Environmental Aspects of Underground Construction and Exploration of Underground Structure – State of the Art

An underground work (such as a tunnel or a cavern) has many, well known, environmental qualities such as: no physical barriers crossing the land, less maintenance costs than an analogous surface structure, less expenses for heating and conditioning; a localized emission of noise, gas, dust during operation and, finally, a better protection against seismic actions.
It cannot be forgotten, anyway, that some negative environmental features are present such as, for example, : perturbation, pollution and drainage of the groundwater; settlements; disposal of waste rock.
In the paper the above mentioned concepts are discussed and analysed to give a global overview of all this aspects.

Preferences for a third-trimester ultrasound scan in a low-risk obstetric population: a discrete choice experiment

Objective: Establish maternal preferences for a third-trimester ultrasound scan in a healthy, low-risk pregnant population.

Design: Cross-sectional study incorporating a discrete choice experiment.

Setting: A large, urban maternity hospital in Northern Ireland.

Participants: One hundred and forty-six women in their second trimester of pregnancy.

Methods: A discrete choice experiment was designed to elicit preferences for four attributes of a third-trimester ultrasound scan: health-care professional conducting the scan, detection rate for abnormal foetal growth, provision of non-medical information, cost. Additional data collected included age, marital status, socio-economic status, obstetric history, pregnancy-specific stress levels, perceived health and whether pregnancy was planned. Analysis was undertaken using a mixed logit model with interaction effects.

Main outcome measures: Women's preferences for, and trade-offs between, the attributes of a hypothetical scan and indirect willingness-to-pay estimates.

Results: Women had significant positive preference for higher rate of detection, lower cost and provision of non-medical information, with no significant value placed on scan operator. Interaction effects revealed subgroups that valued the scan most: women experiencing their first pregnancy, women reporting higher levels of stress, an adverse obstetric history and older women.

Conclusions: Women were able to trade on aspects of care and place relative importance on clinical, non-clinical outcomes and processes of service delivery, thus highlighting the potential of using health utilities in the development of services from a clinical, economic and social perspective. Specifically, maternal preferences exhibited provide valuable information for designing a randomized trial of effectiveness and insight for clinical and policy decision makers to inform woman-centred care.

What Happened to the ‘Development’ in Sustainable Development? Business Guidelines Two Decades After Brundtland

Over twenty years ago ‘Our Common Future’ presented a conceptualization and explanation of the concept of sustainable development. Since then numerous alternative definitions of the concept have been offered, of which at least some are exclusive to each other. At the same time, the role of business in the transition to sustainable development has increasingly received attention. Bringing these two trends in sustainable development together, this paper returns to the Brundtland version of the concept to examine to what extent the original principles of sustainable development are still embedded within key business guidelines, namely the UN Global Compact, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the ICC Business Charter for Sustainable Development, the CAUX Principles, the Global Sullivan Principles and the CERES Principles. The findings suggest that these business guidelines tend to emphasize environmental rather than social aspects of sustainable development, in particular to the detriment of the original Brundtland prioritization of the needs of the poorest. Furthermore, the attention to environmental aspects stresses win-win situations and has a clear managerialist focus; whereas more conceptual environmental issues concerning systems interdependencies, critical thresholds or systemic limits to growth find little attention. The normative codes and principles targeted at the private sector thus not only add another voice to the multiple discourses on sustainable development but also contribute to a reinterpretation of the original agenda set by Brundtland towards conceptualizations of sustainable development around the needs of industrialised rather than developing countries. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessment for the Production of Green Composites

Botanically, green composites belong to an economically important seed plant family that includes maize, wheat, rice, and sorghum known as Saccharum offi cinarum. There are so many natural fibers available in the environment such as rice husk, hemp fibers, flax fibers, bamboo fibers, coconut fiber, coconut coir, grawia optiva and many others also. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a process to estimate the environmental feature and potential impacts related to a product, by organizing a directory of pertinent inputs and outputs of a product system, assessing the potential environmental impacts related with the said inputs and outputs, explaining the results of the inventory analysis and impact evaluation phases in connection to the objectives of the study. Particularly Bagasse, an agricultural residue not only becomes a problem from the environmental point of view, but also affects the profitability of the sugarcane industries. This chapter discusses the properties, processing methods and various other aspects including economic and environmental aspects related to green composites.

A Novel Method to Enable Trade-offs Across the Whole Product Life of an Aircraft Using Value Driven Design

The increasing need to understand complex products and systems with long life spans, presents a significant challenge to designers who increasingly require a broader understanding of the operational aspects of the system. This demands an evolution in current design practice, as designers are often constrained to provide a subsystem solution without full knowledge of the global system operation. Recently there has been a push to consider value centric approaches which should facilitate better or more rapid convergence to design solutions with predictable completion schedules. Value Driven Design is one such approach, in which value is used as the system top level objective function. This provides a broader view of the system and enables all sub-systems and components to be designed with a view to the effect on project value. It also has the capacity to include value expressions for more qualitative aspects, such as environmental impact. However, application of the method to date has been restricted to comparing value in a programme where the lifespan is fixed and known a priori. This paper takes a novel view of value driven design through the surplus value objective function, and shows how it can be used to identify key sensitivities to guide designers in design trade-off decisions. By considering a new time based approach it can be used to identify optimum programme life-span and hence allow trade-offs over the whole product life.

Insight into the key aspects of the regeneration process in the NOx storage reduction (NSR) reaction probed using fast transient kinetics coupled with isotopically labelled (NO)-N-15 over Pt and Rh-containing Ba/Al2O3 catalysts

For the first time, the coupling of fast transient kinetic switching and the use of an isotopically labelled reactant (15NO) has allowed detailed analysis of the evolution of all the products and reactants involved in the regeneration of a NOx storage reduction (NSR) material. Using realistic regeneration times (ca. 1 s) for Pt, Rh and Pt/Rh-containing Ba/Al2O3 catalysts we have revealed an unexpected double peak in the evolution of nitrogen. The first peak occurred immediately on switching from lean to rich conditions, while the second peak started at the point at which the gases switched from rich to lean. The first evolution of nitrogen occurs as a result of the fast reaction between H2 and/or CO and NO on reduced Rh and/or Pt sites. The second N2 peak which occurs upon removal of the rich phase can be explained by reaction of stored ammonia with stored NOx, gas phase NOx or O2. The ammonia can be formed either by hydrolysis of isocyanates or by direct reaction of NO and H2.

The study highlights the importance of the relative rates of regeneration and storage in determining the overall performance of the catalysts. The performance of the monometallic 1.1%Rh/Ba/Al2O3 catalyst at 250 and 350 °C was found to be dependent on the rate of NOx storage, since the rate of regeneration was sufficient to remove the NOx stored in the lean phase. In contrast, for the monometallic 1.6%Pt/Ba/Al2O3 catalyst at 250 °C, the rate of regeneration was the determining factor with the result that the amount of NOx stored on the catalyst deteriorated from cycle to cycle until the amount of NOx stored in the lean phase matched the NOx reduced in the rich phase. On the basis of the ratio of exposed metal surface atoms to total Ba content, the monometallic 1.6%Pt/Ba/Al2O3 catalyst outperformed the Rh-containing catalysts at 250 and 350 °C even when CO was used as a reductant.

COMMUNICATION AND GREEK ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANISATIONS: MEANS OF COMMUNICATION AND INFLUENCING FACTORS

A basic operational objective of any environmental organisation is to raise awareness among the public on issues of environmental protection, through the dissemination of knowledge and experience to local communities, so that the conservation and ecologically sound management of natural resources can acquire a local dimension. This can be achieved either through interventions directed at the State, mainly in relation to its legislative function, or by encouraging citizens to change or improve their attitude regarding environmental matters. In order to ensure a successful outcome and the efficient functioning of any organisation, a feeling of mutual trust and understanding should exist between the latter and its various audiences, i.e. the State and society. A basic ingredient of this balance between the organisation, the broader public and the State is effective communication and activity planning. As a way of contributing to the exploration of this process, this paper describes the means of communication used by Greek environmental organisations, and presents, through a non-linear model, the differentiation amongst them, in conjunction with aspects of the profile of those running each organisation and other indicators, such as the years in operation and the membership figures in each sampled organisation. The paper concludes by arguing that the diversification of communication means is related to the head person's years as a member of the organisation and the extent of its total membership. Another important finding is that the more the involvement in activities within the organisation, the less differentiation we observe amongst the employed means of communication.

Dynamics of Gompertzian tumour growth under environmental fluctuations

We investigate the effect of correlated additive and multiplicative Gaussian white noise oil the Gompertzian growth of tumours. Our results are obtained by Solving numerically the time-dependent Fokker-Planck equation (FPE) associated with the stochastic dynamics. In Our numerical approach we have adopted B-spline functions as a truncated basis to expand the approximated eigenfunctions. The eigenfunctions and eigenvalues obtained using this method are used to derive approximate solutions of the dynamics under Study. We perform simulations to analyze various aspects, of the probability distribution. of the tumour cell populations in the transient- and steady-state regimes. More precisely, we are concerned mainly with the behaviour of the relaxation time (tau) to the steady-state distribution as a function of (i) of the correlation strength (lambda) between the additive noise and the multiplicative noise and (ii) as a function of the multiplicative noise intensity (D) and additive noise intensity (alpha). It is observed that both the correlation strength and the intensities of additive and multiplicative noise, affect the relaxation time.

Strategic Environmental Assessment

The objectives of the text are to take stock of the international experience with SEA; to highlight the key aspects and areas of the process development and application and to probe issues related to the quality and the effectiveness of SEA practice. These are successfully weaved together as each theme is unpacked and the individual authors apply their own interpretations and experiences to current thinking.

A strategic review of electricity systems models

Electricity systems models are software tools used to manage electricity demand and the electricity systems, to trade electricity and for generation expansion planning purposes. Various portfolios and scenarios are modelled in order to compare the effects of decision making in policy and on business development plans in electricity systems so as to best advise governments and industry on the least cost economic and environmental approach to electricity supply, while maintaining a secure supply of sufficient quality electricity. The modelling techniques developed to study vertically integrated state monopolies are now applied in liberalised markets where the issues and constraints are more complex. This paper reviews the changing role of electricity systems modelling in a strategic manner, focussing on the modelling response to key developments, the move away from monopoly towards liberalised market regimes and the increasing complexity brought about by policy targets for renewable energy and emissions. The paper provides an overview of electricity systems modelling techniques, discusses a number of key proprietary electricity systems models used in the USA and Europe and provides an information resource to the electricity analyst not currently readily available in the literature on the choice of model to investigate different aspects of the electricity system.

Negative Aspects of Close Relationships as a Predictor of Increased Body Mass Index and Waist Circumference: The Whitehall II Study

Objectives. We investigated whether exposure to negative aspects of close relationships was associated with subsequent increase in body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference.
Methods. Data came from a prospective cohort study (Whitehall II) of 9425 civil servants aged 35 to 55 years at baseline (phase 1: 1985-1988). We assessed negative aspects of close relationships with the Close Persons Questionnaire (range 0-12) at phases 1 and 2 (1989-1990). We measured BMI and waist circumference at phases 3 (1991-1994) and 5 (1997-1999). Covariates at phase 1 included gender, age, marital status, ethnicity, BMI, employment grade, smoking, physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, and common mental disorder.
Results. After adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics and health behaviors, participants with higher exposure to negative aspects of close relationships had a higher likelihood of a 10% or greater increase in BMI and waist circumference (odds ratios per 1-unit increase 1.08 [95% confidence interval (CI)=1.02, 1.14; P=.007] and 1.09 [CI=1.04, 1.14; P <= .001], respectively) as well as a transition from the overweight (25 <= BMI <30) to the obese (BMI >= 30) category.
Conclusions. Adverse social relationships may contribute to weight gain.

Applied aspects of Rhodococcus genetics

Eubacteria of the genus Rhodococcus are a diverse group of microorganisms commonly found in many environmental niches from soils to seawaters and as plant and animal pathogens. They exhibit a remarkable ability to degrade many organic compounds and their economic importance is becoming increasingly apparent. Although their genetic organisation is still far from understood, there have been many advances in recent years. Reviewed here is the current knowledge of rhodococci relating to gene transfer, recombination, plasmid replication and functions, cloning vectors and reporter genes, gene expression and its control, bacteriophages, insertion sequences and genomic rearrangements. Further fundamental studies of Rhodococcus genetics and the application of genetic techniques to the these bacteria will be needed for their continued biotechnological exploitation.