The Role of Forest Soils in a Northern New England Effluent Management System

The Carrabassett Valley Sanitary District in Carrabassett Valley, Maine has utilized both a forest spray irrigation system and a Snowfluent™ system for the treatment of their wastewater effluent. This study was designed to evaluate potential changes in soil properties after approximately 20 years of treatment in the forested spray irrigation site and three years of treatment in the field Snowfluent™ site. In addition, grass yield and composition were evaluated on the field study sites. After treatment with effluent or Snowfluent™, soils showed an increase in soil exchangeable Ca, Mg, Na, and K, base saturation, and pH. While most constituents were higher in treated soils, available P was lower in treated soils compared to the controls. This difference was attributed to higher rates of P mineralization from soil organic matter due to an irrigation effect of the treatment, depleting available P pools despite the P addition with the treatment. Most of the differences due to treatment were greatest at the surface and diminished with depth. Depth patterns in soil properties mostly reflected the decreasing influence of organic matter and its decomposition products with depth as evidenced by significantly higher total C in the surface compared to lower horizons. There were decreasing concentrations of total N, and exchangeable or extractable Ca, Mg, Na, K, Mn, Zn, and P with depth. In addition, there was decreasing BS with depth, driven primarily by declining exchangeable Ca and Mg. Imgation with Snowfluent™ altered the chemical composition of the grass on the site. All element concentrations were significantly higher in the grass foliage except for Ca. The differences were attributed to the additional nutrients and moisture derived from the Snowfluent™. The use of forest spray imgation and Snowfluent™ as a wastewater treatment strategy appears to work well. The soil and vegetation were able to retain most of the applied nutrients, and do not appear to be moving toward saturation. Vegetation management may be a key tool for managing nutrient accumulation on the grass sites as the system ages.

A survey of the implementation status of environmental management systems in U.S. colleges and universities, and, An environmental management system implementation model for U.S. colleges and universities

A census of 925 U.S. colleges and universities offering masters and doctorate degrees was conducted in order to study the number of elements of an environmental management system as defined by ISO 14001 possessed by small, medium and large institutions. A 30% response rate was received with 273 responses included in the final data analysis. Overall, the number of ISO 14001 elements implemented among the 273 institutions ranged from 0 to 16, with a median of 12. There was no significant association between the number of elements implemented among institutions and the size of the institution (p = 0.18; Kruskal-Wallis test) or among USEPA regions (p = 0.12; Kruskal-Wallis test). The proportion of U.S. colleges and universities that reported having implemented a structured, comprehensive environmental management system, defined by answering yes to all 16 elements, was 10% (95% C.I. 6.6%–14.1%); however 38% (95% C.I. 32.0%–43.8%) reported that they had implemented a structured, comprehensive environmental management system, while 30.0% (95% C.I. 24.7%–35.9%) are planning to implement a comprehensive environmental management system within the next five years. Stratified analyses were performed by institution size, Carnegie Classification and job title. ^ The Osnabruck model, and another under development by the South Carolina Sustainable Universities Initiative, are the only two environmental management system models that have been proposed specifically for colleges and universities, although several guides are now available. The Environmental Management System Implementation Model for U.S. Colleges and Universities developed is an adaptation of the ISO 14001 standard and USEPA recommendations and has been tailored to U.S. colleges and universities for use in streamlining the implementation process. In using this implementation model created for the U.S. research and academic setting, it is hoped that these highly specialized institutions will be provided with a clearer and more cost-effective path towards the implementation of an EMS and greater compliance with local, state and federal environmental legislation. ^

Innovative self management system for guided cardiac rehabilitation

This paper describes the design and development of a system for cardio rehabilitation of patients that suffered a myocardial infarction. The proposed solution focuses on exercise prescriptions and the encouragement of healthy behaviors. The innovative strategy of the design takes into account health promotion models to provide safe, assistive exercise training sessions, personalized feedbacks, and educational contents.

Knowledge Management and Leadership in the Higher Education: A First Approach

Today, it is more and more important to develop competences in the learning process of the university students (that is to say, to acquire knowledge but also skills, abilities, attitudes and values). This is because professional practice requires that the future graduates design and market products, defend the interests of their clients, be introduced in the Administration or, even, in the Politics. Universities must form professionals that become social and opinion leaders, consultants, advisory, entrepreneurs and, in short, people with capacity to solve problems. This paper offers a tool to evaluate the application for the professor of different styles of management in the process of the student’s learning. Its main contribution consists on advancing toward the setting in practice of a model that overcomes the limitations of the traditional practices based on the masterful class, and that it has been applied in Portugal and Spain.

Is Europe ready to provide a pan-European Identity Management System?

European public administrations must manage citizens' digital identities, particularly considering interoperability among different countries. Owing to the diversity of electronic identity management (eIDM) systems, when users of one such system seek to communicate with governments using a different system, both systems must be linked and understand each other. To achieve this, the European Union is working on an interoperability framework. This article provides an overview of eIDM systems' current state at a pan-European level. It identifies and analyzes issues on which agreement exists, as well as those that aren't yet resolved and are preventing the adoption of a large-scale model.

Sustainable Air Traffic Management System Development Methodology

As it is defined in ATM 2000+ Strategy (Eurocontrol 2001), the mission of the Air Traffic Management (ATM) System is: “For all the phases of a flight, the ATM system should facilitate a safe, efficient, and expedite traffic flow, through the provision of adaptable ATM services that can be dimensioned in relation to the requirements of all the users and areas of the European air space. The ATM services should comply with the demand, be compatible, operate under uniform principles, respect the environment and satisfy the national security requirements.” The objective of this paper is to present a methodology designed to evaluate the status of the ATM system in terms of the relationship between the offered capacity and traffic demand, identifying weakness areas and proposing solutions. The first part of the methodology relates to the characterization and evaluation of the current system, while a second part proposes an approach to analyze the possible development limit. As part of the work, general criteria are established to define the framework in which the analysis and diagnostic methodology presented is placed. They are: the use of Air Traffic Control (ATC) sectors as analysis unit, the presence of network effects, the tactical focus, the relative character of the analysis, objectivity and a high level assessment that allows assumptions on the human and Communications, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) elements, considered as the typical high density air traffic resources. The steps followed by the methodology start with the definition of indicators and metrics, like the nominal criticality or the nominal efficiency of a sector; scenario characterization where the necessary data is collected; network effects analysis to study the relations among the constitutive elements of the ATC system; diagnostic by means of the “System Status Diagram”; analytical study of the ATC system development limit; and finally, formulation of conclusions and proposal for improvement. This methodology was employed by Aena (Spanish Airports Manager and Air Navigation Service Provider) and INECO (Spanish Transport Engineering Company) in the analysis of the Spanish ATM System in the frame of the Spanish airspace capacity sustainability program, although it could be applied elsewhere.

Open multi-technology building energy management system

Energy Efficiency is one of the goals of the Smart Building initiatives. This paper presents an Open Energy Management System which consists of an ontology-based multi-technology platform and a wireless transducer network using 6LoWPAN communication technology. The system allows the integration of several building automation protocols and eases the development of different kind of services to make use of them. The system has been implemented and tested in the Energy Efficiency Research Facility at CeDInt-UPM.

The impact of sustainable construction and knowledge management on sustainability goals. A review of the venezuelan renewable energy sector

The recognition of the relevance of energy, especially of the renewable energies generated by the sun, water, wind, tides, modern biomass or thermal is growing significantly in the global society based on the possibility it has to improve societies′ quality of life, to support poverty reduction and sustainable development. Renewable energy, and mainly the energy generated by large hydropower generation projects that supply most of the renewable energy consumed by developing countries, requires many technical, legal, financial and social complex processes sustained by innovations and valuable knowledge. Besides these efforts, renewable energy requires a solid infrastructure to generate and distribute the energy resources needed to solve the basic needs of society. This demands a proper construction performance to deliver the energy projects planned according to specifications and respecting environmental and social concerns, which implies the observance of sustainable construction guidelines. But construction projects are complex and demanding and frequently face time and cost overruns that may cause negative impacts on the initial planning and thus on society. The renewable energy issue and the large renewable energy power generation and distribution projects are particularly significant for developing countries and for Latin America in particular, as this region concentrates an important hydropower potential and installed capacity. Using as references the performance of Venezuelan large hydropower generation projects and the Guri dam construction, this research evaluates the tight relationship existing between sustainable construction and knowledge management and their impact to achieve sustainability goals. The knowledge management processes are proposed as a basic strategy to allow learning from successes and failures obtained in previous projects and transform the enhancement opportunites into actions to improve the performance of the renewable energy power generation and distribution projects.

An architecture for a heterogeneous private IaaS management system

Cloud computing and, more particularly, private IaaS, is seen as a mature technology with a myriad solutions tochoose from. However, this disparity of solutions and products has instilled in potential adopters the fear of vendor and data lock-in. Several competing and incompatible interfaces and management styles have given even more voice to these fears. On top of this, cloud users might want to work with several solutions at the same time, an integration that is difficult to achieve in practice. In this paper, we propose a management architecture that tries to tackle these problems; it offers a common way of managing several cloud solutions, and an interface that can be tailored to the needs of the user. This management architecture is designed in a modular way, and using a generic information model. We have validated our approach through the implementation of the components needed for this architecture to support a sample private IaaS solution: OpenStack

Development of a management system for virtual machines on private clouds

Cloud computing and, more particularly, private IaaS, is seen as a mature technol- ogy with a myriad solutions to choose from. However, this disparity of solutions and products has instilled in potential adopters the fear of vendor and data lock- in. Several competing and incompatible interfaces and management styles have increased even more these fears. On top of this, cloud users might want to work with several solutions at the same time, an integration that is difficult to achieve in practice. In this Master Thesis I propose a management architecture that tries to solve these problems; it provides a generalized control mechanism for several cloud infrastructures, and an interface that can meet the requirements of the users. This management architecture is designed in a modular way, and using a generic infor- mation model. I have validated the approach through the implementation of the components needed for this architecture to support a sample private IaaS solution: OpenStack.

Agent-based modeling and simulation for the design of the future european Air Traffic Management system: the experience of CASSIOPEIA

The SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) program is an ambitious re-search and development initiative to design the future European air traffic man-agement (ATM) system. The study of the behavior of ATM systems using agent-based modeling and simulation tools can help the development of new methods to improve their performance. This paper presents an overview of existing agent-based approaches in air transportation (paying special attention to the challenges that exist for the design of future ATM systems) and, subsequently, describes a new agent-based approach that we proposed in the CASSIOPEIA project, which was developed according to the goals of the SESAR program. In our approach, we use agent models for different ATM stakeholders, and, in contrast to previous work, our solution models new collaborative decision processes for flow traffic management, it uses an intermediate level of abstraction (useful for simulations at larger scales), and was designed to be a practical tool (open and reusable) for the development of different ATM studies. It was successfully applied in three stud-ies related to the design of future ATM systems in Europe.

An agent-based approach for the design of the future european air traffic management system

This paper describes an agent-based approach for the simulation of air traffic management (ATM) in Europe that was designed to help analyze proposals for future ATM systems. This approach is able to represent new collaborative deci-sion processes for flow traffic management, it uses an intermediate level of ab-straction (useful for simulations at larger scales), and was designed to be a practi-cal tool (open and reusable) for the development of different ATM studies. It was successfully applied in three studies related to the design of future ATM systems in Europe.

Implementing an Integrated Management System (IMS) at an Aerospace Manufacturing Facility

This project analyzes the challenges, issues, benefits, and lessons learned that several companies experienced while implementing integrated management systems. Based on previous experiences, this paper defines several strategies that an organization should use to increase the probability of implementing an integrated management system (IMS) successfully. Strategies include completing a feasibility analysis, creating a policy, allocating resources, developing objectives, modifying documentation, and creating a continuous monitoring process. Moreover, an organization can reduce potential obstacles by promoting a culture that encourages management commitment and employee participation. Results indicate the implementation of an IMS provides the framework to manage environmental, health, and safety programs effectively. By implementing an IMS, an organization can save time and money, as well as proactively control risk.

Human Resource's Role in Leveraging Knowledge Management as a Competitive Advantage

The ultra-competitiveness in the twenty-first century's business environment suggests that, to survive, human resource (HR) must prove its value. The knowledge economy presents HR the opportunity to demonstrate its added value through leveraging knowledge management (KM) as a competitive advantage. This capstone reviews the literature on business strategy, knowledge, KM, KM success, and HR to reveal links between these subjects and illustrate three roles HR can undertake to leverage KM as a competitive advantage. The capstone also assesses HR's current contributions to KM through a survey of 42 HR professionals. Survey results suggest that, although HR contributes to the three KM roles, HR is not currently fully capitalizing on the opportunity to become a strategic business partner through KM.