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This article analyzes how news management strategies coupled with journalistic conventions affect news coverage of the Asamblea Ciudadana Ambiental de Gualeguaychú in Argentina, a social movement against the establishment of two paper mill plants on the Rio Uruguay. Since 2003, the Asamblea has received wide attention in local and national news. Media advocacy has been central to the Asamblea's political goals. This case offers an opportunity to examine the role of the news media in the definition of environmental risk in a country with weak environmental policies and a weak tradition of environmental reporting. News coverage of the Asamblea confirms the media's penchant for sensational and dramatic events. Also, it suggests that the mainstream media does not necessarily portray social movements negatively. Because the media largely relies on official sources in setting news frames, shifting views about the movement among political elites on news events take attention away from structural processes and environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our objective is to achieve the societal implementation of the Circular Economy Program for Automobile Carbon Fibers. This involves recycling carbon fibers sourced from carbon fiber reinforced plastics/carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastics (CFRP/CFRTP) discarded from automobiles and reintegrating them into the manufacturing processes of automobiles. Although, the existing carbon fiber recycling technology recycles the carbon fiber into a finely chopped state; it is not the original continuous carbon fiber product. A novel recycling technology is elucidated herein, referred to as the electrolytic sulfuric acid method (ESAM). The ESAM recycles carbon fibers by decomposing only the resin component of CFRP/CFRTP into CO2 and water using oxidative active species generated by electrolytic sulfuric acid. This method can (1) be applied to all resins, (2) maintains strength of the recycled carbon fibers, and (3) regenerates continuous carbon fibers. Moreover, it is the only technology applicable to CFRP pressure tanks. The successful recycling of continuous carbon fiber from pressure tanks has been achieved, enabling the production of new tanks and unidirectional CFRTP tape. This technology recycles the original continuous carbon fiber product, thus enabling a "close" resource circulation cycle. We have not yet confirmed the number of times recycling can be performed. However, according to the method described in this paper, the recycling process can yield continuous carbon fibers without a decrease in physical properties. Therefore, theoretically, it becomes possible to recycle indefinitely and revert the fibers to their original state, provided that the strength reduction during product use is not a significant consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Indigenous-led activism against proposed oil pipelines has relied heavily on social media, as in the #NoDAPL campaign against the Dakota Access Pipeline. This paper explores affective engagement in online activism, including the Standing Rock 'check-in' campaign on Facebook. Moving beyond dichotomous understandings of embodied vs digital activism, Cannupa Hanska Luger's Mirror Shields Project employs digital media in order to support direct action at Standing Rock. Patricia Clough draws a direct link between affect and technoscientific understandings of the body in her concept of biomediated bodies. This helps explain how physical and digital activism are linked: the digital and the physical cannot be understood as independent of each other, since online engagement always has an embodied aspect as well. Luger's Mirror Shields Project functions as a form of alterlife, in resistance to biopower, recognizing historical and ongoing harms while also creating new possibilities for resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from an investigation of nature-based practices, from the perspectives of 10 academics/educators from six nations. Participants engaged in a focus group exploring the prevalence and inclusion of nature in social work practice and education. While the study focused on individual members' experiences and perspectives, the findings highlight important context-specific factors for including nature within social work to reconnect humans with nature for health, well-being, healing, and justice. An Integrative Environmental Model for social work is proposed to assist future practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the catalogue of environment-related publications in Urban Studies, this paper identifies and reviews 12 thought-provoking articles that have addressed the issue of climate changes and cities from complementary perspectives. It argues that to advance a holistic understanding of urban environmental issues it is necessary to embrace a broad multi-disciplinary approach, particularly as moving towards low carbon urban living will require integrated social, political and technical adaptation processes. Ultimately, the paper advances a forward-looking research agenda that extends beyond consideration of how to improve urban environmental performance to include evaluation of how urban consumers, firms and local government endeavour to achieve sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of neoliberal environmentalism was to unleash the market to protect the environment; but as it turns out, things are getting worse on our way to catastrophe. Despite persistent failures, neoliberal environmentalism remains prevalent—and apparently without alternative. This paper directs focus on an often-overlooked dimension of this apparent stasis: the nexus of self and society in advanced capitalism, as shown in the linkage between neoliberal environmentalism and the autonomous ecoconsumer. Marcuse's concept of repressive desublimation is engaged to better understand how environmentalist desire is currently being thwarted in ways that inhibit movement toward socioecological emancipation. The paper provides an illustrative example of desublimated environmentalist desire in the current recycling crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances two arguments about environmental problems. First, it interrogates the strength and limitations of empiricist accounts of problems and issues offered by actor-network theory. Drawing on the work of C.S. Peirce, it considers how emerging environmental problems often lead to abductive inferences about the existence of hidden causes that may or may not have caused the problem to emerge. The analysis of environmental problems should be empiricist in so far as it is sceptical of the claims of those who know in advance what the problem is, but it should also be alert to processes and things that are not readily traceable or perceived. Secondly, the paper's contention is that environmental problems almost invariably involve an encounter between unlike or disparate materials or processes. In such circumstances, the challenge is to develop a form of inquiry that is alert to both the specificity of such encounters and to the specificity of the political situations in which they come to matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using the concepts of metabolism and metabolic rift as a framework, this paper examines carbon geoengineering technologies as a solution to climate change and explores if it is possible to mend an ecological metabolic rift without fundamental changes in the social metabolic order. Carbon geoengineering technologies have become a key component of scenarios to limit the extent of global warming and are being discussed as a means to sequester carbon and, therefore, mend the carbon cycle. However, most applications of carbon geoengineering thus far do not result in net negative emissions. Strategies to make operations profitable result in neutral or positive, rather than negative, emissions. While these strategies have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations, the current social order constrains their use and effectiveness. Instead of being applied as part of the solution to climate change, carbon geoengineering is being strategically promoted by the fossil fuel industry in ways that serve to reproduce and maintain the current social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mini-review reports curbing waste shells (i.e. seashells, eggshells, snail shells, etc.), environmental health issues and liabilities by using them as material for heterogenous catalysts, blended cement manufacture, concrete aggregate, ceramics and plastics additives, biofilter medium and biomedical applications. The traditional materials used in the manufacture of these products could be relatively cheap; however, there are considerable environmental issues (i.e., ecological damage, disruption of eco-system and air contamination) as well as intense energy consumption associated with the exploitation of depleting natural resources. Waste shells are a renewable and cheap alternative, and will simultaneously decrease manufacturing cost while reducing their burden on the environment. This paper emphasizes environmental sustainability by summarizing articles published on various applications of waste shell-derived biomaterials. The properties of waste shell-derived biomaterials are presented and discussed. The materials' properties suggest they are similar to limestone and their biological–natural origin and the high calcium carbonate content with a trace amount of other mineral elements makes them highly favorable for cement production, heterogenous catalysts and hydroxyapatite manufacture for biomedical and wastewater treatment applications. The purpose of this work is to offer new perspectives and direction for future research on waste shell-derived biomaterials while existing areas of applications demanding scale up are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A circular approach to the way in which we manage the resources consumed and produced in cities – materials, energy, water and land – will significantly reduce the consumption of finite resources globally. It will also help to address urban problems including resource security, waste disposal, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, heating, drought and flooding. Taking a circular approach can also tackle many other socio-economic problems afflicting cities, for example, providing access to affordable accommodation, expanding and diversifying the economic base, building more engaged and collaborative communities in cities. Thus it has great potential to improve our urban living environments. To date, the industrial ecologists and economists have tended to dominate the circularity debate, focusing on closed-loop industrial systems and circular economy (circular businesses and systems of provision). In this paper I investigate why the current state-of-the-art conceptualisation for circular economy (RESOLVE) is inadequate when applied to a city. Through this critique and a broader review of the literature I identify the principles and components which are lacking from the circular economy (CE) conceptualisation when applied to a city. I then use this to develop my own definition and conceptualisation of a circular approach to urban resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that ‘the Anthropocene’ is a deeply depoliticizing notion. This de-politicization unfolds through the creation of a set of narratives, what we refer to as ‘AnthropoScenes’, which broadly share the effect of off-staging certain voices and forms of acting. Our notion of the Anthropo-obScene is our tactic to both attest to and undermine the depoliticizing stories of ‘the Anthropocene’. We first examine how various AnthropoScenes, while internally fractured and heterogeneous, ranging from geo-engineering and earth system science to more-than-human and object-oriented ontologies, place things and beings, human and non-human, within a particular relational straitjacket that does not allow for a remainder or constitutive outside. This risks deepening an immunological biopolitical fantasy that promises adaptive and resilient terraforming, an earth system management of sorts that permits life as we know it to continue for some, while turning into a necropolitics for others. Second, we develop a post-foundational political perspective in relation to our dramatically changing socio-ecological situation. This perspective understands the political in terms of performance and, in an Arendtian manner, re-opens the political as forms of public-acting in common that subtracts from or exceeds what is gestured to hold socio-ecological constellations together. We conclude that what is off-staged and rendered obscene in ‘the AnthropoScenes’ carries precisely the possibility of a return of the political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the Shanghai 2010 World Expo to show how spectacle serves a governing function of the Chinese developmental state. I introduce soil exegesis as a method to excavate sedimented power relations of spectacle, undergirding the expo’s presentation. This approach investigates how spectacle is a state-territorializing project and pedagogical venture that relies on and denies the state socialist-era’s waste, to produce a ‘new nature’ and perform socio-technical management of crisis and crowds. Dynamic rearrangement of soil quality and composition facilitated the urban redevelopment zone of sustainable futures, while interactive-technocratic environments inserted visitor bodies into expo surveillance systems and infrastructure without reference to the embedded political ecology of the mass event within Shanghai and beyond. The article concludes by considering ethical legacies of the event and the ways ‘sustainable spectacle’ operates through waste administration and environmental performance that ‘greenwash’ the socialist past and obstruct other governing arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Hannah Arendt's insights into the affinities between Marxism and the philosophy of life, this article reconstructs a theoretical position that we propose to call 'vitalist Marxism'. This position conceives of life not only as an essential foundation of the production process, but also as a critical resource for resistance to the capitalist logic of exploitation. We highlight the role Georges Canguilhem (1904–95) played in developing this position, in particular by depicting tools and machines as 'organs of life'. Drawing on Canguilhem's early writings as well as unpublished manuscripts, we show that this 'organological' understanding of technology was rooted in the increasingly anti-fascist reception of Marx in France during the 1930s. Against the background of today's protests against climate destruction, racism, and anti-feminist violence, all of which invoke the defense of basic living conditions, we argue that the critical position of vitalist Marxism acquires remarkable topicality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues against what we call 'the local trap', in which development researchers and practitioners falsely assume that localized decision-making is inherently more socially just or ecologically sustainable. The local trap constrains research on a range of topics in development research, including productive conservation networks, agro-forestry, community-based natural resource management, common property regimes and community-based collaboration. We use recent research on scale in political and economic geography to argue that scales and scalar arrangements are socially constructed through political struggle; they are never ontologically given. In other words, there is nothing inherent about any scale or scalar arrangement. Therefore, an arrangement in which resources or decisions are controlled locally is no more likely to lead to ecologically sustainable or socially just outcomes than an arrangement in which the regional, national or global scale predominates. Because scales are produced through socio-political struggle, the outcomes of a given scalar arrangement are dependent on the political agenda(s) of those empowered by the arrangement. When we start from the assumption that there is nothing inherent about scale, we cannot assume the political and ecological dynamics of a particular scalar configuration. We must instead make those dynamics the object of critical inquiry. The paper uses a case study of beekeeping in the Brazilian Amazon to illustrate the range of both positive and negative outcomes that can result when decision-making is localized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does it mean to read Stuart Hall from South Africa, in relation to South Africa, and with South Africa in mind? This paper engages 'what's left of the debate' between Marxism and postcolonialism as politico-theoretical projects by refusing the opposition of compartmentalized scholarly fields, and by positing a conjunctural postcolonial-postsocialist praxis necessary for interpreting contemporary South Africa (as elsewhere.) Drawing on Hall's notion of 'moments' as both spatial and temporal, and assembled in the work of representation, I draw together insights from three moments in Hall's work: his foundational essay for the apartheid predicament, 'Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance'; the collectively written Policing the Crisis and particularly its remarkable conclusion which speaks to the criminalization of poor people's struggles; and his later thoughts on 'the end of innocence' with respect to coalitional Black politics. Reflecting on aspects of my research on 20th-century Durban, I suggest why these three moments must be seen in relation to each other, as a constellation that points, through the legacies of the Black Radical Tradition, to as yet unnamed postcolonial-postsocialist Marxisms of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental protection is presumed to damper economic growth and media accounts of resource extraction often portray trade-offs between jobs and the environment. However, there is limited evidence that environmental protection universally costs jobs and heavily polluting industries provide few jobs in comparison to environmental impacts. Therefore, how has media discourse contributed to the taken-for-granted division between the economy and the environment? This paper uses the Keystone XL pipeline controversy as a case of the symbolical conflict between supporters of growth and conservation to explore the role of ideology and power in media discourse. I use frame analysis of newspaper articles to explore the representations of labor and the environment and how hegemonic ideology legitimizes resource extraction. My analysis reveals binary framing that constructed the pipeline as a political controversy over the trade-off between the environment and the economy, which made conflict between workers and environmentalists sensible, and silenced alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biology and politics have always been permeable to one another, trading metaphors back and forth. This is nowhere more blatant than when people claim to talk about ‘the planet’ as a whole. James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia has often been interpreted as a godlike figure. By reviewing in some detail a critical assessment of Lovelock’s Gaia by one scientist, Toby Tyrrell, the paper tries to map out why it is so difficult for natural as well as social scientists not to confuse Gaia with some sort of Providence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hearings of the Senate Environmental Protection Subcommittee on reauthorizing the Clean Air Act of 1987 are analyzed and contrasted with Senate hearings of other committees to show how these hearings fit into the societal debate on clean air. The discourse of the hearings is analyzed by examining the language of the talk and by analyzing the style of argument. The discourse in these hearings is shown to be distinctive by comparing it with other hearings. The argument of the paper is that this distinctiveness is the result of the type of communication possible in electronic/mass media communication. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the interconnections and interrelations between food, waste, people and state during a series of survival crises in the famines of 1921–3, 1932–3 and 1946–7 in Soviet Ukraine. Owing to grain and food requisitions, the collectivization of agriculture and rationing, as part of the state's growing control over the flow of economic resources from the 1920s to the 1940s, discarded food acquired particular importance for people's survival during these times of extremes. Focusing on both individual and institutional levels of waste production and regulation, this study explores the role of food waste in the survival practices of the starving and traces the development of their individual resourcefulness and interconnectedness with wider social and natural environments. The article explores different types of food waste, including husks, leftover food, carrion and spoiled and rotten food and the spaces of its collection. By 'following' the traces of waste in urban and rural landscapes, including, among others, dumpsters, slaughterhouses, cattle cemeteries and railway stations, the article brings into focus the critical changes in human–food, human–waste and human–nature relationships in times of extremes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2022, a scientific breakthrough in fusion energy resulted in widespread media attention with a focus on fusion as a key strategy to mitigate climate change. In this article, we draw from Herbert Marcuse's work on technological rationality to examine fusion technology in this context. We explore if fusion is seen as a way to master nature, if it protects current power relations, and if a focus on fusion might detract attention and resources from alternatives. Illustrating technological rationality, much attention is being given to the potential achievement of fusion energy, it is being championed by already powerful economic actors, and despite that it is unlikely to be ready in time to support necessary climate mitigation, it may be detracting support for more effective and just strategies that already exist. In this context, framing fusion as a solution to climate change represents what Marcuse calls 'one-dimensional thinking'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the study of the ecology of early Holocene, 9000-4000 cal BC, specifically human and faunal dispersal into the Norrland and Dalarna areas of northern Sweden. It has been hypothesised that this region of Sweden was settled by hunter-gatherer groups of Butovo/Veretye ancestry moving in from the eastern taiga zone and at the same time groups from the West Scandinavian coast were moving north following the melting Weichselian ice sheet. Due to the speed of the melting ice these two groups must have encountered each other in the central part of northern Sweden. This article discusses the environment of these two separate groups and the possible consequences of their encounter, informed by results from the zooarchaeological analysis of burnt, radiocarbon dated bones from sites spanning much of Norrland and Dalarna. A compilation of previously dated sites are presented, and also new 14C dates from excavated sites. The northern population preferred to hunt forest game and held on to it for a long time even if sea mammals were available. The southern population, on the other hand, hunted sea mammals and forest game through the whole period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many analysts expect that a decline in natural resources and a rise in resource demand will increase the risk of interstate war in the coming decades. Other researchers reject this expectation. Empirical examinations are mostly qualitative case studies, and the few statistical models center primarily on waters. We argue changing resource levels can provide either an incentive or a disincentive for countries to go to war. The net effects by resource are empirical issues. We offer statistical models for a large sample, including several types of renewable and non-renewable resources, and other variables. We find that resource changes impact interstate war, and the magnitude of their impacts is on par with that of non-resource forces, and the effects of one time resource changes linger. The paper examines implications for the coming decades in light of the United States’ National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical studies of globalization seek to unmask how this stage of capitalist history reshapes patterns of uneven development around the world. While globalization can reproduce long-standing patterns of North–South unequal exchange, in this paper, I focus on how capital mobility and competition contribute to uneven development. Drawing primarily on Neil Smith’s theory of uneven development, I offer a theoretical discussion of how capital’s capacity to seesaw from place to place in its search for higher profits—and the spatial competition between places that this capacity triggers—constitutes a source of unevenness. Regions, nations, and localities adapt to capital’s seesaw by offering, among others, cheaper labor and lower environmental regulation costs. While this can work for a time, advantages are either eroded by the unfolding contradictions of capitalism or competed away by the emergence of new areas. In the last section, I offer a tentative illustration of this argument with a brief examination of pollution havens and Special Economic Zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the focus of cyber conflict has been on interstate conflict. This article focuses on two interrelated questions in the important but neglected area of cyber contentious politics. First, how does the public feel about the use of different eco tactics including cyber-based tactics carried out by activists involved in the radical environmental movement, a movement that uses protest and sabotage in service of environmental causes? Second, how do anti-technology sentiment and concerns about climate change influence support for different eco tactics? To answer these questions, we conduct a survey and survey experiment on a nationally diverse sample of Americans. We find that Americans are less supportive of certain eco tactics, particularly those that involve property destruction or physical sabotage compared to cyber-based tactics. We further show that anti-technology sentiment and perceived threat from climate change are correlated with increased support for eco direct actions. Using a survey experiment we show that cyber direct actions that result in sabotage are viewed as more acceptable than kinetic actions even though they both result in the same level of destruction. Finally, we include qualitative data from interviews with activists to better understand the strategy and role that new technology and tactics play in the broader radical environmental movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An important role of garments is to provide adequate comfort. A study was undertaken of the sensory scores for perceived comfort of wool base layer long sleeve knitted T shirts. This paper, the first in a series, describes and evaluates the wearer trial protocol in which untrained female wearers scored tactile, thermal, and moisture-based sensations during a controlled series of activities in a range of controlled climatic environments. Wearer scores were sufficiently consistent, that significant differences in aggregate scores between garments were detected that reflected changes in the fiber type (wool, cashmere, and cotton) and fiber specifications. Prickle and discomfort scores responded to different factors. The importance of choosing appropriate test conditions when assessing garments for particular end uses was highlighted as both the environment and activity affected wearer's perception of garment performance. A novel test feature was the use of a ‘link’ garment common to separate trials. This, combined with the observed absence of an effect due to garment washing, enabled the testing to be expanded so that 38 garments were successfully compared over 30 months in nine trials. Finally while the first trial used 43 wearers to obtain good estimates of absolute comfort levels, it was demonstrated that a reduction to 25 wearers was adequate for later trials with minimal loss in sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Technology development is often considered to obfuscate democratic decision-making and is met with ethical suspicion. However, new technologies also can open up issues for societal debate and generate fresh moral engagements. This paper discusses two technological projects: schemes for pig farming in high-rise agro-production parks that came to be known as ‘pig towers’, and efforts to develop techniques for producing meat without animals by using stem cells, labelled ‘in vitro meat’. Even before fully entering our world as actually realized systems or commercially viable products, these technologies disclosed societal concerns over animal agriculture. These concerns were expressed through active public responses and were informed by formal methods of assessment, such as applied ethics and lifecycle analysis. By closely examining how features of these designs entered public debates and ethical thought, we trace the moral world-disclosing character of technological projects. We find that these proposals generate occasions for debate and gather new societal actors to form new coalitions or rifts. Both technologies gave rise to particular understandings of societal issues. As the central means through which problems were discussed changed, new types of arguments were considered relevant and ontological shifts could even be seen to occur with what was considered ‘real meat’ and the ‘true nature’ of animal farming. We argue that world disclosing involves a renewed sense of the character of political and moral agency, whereby the sensibilities that constitute a moral subject are redefined. Finally, we explore the inner tensions and ambiguities of this process of moral and political change by confronting the notions of ‘world disclosure’ developed by Dewey and Heidegger, thereby connecting to recent debates within both STS and political theory on how to understand political processes in a technological culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, a substantial body of research has focused on the development of computational tools and analytical frameworks for modeling oil spill events. Much of this work is dedicated to deepening our understanding of the interactions between oil, fragile ecosystems, and the environment, as well as the impacts of oil on human settlements which are vulnerable to spill events. These advances in oil spill modeling and associated analytics have not only increased the efficiency of spill interdiction and mitigation efforts, they have also helped to nurture proactive, versus reactive, response strategies and plans for local and regional stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to provide a progress report on the wide range of computational tools, analytical frameworks, and emerging technologies which are necessary inputs for a complete oil spill modeling package. Specifically, we explore the use of relatively mature tools, such as dedicated spill modeling packages, geographic information systems (GIS), and remote sensing, as well emerging technologies such as aerial and aquatic drones and other in-situ sensing technologies. The integration of these technologies and the advantages associated with using a geographic lens for oil spill modeling are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Environmental justice’ refers to the human right to a healthy and safe environment, a fair share of natural resources, access to environmental information and participation in environmental decision-making. Some analysts have argued that environmental justice is undermined by the political economy of capitalism. This paper builds on this analysis by evaluating the environmental justice situation in Cuba, a country where there is little capitalist influence. Evidence is based on participant observation and interviews in Cuba, as well as secondary quantitative data. The research findings suggest that Cuba fares relatively well in terms of environmental justice, but still faces a number of challenges regarding the quality of its environment and some aspects of the environmental decision-making process. However, many of its ongoing problems can be attributed to global capitalist pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Low birth weight in humans is predictive of hypertension in adult life, and while the mechanisms underlying this link remain unknown, fetal overexposure to glucocorticoids has been implicated. We have previously shown that prenatal dexamethasone (DEX) exposure in the rat lowers birth weight and programmes adult hypertension. This current study aimed to unravel the molecular nature of this hypertension. However, unknowingly, post hoc investigations revealed that our animals had been subjected to environmental noise stresses from an adjacent construction site, which were sufficient to confound our prenatal DEX-programming experiments. This perinatal stress successfully established low birth weight, hypercorticosteronaemia, insulin resistance, hypertension and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysfunction in vehicle (VEH)-treated offspring, such that the typical distinctions between both treatment groups were ameliorated. The lack of an additional effect on DEX-treated offspring is suggestive of a maximal effect of perinatal stress and glucocorticoids, serving to prevent against the potentially detrimental effects of sustained glucocorticoid hyper-exposure. Finally, this paper serves to inform researchers of the potential detrimental effects of neighbouring construction sites to their experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a framework for understanding social movements that address issues related to science, technology and expert knowledge. ‘Democratizing science movements’ contest, reframe, and engage in the production of official scientific research in order to achieve their goals. They contest the seeming objectivity and neutrality of science and seek to legitimate lay perspectives. In order to empirically explore why such movements arise and how they work, I discuss two cases: the anti-dam movement in Brazil and the environmental breast cancer movement in the USA. While there are obvious internal and contextual differences between these two movements, they both exemplify similar characteristics of democratizing science movements. In this sense, these cases are representative of a broader, transnational phenomenon. Qualitative data in the form of interviews, ethnographic observations and document collection were used to study these cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of methods and approaches that can be used for supporting waste management decisions at different levels in society have been developed. In this paper an overview of methods is provided and preliminary guidelines for the choice of methods are presented. The methods introduced include: Environmental Impact Assessment, Strategic Environmental Assessment, Life Cycle Assessment, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Cost-effectiveness Analysis, Life-cycle Costing, Risk Assessment, Material Flow Accounting, Substance Flow Analysis, Energy Analysis, Exergy Analysis, Entropy Analysis, Environmental Management Systems, and Environmental Auditing, The characteristics used are the types of impacts included, the objects under study and whether the method is procedural or analytical The different methods can be described as systems analysis methods. Waste management systems thinking is receiving increasing attention. This is, for example, evidenced by the suggested thematic strategy on waste by the European Commission where life-cycle analysis and life-cycle thinking get prominent positions. Indeed, life-cycle analyses have been shown to provide policy-relevant and consistent results. However, it is also clear that the studies will always be open to criticism since they are simplifications of reality and include uncertainties. This is something all systems analysis methods have in common. Assumptions can be challenged and it may be difficult to generalize from case studies to policies. This suggests that if decisions are going to be made, they are likely to be made on a less than perfect basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An understanding of the politics of the water sector during the first decade of South Africa's democracy requires an engagement with a series of parallel debates. There is a technical debate about the nature of the water supply challenge. There is an institutional politics around budget allocation, between and within spheres or levels of government. There is a tension between a rights-based approach to service provision and the politics of sustainability and conservation. The interplay between these parallel dynamics is about the politics of the South African transition to democracy. But South Africa is not an island. So, finally, there is the global water debate, with its human rights, economic, anti-privatisation/imperialism and environmental dimensions. The focus of this paper is on how these different politics are playing out and how they impact on South Africans, particularly the poor who have perhaps the most to gain or lose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reassesses available evidence for environmental and cultural changes in western Uganda since 1000 bc. The period of study includes the introduction of iron working in the region, as well as the transition to nucleated settlement patterns and the apparent decline of these settlements, prior to the colonial period. Several oscillations in climate conditions, from relatively dry to relatively wet, are recorded by palaeoclimate data. Some of these can be linked to variations in vegetation cover, apparent in pollen records from a number of locations. There is a difficulty in establishing cause–effect relationships here, because human impact can have a similar impact on moist forests to increases in climatic aridity. However, there are three cases where the explication of changes in climate, vegetation and the level of human impact are possible. The first occurred towards the end of the first millennium ad and coincided with the beginning of the Later Iron Age. This was a period of major changes in cultural relationships and settlement pattern, during which variations in environmental conditions may have influenced rather than forced a process of political centralization. Increased climatic aridity and problems of soil exhaustion may have driven a subsequent change in the pattern of settlement, towards the beginning of the ad 1500s. Agricultural shortfalls and consequent problems of food insecurity among large, sedentary populations, towards the end of a relatively dry period during the late ad 1600s and early 1700s, may explain the decline of nucleated settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study primarily focuses on green machining, which refers to the environmentally friendly machining of parts without compromising the environment and human health. Green machining, an innovative approach in the manufacturing industry, aims to reduce the environmental impact and promote sustainable practices throughout the machining process. Green machining involves the utilization of methods such as machining, dry machining, high-performance cutting, hybrid machining, and high-speed cutting, along with environmentally friendly lubrication practices. The objective of this research is to investigate the effects of machining Ti6Al4V alloys, a widely used lightweight metal in the aerospace industry known for its challenging machinability. The study specifically examines cutting force, surface roughness, and tool wear under various cutting parameters and tribological conditions. The use of a new lubrication/cooling method was investigated in order to minimize the effects of traditional cutting fluids used in the machining of difficult materials, which may cause environmental and human health. This way, sustainable green production compatible with the environment has been realized today, where global warming and carbon emissions are rapidly increasing. In addition, it was observed that the factor determining the cutting force was the depth of cut and the feed rate was the most significant factor affecting the surface roughness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil spill modeling is fundamental for planning and preparing for, as well as responding to and mitigating, actual spill events. As a result, significant research effort has been directed toward developing analytical approaches for deepening our understanding of spill risk, community vulnerability, oil behavior, spill outcomes, and impacts. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of the oil spill risk assessment and impact modeling literature, with a focus on the vulnerability of local environmental, ecological, and community systems, as well as the geographic processes associated with modeling spills and transforming these data into a robust and meaningful impact assessments. The results of this progress report reveal a number of methodological and substantive commonalities across the scientific literature. Moreover, the synthesis of this literature should provide researchers with a strong foundation for pursuing future work in this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the emergence of New Politics issues, there has been considerable debate about their potential for creating party system realignment. However, this debate has largely ignored the role of political elites in responding to changes in mass electorates. In this paper, we develop a model of realignment based on values and ideology which takes party elites into account. The model is tested using data that are based on national voter and parliamentary candidate surveys collected in Australia during the 1990 federal election. A realignment hypothesis predicts that the contemporary Australian party system is being replaced by a system reflecting New Politics/Old Politics conflict. An adaptation hypothesis predicts that the existing parties are adapting to New Politics concerns. The results show more support for the adaptation hypothesis and although a potential for realignment exists, postmaterial values and environmental ideologies have as yet insufficiently penetrated both elites and masses to bring this about. The results have major implications for the development of party alignments in other advanced societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the new theoretical concept of environing media, which is developed to offer critical insight into how processes of mediation affect how we perceive of, manage and use the environment. Building on the insight that the environment has been in a continuous slow process of change that is now escalating due to human impacts, the article sketches a history of how environmental change and mediation are intertwined. Taking the history of agriculture as a case for the theoretical development, it shows how the current digitization of farming and implementation of AI systems in precision agriculture is the last of a long series in which environmental mediation come to play a crucial role in the forging of human–Earth relations. The article thereby shows the complex interplay between knowing and changing the environment as media technologies produce new epistemologies that in turn produce new interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the environment is fundamental to humankind's wellbeing, to date, social work has been largely focused on the social, rather than the physical, environment. To map how the broader environment is captured in the profession's foundational documents, an exploratory sequential mixed methods study (QUAL → quan) analysed data from 64 social work codes of ethics. Findings indicate that although the environment is mentioned in the majority of these, there is a continued focus on the social, overlooking to some degree the physical, predominantly the built, environment. A more holistic understanding of the environment would enable social work to better fulfil its commitment to human rights and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attends to everyday practices in a laboratory of neural genetics that studies olfaction, with the fruit fly as its model organism. Practices in neural genetics exhibit one of the 'post' aspects in post-genomic science – a turn to the environment. To get at how laboratory members engage body-environment continuities, I pay attention to an occasion of designing experimental chambers for an optogenetics study. As practitioners deal with the body's continuities with the world by engaging the spatial character of olfaction, their accounts exhibit qualities of feelings of immediate experience, relatable to C.S. Peirce's phenomenological category of Firstness. While these traces of Firstness inevitably manifest themselves in mixtures with the other two of Peirce's categories – namely, Secondness and Thirdness – noticing them allows for an engagement of the environment that goes beyond action and meaning. I reflect on that environment by considering the involvement of scientists' bodies in life with flies, while not forgetting my inhabitation of the laboratory space. Rather than relying on a cross-mapping of attributes known from the human sphere (intentional states or features of the human body) while managing a measurable space observed from the outside, this is an environment lived from within and with others. I conclude the article by proposing its noticing as an orientation toward ecological preoccupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fiber reinforced composites have been used in several applications for several years and the market is continuously growing. It is known that the addition of fibers for reinforcing of matrix has advantages, especially the mechanical properties of the composites. Environmental and economic concerns are stimulating new research in the development of sustainable fiber for reinforcing polymer matrix. Particularly attractive are new materials in which a good part is based on natural and renewable resources, hence aggravating the environmental concerns that may result in the depletion and dwindling of wood resources from forest. This assessment report provides detailed world production of natural fiber and the inherent looming danger envisaged if attention is not shifted from its continuous usage. It has been stated that natural fibers are renewable and sustainable, but they are in fact, neither i.e. living plants are renewable and sustainable, from which natural fibers are taken, but not the fibers themselves. The US market reports that the composite market was 2.7 billion pounds sterling in 2006 and it is estimated to reach 3.3 billion pound sterling by 2012 with a 3.3% annual growth. Natural fiber market in the US experienced a 13% growth rate (275 million kilograms) between 1994 and 2004 and the demand for the natural fibers continues to rise. The average global annual market growth for natural fibers between 2003 and 2007 was 38%, while Europe saw the highest annual growth rate of 48%. This market was estimated at 0.36 million metric ton in 2007 and it is expected to reach 3.45 million metric ton in 2020. Fiber reinforced market is a multibillion dollar business and the natural fiber composites take a fair part of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the implications of tourism activities for economic growth and environmental assets, focusing especially on small island countries. The author develops a stylized dynamic economic model in which tourism is the trigger of the incentive mechanism leading to abatement activities and economic growth. The basic idea is that tourists choose the location to visit according to a number of factors (including environmental quality) which are affected by residents' choices. If residents engage in environmental protection activities, it then may be possible for environmentally based tourism economies to reach a smooth development process. The author shows that the (sustainable) balanced growth path is the only viable equilibrium, and along such a path consumption grows while environmental quality rises. Tourists' preferences crucially affect the longrun outcome, since economic and environmental growth rates increase with the green preference and decrease with the grey preference and crowding aversion parameters. Thus, if tourism specialization is to be the pathway to development, green tourism will need to be promoted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The low-pressure steam requirement in the iron and steel production plant is obtained through pressure reduction stations with unrestrained expansion. In this study, the feasibility of obtaining the low-pressure steam that is needed in the plant in a backpressure turbine instead of pressure reduction stations has been studied. In this way, it is foreseen that a significant amount of wasted energy during the unrestrained expansion in pressure reduction stations, can be recovered as shaft work during the expansion process performed in the turbine. The obtained shaft work is planned to be used in the boiler feedwater pump drive. It is aimed to increase the efficiency of the system by the deactivation of boiler feedwater pump electric motors and as well as bringing the energy that is lost during the unrestrained expansion of the superheated steam to the system through the pump drive. The estimated size of energy saving of the system could be reached to 33.74%. The annual size of achievable saving has been determined by approximately 8,094,810 kWh and economically $509,973. The payback period of the estimated $683,079 investment is 1.34 years. A determined amount of saving is also equivalent to the reduction of 7,285,329 kg CO2 emission, annually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Re-evaluating dominant cultural narratives around dying and death is central to new critiques of individualism and human exceptionalism. As conceptual tools for theorizing the end of the individual proliferate, the affective dimensions of this project are often overlooked, especially as they pertain to individual subjects. In contrast, a significant number of iconic queer and feminist thinkers have suffered breast cancer and written memoirs representing the subjective experience of confronting mortality. This article identifies the affective orientations towards one's own mortality as missing from queer and feminist thinking on embodiment in the Anthropocene. As a remedy, the article reads several iconic feminist breast cancer memoirs – Sontag, Lorde, Sedgwick, Jain and Boyer – for their complex representations of affect, in particular fear, in relation to dying and death. Using the affect theory of Silvan Tomkins, this analysis contributes to critiques of cancer culture in medical humanities and of mortality and embodiment in feminist environmental humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), created in 1959 to govern the southern continent, is often lauded as an illustration of science's potential to inspire peaceful and rational International Relations. This article critically examines this optimistic view of science's role in international politics by focusing on how science as a global hierarchical structure operated as a gatekeeper to an exclusive Antarctic club. I argue that in the early 20th century, the conduct of science in Antarctica was entwined with global and imperial hierarchies. As what Mattern and Zarakol call a broad hierarchy, science worked both as a civilized marker of international status as well as a social performance that legitimated actors' imperial interests in Antarctica. The 1959 ATS relied on science as an existing broad hierarchy to enable competing states to achieve a functional bargain and 'freeze' sovereignty claims, whilst at the same time institutionalizing and reinforcing the legitimacy of science in maintaining international inequalities. In making this argument, I stress the role of formal international institutions in bridging our analysis of broad and functional hierarchies while also highlighting the importance of scientific hierarchies in constituting the current international order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simulation framework suitable for the quantitative assessment of policies in the natural resource sector is considered. It is based on a combination of conventional econometric methods with technical and engineering models which describe the input- output and environmental relationships of the natural resource sector. A detailed study of the effect of fiscal and monetary poli cies on the housing market and on the resource industries sup plying housing materials is considered for purpose of illustration, with particular emphasis on the wood (lumber and plywood) used in housing. A validated 30-equation simulation model has been constructed. This describes the housing market, materials used in housing, production functions for these materials, and environmental effects of this production activity. A sample policy simulation is given. The main contribution of the work has been the updating of an existing housing model and the development of its linkages with the lumber and plywood sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]