Impacts pathway approach

There is a nearly endless number of possible environmental impacts causally interconnected through environmental impact pathways or cause-effect chains (see example in Fig. 1 for the impacts associated with emissions of N- and P-compounds causing eutrophication of the environment). Life cycle assessment attempts to address all relevant impacts of a product life cycle (ISO 2006) and has therefore had to develop a systematic approach to the classification of envi-rmunental impacts and the quantitative expressimi of how large an envirOTunental impact is caused by an emission or a physical interventimi. 

This is significant— but for most engineers and scientists the comfortable approaches remain the traditional impact pathways such as patents, KTPs, spinouts and so on. Whilst these do not preclude social enterprise, the science and engineering research community is not particularly well prepared to even think in those terms when it contemplates or plans the impact of its research. The difficulties are in part due to a traditional emphasis on more comfortably countable and monetised activities—e.g. patents, spinouts (employment), product and a technical problem-solution focus. Benefits to society, culture, public policy, the environment and quality of life are much harder to conceive and to deliver. 

The ECO method was developed to aid environmental impact and cost optimisation of chemical synthesis pathways or processes suitable for the research and development (R D) stage. In order to represent terms of ecological as well as economic sustainability, three objective functions which incorporate (i) energy demand (EF), (ii) risks concerning human health and the environment (EHF) and (iii) costs (CE), were defined. Their calculation follows the life cycle approach and is based on the data available already in R D. Because the application of a comprehensive LCA is both, too complex and based on data which are partially not available at the R D stage, the determination of the three objective functions is based on the SLCA approach extended by economic issues. The key objectives are introduced below. 

A good deal of this work had no impact in the development of models of molecular structure and the elucidation of reaction mechanisms one reason was Perrin s own coolness to quantum wave mechanics. 108 Another, according to Oxford s Harold Thompson, who studied with Nernst and Fritz Haber, was that researchers like Lecomte "did not know enough chemistry he was a physicist." 109 Perrin, too, approached physical chemistry as a physicist, not as a chemist. He had little real interest or knowledge of organic chemistry. But what made his radiation hypothesis attractive to many chemists was his concern with transition states and the search for a scheme of pathways defining chemical kinetics. 

There is increasing evidence13,7-191 demonstrating the important impact on bioactivity that (3-methylphenylalanines can have when incorporated into bioactive peptides. Asymmetric synthesis of these compounds with well-established chemistry and economic starting materials has become well developed. Among the reported syntheses, the chiral auxiliary assisted asymmetric pathway120-221 remains the most well-developed approach, while other pathways have only been briefly explored, because either too many steps were involved1231 or poor stereoselectivity was obtained.1241... 

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