Resource limitations, paper

The Impact of Increasing Paper Consumption and Resource Limitations on Alkaline... 

There is growing interest in the use of cereal straws such as wheat straw for animal feed after increasing its digestibility by various methods, or as a raw material for paper and board production. This is particularly important in areas with limited forest resources (1). For all these purposes a good physicochemical characterisation of cereal straw is necessary. 

One of the authors on the original AMI paper and a major code developer in that effort, James J. P. Stewart, subsequently left Dewar s labs to work as an independent researcher. Stewart felt that the development of AM 1 had been potentially non-optimal, from a statistical point of view, because (i) the optimization of parameters had been accomplished in a stepwise fashion (thereby potentially accumulating errors), (ii) the search of parameter space had been less exhaustive than might be desired (in part because of limited computational resources at the time), and (iii) human intervention based on the perceived reasonableness of parameters had occurred in many instances. Stewart had a somewhat more mathematical philosophy, and felt that a sophisticated search of parameter space using complex optimization algorithms might be more successful in producing a best possible parameter set within the Dewar-specific NDDO framework. 

Another aspect of concern is the limit of resources in the world. Some decades ago, the term recycling was almost unknown. At the present time recycling is a household term and recycling of metal products, paper and plastics has been recognized for the important role it plays in conserving our resources. We have reached a level of maturity to be able to recognize that our natural resources are limited and finite in our world, and that methods to conserve these resources by recycling and other methods have a prominent role to play. 

In this chapter, the outlook for paper consumption to the year 2000 will be reviewed. Even the most conservative projections indicate the volume will more than double from present levels. The more optimistic forecasts project a tripling in consumption. Recognizing the finite limitations of the earth s resources, finding adequate quantities of the various raw materials needed to meet this doubling or tripling in demand poses a significant challenge. 

Preparation of this paper commenced while the author was employed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Division of Mineralogy, Baas Becking Geobiological Laboratory, in Canberra, Australia. The Baas Becking Geobiological Laboratory is supported by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the Bureau of Mineral Resources, and the Australian Mineral Industries Research Association Limited. 

We fool ourselves, however, if we dwell on energy alone. The uses of all natural resources are intertwined. Oil is of little use without engines built of iron, copper, zinc, and other metals. Farmlands will yield maximum crops only if they are tilled by tractors emd plows and fertilized with compounds of phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium. A failure in the supply of one resource will inevitably influence the use of others. Viewing the panoply of natural resources, we see that one group, metals, occupies a unique position. Without metals we could not build machines to replace human muscle. Without metals we could use little of the available energy. Metals are, in effect, the enzymes of industry. If supplies of metals are limited, then society must ultimately be limited too. It is my contention that the distribution of the chemical elements in nature means, inevitably, that there are natural limits to supplies of metals, and that these limits are much more important to the future of society than limits on energy. I also contend that, with sufficient work, the limits can be predicted. It is the piu-pose of this paper, therefore, to explore briefly the way metals occur and to attempt to place in perspective the limitations they may ultimately impose on us. 

The numerical approach presented in this paper allows one to calculate the distribution of hydrogen in stressed solids with limited expenditure of computer resources. Its generalization for the case of stress and strain assisted diffusion is straightforward. 

We will explore in detail the link between women-based businesses in herbal products and sustainable rural development in a challenging environment counting on limited resources. Finally, our paper shall give an understanding of the key role that... 

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