Sustainability 13 Sustainable Development

The key aim for the twenty-first century is sustainable development. Sustainable development seeks to reconcile environmental protection and development it means nothing more than using resources no faster than they can regenerate themselves, and... 

What does sustainable development/sustainability mean ... 

World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Sustainable Development Reporting Striking the Balance, June 1, 2003a, p. 10. Available at http //www.wbcsd.org/DocRoot/ GGFpsq8dGngT5K56sAur/20030106 sdreport.pdf, March 15, 2004. 

Sustainable Development, Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility, are terms often used to describe the trend towards enhanced performance and reporting with respect to environmental, social, and economic indicators. 

Sustainable Development Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. P2 plays an important role in achieving the goal of sustainability as it emphasizes the efficient use of materials and resources with an environmental aspect added to it. 

Sustainability and the environment Sustainability science and engineering Sustainable buildings Sustainable construction Sustainable design Sustainable development Sustainable living Sustainable urban development... 

In November 1996, the ASCE Board of Direction adopted the following definition of Sustainable Development "Sustainable Development is the challenge of meeting... 

Chemical processes will in the future need to be designed as part of a sustainable industrial development which retains the capacity of ecosystems to support industrial activity and life. This book therefore places a high emphasis on waste minimization and energy efficiency in the context of good economic performance and good health and safety practices. 

Gas reservoirs are produced by expansion of the gas contained in the reservoir. The high compressibility of the gas relative to the water in the reservoir (either connate water or underlying aquifer) make the gas expansion the dominant drive mechanism. Relative to oil reservoirs, the material balance calculation for gas reservoirs is rather simple. A major challenge in gas field development is to ensure a long sustainable plateau (typically 10 years) to attain a good sales price for the gas the customer usually requires a reliable supply of gas at an agreed rate over many years. The recovery factor for gas reservoirs depends upon how low the abandonment pressure can be reduced, which is why compression facilities are often provided on surface. Typical recovery factors are In the range 50 to 80 percent. 

Diflfiisive processes nonnally operate in chemical systems so as to disperse concentration gradients. In a paper in 1952, the mathematician Alan Turing produced a remarkable prediction [37] that if selective diffiision were coupled with chemical feedback, the opposite situation may arise, with a spontaneous development of sustained spatial distributions of species concentrations from initially unifonn systems. Turmg s paper was set in the context of the development of fonn (morphogenesis) in embryos, and has been adopted in some studies of animal coat markings. With the subsequent theoretical work at Brussels [1], it became clear that oscillatory chemical systems should provide a fertile ground for the search for experimental examples of these Turing patterns. 

To develop new fuels and materials and to provide environmentally sustainable solutions to energy generation problems... 

Human activity, particularly in the developing world, continues to make it more difficult to sustain the world s biomass growth areas. It has been estimated that tropical forests are disappearing at a rate of tens of thousands of hm per year. Satellite imaging and field surveys show that Brazil alone has a deforestation rate of approximately 8 x 10 hm /yr (5). At a mean net carbon yield for tropical rain forests of 9.90 t/hm yr (4) (4.42 short ton /acreyr), this rate of deforestation corresponds to a loss of 79.2 x 10 t/yr of net biomass carbon productivity. 

Several studies estimate the potential of available virgin and waste biomass as energy resources (Table 4) (10). In Table 4, the projected potential of the recoverable materials is about 25% of the theoretical maximum woody biomass is about 70% of the total recoverable potential. These estimates of biomass energy potential are based on existing, sustainable biomass production and do not iaclude new, dedicated biomass energy plantations that might be developed. 

In the spring of 1989, it was announced that electrochemists at the University of Utah had produced a sustained nuclear fusion reaction at room temperature, using simple equipment available in any high school laboratory. The process, referred to as cold fusion, consists of loading deuterium into pieces of palladium metal by electrolysis of heavy water, E)20, thereby developing a sufficiently large density of deuterium nuclei in the metal lattice to cause fusion between these nuclei to occur. These results have proven extremely difficult to confirm (20,21). Neutrons usually have not been detected in cold fusion experiments, so that the D-D fusion reaction familiar to nuclear physicists does not seem to be the explanation for the experimental results, which typically involve the release of heat and sometimes gamma rays. 

The low (ca 2%) yield of NO, the tendency to revert to N2 and O2 if the product stream is not quenched rapidly, the consumption of large (ca 60,000 kWh/1N2 fixed) amounts of electricity, and the concomitant expense to sustain the arc all led to the demise of this process. The related Wisconsin process for oxidising N2 at high temperatures in a pebble-bed furnace was developed in the 1950s (13). Although a plant that produced over 40 t/d of nitric acid was built, the product recovery costs were not economically competitive. 

Dissolved Minerals. The most significant source of minerals for sustainable recovery may be ocean waters which contain nearly all the known elements in some degree of solution. Production of dissolved minerals from seawater is limited to fresh water, magnesium, magnesium compounds (qv), salt, bromine, and heavy water, ie, deuterium oxide. Considerable development of techniques for recovery of copper, gold, and uranium by solution or bacterial methods has been carried out in several countries for appHcation onshore. These methods are expected to be fully transferable to the marine environment (5). The potential for extraction of dissolved materials from naturally enriched sources, such as hydrothermal vents, may be high. 

Improvements in asthma treatment include the development of more effective, safer formulations of known dmgs. The aerosol adrninistration of P2-agonists or corticosteroids results in a decrease in side effects. Also, the use of reUable sustained release formulations has revolutionized the use of oral xanthines which have a very narrow therapeutic index (see Controlled release technology). For many individuals, asthma symptoms tend to worsen at night and the inhaled bronchodilatots do not usually last through an entire night s sleep (26,27). 

Common side effects of theophylline therapy include headache, dyspepsia, and nausea. More serious side effects such as lethal seizures or cardiac arrythmias can occur if blood levels are too high. Many derivatives of theophylline have been prepared in an effort to discover an analogue without these limitations (60,61). However, the most universal solution has resulted from the development of reHable sustained release formulations. This technology limits the peaks and valleys in semm blood levels that occur with frequent dosing of immediate release formulations. ControUed release addresses the problems inherent in a dmg which is rapidly metabolized but which is toxic at levels ( >20 7g/mL) that are only slightly higher than the therapeutically efficacious ones (10—20 p.g/mL). Furthermore, such once-a-day formulations taken just before bedtime have proven especially beneficial in the control of nocturnal asthma (27,50,62). 

Deficiency. Macrocytic anemia, megaloblastic anemia, and neurological symptoms characterize vitamin B 2 deficiency. Alterations in hematopoiesis occur because of the high requirement for vitamin B 2 for normal DNA repHcation necessary to sustain the rapid turnover of the erythrocytes. Abnormal DNA repHcation secondary to vitamin B 2 deficiency produces a defect in the nuclear maturational process of committed hematopoietic stem cells. As a result, the erythrocytes are either morphologically abnormal or die during development. 

Further reduction in the price of carbon fibers may enable penetration into the automotive market. A primary carbon fiber producer has armounced that prices will drop to 700 yen/kg ( 6.80/lb) by 1995 (73) and that cooperative development efforts with a main Japanese automobile producer are underway. Development for use in constmction, such as cement and cable reinforcement, and marine apphcations will result in sustained growth volume through the eady twenty-first century. 

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