Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Studies of media and ecology are often reduced to questions of representation: understanding the cultural mediation of nature means looking to screen based content. However, given recent work in materialist media studies from Doug Kahn, Lisa Parks and Eugene Thacker in particular, a new possibility comes into view. We now know that before nature is mediated through culture, it is often passed through layers of technology. With that in mind, this paper offers a radical rethinking of the technological mediation of the ecological. Through a study of the technical apparatus as an active system of knowledge, two different sections of the paper will illustrate the 'tool-kit' that makes possible a technical study of ecology. The first looks to historical developments of hardware such as the telegraph, radio, and satellites to pinpoint examples where media technology has been used to pick up signals from the natural world. Framed by the philosophy of Peter Sloterdijk, it explores the way nature has been given form through its transduction into communication systems. The second section of this paper, addressing ecology on a different register, looks past the surface of digital media to the manner in which ecologies are mediated via computer code. In this section, by conducting a reverse-engineering of the software based eco-media videogame Mountain (O'Reilly, 2014), we encounter the ecological structure of code systems which could be applied to other data visualisation systems. These two methods of analysis suggest the possibilities of a technologically focused study of eco-media: in coming to grips with both global and internal ecologies through what Sloterdijk terms 'air conditioning' systems - the material processes that provide the atmosphere of everyday life - we investigate the possibilities for innovative, post-human, approaches to a natural world entwined with media and technology.

Part I: Value Added Products from Mining Wastes -- Chapter 1. An Overview of Mining Wastes (Kirtikumar Randive) -- Chapter 2. Red Mud in Pollution Control (Suchita Rai) -- Chapter 3. Aluminum Dross (Upendra Singh) -- Chapter 4. Geopolymers from Mining Rejects and Industrial Slags (P A Mohamed Najar) -- Chapter 5. Geopolymers for Construction (Sneha Dandekar) -- Chapter 6. Detoxification of Aluminium Spent Pot-Lining (M. T. Nimje) -- Chapter 7. Beneficiation of Low-Grade material (P. G. Bhukte) -- Chapter 8. Use of Saprolite in Refractory Industry (P. G. Bhukte) -- Chapter 9. REE from Fertilizer Mineral Wastes (Yamuna Singh) -- Chapter 10. Value Added Products from Mining Wastes (Abhijeet Bhondwe) -- Part II: Innovations for Balancing Environment, Ecology, and Economy -- Chapter 11. Microbial Remediation of Mine Dumps and Soils (Anand Barapatre) -- Chapter 12. Bioremediation of Chromium (Shweta V. Deote) -- Chapter 13. Nanotechnology in Bioremediation (Bipin D. Lade) -- Chapter 14. Mineral and Mining Wastes (Nikhil Kulkarni) -- Chapter 15. Mine Waters (Rajani G. Tumane) -- Chapter 16. Bats in Abandoned Mines (Madhuri Thakre) -- Chapter 17. Arsenic as an Exploration Tool (Gladson Bage).

For years, humans have been trying to stabilize the world's environment by lowering the amount of greenhouse gases that their societies pump into the air. In 1992, this approach was even incorporated into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. But because this strategy failed to produce the desired results so far, technology-based processes designed to save the environment have emerged as a popular new weapon in the climate-protection arsenal. The question is: Are such climate-engineering efforts a viable environmental policy option? And can they serve, at the very least, as the ultima ratio if all other efforts to stave off climate change fail?

"Der Beitrag ergänzt den Ansatz der Öko-Effizienz um den bisher vernachlässigten
Aspekt einer notwendigen ökologischen Konsistenz des industriellen
Metabolismus. Beide Aspekte gehören zum vollständigeren Konzept einer industriellen
Ökologie, die sich nicht durch bloße Mengenreduktion an ihre Umwelt anpassen
muss, sondern sich entfalten kann aufgrund ihrer qualitativen Eigenschaft
der metabolischen Naturintegration." (Textauszug)

In Arequipa, Peru's second largest city, engineers work hard to control water flows and provide different sectors with clean and sufficient water. In 2011, only 10 percent of the totality of water used daily by Arequipa's then close to 1 million people—in households, tourism, industry, and mining—was treated before it was returned to the river where it continues its flow downstream towards cultivated fields and, finally, into the Pacific Ocean. It takes specialized knowledge and manifold technologies to manage water and sustain life in Arequipa, and engineers are central actors for making water flow. Examining the ecology of water management, this article asks to what extent we can talk of a way of knowing and enacting water that is particular to engineers. Through engineering practices, a technical domain emerges as separate from and superior to political and social domains. This production of categories can be understood as practices of purification. However, a purely technical grip on water is never possible. Unruly elements, like weather, contamination, urban dwellers, and competing interests, interfere and make processes of intervention unstable. Water is never completely cleaned, and, equally, the continuous processes of purification of categories and domains take place while other processes work to blur their boundaries.

The IENE 2014 conference puts emphasis on the "greening" of transport infrastructure: both in respect to a wiser use of marginal infrastructure habitats to favour biodiversity and certain ecosys- tem services, and in respect to a more permeable and safer infrastructure that minimises the direct impact on wildlife. Transportation and infrastructure are recognised as signi cant drivers in the global loss of biodiverity. Their impacts on nature are well described and there is ample evidence for the negative effects of traffic and transportation infrastructure on nature. Even though roads and railroads may occupy but a small proportion of an area, they a ect the entire landscape, cause the death of millions of wild animals, and disturb surrounding habitats through pollution, noise and alien species. The overall impact is evident, but there are means to minimise the pressure, to adjust infrastructure facilities and, to some degree, introduce beneficial services for wildlife. Such measures can and should be implemented as a standard in infrastructure development and maintenance. Knowledge about their functionality and e cacy is, however, not always satisfying. Technical innovations and new mitigation concepts need to be tested and evaluated. Their func- tionality and e ectiveness also depends on the interplay between the transport sector and other sectors of society. Communication, knowledge transfer, and public education are just as essential here, as legal frameworks, policy, technical development and environmental science. European policy (e.g., Green Infrastructure) is developing clearly in this direction, recognizing the transport sector and transportation facilities as important players in the endeavour towards a greener and sustainable future. Obviously, this calls for international collaboration in research and practice, for enhanced exchange of knowledge between disciplines, and for the development of harmonised standards and pro- cedures that can be referred to by international actors. IENE provides this interdisciplinary arena through its conferences and workshops. The IENE 2014 international conference emphasises that transport infrastructure can be planned and designed as an ecologically well-adopted, safe and e cient system, while acknowledging that certain impacts can never be avoided. IENE, together with the Swedish Transport Administration, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, the Danish Road Directorate and numerous other partners, invites scientists, practitioners and planners, governmental agencies and private companies, NGO's and anybody with an interest in the above to the IENE 2014 conference in Sweden. We welcome new partner- and sponsorships and o er a well-approved and international network for communication and presentation.

Presents a review of the development of US water resource policy analysis and practice that offers perspectives from several disciplines: law, economics, engineering, ecology and political science. This book explores the evolution of water related analytical capabilities and institutions

Information technologies have evolved to an enabling science for natural resource management and conservation, environmental engineering, scientific simulation and integrated assessment studies. Computing plays a significant role in every day practices of environmental engineers, natural scientists, economists, and social scientists. The complexity of natural phenomena require interdisciplinary approaches, where computing science offers the infrastructure for environmental data collection and management, scientific simulations, decision support, documentation and reporting. Ecology, environmental engineering and natural resource management comprise an excellent real-world testbed for IT system demonstration, while bring up new challenges for computer science. Complexity, uncertainty and scaling issues of natural systems set up a demanding application domain for modelling, simulation and scientific workflows, data management and reporting, decision support and intelligent systems, distributed computing environments, geographical information systems, heterogeneous systems integration, software engineering, accounting systems, control systems, as well as sustainable manufacturing and reverse logistics. This books offers a collection of papers presented at the 5th International Symposium on Environmental Engineering, held in July 2011, in Poznan, Poland. Recent success stories in ecoinformatics, promising ideas and new challenges are discussed among computer scientists, environmental engineers, industrial engineers, economists and social scientists, demonstrating new paradigms for problem solving and decision making.

This article starts with an overview of the author's personal involvement—as an Operations Research consultant—in several engineering case-studies that may raise ethical questions; e.g., case-studies on nuclear waste, water management, sustainable ecology, military tactics, and animal welfare. All these case studies employ computer simulation models. In general, models are meant to solve practical problems, which may have ethical implications for the various stakeholders; namely, the modelers, the clients, and the public at large. The article further presents an overview of codes of ethics in a variety of disciples. It discusses the role of mathematical models, focusing on the validation of these models' assumptions. Documentation of these model assumptions needs special attention. Some ethical norms and values may be quantified through the model's multiple performance measures, which might be optimized. The uncertainty about the validity of the model leads to risk or uncertainty analysis and to a search for robust models. Ethical questions may be pressing in military models, including war games. However, computer games and the related experimental economics may also provide a special tool to study ethical issues. Finally, the article briefly discusses whistleblowing. Its many references to publications and websites enable further study of ethical issues in modeling.

In the context of growing global concerns about climate change, this book presents a regional and sub-continental synthesis of pastoralists' responses to past environmental changes and reflects on the lessons for current and future environmental challenges. Drawing from rock art, archaeology, paleoecological data, trade, ancient hydrological technology, vegetation, social memory and historical documentation, this book creates detailed reconstructions of past climate change adaptations across Sahelian Africa. It evaluates the present and future challenges to climate change adap.