Suchergebnisse

This is a short story by Leanne Phillips inspired by the theme women and notions of service.

Reliability analysis is the study of both the probability and the process of failure of a system. For that purpose, several tools are available, for example, fault trees, event trees, or the GO technique. These tools are often complementary and address different aspects of the questions. Experience shows that there is sometimes confusion between two of these methods: fault trees and event trees. Sometimes identified as equivalent, they, in fact, serve different purposes. Fault trees lay out relationships among events. Event trees lay out sequences of events linked by conditional probabilities. At least in theory, event trees can handle better notions of continuity (logical, temporal, and physical), whereas fault trees are most powerful in identifying and simplifying failure scenarios. Different characteristics of the system in question (e.g., a dam or a nuclear reactor) may guide the choice between fault trees, event trees, or a combination of the two. Some elements of this choice are examined, and observations are made about the relative capabilities of the two methods.

Abstract
This article develops the notion of the "embodied history of trees" and articulates its conceptual and ethical implications. It demonstrates how trees literally embody their environment in their very structure and argues that trees express their environments in the deepest, most responsive, and most immediate way. The article then moves to consider how trees fundamentally shape their environment, showing that just as trees are expressions of their contexts, so their contexts are expressions of the trees. By highlighting the deep reciprocity between trees and their environments, the article raises crucial questions about the usual modes of conceptualizing the relation between organism and environment, and points to the ways in which environmental ethics remains largely wedded to these problematic conceptualizations. It concludes by developing environmental ethical concepts in light of the embodied history of trees, noting how these concepts challenge assumptions within mainstream environmental ethics, while extending the insights of deep ecology, ecofeminism, and Indigenous relational ethics in illuminating ways.

Forest trees cover 30% of the earth's land surface, providing renewable fuel, wood, timber, shelter, fruits, leaves, bark, roots, and are source of medicinal products in addition to benefits such as carbon sequestration, water shed protection, and habitat for 1/3 of terrestrial species. However, the genetic analysis and breeding of trees has lagged behind that of crop plants. Therefore, systematic conservation, sustainable improvement and pragmatic utilization of trees are global priorities. This book provides comprehensive and up to date information about tree characterization, biological understanding, and improvement through biotechnological and molecular tools.

Abstract The starting point of this article is the assertion, common among tappers (or seringueiros) in plantations in the interior of São Paulo, that it is necessary to tame rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) at the beginning of each harvest. They use this phrase to indicate the need to accustom the trees, from the first cuts, to establish an optimal flow of latex. The process of taming the tree is also discussed here based on historical ethnographic materials regarding relationships established with rubber trees in the last decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both in the Amazon and in the nascent plantations in Southeast Asia. British naturalists from different colonies came to dispute who "discovered" the fact that the rubber tree possesses a mechanism that they called the "wound response". Based on this diversity of references to the modes of relationship with the peculiar characteristics of the rubber tree, I seek to elucidate, by viewing the genesis articulated between technical and vital rhythms, what it means to affirm that a tree responds or is tamed.