Uwagi tetryka o zrównoważoności

This is a different approach to the subject of sustainability which suggests: 1) that certain activities are inherently unsustainable; 2) that sustainability be defined with regard to a basic level of technology, economy, and demand; 3) that sustainability can be better managed by looking at the energy and waste and consumption from manufacturing, and treating the technologies as “black boxes”; 4) the environmental permit data from manufacturing concerns needs to be made more public because the effect of the publication of that information will enhance pollution reduction; 5) that we need to define  pollution receptors and assign the costs to develop trans-boundary solutions; and 6) that there is a lot of fruitful work still to be performed on developing very good estimates of the capacity of agricultural, non-agricultural, and oceanic receptors.Niniejszy artykuł przedstawia odmienne podejście do idei zrównoważonego rozwoju, które sugeruje: 1) że pewne działania są ze swej natury niezrównoważone; 2) że zrównoważony rozwój powinien być definiowany w odniesieniu do technologii, gospodarki i popytu na poziomie podstawowym; 3) że zrównoważony rozwój może być lepiej kontrolowany dzięki obserwacji ilości energii, odpadów i zużycia zasobów w produkcji, oraz dzięki traktowaniu technologii jak „czarne skrzynki”; 4) że dane o pozwoleniach środowiskowych otrzymywanych przez koncerny produkcyjne powinny być szerzej upubliczniane, gdyż umożliwi to większą redukcję emisji zanieczyszczeń; 5) że należy określić receptory zanieczyszczeń i przypisać im koszty opracowania transgranicznych rozwiązań; oraz 6) że wciąż pozostaje wiele owocnej pracy do wykonania w zakresie opracowania dokładnych danych szacunkowych na temat wydajności receptorów rolniczych, pozarolniczych i oceanicznych

The posterior nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans: serial reconstruction of identified neurons and complete pattern of synaptic interactions

Serial-section electron microscopy has been used to reconstruct the cellular architecture of the posterior nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Each of 40 neurons in the tail of the adult hermaphrodite can be reproducibly and unambiguously identified by a set of morphological features, including cell body position, fiber geometry and size, and staining properties. A complete list of synapses has been assembled for 2 isogenic animals, and these lists are compared with a third isogenic animal reconstructed by White et al. (1986). The set of neurons and their pattern of synaptic interactions is simple and reproducible. Most of the cells are involved in sensory transduction or in local signal processing to relay signals via a few interneurons to motoneurons and thence to body muscles. Because the tail neurons are well separated and fairly reproducible in position, the hermaphrodite tail lends itself to laser-ablation studies of sensory processing (cf. Chalfie et al., 1985). Most of the synapses in the tail are concentrated in the preanal ganglion. Among the approximately 150 synapses there, about 85% are dyadic chemical synapses. The dyadic synapses are involved in reproducible patterns that have several interesting features. Most neurons synapse onto a few preferred pairs of target cells, in patterns that suggest a combinatorial model of synapse specification that may be open to genetic analysis. Furthermore, most dyadic contacts A----B,C fit a pattern in which the 2 postsynaptic partners are involved elsewhere in unidirectional synapses B----C. Thus, the dyadic synapse may serve to diverge sensory signals into parallel pathways, which then reconverge. This divergence/reconvergence pattern eventually directs processed sensory signals to the ventral cord interneurons PVCL and PVCR. About 80–90% of the synapses fall into repeated classes of synapses. Many of the remaining synapses are widely scattered and irreproducible from one animal to the next. Some of these contacts may be developmental mistakes reflecting a degree of “noise” in synapse specification (Waddington, 1957)

Are Recent Peculiar Velocity Surveys Consistent?

We compare the bulk flow of the SMAC sample to the predictions of popular cosmological models and to other recent large-scale peculiar velocity surveys. Both analyses account for aliasing of small-scale power due to the sparse and non-uniform sampling of the surveys. We conclude that the SMAC bulk flow is in marginal conflict with flat COBE-normalized Lambda-CDM models which fit the cluster abundance constraint. However, power spectra which are steeper shortward of the peak are consistent with all of the above constraints. When recent large-scale peculiar velocity surveys are compared, we conclude that all measured bulk flows (with the possible exception of that of Lauer & Postman) are consistent with each other given the errors, provided the latter allow for `cosmic covariance'. A rough estimate of the mean bulk flow of all surveys (except Lauer & Postman) is ~400 km/s towards l=270, b=0.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. To appear in Proceedings of the Cosmic Flows Workshop, Victoria, B. C., Canada, July 1999, eds. S. Courteau, M. Strauss, and J. Willic