Two landscapes: Comparing ecology movements in Slovakia and Hungary

This paper broadly compares environmentalism in Hungary and Slovakia, with a specific focus on Slovakia’s green movement under late-socialism and after. Nature activism in both countries was not directly controlled by the Party, and in each case individuals pushed the boundaries of activism and redefined notions of protest and dissent. But the way these two movements emerged were quite different from one another. In Hungary, the movement coalesced around a big “international” Soviet-style mega-project. This was the flashpoint. In Hungary, the Nagymaros dam project was an infringement — a monument of unhappy partnerships, and a symbol that fueled nationalist rumblings. In Slovakia, the whole notion of megaworks was not an unwelcome idea. But the differences between Hungarian and Slovak greens are more than the story of a dam controversy. While Hungary’s movement had its origins in the Danube River, Slovak greens emerged from the conservation of folk dwellings in the mountains. In Slovakia — the weekend amateur, the Catholic, the writer, the sociologist — instead found traction in the notion of human conservation. I explore these differences and examine how things change in the post-socialist period

Harnessing the potential of ligninolytic enzymes for lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment

Abundant lignocellulosic biomass from various industries provides a great potential feedstock for the production of value-added products such as biofuel, animal feed, and paper pulping. However, low yield of sugar obtained from lignocellulosic hydrolysate is usually due to the presence of lignin that acts as a protective barrier for cellulose and thus restricts the accessibility of the enzyme to work on the cellulosic component. This review focuses on the significance of biological pretreatment specifically using ligninolytic enzymes as an alternative method apart from the conventional physical and chemical pretreatment. Different modes of biological pretreatment are discussed in this paper which is based on (i) fungal pretreatment where fungi mycelia colonise and directly attack the substrate by releasing ligninolytic enzymes and (ii) enzymatic pretreatment using ligninolytic enzymes to counter the drawbacks of fungal pretreatment. This review also discusses the important factors of biological pretreatment using ligninolytic enzymes such as nature of the lignocellulosic biomass, pH, temperature, presence of mediator, oxygen, and surfactant during the biodelignification process

Kinetic and Microstructural Aspects of Zircon Decomposition in the Presence of Alpha or Beta Alumina

146 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1971.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD