A New Process for Organizing Assessments of Social, Economic, and Environmental Outcomes: Case Study of Wildland Fire Management in the USA

Ecological risk assessments typically are organized using the processes of planning (a discussion among managers, stakeholders, and analysts to clarify ecosystem management goals and assessment scope) and problem formulation (evaluation of existing information to generate hypotheses about adverse ecological effects, select assessment endpoints, and develop an analysis plan). These processes require modification to be applicable for integrated assessments that evaluate ecosystem management alternatives in terms of their ecological, economic, and social consequences.We present 8 questions that define the steps of a new process we term integrated problem formulation (IPF), and we illustrate the use of IPF through a retrospective case study comparing 2 recent phases of development of the Fire Program Analysis (FPA) system, a planning and budgeting system for the management of wildland fire throughout publicly managed lands in the United States. IPF extends traditional planning and problem formulation by including the explicit comparison of management alternatives, the valuation of ecological, economic and social endpoints, and the combination or integration of those endpoints. The phase 1, limitedprototype FPAsystem used a set of assessment endpoints ofcommonform (i.e., probabilities of givenflameheights over acres of selected land-resource types), which were specified and assigned relative weights at the local level in relation to a uniform national standard. This approach was chosen to permit system-wide optimization of fire management budget allocations according to a cost-effectiveness criterion. Before full development, however, the agencies abandoned this approach in favor of a phase 2 system that examined locally specified (rather than system-optimized) allocation alternatives and was more permissive as to endpoint form. We demonstrate how the IPF process illuminates the nature, rationale, and consequences of these differences, and argue that its early use for the FPA system may have enabled a smoother development path

An Ancient Relation between Units of Length and Volume Based on a Sphere

The modern metric system defines units of volume based on the cube. We propose that the ancient Egyptian system of measuring capacity employed a similar concept, but used the sphere instead. When considered in ancient Egyptian units, the volume of a sphere, whose circumference is one royal cubit, equals half a hekat. Using the measurements of large sets of ancient containers as a database, the article demonstrates that this formula was characteristic of Egyptian and Egyptian-related pottery vessels but not of the ceramics of Mesopotamia, which had a different system of measuring length and volume units

Does the history of food energy units suggest a solution to "Calorie confusion"?

The Calorie (kcal) of present U.S. food labels is similar to the original French definition of 1825. The original published source (now available on the internet) defined the Calorie as the quantity of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water from 0 to 1°C. The Calorie originated in studies concerning fuel efficiency for the steam engine and had entered dictionaries by 1840. It was the only energy unit in English dictionaries available to W.O. Atwater in 1887 for his popular articles on food and tables of food composition. Therefore, the Calorie became the preferred unit of potential energy in nutrition science and dietetics, but was displaced when the joule, g-calorie and kcal were introduced. This article will explain the context in which Nicolas Clément-Desormes defined the original Calorie and the depth of his collaboration with Sadi Carnot. It will review the history of other energy units and show how the original Calorie was usurped during the period of international standardization. As a result, no form of the Calorie is recognized as an SI unit. It is untenable to continue to use the same word for different thermal units (g-calorie and kg-calorie) and to use different words for the same unit (Calorie and kcal). The only valid use of the Calorie is in common speech and public nutrition education. To avoid ongoing confusion, scientists should complete the transition to the joule and cease using kcal in any context

ForestSim: Spatially explicit agent-based modeling of non-industrial forest owner policies

This paper describes ForestSim, an agent-based modeling (ABM) platform for forest management policy experimentation and bioenergy sustainability assessment. ForestSim integrates tools and techniques from biomass estimation, ABM, sustainability assessment, and forest-growth modeling to simulate the harvest activities of thousands of decentralized private forest owners responding to alternative forest management policies to determine the impacts on locally derived sustainability indicators. ForestSim is relatively easy to modify for those interested in exploring more nuanced aspects of non-industrial private forest owner decision-making, forest growth dynamics, forest management policy alternatives, and sustainability assessment criteria tailored to their own research design purposes or specific study regions. Keywords: Agent-based modeling, Policy modeling, Forest modeling, Environmental impacts, Land-use chang

Plant-Wide Energy Conservation Program Yields Impressive Results

Teledyne Continental Motors, Industrial Products Division (IPD), presently has 752,300 square feet of manufacturing area located on 59 acres in downtown Muskegon, Michigan. Fifty percent of the buildings were constructed between 1917 and 1921, with the balance built between 1941 and 1968. Extensive machining and assembly facilities are located there for the production of a variety of water-cooled, internal combustion engines. In September of 1977, IPD retained Roy F. Weston, Inc. to provide an In-depth survey of energy use at the facility with the specific objective of recommending cost-effective means of reducing energy costs to augment Teledyne's ongoing conservation efforts. Boiler operations, steam distribution and condensate return systems, heating and air conditioning systems, building shell, and other available opportunities for energy usage reduction were evaluated. By a series of process changes, HVAC revisions, and other cost-effective conservation measures, Teledyne has reduced energy consumption by 380,000 MBtu per year, a decrease of 65 percent based upon 1974 consumption. Energy savings coupled with reduced associated fixed costs are equivalent to a total cost avoidance of over $1,200,000. This paper presents the results of Weston's energy survey and system designs, Teledyne's progressive. Implementation of energy conservation techniques, and actual plant performance to date in achieving energy savings

Spinners or sinners? PR, journalists and public trust

The credibility of journalists and public relations professionals took some bad knocks in 2004. This paper examines the recent history of the debate and some of the efforts being made within the communications industry to rebuild the public confidence that journalism is a vital part of the democratic process. The NUJ has issued new guidelines to its members in public relations at a time when PR professionals are calling for a rethink about the relationship between journalism and PR. The heart of the matter is the issue of trust – which is also high on the post-Hutton media agenda. Public trust in journalism and in corporate social responsibility is low; “spin” has been disgraced, and media regulation is under reconstruction. How can media professionals forge new relationships with their publics, to promote healthy and open democracy? It is time for dialogue and commitment to work together on redefining the role of all media professionals in an open democracy. © 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limite

What a geographical entity could be

The main task of this article is providing a sketch of possible approaches, response attempts, conundrums and issues arising from the question: 'What is a geographical entity?'. It is shown how trying to answer this question is made particularly difficult by a multiplicity of aspects that might be summarized as follows: (1) There exist multiple conceptualizations of the geographical world. (2) Different languages and cultures may slice such a world in different ways. (3) The geographical world has changed and will change over time. (4) Also geography (as a discipline) has changed and will change over time, modifying its perspective, tools, domains of investigation and aims. Consequently, what had, has been, will be considered as non-geographic could be considered as geographic and vice versa. (5) There were, are and will be different kinds of geographies as well as different geographical branches, each of them had, have and might have different tools, aims, points of view and vocabularies. (6) The introduction of new scholarly fields and new technologies, the birth of intellectual movements or paradigm shifts and developments on other disciplinary contexts can/will influence geography as a discipline