scholarly journals Bioplastics – An Eco-friendly Alternative to Petrochemical Plastics

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Selvamurugan Muthusamy ◽  
Sivakumar Pramasivam
Keyword(s):  
Public Awareness ◽  
Plastic Pollution ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Global Estimate ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Past Half ◽  
Emission Of Greenhouse Gases

Plastics have varied application and have become an essential part of our daily lives. The use of the plastics has increased twenty-fold in the past half-century and is expected to double again in the next 20 years. As a global estimate, around 330 million tonnes of the plastics are produced per annum. The production, use and disposal of the plastics emerged as a persistent and potential environmental nuisance. The improper disposal of the plastics ends up in our environment, resulting in the deaths of millions of animals annually and also the reduction in fertility status of the soil. The bioplastics products are manufactured to be biodegradable with similar functionality to that of conventional plastics, which has the potential to reduce the dependence on petrochemicals based plastics and related environmental problems. The expansion and development of the bioplastics and their products would lead to the increase in the sustainability of environment and reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases. The bioplastics innovation would be a key to the long-term solution for the plastic pollution. However, a widespread public awareness is also essential in effecting longer-term change against plastic pollution.

The empirical trend

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Sampson
Keyword(s):  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Literature Survey ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Systematic Sampling ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Scientific Standards ◽  
Past Half

Linguistic science of the past half-century has often been distorted through neglect of normal scientific standards of empirical falsifiability. An earlier paper in this journal used a quantitative literature survey to examine how far in practice the newer trend towards use by linguists of corpora and other empirical data sources had progressed. The result was ambiguous: a trend towards greater empiricism had occurred since about 1970, but around the turn of the century it appeared to have reversed, and the end of the period surveyed (2002) fell so soon thereafter that it was hard to guess whether this reversal was a blip or a long-term change. With a further decade of linguistic literature to examine, the present paper repeats the survey using a more systematic sampling technique, and this yields results that are much more clearcut than those of the earlier paper.

Afghanistan-US Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Global Response ◽  
The Past ◽  
Thrust Front ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Partnership Agreement ◽  
Past Half

Afghanistan has twice been thrust front and center of US national security concerns in the past half-century: first, during the Soviet-Afghan War, when Afghanistan served as a proxy for American efforts to combat Soviet influence; and second, as the frontline state and host for America’s global response to al-Qaida’s terrorist attacks of 2001. In both instances, American involvement swung from intensive investment and engagement to withdrawal and neglect. In both cases, American involvement reflected US concerns more than Afghan realities. And both episodes resulted in short-term successes for American security with long-term consequences for Afghanistan and its people. The signing of a strategic partnership agreement between the two countries in 2012 and a bilateral security agreement in 2013 created the possibility of a steadier and more forward-looking relationship—albeit one that the American and Afghan people may be less inclined to pursue as America’s longest war continues to grind on.

scholarly journals Understanding Urban Expansion on the Tibetan Plateau over the Past Half Century Based on Remote Sensing: The Case of Xining City, China

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Xinhao Pan ◽  
Yihang Wang ◽  
Zhifeng Liu ◽  
Chunyang He ◽  
Haimeng Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Urban Sprawl ◽  
Satellite Data ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Urban Land ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Past Half

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is an important area that affects global sustainable development. Quantifying spatiotemporal patterns of urbanization is crucial for maintaining the sustainability on the TP. This study took Xining City, the largest city on the TP, as an example to understand the urban expansion in this region in the past 50 years. We combined the high-resolution spy satellite data and China’s long-term urban land dataset (CULD) to quantify the urban expansion of Xining City. The object-oriented random forest classification was performed to extract urban land from spy satellite data in 1969, and the inter-annual correction was used to combine urban land information from 1969 to 2017. We found that the proposed approach can accurately quantify the urban expansion of Xining City over the past half century with an overall accuracy of 91% and a kappa coefficient of 0.86. Such high accuracy benefits from the fine resolution of spy satellite data and the consistency of CULD. We also found that Xining City experienced accelerated and fragmented urban sprawl to higher altitude areas, as a result of socioeconomic development and topographical limitations. The acceleration of urban expansion was more obvious, and the urban landscape fragmentation was more serious at high altitude areas. Such urban expansion encroached on cropland and grassland, and caused increased risks of landslides and other geological disasters. Therefore, Xining City urgently needs to promote the development of compact cities to control urban sprawl at higher altitude areas and provide a reference for improving urban sustainability across the TP. In this study, we analyzed the urban expansion of Xining city from 1969 to 2017, and provided a reliable way to understand the long-term spatiotemporal urbanization based on remote sensing, which has the potential for wide applications. In addition, the extracted urban information can help to improve the urban sustainability of Xining City and the entire TP.

EDITORIAL: Migration and competitiveness: Japan and the United States

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Philip L. Martin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Variable Cost ◽  
Fixed Cost ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Key Sectors ◽  
Past Half

Japan and the United States, the world’s largest economies for most of the past half century, have very different immigration policies. Japan is the G7 economy most closed to immigrants, while the United States is the large economy most open to immigrants. Both Japan and the United States are debating how immigrants are and can con-tribute to the competitiveness of their economies in the 21st centuries. The papers in this special issue review the employment of and impacts of immigrants in some of the key sectors of the Japanese and US economies, including agriculture, health care, science and engineering, and construction and manufacturing. For example, in Japanese agriculture migrant trainees are a fixed cost to farmers during the three years they are in Japan, while US farmers who hire mostly unauthorized migrants hire and lay off workers as needed, making labour a variable cost.

Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Past Half

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.

Pakistan’s Development: Successes, Failures, and Future Tasks (Presidential Remarks)

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Golden Jubilee ◽  
Freedom Movement ◽  
Past Half ◽  
Do So

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.

A Scientific Search for Altruism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Daniel Batson
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Empathic Concern ◽  
Altruistic Motivation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Past Half

This book provides an example of how the scientific method can be used to address a fundamental question about human nature. For centuries—indeed for millennia—the egoism–altruism debate has echoed through Western thought. Egoism says that the motivation for everything we do, including all of our seemingly selfless acts of care for others, is to gain one or another self-benefit. Altruism, while not denying the force of self-benefit, says that under certain circumstances we can care for others for their sakes, not our own. Over the past half-century, social psychologists have turned to laboratory experiments to provide a scientific resolution of this human nature debate. The experiments focused on the possibility that empathic concern—other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need—produces altruistic motivation to remove that need. With carefully constructed experimental designs, these psychologists have tested the nature of the motivation produced by empathic concern, determining whether it is egoistic or altruistic. This series of experiments has provided an answer to a fundamental question about what makes us tick. Framed as a detective story, the book traces this scientific search for altruism through the numerous twists and turns that led to the conclusion that empathy-induced altruism is indeed part of our nature. It then examines the implications of this conclusion—negative implications as well as positive—both for our understanding of who we are as humans and for how we might create a more humane society.

The Twentysomething Soul

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Clydesdale ◽  
Kathleen Garces-Foley
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Past Half ◽  
The Way

Few realize how much Americans’ journey through their twenties has changed during the past half-century or understand how incorrect popular assumptions about young adults’ religious, spiritual, and secular lives are. Today’s twentysomethings have been labelled the “lost generation”—for their presumed inability to identify and lead fulfilling lives, “kidults”—for their alleged refusal to “grow up” and accept adult responsibilities, and the “least religious generation”—for their purported disinterest in religion and spirituality. These characterizations are not only unflattering, they are deeply flawed. The Twentysomething Soul tells an optimistic story about American twentysomethings. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and a survey of thousands across America, it introduces readers to the full spectrum of American young adults, many of whom live purposefully, responsibly, and reflectively. Some prioritize faith and spirituality. Others reject their childhood religion to explore alternatives and practice a personal spirituality. Still others sideline religion and spirituality until their lives get settled or reject organized religion completely. There is change occurring in the religious and spiritual lives of young adults, but little of it is among the 1 in 4 American twentysomethings who have consistently prioritized religious commitment during the past half-century. The change is rather among the now 3 in 10 young adults who, though intentionally unaffiliated with religion, affirm a variety of religious, spiritual, and secular beliefs. The Twentysomething Soul will change the way readers view contemporary young adults, giving an accurate—and refreshing—understanding of their religious, spiritual, and secular lives.

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