Report “Confronting the Global Water Crisis through Research” Uncovers Key Trends in Water Resources Research Global water research grows nearly 30 percent annually during past decade Amsterdam, March 22 nd , 2011 – The report “Confronting the Global Water Crisis through Research – 2010”, carried out by Elsevier and released today, reveals the increasingly international and strategic nature of water resources research. Examining major trends in water research at the international, national and institutional levels, the report highlights the escalation in the article output of countries conducting water resources research and the expansion of such research into strategic disciplines. Elsevier used Scopus data and one of the solutions from its performance and planning suite, SciVal Spotlight, to develop a detailed analysis of country and institutional strengths in the field. “Most countries realize the importance of multidisciplinary research in water research as they face climate change and population growth,” said Dr. Christiane Barranguet, Executive Publisher of Elsevier Aquatic Sciences. “This is reflected by the nearly 30% annual growth rate in global water resources research from 2000 to 2009, as countries increasingly look to science to find answers to pressing questions regarding local and global water resources demands.” Key findings from the report include: • The Emergence of China While the U.S. leads in producing water resources research and yields the widest variety of such research, China is quickly emerging as a key player in the field. From 2003 to 2010, the number of articles published on water resources research from institutions in China increased by 28% annually while the number of articles published by U.S. institutions increased at a rate of 11%. If a straight-line growth trend is assumed, China will surpass the U.S. in the number of articles published on water resources research in 2014. • International Growth Given the strengths of its research and grant-making institutions, the U.S. will likely maintain a leading role in water resources research. However, the international focus on water resources suggests that the U.S. will increasingly share the research stage with other countries. The data indicates a rapid growth of water resources research throughout the world, including some countries where until recently, there was very little of such research. Faced with economic expansion, rising populations and growing industrialization, countries such as Iran, India, Russia, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico have experienced severe water problems and have subsequently seen dynamic increases in water research. For example, Iran produced only 12 papers on water resources between 1970 and 2000, but produced more than 60 papers each year from 2005 to 2008. • Multidisciplinary Growth By extensively mapping research articles by discipline, data from SciVal Spotlight reflects the increasingly multidisciplinary nature of water resources research. While environmental sciences, earth sciences, engineering and biological sciences continue to dominate the field, disciplines such as economics, math, computer science, chemistry and biochemistry are rapidly expanding into water research. Economics in particular, has seen significant growth. From 2004 to 2008, the annual growth rate in economics articles within water resources research was 100%. The rise of these disciplines highlights the changing interests of governments and grant-making institutions as they work to solve a variety of problems associated with water resources. To receive a copy of the report, please contact Sandra Plasse at +1 212-752-8338 or splasse@psbpr.com . # # # Survey Methodology The analysis was split in to two phases: phase I looked at the water resources literature landscape and phase II, which took a look at a number of well performing nations and one of their institutions that is a main contributor to the subject field. Phase I - To construct the initial data pool, the keywords "water resources*" were used to search titles, abstracts, and keywords of original articles, reviews, and proceedings papers published in the SciVerse Scopus™ database (http://www.info.sciverse.com) from Elsevier between January 1, 2004 and Dec 31, 2008. The resulting pool of research papers related to water resources was then analyzed. The data pool was used to generate list of subject categories, institutions, and nations ranked in three ways: according to total number of papers, total cites, and total cites/paper. Phase II - SciVal® Spotlight (http://www.info.scival.com/) was used to gain deeper insights into the core strengths of these top nations and the institutions that are contributing to these national strengths. About the Elsevier SciVal ® Suite Elsevier’s SciVal suite ( http://www.info.scival.com ) of services supports academic and government leadership in evaluating, establishing and executing research strategies that optimize the performance of existing assets and maximize investments to enhance near and long-term productivity. SciVal tools leverage Scopus® data, Elsevier’s trusted source of bibliometric data, to offer innovative yet authoritative solutions. Current suite offerings include: SciVal Spotlight™, a strategic tool that generates unique institutional and country maps of existing and emerging strengths based on an interdisciplinary perspective of current performance; SciVal Funding™, an online solution that provides targeted recommendations on grants to pursue based on pre-populated research profiles and historical awards; SciVal Experts, a semantic technology-based application that enables researchers to identify and locate sources of expertise at an individual or departmental level within and across institutions. About Elsevier Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell , and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier’s online solutions include SciVerse ScienceDirect , SciVerse Scopus , Reaxys , MD Consult and Nursing Consult , which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai’s Pinpoint Review , which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively. A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC , a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange). Media Contacts Sandra Plasse/Jen Saunders +1 212-752-8338 splasse@psbpr.com jsaunders@psbpr.com
Global warming and the evolution of Womens PANTIES 以上的讨论来自 http://www.xdtalk.com/forums/xdtalk-chatter-box/44091-global-warming-affects-womens-panties.html ，上面有很多有意思的评论，这也许只是一个FUNNY，但里面还是有很多东西需要探究的，比如，女性与气候变化的有关问题，当然包括健康，也有服侍的变化等 。 希望这个玩笑能引起大家的注意和思考。
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GOCE/SEM1AK6UPLG_0.html 中那一枚彩色的会旋转的"土豆",是什么呢? 杨正瓴 同志 很好奇.我觉得: 应该是大地水准面的模拟图.不同的颜色,代表不同的重力异常 区域.容易理解的是在海沟和珠穆朗玛峰地区,它们的颜色应该 不一样,也就是重力异常的数值不同,等值线的稀疏和稠密程度 也不同.旋转的土豆的作者,省略了等值线的绘制,强调了各地 不同的重力异常. 颜色应该是由绘制者的喜好确定的,红色可以代表正的重力 异常区域.但,和对照地球仪上的海洋区域的话,应该可以确定 作者的意图. 大地水准面的起伏和地面质量的分布有关,所以山峰和海洋 地区应呈现不同的"高度".但水准面的变化,不会像实地的差异 那样大,所以不可能像实际地形那样明显. 读者可以注意 geoid global gravity 这三个关键词.一个意思是大地水准面,一个是全球的,一个 是重力.用一定分辩率的全球重力观测数据,可以绘制出地球的 大地水准面.ESA网站宣传的应该就是GOCE卫星在这方面的成绩. 2012-4-9 "The colours in the image represent deviations in height (–100 m to +100 m) from an ideal geoid. The blue colours represent low values and the reds/yellows represent high values. "
What an observation! If you don't agree with this observation, please read "Japan's nuclear crisis pales in comparison to destruction from global climate change" via the link below. http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110318/cm_csm/370603 ps. Thanks to Fukushima, I am writing Blog at my home in Hawaii, instead of driving to the Honolulu airport. I purchased a r/t last November, to visit China via NRT during my spring break.
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE (click to see the syllabus) Contemporary Ethical Issues Focus: This course carries the Contemporary Ethical Issues Focus designation. People are called upon daily to make decisions in their personal lives that impact the environment. We are also involved in development of public environmental policy from the local to the global scale. Responsible decision-making in environmental issues requires a sound understanding of the scientific considerations as well as of the many implications for human welfare. The issues are complex. Many contemporary ethical issues will be presented in class lectures and debated in seven discussion group meetings. In discussions, emphasis will be placed on examining the many facets involved in environmental decision-making: weighing the benefits to different groups, balancing economic benefits vs. environmental health, consideration of the conflicting demands and needs of industrialized vs developing countries and of current vs future generations. Discussion group essays will address specific questions of an ethical/scientific nature that arise from the assigned readings. The first meeting of the discussion groups will include discussion of various frameworks for ethical decision making as outlined in Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making developed by Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer (available at: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/thinking.html ). Contemporary ethical issues constitute at least 30% of the course content.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 Obituary Notice: World Authority on Ocean Circulation: Peter Niiler Prominent ocean researcher, founder of the Global Drifter Program Scripps news
China needs to become a civil society in order to be a true global leader The following is a guest post by Pei Bin, director of China Partnership Development for BSR , a global business network and consultancy focused on sustainability. The opinions expressed are her own. At the recent Aspen Institute Socrates Summer Seminar, I attended the session Soft-Power: U.S. Leadership in a Hardball World, moderated by Joseph Nye, a professor of International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. The session sparked my own reflections on the existence, or lack thereof, of soft power in China. While everyone at the Aspen Institute expressed strong and positive interest in China, the majority of the United States still views China as a threat. As BSRs President and CEO Aron Cramer once said: One thing our countries have in common is that we see our weaknesses through the prism of the perceived power of the other country, and sometimes we lose sight of the balance between the two. As a Chinese national, Chinas economic confidence is clear to me. But the country still lacks a strong global profile and image abroad, otherwise known as soft power. Chinas dramatic economic development driven by top-down policy support and bottom-up entrepreneurship at all levels and across all regions was achieved at the cost of cheap labor, environmental deterioration, and the exploitation of natural resources. Even though China has brought 500 million people out of poverty, the majority of the population is still living in remote, mountainous regions and fighting for daily survival. The Chinese government needs to do a lot more to enable civil society development in China. For the past 30 years, the government has committed to further reforms to foster the development of trade associations and private foundations but with total control of the process. Nonetheless, there is a growing space for civil society in China, as seen with the increase in the number of private foundations in the past several years. More than 1,800 foundations have already been established, and foundations have been growing at a rate of over 200 per year for the past three years. However, there is a lot more the government must do. As David Shambaugh said in a recent article in the International Herald Tribune, China will not develop its soft power until it develops civil society. In order to help accomplish this, China also needs to provide more support and guidance for Chinese companies that want to expand their operations overseas. Currently, there are nearly 60,000 trade associations and chambers of commerce in China. Chinese trade associations need to play a bigger and more positive role in promoting voluntary standards of corporate social responsibility as an integral part of their effective management and operation through engagement of their member companies. This is a stark contrast to the EU trade associations and governments, which already actively support companies internationalization efforts. Additionally, Chinese companies that go abroad need to step up their efforts to engage local communities and stakeholders in their countries of operation. Many of these international projects have been contracted out to construction companies that have no knowledge of community development or sustainable development and lack international management skills. While they have helped build hard infrastructure, such as roads and clinics in Africa, Afghanistan, and Peru, they have failed to empower local communities. China is certainly an economic power when it comes to volume, but it definitely cannot be considered a powerful international leader without making more of a commitment to social leadership as well. Chinese companies need to focus more on the social return on investments that help drive positive social changes in local communities where they operate. Only then can China become a true global leader.
Source: Global Times Jiang Gaoming Editor's Note: It's been a restless summer for anyone living along the Yangtze River. Flooding has overwhelmed reservoirs, and flood-control facilities along the river are facing their biggest test since 1998. It's said that the flood is a once-in-a-century event caused by climate anomalies, but Jiang Gaoming (Jiang), chief researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany, holds a different viewpoint. He asserts that a seemingly natural calamity is actually a man-made disaster. Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Yuan talked to Jiang on the source of the flooding. GT: Why do you think the flooding in the Yangtze River this year is more of a man-made disaster than a natural one? Jiang: Many experts attribute this year's flood to climate anomalies. It sounds right, since the precipitation in Yangtze River valley this year was extremely high, and global warming might have contributed to the high precipitation. However, high precipitation alone does not necessarily lead to such a devastating flood. It's not that simple. Devastating floods occurred in the past with normal frequency, but in recent decades the term like once in a century has been repeated over and over again to describe different floods. People still remember the severe flooding along the Yangtze River in 1998, and this year an even worse one has occurred. I think it's unnatural, and we should rethink the cause of the floods. Actually, a more important factor than climate change is that the Yangtze River's capacity for precipitation is decreasing. This change is mainly man-made. The vegetation in areas on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River has been greatly damaged on account of replacing natural forests with tree plantations. For example, in Yunnan Province, natural tropical forests were replaced by fast-growing eucalyptus forests, and in Hubei Province, natural forests were burned out and man-made forests were established to produce paper. The water conservation ability of man-made forests, which have a seriously limited range of species, is much weaker than that of natural forests. Diversity leads to stability. Moreover, geographical environments along the Yangtze River have been changed. For example, Hubei Province was once called the province of lakes, as its name reflects. In flood seasons, its numerous lakes served as irreplaceable flood storage channels. However, now a large amount of lakes have disappeared due to land reclamation, boosting the pressure in the main channel. There have been hundreds of hydroelectric power stations, big and small, built along the whole of the Yangtze River. They also contribute a lot to frequent flooding, as they obstruct the flow of water. These man-made factors have reduced the Yangtze River's capacity to endure high rainfalls. Consequently, the same amount of rain now leads to worse floods than in the past, and so we see once-in-a-century floods every few years. GT: Why do experts automatically attribute flooding to climate change? Jiang: High precipitation is indeed a direct cause of the floods, and global warming and climate change could lead to abnormal precipitation, so it's natural that people would put the floods down to climate anomalies.But at the same time, potential man-made factors are sorely neglected.Most people, including many meteorologists, lack a sense of self-examination. When natural disasters happen, their initial reaction is to put all the blame on outside causes.It does not just happen with floods, but also happens with many other natural disasters, like sandstorms and droughts. For example, every year winds blow over the Mongolian Plateau, but why are the sandstorms getting more serious year by year? It's because of water loss and soil erosion in the plateau caused by human disturbance. Sometimes, after the event, some would start to rethink the role of humanity in causing these disasters, but usually even such self-examination is not profound enough to strengthen public awareness and take actual and effective remedies. For example, after the severe flooding along the Yangtze River in 1998, preventing the destruction of vegetation and soil and water loss in the regions along the Yangtze River was put on the agenda. At that time, a number of relevant policies were set, but they produced very little effect. GT: In China, the implementation of environmental policies is usually unsatisfactory. Many local governments insist on operating some projects that violate environmental laws. Do local governments seek advice from relevant experts, like you, when they make decisions on whether a project should be run? Jiang: Yes, in many cases they do. I myself have been consulted in some cases. But the problem is whether experts' advices is considered seriously - it's a pity that sometimes they are not.Last year, the Chongqing government planned to establish the Xiaonanhai Hydroelectric Power Station on the Yangtze River, which would be located in the only national fish reserve in the Yangtze River and could lead to the extinction of a great number of rare fish species.Many environmentalists and experts dedicated themselves to halting the project. At last the project was stopped, but I'm afraid that it wasn't because of experts' objections. Actually, it was the central government's intervention that stopped it. Economic profits and GDP are often the initial considerations of local governments and many interest groups, like large pulp corporations and power stations, while protecting the ecological environment cannot bring them visible profits in the short term. Usually some local governments will consider environmental problems seriously only if the central government interferes.We should ascertain where the responsibility lies, and those who neglect their environmental protection duties should be penalized. Otherwise, actions that damage the environment will continue unabated.Maybe this year we can stop Hubei Province from burning natural forests and planting pulpwood forests, but without mandatory accountability, we cannot make sure the same project would not happen again. GT : Since local governments are obsessed with profit, is there any way to put a price on environmental protection? Jiang : Western scientists have introduced some measures to provide intuitive evaluation, which is called the valuation of ecosystem services. This can put a value on all kinds of ecosystem. For example, it can calculate how much oxygen a forest releases. But such methods might not be persuasive enough when providing advices to those local governments, which only emphasize the economy and GDP growth. The economic profits calculated are abstract, and could not be transferred into cash. However, those eco-unfriendly projects, like pulpwood forests, can bring local governments tangible profits. So it cannot be measured in terms of money. Making mandatory laws and regulations is the only effective way. Policymakers and lawmakers need to realize that a good natural environment can also bring economic benefit.Local residents can profit from it, as at least people's health and agricultural production would be guaranteed. It can also bolster the development of the tourism sector. More importantly, good environment could work up support for national security. Each time there are serious natural calamities, like flood and draught, soldiers have to be sent to provide disaster relief. It seems that it has been our army' major task. A better environment and less natural disasters could allow the army to spare more resources to improve their military abilities.
Call for Papers Authors are invited to submit papers on issues, especially scaling issues, related to current and future Internet technology. Topics of interest include, but not limited to, the following: Novel applications and new paradigms Next-generation network architectures Handling Internet dynamics/heterogeneity (by applications and/or the network) P2P networking and overlay networks Large-scale distributed Internet applications Privacy and/or security issues in the Internet Anomaly, intrusion and attack detection Routing (unicast, multicast, anycast, etc.) Flow management (fairness/sharing, congestion control, differentiated services, etc.) The Internet and wireless/mobile devices, as well as intermittent connectivity Traffic measurement, analysis, modeling, and visualization Provisioning, monitoring, and management of IP services Content networking (caching, content distribution, content routing, content services, load balancing, etc.) Important Dates Paper submission: (tbc) Notification of acceptance: (tbc) Final manuscripts due: (tbc) Symposium: 14 April 2011 Submission Instructions Submitted manuscripts must be formatted in standard IEEE camera-ready format (double-column, 10-pt font) and must be submitted via EDAS as PDF files formatted for 8.5x11-inch paper. The manuscripts must be no longer than 6 pages. The Program Committee reserves the right to not review papers that violate these formatting rules. Submitted papers must not have been previously published, or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. All submitted papers will be reviewed and judged on originality, technical correctness, relevance, and quality of presentation. All accepted papers must be presented at the symposium by one of the authors. http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/conferences/gi2011/cfp.html
A CALIFORNIA Congressman was seated next to a little girl on the airplane leaving from DALLAS when he turned to her and said, 'Let's talk. I've heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.' The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said to the total stranger, 'What would you like to talk about?' 'Oh, I don't know,' said the congressman. 'How about global warming or universal health care', and he smiles smugly. OK, ' she said. 'Those could be interesting topics. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?' The California legislator, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, 'Hmmm, I have no idea.' To which the little girl replies, Do you really feel qualified to discuss global warming or universal health care when you don't know shit?
Climate scientists grapple with real uncertainties, but those who doubt the reality of human-driven global warming usually ignore those issues and, instead, perpetuate a series of claims that do not hold up to scrutiny. What follows is a selection of myths about climate. NATURE. VOL 463 简要概括解释了怀疑全球变暖的几个主要Myth。详见附件~~ myth
来源： http://www.skepticalscience.com/Does-Urban-Heat-Island-effect-add-to-the-global-warming-trend.html Wednesday, 24 September, 2008 Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend? It's well established that urban areas are warmer than surrounding rural areas. However, does Urban Heat Island (UHI) contribute to the global warming trend? Short answer, no . Two thirds of global temperature data comes from ocean records, free of UHI effect. For land records, urban trends are compared to nearby rural data- anomalous urban trends are homogenized to match rural records( Hansen 2001 ). However, in most cases, the urban temperature trend is observed to be little different to the rural trend.A new paper Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China (Jones et al 2008) looks at this in more detail. Comparing rural and urban sites in London and Vienna The paper begins by looking at 5 sites in and around London. Figure 1 shows absolute temperatures, clearly indicating a UHI influence on the urban sites atLondon Weather Centre (brown) and St. James Park (dark blue). The coolest record is the rural basedRothamsted (dark green). However, the excess urban warmth has no effect on the temperature trend - all sites show the same overall trend. Figure 1: Annual temperature trends for five sites in and around London. Brown and dark blue are urban sites, green are rural. A similar comparison was made between two sites in Vienna. Again, theabsolute temperature is greater for the urban site but both sites show near identical trends. Figure 2: Annual temperature trends for two sites in Vienna Hohewarte in the center (brown) and the rural location of Grossenzersdorf (green). Comparing rural and urban networks in China So established urban areas show the same trends as surrounding rural areas. What about urban areas that are still developing? China, in contrast to Europe, has experienced rapid economic growth over the last 30 years with a dramatic increase in its city areas. If there were to be significant urban-related warming, it ought to be in this region and over recent decades. Figure 3 compares a range of temperature datasets: Figure 3: Annual average temperature anomalies. Jones et all (dotted green and brown) is a dataset of 42 rural and 42 urban sites. Li et al (solid green and brown) is a homogenized dataset of 42 rural and 40 urban sites. Li (blue) is a non-homogenized set of 728 stations, urban and rural. CRUTEM3v (red) is a land-only data set (Brohan et al., 2006). This plot uses the 195483 base period. That there are hardly any differences between the six series tells us several things. Small datasets of 40 stations show the same result as the 728 station dataset. In other words, for a region of this size, the average can be constructed from a limited number of sites, implying that for the 728 station network there is considerable redundancy. As the scale increases, the overall impact of homogeneity adjustments diminishes. This might be a bit heartbreaking for those hard working boffins who spend hundreds of hours pouring meticulously over station data, ensuring the data is all homogenised (but of course, they don't do it just to calculate global trends). And of course, the most significant finding: the trend is the same for both urban and rural groups over any of the periods. Even in the case of developing urban areas, when averaged out over large areas, urban heat island has little impact on the warming trend.
标签: global
