bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Tools for Music Theory Concepts
Authors: Manzo V. J
Published: November 2020

In this chapter, we will design some tools to aid in the discussions of concepts related to music theory. In particular, we will discuss chord progressions, scale analysis, chord analysis, mode relationships, harmonic direction of chords, and harmonization. By the end of this chapter, you will have an arsenal of tools for explaining theoretical concepts of music. Sometimes, theoretical concepts in music can be difficult to grapple with, even for professional musicians. As we discuss some different ways to address these concepts through soft ware, try to think of demonstrating the theory concept as the goal, and the Max part of it as the means of reaching the goal. This will help you to program with the goal in mind and will help the way we reach that goal, through Max, to make more logical sense. Begin with the goal in mind! Let’s quickly build a patch that allows us to play back chords. As you’ll recall, we used a patch like this in the Chapter 7: Example 2 in the EAMIR SDK. Let’s open that patch. You may also build a chord patch from scratch if you prefer. 1. Click on Extras>EAMIR from the top menu to view the main menu of the EAMIR SDK 2. In the umenu labeled Examples, click the second item 2. EAMIR _Chord_Basics.maxpat 3. Click File>Save As and save the file as chord_progressions. maxpat Suppose you wanted to discuss the chord progressions used in your favorite popular music song. Let’s pretend that the chord progression is 1, 5, 6, 4 (I V vi IV) in the key of C Major (C, G, A minor, F). We can allow the user to play through each chord in the progression by entering these chords into a coll.
High Blue: The Great Downshift of Dryness
Authors: deBuys William
Published: November 2020

Mapmakers typically depict the aridlands of the world in colors like buff and buckskin, in contrast to the greens of wetter regions. Their choice is true to reality, for dry places usually produce scant vegetation, and the bare ground, baked by unobstructed sun, tends to wear a washed-out shade of dun, or one of its cousins. In the North American Southwest, you might add a touch of rust to reflect the widespread iron-rich geology. In many areas, oxides of iron produce the pinkish flesh tones that make it easy to think the landscape is alive. If you also brush in some piney greens and spruce black for upland woods and forests, and dab smaller areas white to represent high-country snowcaps, you have a fair start toward capturing the palette of the region. But you would still be missing the most definitive color of the Southwest, which is found not beneath the feet, but overhead. You can look up, straight up, almost any day of the year, and there it is: an intense, infinite blue, miles deep and beyond reach. It is not merely bluish, not the watery blue of Scandinavian eyes, not the black-mixed blue of dark seas or bachelor buttons, not the hazy blue of glacier ice or distant mountains, but an Ur-blue, an über-blue, a defining quintessence. It is to other blues as brandy is to wine: a distillation, pure and heady. It can be a little deflating to reflect that the ethereal blue of southwestern skies results from mundane forces, that it is the product of solar radiation and atmospheric gases interacting in an environment shaped by climate. If the air held more water vapor, the sky would whiten overhead, as it does at the horizons, where the light that reaches our eyes has more atmosphere and diffusing vapor to travel through.
Sand Canyon: Vanishing Acts
Authors: deBuys William
Published: November 2020

In the southwest the specter of climate change invites a long look into the deep past. For anyone who hunts for insights about the nature of the region and the trick of making peace with its aridity, the ubiquitous signs of vanished communities beckon irresistibly—in the ruins of Chaco Canyon, the empty cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, and the mounded rubble of abandoned villages scattered near and far. The “lessons” they offer, however, are not always as clear as we would like them to be. Cautionary tales about the truths and errors of distant centuries can be easy to spin but surprisingly hard to reconcile to the complexity of the archaeological record, which is never static. As with any domain of science, the story told by the archaeology of the Southwest is always emerging, always gaining in heft and detail. When I went looking for someone who could help me read it, the trail I took led to the head of a rugged canyon, choked with piñon and juniper, in the far southwest of Colorado. “There’s a kiva, there’s a kiva, there’s a kiva,” says archaeologist Mark Varien, who is vice president of programs at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, outside Cortez. He points in succession to three circular depressions amid the rubble, signatures of the remains of subterranean rooms that once housed much of the life of the pueblo. Rough blocks of sandstone outline the space the kivas occupied, their roofs having long ago caved in. Wind has filled their cavities with the dust and litter of centuries. Now they bloom with cliff rose and sagebrush. We stand just behind the kivas on a mound of half-buried building stones, which are canted at every angle—the remains of masonry rooms. To either side lie the mounds of more room blocks, their rear walls forming the perimeter of the pueblo, and the pueblo itself wrapping around the cleft of a rocky draw. The draw leads south and widens into Sand Canyon, a dry tributary of McElmo Creek, which flows west out of Colorado and joins the San Juan River not far away in Utah.
Highway 79 Revisited: “Mega” Trends in the Sun Corridor
Authors: deBuys William
Published: November 2020

Whether you are breaking prairie sod in the nineteenth century or raising a family and scrambling to make ends meet in the twenty-first, it is hard to get worked up over abstract possibilities. There is too much that needs doing, right here, right now. Even knowing the odds, people still live in earthquake zones, hurricane alleys, and the unprotected floodplains of mighty rivers. The warm embrace of a thirsty aridland city is not so different. Generally speaking, it is hard for any of us to get seriously concerned about what might happen until it does happen. That’s why the politics of climate change are so difficult. The measurements and observations that convince scientists about the warming of Earth are invisible to the rest of us. We fail to sense them at the scale of our personal lives. And believing in the verdicts of computer models about what might happen twenty or forty years in the future, well, that is tantamount to a leap of faith, and most people don’t ordinarily jump that far. Believing in the growth of cities can be difficult, too. Beginning in 2007, the domino of subprime mortgage defaults knocked over the domino of overleveraged investment banks, which toppled a wobbly world credit system, which upended industries around the globe and ushered in the Great Recession. 1 The home-building industries of growth-crazy cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix collapsed virtually overnight. Suburbs from Florida to California became ghost towns where wind-driven litter piled up in doorways and weeds grew higher than the sills of boarded-up windows. Some analysts predicted the emergence of a new generation of suburban slums and the death of gas-guzzling, car-dependent, long-commute suburban lifestyles. 2 Indeed, in the long run, considering the implications of peak oil and peak water and the likelihood of more severe climate reckonings than we’ve yet seen, such a demise seems likely—though maybe not quite yet.
Conclusion
Authors: O'Brien James
Published: November 2020

Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunged over the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem (FINA), the twenty-sixth story. What we read about the post-Reichenbach Holmes is that he had “never been the same man afterwards” (Stashower 1999, 443). Actually the very first story written after Holmes and Moriarty went over the falls was The Hound of the Baskervilles (HOUN). It is the most famous Holmes tale, and it is always rated as the very best one too. The next three stories, The Empty House (EMPT), The Norwood Builder (NORW), and The Dancing Men (DANC) are all rated fairly well. So Conan Doyle gets to the halfway point quite strongly (DANC is the thirtieth story). But soon the quality drops off. The fifty-six Holmes short stories have been rated several times (Bigelow 1993, 130–138). It is revealing to compare the first thirty stories with the last thirty. Here are the results from the 1959 ratings done by readers of The Baker Street Journal. Eight of the ten stories on the “best” list are from the first half of the Canon. Only two later stories make the list. The “worst” list is just the reverse. Nine of the ten stories are from the second half; eight of the tales on the worst list are from the last twelve stories that Conan Doyle wrote, between 1921 and 1927. Even Conan Doyle himself agreed with this. In 1927, he listed his twelve favorite short stories and later added his next seven. Conan Doyle’s list has fifteen early stories and four late ones. . . . Arthur Conan Doyle’s Favorite Holmes Short Stories SPEC (10), REDH (4), DANC (30), FINA (26), SCAN (3), EMPT (28), FIVE (7), SECO (40), DEVI (43), PRIO (32), MUSG (20), REIG (21), SILV (15), BRUC (42), CROO (22), TWIS (8), GREE (24), RESI (23), NAVA (25) . . . When the four long stories are included, not much changes. Generally HOUN displaces The Speckled Band (SPEC) as number one. But the later stories still fare poorly. One of the second-half tales that is always rated high is The Bruce Partington Plans (BRUC).
Materials for Technology-Based Music Instruction
Authors: Dorfman Jay
Published: November 2020

Nearly all forms of education make use of materials to support student learning. In the case of traditional music education, the type of material that comes to mind most readily is composed music. Since the dominant form of music education in the United States is the traditional ensemble, composed music is a justifiable representation of what most teachers think of as musical material. In this chapter, we will look at a couple of examples of established criteria for selecting musical materials for various types of teaching scenarios. Then, we will imagine how those criteria might be applied to TBMI and address the crossover between the music we use in traditional music teaching and the music that might be used in technology-based music instruction. We will then examine the types of materials that are specifically related to technology (software and hardware) and sort through some processes for evaluating and selecting those materials. Though most teachers do not articulate any kind of formula for music selection, there are certainly criteria by which music can be chosen for the classroom. A well-known treatise on criteria for wind band music selection is a dissertation by Ostling (1978) in which the author spelled out several guidelines for selecting music with “serious artistic merit.” Among Ostling’s suggestions were the following: The composition has form—not “a form” but form—and reflects a proper balance between repetition and contrast. The composition reflects craftsmanship in orchestration, demonstrating a proper balance between transparent and tutti scoring, and also between solo and group colors. The composition is sufficiently unpredictable to preclude an immediate grasp of its musical meaning. The route through which the composition travels in initiating its musical tendencies and probable musical goals is not completely direct and obvious. The composition is consistent in quality throughout its length and in its various sections.
Assessment and Technology-Based Music Instruction
Authors: Dorfman Jay
Published: November 2020

Assessment is such an important cornerstone of the current educational landscape that it must be a part of discussion about any educational topic, including TBMI. To paraphrase Duke (2005), rather than thinking about assessment as the culmination of an educational cycle, teachers should embed assessment into every lesson, every activity, and our plans for everything that comes next. Duke stated, “The distinction between the assessments and the substance of instruction day to day should be diminished to the point that the day-to-day activities of instruction closely resemble the assessments themselves” (2005, p. 71). In a TBMI class, this is the scenario for which teachers should strive. Still, assessment remains a thorny issue for TBMI teachers because they are often unaccustomed to assessing the types of work that students do in TBMI classes, examples of which were seen in the sample lessons in chapter 6. Assessing what students do informs us about the extent to which they retain information and achieve learning objectives, the quality of that learning, and students’ abilities to apply conceptual understanding to both familiar and novel situations. If we do it for no other reason, assessing students tells us when they are ready to go on to the next bit of information, the next activity, or the next level of complexity of work. I observed Mr. U during a day trip to his school in a suburb in the northeast United States. Mr. U has been teaching music technology classes at the high school level for about 15 years—perhaps the longest of any teacher profiled in this book—and has been nationally recognized for his excellence in doing so. Over that time, he has gone through many changes of equipment, software, and course designs. He has developed a vast and sophisticated set of projects for his students, who can take level 1 and 2 music technology classes. Most of the assignments and requirements are housed on a website that Mr. U developed as part of a professional development project. His students clearly enjoy the music technology classes he teaches.
Data Sets
Authors: Elsner James B. , Jagger Thomas H.
Published: November 2020

Hurricane data originate from careful analysis of past storms by operational meteorologists. The data include estimates of the hurricane position and intensity at 6-hourly intervals. Information related to landfall time, local wind speeds, damages, and deaths, as well as cyclone size, are included. The data are archived by season. Some effort is needed to make the data useful for hurricane climate studies. In this chapter, we describe the data sets used throughout this book. We show you a work flow that includes importing, interpolating, smoothing, and adding attributes. We also show you how to create subsets of the data. Code in this chapter is more complicated and it can take longer to run. You can skip this material on first reading and continue with model building in Chapter 7. You can return here when you have an updated version of the data that includes the most recent years. Most statistical models in this book use the best-track data. Here we describe these data and provide original source material. We also explain how to smooth and interpolate them. Interpolations are needed for regional hurricane analyses. The best-track data set contains the 6-hourly center locations and intensities of all known tropical cyclones across the North Atlantic basin, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. The data set is called HURDAT for HURricane DATa. It is maintained by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Center locations are given in geographic coordinates (in tenths of degrees) and the intensities, representing the one-minute near-surface (∼10 m) wind speeds, are given in knots (1 kt = .5144 m s−1) and the minimum central pressures are given in millibars (1 mb = 1 hPa). The data are provided in 6-hourly intervals starting at 00 UTC (Universal Time Coordinate). The version of HURDAT file used here contains cyclones over the period 1851 through 2010 inclusive. Information on the history and origin of these data is found in Jarvinen et al (1984). The file has a logical structure that makes it easy to read with a FORTRAN program. Each cyclone contains a header record, a series of data records, and a trailer record.
Intensity Models
Authors: Elsner James B. , Jagger Thomas H.
Published: November 2020

Strong hurricanes, such as Camille in 1969, Andrew in 1992, and Katrina in 2005, cause catastrophic damage. It is important to have an estimate of when the next big one will occur. You also want to know what influences the strongest hurricanes and whether they are getting stronger as the earth warms. This chapter shows you how to model hurricane intensity. The data are basinwide lifetime highest intensities for individual tropical cyclones over the North Atlantic and county-level hurricane wind intervals. We begin by considering trends using the method of quantile regression and then examine extreme-value models for estimating return periods. We also look at modeling cyclone winds when the values are given by category, and use Miami-Dade County as an example. Here you consider cyclones above tropical storm intensity (≥ 17 m s−1) during the period 1967–2010, inclusive. The period is long enough to see changes but not too long that it includes intensity estimates before satellite observations. We use “intensity” and “strength” synonymously to mean the fastest wind inside the cyclone. Consider the set of events defined by the location and wind speed at which a tropical cyclone first reaches its lifetime maximum intensity (see Chapter 5). The data are in the file LMI.txt. Import and list the values in 10 columns of the first 6 rows of the data frame by typing . . . > LMI.df = read.table("LMI.txt", header=TRUE) > round(head(LMI.df)[c(1, 5:9, 12, 16)], 1). . . The data set is described in Chapter 6. Here your interest is the smoothed intensity estimate at the time of lifetime maximum (WmaxS). First, convert the wind speeds from the operational units of knots to the SI units of meter per second. . . . > LMI.df$WmaxS = LMI.df$WmaxS * .5144 . . . Next, determine the quartiles (0.25 and 0.75 quantiles) of the wind speed distribution. The quartiles divide the cumulative distribution function (CDF) into three equal-sized subsets. . . . > quantile(LMI.df$WmaxS, c(.25, .75)) 25% 75% 25.5 46.0 . . . You find that 25 percent of the cyclones have a lifetime maximum wind speed less than 26 m s−1 and 75 percent have a maximum wind speed less than 46ms−1, so that 50 percent of all cyclones have a maximum wind speed between 26 and 46 m s−1 (interquartile range–IQR).
Spatial Models
Authors: Elsner James B. , Jagger Thomas H.
Published: November 2020

In Chapter 7, annual counts were used to create rate models, and in Chapter 8, lifetime maximum winds were used to create intensity models. In this chapter, we show you how to use cyclone track data together with climate field data to create spatial models. Spatial models make use of location information in data. Geographic coordinates locate the hurricane’s center on the surface of the earth and wind speed provides an attribute. Spatial models make use of location separate from attributes. Given a common spatial framework, these models can accommodate climate data including indices (e.g., North Atlantic Oscillation) and fields (e.g., sea-surface temperature). Here, we show you how to create a spatial framework for combining hurricane data with climate data. The method tessellates the basin with hexagons and populates them with local cyclone and climate information (Elsner et al., 2012). In Chapter 5, you learned how to create a spatial data frame using functions from the sp package (Bivand et al., 2008). Let us review. Here you are interested in wind speeds along the entire track for all tropical storms and hurricanes during the 2005 North Atlantic season. You begin by creating a data frame from the best.use.RData file, where you subset on year and wind speed and convert the speed to meters per second. . . . > load("best.use.RData") > W.df = subset(best.use, Yr==2005 & WmaxS >= 34 + & Type=="*") > W.df$WmaxS = W.df$WmaxS * .5144 . . . The asterisk for Type indicates a tropical cyclone as opposed to a tropical wave or extratropical cyclone. The number of rows in your data frame is the total number of cyclone hours (3,010), and you save this by typing . . . > ch = nrow(W.df) . . . Next, assign the lon and lat columns as spatial coordinates using the coordinates function (sp). Finally, make a copy of your data frame, keeping only the spatial coordinates and the wind speed columns.
Cluster Models
Authors: Elsner James B. , Jagger Thomas H.
Published: November 2020

A cluster is a group of the same or similar events close together. Clusters arise in hurricane origin locations, tracks, and landfalls. In this chapter, we look at how to analyze and model clusters. We divide the chapter into methods for time, space, and feature clustering. Of the three feature clustering is best known to climatologists. We begin by showing you how to detect and model time clusters. Consecutive hurricanes originating in the same area often take similar paths. This grouping, or clustering, increases the potential for multiple landfalls above what you expect from random events. A statistical model for landfall probability captures clustering through covariates like the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which relates a steering mechanism (position and strength of the subtropical high pressure) to coastal hurricane activity. But there could be additional time correlation not related to the covariates. A model that does not account for this extra variation will underestimate the potential for multiple hits in a season. Following Jagger and Elsner (2006), you consider three coastal regions including the Gulf Coast, Florida, and the East Coast (Fig. 6.2). Regions are large enough to capture enough hurricanes, but not too large as to include many non-coastal strikes. Here you use hourly position and intensity data described in Chapter 6. For each hurricane, you note its wind speed maximum within each region. If the maximum wind exceeds 33 m s−1, then you count it as a hurricane for the region. A tropical cyclone that affects more than one region at hurricane intensity is counted in each region. Because of this, the sum of the regional counts is larger than the total count. Begin by loading annual.RData. These data were assembled in Chapter 6. Subset the data for years starting with 1866. . . . > load("annual.RData") > dat = subset(annual, Year >= 1866) . . . The covariate Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) data begins in 1866 . Next, extract all hurricane counts for the Gulf coast, Florida, and East coast regions. . . . > cts = dat[, c("G.1", "F.1", "E.1")] . . .
Introduction: By the Time I Got to Phoenix
Authors: Ross Andrew
Published: November 2020

For those who prefer history chopped up into neat slices, John McCain’s modest concession speech on the lawn of the Arizona Biltmore on November 5, 2008, seemed like a clean cut of the knife. With the economy in a nosedive, it was not just the end of a presidential campaign. The neoliberal era seemed to be over—its reigning troika of deregulation, marketization, and privatization cast into disgrace, along with its most recent fiscal vehicles such as debt leveraging and speculation in finance and land. Nowhere was the devastation more visible than in McCain’s hometown. Phoenix had flown highest in the race to profit from the housing bubble, and it had fallen the furthest. Footage of the metro region’s outer-ring subdivisions reclaimed by sage grass, tumbleweed, and geckos was as evocative of the bubble’s savage aftermath as photographs of the Dust Bowl’s windblown soil had been of the Great Depression. Had Arizona’s senior senator not owned a condo nearby, he would have stayed in the hotel’s Goldwater presidential suite (every president since Hoover has slept at the Biltmore), stirring up associations with the Phoenix politician whose 1964 run for the White House pioneered the modern conservative temper of evangelizing against the power of government. Regarded locally as a carpetbagger when he first ran for Congress in 1982, McCain benefited from his wife Cindy’s family connections to take over Barry Goldwater’s senate seat four years later, but his people-pleasing style found little favor over the years among the Goldwater faithful. On that night, at least, there was no dearth of commentators willing to see McCain’s concession speech as heralding the end of the Sunbelt’s long hold on national politics, an arc that originated in the postwar eff ort of Goldwater’s circle at the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce to remake Arizona’s decrepit GOP into an instrument of growth for growth’s sake.
The Battle for Downtown
Authors: Ross Andrew
Published: November 2020

Before the financial crash froze the motion of money, the plan to repopulate thinned-out downtowns had become an article of faith among advocates of low-carbon urbanism. Where else could the blueprint for truly sustainable living be realized? The technical difficulty and cost of retrofitting suburbs for higher density was prohibitive, even in the postwar inner-ring subdivisions that were more compact in their land use than today’s sprawl counterparts on the urban fringe. It was in city centers that the biggest improvements in energy efficiencies and emissions could be achieved, and, since the carbon clock was ticking, there was a consensus that their repopulation by middle-class residents ought to be accomplished posthaste. Urbanists, guided unerringly by Jane Jacobs’s prescriptions for vibrant street life, had long argued that the kind of society fostered by mixed-use and mixed-income downtown neighborhoods was more open-minded and mutually gratifying than the atomized lifestyle of the master-planned exurban community. After all, Jacobs’s version of the city had been driven primarily by concerns about quality of life, or what could be called cultural health. In her view, those who had planned the urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 1960s and hastened the population flight outwards had bequeathed a soulless, antiurban city—“a Great Blight of Dullness,” as she memorably put it. Hence, her full-throated praise for the daily festival of street life in mixed-use neighborhoods, even those condemned by the improvers as examples of urban blight. Compared to the presumed conformity of the suburbs, the humming, cosmopolitan milieu of her downtown sidewalks surely boasted a superior civilization. In the decades after Jacobs launched her downtown revolution, the argument for high-density core residence got a turbo boost from environmentalist quarters. Criticism of suburbia was no longer a matter of taste—how ugly and dull are these cookie-cutter houses and strip malls? Now it was backed up by estimates of the ecological costs of the unplanned, low-density tract development known as sprawl. In recent years, climate change had lent an extra sense of urgency to the case for downtown resettlement.
Living Downstream
Authors: Ross Andrew
Published: November 2020

In neighborhoods well to the north of the Salt River channel, Phoenix’s artist communities and downtown advocates fought for mixed-use zoning that would allow places of residence to coexist with commercial storefronts. South of the river, where housing was placed in close proximity to dirty industrial facilities, mixed land use had an altogether different meaning. Residents in South Phoenix, long regarded as the city’s human and natural sacrifice zone, were fighting for the right to enjoy clean air and water, unencumbered by the toxic hazards that government permitting had allowed to fester in their neighborhoods. The disparity between these two battles with City Hall spoke volumes about the environmental challenges facing Phoenix, and almost every other city divided by race and class. Hydrologists talk about water “flow” in the West, but very few of the rivers flow naturally anymore, and many, like the mighty Colorado itself, rarely reach their destinations. Except for spasmodic floods, the Salt River has not really flowed through the Phoenix Basin since the early twentieth century, and it exists today primarily as an orderly system of canals. In its natural heyday, it was a wildly erratic river, and so its flood plain was several miles broad. Today’s riverbed is a vast moonscape of sand and cobbles, though it is far from deserted. Cheap land and laissez-faire regulation have drawn in the region’s worst polluters over the years. For decades, it was used as a dumping ground for all manner of waste, some of it exported from neighboring states, like California, with more oversight over disposal of hazardous materials than Arizona. From a commercial standpoint, the riverbed was the mother of all brownfield sites, zealously eyed by developers hoping to cut a deal with government agencies with fast-track access to federal cleanup funds. Dreams of converting the urban portions of the Salt River into a waterside attraction dated back to the 1960s when ASU design students conceived a restoration project under the alluring name of Rio Salado.
Melting Ice Rivers
Authors: Colopy Cheryl
Published: November 2020

From a remote outpost of global warming, a summons crackles over a two-way radio several times a week: . . . Kathmandu, Tsho Rolpa! Babar Mahal, Tsho Rolpa! Kathmandu, Tsho Rolpa! Babar Mahal, Tsho Rolpa! . . . In a little brick building on the lip of a frigid gray lake fifteen thousand feet above sea level, Ram Bahadur Khadka tries to rouse someone at Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology in the Babar Mahal district of Kathmandu far below. When he finally succeeds and a voice crackles back to him, he reads off a series of measurements: lake levels, amounts of precipitation. A father and a farmer, Ram Bahadur is up here at this frigid outpost because the world is getting warmer. He and two colleagues rotate duty; usually two of them live here at any given time, in unkempt bachelor quarters near the roof of the world. Mount Everest is three valleys to the east, only about twenty miles as the crow flies. The Tibetan plateau is just over the mountains to the north. The men stay for four months at a stretch before walking down several days to reach a road and board a bus to go home and visit their families. For the past six years each has received five thousand rupees per month from the government—about $70—for his labors. The cold, murky lake some fifty yards away from the post used to be solid ice. Called Tsho Rolpa, it’s at the bottom of the Trakarding Glacier on the border between Tibet and Nepal. The Trakarding has been receding since at least 1960, leaving the lake at its foot. It’s retreating about 200 feet each year. Tsho Rolpa was once just a pond atop the glacier. Now it’s half a kilometer wide and three and a half kilometers long; upward of a hundred million cubic meters of icy water are trapped behind a heap of rock the glacier deposited as it flowed down and then retreated. The Netherlands helped Nepal carve out a trench through that heap of rock to allow some of the lake’s water to drain into the Rolwaling River.
The Sorrows of Bihar
Authors: Colopy Cheryl
Published: November 2020

Before I went to Bihar I knew little about embankments. I had seen levees in California, in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and in the Central Valley. There, if you stand on an embankment on one side of the river, you can look across and see a matching embankment. Some have been set back from the river a half of a mile or so; but even then it is easy to grasp in a glance the relatively linear triad of a river and its pair of embankments. The first embankment I saw in Bihar after miles of bumping along in the back seat of a gray Tata Sumo SUV in the April heat was a steep-sided loaf of sand, maybe twelve feet above the adjacent land. I scrambled to the top and looked around. The Kamla River glared below, reflecting a hazy but intense sun. It flowed lazily between the embankment and a wide stretch of sand a few inches above the water. Together the water and the sandbank narrowed as they receded into the distance. I didn’t see another embankment. I was disoriented by the incessantly jarring ride and the heat, but I recall asking where the other embankment was. A gesture directed my eyes toward the horizon of low trees and brush and sandy soil. Nothing was very distinguishable in the monochromatic haze of dust and heat. Over the next two days my eyes and brain continued to struggle in vain to make sense of what I was seeing by comparing the north Indian state of Bihar to California. California rivers are powerful and can flood portions of the flat Central Valley, but they are in no way comparable to the rivers that rush out of the towering Himalaya. The Sierra Nevada ranges from five to twelve thousand feet. At twelve thousand feet in the Himalaya, one is still in the “middle hills,” where in spring there are forests of rhododendron trees blooming.
The Garland
Authors: Colopy Cheryl
Published: November 2020

Bundelkhand is a thirsty land. When I arrived there early in 2008, my skin—already parched from the dry winter air of Kathmandu and Delhi—immediately felt itchy. The cool air hit my sinuses with a prickly thud. They ached, and my eyes smarted as moisture left them. The land was an expanse of beige sand and rocks; beautiful, I thought, save for a dryness so intense it made me feel a little anxious. Most of the trees were not very tall, except for the water-thrifty “flame of the forest,” with its dark green dust-covered leaves, several inches wide. In the spring the leaves drop off and the tree’s bright orange blossoms, shaped rather like bird beaks, pop out to give the tree its other English name, “parrot tree.” Bundelkhand is sometimes called the heart of India. It sits in the center of the broad upper half of the subcontinent and its many ruins from the nation’s Mughal and Hindu past evoke the shifting suzerainty of pre-British India. Most of the ancient kingdom of Bundelkhand is now in Madhya Pradesh, also known as “MP,” or “middle province.” It’s a large landlocked state south of Delhi; Bhopal, the site of the devastating 1984 explosion at the Union Carbide pesticide plant, is its capital. The remainder of Bundelkhand is in Uttar Pradesh, “UP,” or “northern province.” Many would like to see Bundelkhand secede from both and become a separate state. With a population of fifteen million, it would be a sub-stantial state on its own. And some people believe this poor and undeveloped region will have a better chance of progress if it is independent of both MP and UP and their politics. I stayed in Jhansi, a large district in the UP portion of Bundelkhand, at the campus of a nonprofit endeavor called Development Alternatives. The group works to help people in Bundelkhand manage water and develop small industries as an alternative to agriculture. There was a simple guesthouse on the campus with hot showers, which revived me and rehydrated my dry eyes and nose in the evening.
Brief Organic Review
Authors: Morrow Gary W.
Published: November 2020

In addition to simple hydrocarbon structures (alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, and aromatic systems) and alkyl groups (methyl, ethyl, propyl, isopropyl, etc.), this text assumes a familiarity with the most common functional groups associated with organic chemical structures and their basic reactivity patterns. Table 1.1 summarizes the names and structures of some of the more important functional groups we will be dealing with throughout the remainder of the book. It is important to remember that functional groups containing O or N with nonbonding electrons have an affinity for both protic and Lewis acids and are important participators in H-bonding. Groups containing a carbonyl (C=O) function are especially important, as these bonds are strongly polarized (δ+C=Oδ–), the C atom being electron deficient and the O atom electron excessive; this strong polarization is mainly responsible for the familiar reactivity patterns associated with carbonyl compounds. Figure 1.1 depicts the standard classification of isomers in organic chemical structures. Recall that constitutional isomers are compounds with the same molecular formula but different atom connectivity, such as 1-butanol versus 2-butanol. Stereoisomers, on the other hand, are compounds with the same formula and the same atom connectivity, differing from one another only in the three-dimensional orientation of their atoms in space. These are divided into two groups: enantiomers and diastereomers. Enantiomers are nonsuperimposable mirror image molecules whose asymmetry is usually the result of a tetrahedral carbon atom with four different atoms or groups attached to it, as in the 2-butanol enantiomers. Such chiral molecules rotate the plane of polarized light either (+) or (−) and so are said to be optically active. Achiral molecules, such as 1-butanol, do not rotate the plane of polarized light and so are optically inactive. A standard formalism for representation of a chiral center is to use bond line drawings with two of the four atoms or groups lying in the plane of the paper, a third projecting outward (wedge bond), and the fourth projecting inward (dashed bond).
The Terpenoid Pathway: Products from Mevalonic Acid and Deoxyxylulose Phosphate
Authors: Morrow Gary W.
Published: November 2020

It was Otto Wallach (1847– 1931) who first coined the term “terpene” and made the observation that many plant-derived essential oils had chemical structures whose composition was based on multiples of a basic five-carbon unit. His work with turpentine and the organic products derived from it was consistent with earlier studies of natural rubber which had shown that its thermal decomposition released “isoprene” (2-methyl-1,3-butadiene) as the principal product. This led eventually to the formulation of the so-called biogenetic isoprene rule of Leopold Ruzicka (1887–1976) in 1953 which stated that “the carbon skeleton of the terpenes is composed of isoprene units linked in regular or irregular arrangement.” As it turns out, biosynthetic pathways to terpenes are found in nearly all organisms, producing a remarkable variety of different structural types, as we will soon see. In fact, something in excess of over 25,000 different terpenes with a wide variety of biological functions have been isolated from the plant kingdom over the years. Interestingly, while many terpenes are simple achiral compounds, others are chiral as can be seen in the case of α-pinene in Fig. 4.1. But unlike the naturally occurring L-amino acids and D-carbohydrates, different organisms may produce the same terpene product but in different enantiomeric forms. For example, limonene is formed by more than 300 plants, with the (+)-(R) enantiomer being the most widespread form as the major constituent of citrus peel essential oils (orange oil). As the most abundant of all terpenes, its pleasant citrus fragrance and flavor have led to its worldwide use in the food and fragrance industries and also as a botanical insecticide. A number of plants produce both enantiomers of limonene, while others produce only the (−)-(S)-enantiomer which possesses a strong pine smell reminiscent of turpentine. This obviously speaks to the chirality and enantioselectivity of our own olfactory receptor sites which can readily distinguish between the two enantiomers, thus signaling a different odor response in each case.
Organic Synthesis in the Laboratory
Authors: Morrow Gary W.
Published: November 2020

The German chemist Friedrich Wöhler is generally credited with the first laboratory synthesis of a known organic compound (urea) from inorganic materials. He accomplished this by the simple heating of an inorganic salt, ammonium cyanate (NH4OCN). “I must tell you,” he wrote to his mentor Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1828, “that I can prepare urea without requiring a kidney of an animal, either man or dog.” While this report may seem relatively minor given the structural simplicity of urea, its impact was revolutionary. For the first time, the preparation and isolation of an organic compound had been achieved in the absence of the elemental “vital force” of living systems previously believed to be required for the construction of all such compounds. This milestone of 19th century organic chemistry was later followed by many others, including Kolbe’s synthesis of acetic acid in 1847 and Fischer’s synthesis of glucose in 1890. With the support of evolving methods for compound separation, purification, and spectroscopic analysis, rapid advances in the sophistication of organic synthesis followed throughout the 20th century, developing in tandem with an ever-deepening understanding of the underlying organic processes associated with living systems. While it is certainly true that syntheses of many structurally complex unnatural compounds of theoretical interest are also among the most remarkable achievements in synthetic strategy, tactical execution, and perseverance, the realm of natural products remains the dominant source for the most challenging and potentially beneficial targets available for such synthetic efforts. Figure 8.1 shows a small selection of some natural (and unnatural) products which have been produced via synthesis over the years, from Wöhler’s time to the present. Note the increasing levels of structural sophistication and stereochemical complexity that have eventually been mastered by practitioners of organic synthesis. In our own time, the traditional boundaries between organic and biological chemistry are disappearing in ways that are likely to transform the design and synthesis of organic molecules, from the construction of synthetic biologicals designed to act as biomarkers, biosensors, or drug delivery agents, to the development of molecular motors, self-replicating macromolecular systems, and even synthetic life forms.
Understanding Wind Power Systems
Authors: Valentine Scott
Published: November 2020

All of the above statements represent prominent objections to wind power development. For the most part, these statements are premised upon small truths that have been exaggerated by wind power opponents in order to generate public opposition. The intent of this chapter is to try and separate fact from fiction in order to give the reader a better technical understanding of the true hurdles faced by nations that embark on ambitious wind power development programs. Although a technical understanding of wind power systems is not necessary to understand the case studies presented in this book, enhanced technical understanding will help the reader better understand the possibilities and limitations of the technology. This chapter begins by describing the basic components of a wind power system before exploring how technical choices made in regard to system components and site location influence generation costs. From this technical foundation, the discussion will shift to the stochastic (fluctuating) nature of wind power and examine existing solutions for smoothing power fluctuations. This will provide the reader with a better understanding of the potential of wind power systems to replace fossil fuel electricity generation technologies. In concluding sections of this chapter, an attempt will be made to separate truth from fiction in regard to community and environmental impacts commonly attributed to wind power systems. Hopefully, by the end of this chapter, the pros and cons associated with wind power development will be better understood. There are basically two main wind turbine designs—vertical axis and horizontal axis. Vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT), which can resemble egg beaters placed on towers, are not widely used for electricity generation, so this section will focus on the main components of horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT). The main components of a wind turbine includes the rotor blade; the nacelle (which houses the gearbox, generator, and yaw motor); the tower upon which the wind turbine is placed; the foundation which anchors the tower to the ground; the control system and transformer (usually located at the base of the tower), which transforms the collected energy into electric current that can be delivered to the electricity grid; and the electrical conduits that connect the wind turbine to the electricity grid.
Applied Policymaking
Authors: Valentine Scott
Published: November 2020

Chapter 10 summarized nine social factors, seven technological factors, seven economic factors, and nine political factors that have influenced the fortunes of wind power development in the six case study nations covered in this book. The premise underpinning the previous chapter is that successful wind power development policy depends on strategic management of forces of change within four contextual areas depicted in Figure 11.1. There are three basic tenets underpinning this model. First, the environment in which wind power policy is formulated and implemented can be better understood by comprehensive analysis of conditions within four contextual areas: the sociocultural context, the economic context, the technological context, and the political context. Within each of these four areas there are dominant forces (variables) that have proven to be influential in hindering or helping wind power development. The trouble is that for each nation, the relative importance of each influential variable differs because energy policy in each nation is influenced by a unique conflation of sociocultural, technological, economic, and political conditions. For example, a high degree of information asymmetry is evident in both Japan and China. Citizens of both nations lack adequate information about the pros and cons of energy technologies to make informed decisions. In Japan, information asymmetry helps explain why there is so little support for wind power and why the government has been able to continue its advocacy of nuclear power. In China citizens are also kept largely in the dark about energy sector developments, but this is not a problem for wind power development because the government is committed to supporting wind power whether the public consents or not. In short, information asymmetry is a barrier to wind power development in Japan, but in China, it is not. Second, the analysis of STEP forces is complicated because variables within each of these four contextual areas interact in unpredictable ways due to the complexity of variable interrelations. Cause-and-effect links are extensive which means that numerous positive and negative feedbacks catalyze chaotic systemic evolution. For example Canada possesses a wealth of hydropower capacity that suggests a high degree of grid resilience.