bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Swimming Lessons
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

Shortly before the birth of our first child, Kate, now twenty-eight, Joan and I bought a copy of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care. It proved to be very reassuring. A thick book with no wasted words, it told almost everything we needed to know about the coughs, the sneezes, the spots, the fevers, the crying at three in the morning, the rejection of nourishment, the emergence or nonemergence of teeth, and the terror-inspiring inclination of sleeping infants to stop breathing for a while just when their parents are getting settled in bed. There were, of course, a few things Dr. Spock failed to mention. I knew from medical school the signs and symptoms of many rare and terrible diseases of infants. Kate got them all. Each time we would rush her to the pediatrician, Dr. Arky, and each time we had the satisfaction of bringing a little uninhibited laughter into the life of that overworked and kindly man. Fortunately for Dr. Arky, we moved from north to central Jersey when Kate was two and found a new pediatrician, Dr. Lapkin. Although we got more experienced as time passed, and came to know Dr. Spock pretty much by heart, there was always something new. I remember, for example, my deep concern about Jonathan, our third child, when he was an infant; he did not seem to be able to hear. Joan was not particularly worried at first, but fear is contagious. What if the development of his language were affected? Anyway, it was time for his one-month visit to the pediatrician. Dr. Lapkin appeared somewhat tired but was in a good mood; it was nearing the end of a long day. I watched as he listened to Jonathan’s heart and lungs with his stethoscope and examined his reflexes. “He looks fine,” Dr. Lapkin said. “Any problems?” “He doesn’t seem to hear loud noises,” I said. “I’m afraid that he may be deaf. Is there some kind of audiometer test you could give him?” “He’s responding normally to my voice as I speak,” answered Dr. Lapkin. “He has been during the whole examination. Are there any other problems?” he asked, directing the question to Joan.
Speed
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

Plum Creek begins in drainage from farms on the west side of the city of Oberlin, Ohio, and flows eastward through a city golf course, a college arboretum, and the downtown area. East of the city, the stream receives the effluent from the city sewer facility before it joins with the Black River, which flows north through two rust-belt cities, Elyria and Lorain, before emptying into Lake Erie 25 miles west of Cleveland. Plum Creek shows all of the signs of 150 years of human use and abuse. As late as 1850 the stream ran clear even in times of flood, but now it is murky brown year-round. Because of pollution, sediments, and the lack of aquatic life, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers it to be a “nonattainment” stream. Yet it survives, more or less. To most residents of Oberlin, Plum Creek is little more than a drain and sewer useful for moving water off the land as rapidly as possible. Few regard it as an aesthetic asset or ecological resource. The character of Plum Creek changes quickly as it flows eastward into downtown Oberlin. Runoff from city streets enters the stream where the creek runs under the intersection of Morgan and Professor Streets. One block to the east, a larger volume of runoff polluted by oil and grease from city streets enters the creek as it flows under Main Street, past a Midas Muffler shop, a NAPA Auto Parts Store, and City Hall, located in the flood plain. Where Plum Creek flows under Main Street, an increased volume of storm water and consequently increased stream velocity have widened the banks and cut the channel from several feet to a depth of 10 feet or more. The city has attempted to stabilize the stream by lining the banks with concrete or by riprapping with large chunks of broken concrete. The aquatic life that exists upstream mostly disappears as Plum Creek flows through the downtown. Bending to the northeast, the creek passes through suburban backyards, past the municipal wastewater plant, a Browning Ferris Industries landfill, and on toward the west fork of the Black River and Lake Erie.
None So Blind: The Problem of Ecological Denial (with David Ehrenfeld)
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

Willful blindness has reached epidemic proportions in our time. Nowhere is this more evident than in recent actions by the U.S. Congress to deny outright the massive and growing body of scientific data about the deterioration of the earth’s vital signs, while attempting to dismantle environmental laws and regulations. But the problem of ecological denial is bigger than recent events in Congress. It is flourishing in the “wise use” movement and extremist groups in the United States, among executives of global corporations, media tycoons, and on main street. Denial is in the air. Those who believe that humans are, or ought to be, something better than ecological vandals need to understand how and why some people choose to shun reality. Denial, however, must be distinguished from honest disagreement about matters of fact, logic, data, and evidence that is a normal part of the ongoing struggle to establish scientific truth. Denial is the willful dismissal or distortion of fact, logic, and data in the service of ideology and self-interest. The churchmen of the seventeenth century who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, for example, engaged in denial. In that instance, their blind obedience to worn-out dogma was expedient to protect ecclesiastical authority. And denial is apparent in every historical epoch as a willing blindness to the events, trends, and evidence that threaten one established interest or another. In our time, great effort is being made to deny that there are any physical limits to our use of the earth or to the legitimacy of human wants. On the face of it, the case is absurd. Most physical laws define the limits of what it is possible to do. And all of the authentic moral teachings of 3,000 years have been consistent about the dangers and futility of unfettered desire. Rather than confront these things directly, however, denial is manifested indirectly. A particularly powerful form of denial in U.S. culture begins with the insistence on the supremacy over all other considerations of human economic freedom manifest in the market economy. If one chooses to believe that economies so dominated by lavishly subsidized corporations are, in fact, free, then the next assumption is easier: the religious belief that the market will solve all problems.
Architecture and Education
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

As commonly practiced, education has little to do with its specific setting or locality. The typical campus is regarded mostly as a place where learning occurs, but is, itself, believed to be the source of no useful learning. A campus is intended, rather, to be convenient, efficient, or aesthetically pleasing, but not instructional. It neither requires nor facilitates competence or mindfulness. By that standard, the same education could happen as well in California or in Kazakhstan, or on Mars, for that matter. The same could be said of the buildings and landscape that make up a college campus (Orr 1993). The design of buildings and landscape is thought to have little or nothing to do with the process of learning or the quality of scholarship that occurs in a particular place. But in fact, buildings and landscape reflect a hidden curriculum that powerfully influences the learning process. The curriculum embedded in any building instructs as fully and as powerfully as any course taught in it. Most of my classes, for example, were once taught in a building that I think Descartes would have liked. It is a building with lots of squareness and straight lines. There is nothing whatsoever that reflects its locality in northeast Ohio in what had once been a vast forested wetland (Sherman 1996). How it is cooled, heated, and lighted and at what true cost to the world is an utter mystery to its occupants. It offers no clue about the origins of the materials used to build it. It tells no story. With only minor modifications it could be converted to use as a factory or prison, and some students are inclined to believe that it so functions. When classes are over, students seldom linger for long. The building resonates with no part of our biology, evolutionary experience, or aesthetic sensibilities. It reflects no understanding of ecology or ecological processes. It is intended to be functional, efficient, minimally offensive, and little more. But what else does it do? First, it tells its users that locality, knowing where you are, is unimportant. To be sure, this is not said in so many words anywhere in this or any other building. Rather, it is said tacitly throughout the entire structure.
Education, Careers, and Callings
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

In the past decade I have received several hundred letters of inquiry from students asking for advice about education and careers. Most want to know how to combine their passion for the natural world with formal education in order to craft a useful life. The letters and e-mails are often written in a tone of frustration. An undergraduate biology major, for example, writes: “I have been researching my options, and I have come to the conclusions [sic] that there are quite a number of programs labeled ‘conservation biology’ or ‘environmental studies’ around the country. It is fairly easy to become lost in a sea of them. I attended the Society for Conservation Biology meeting in Maryland, but failed to find any prospective advisors. Would you have any advice to offer on this topic?” Similarly, a recent Ph.D. in wildlife biology writes: “I am struggling to translate my professional training into a life well lived that in some way might contribute to preserving the natural world and not just documenting its decline. . . . My professional training did not prepare me well for these tasks.” Dozens of other letters have the same plaintive themes. The problem is not simply that there are many more students who want practical careers in environmental work than those who find them. The deeper problem has to do with the experience of students as they pass through the system of higher education. Whatever they once may have been, institutions of higher education have become vast and expensively operated machines much like any for-profit corporation. Students are fed through a conveyor belt of requirements, large classes, deadlines, and general busy-ness. What they learn seldom adds up to anything like a coherent, ecologically solvent worldview. The scale of most institutions is not conducive to humane interaction. Seldom encouraged to discern an inner calling, students are more often counseled to find secure careers that pay well. Nonetheless, many students still feel a calling toward service that runs counter to the incentives, values, and structure of their formal education.
The Ecology of Giving and Consuming
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

Some years ago a friend of mine, Stuart Mace, gave me a letter opener hand-carved from a piece of rosewood. Over his 70-some years Stuart had become an accomplished wood craftsman, photographer, dog trainer, gourmet cook, teacher, raconteur, skier, naturalist, and allaround legend in his home town of Aspen, Colorado. High above Aspen, Stuart and his wife, Isabel, operated a shop called Toklat, which in Eskimo means “alpine headwaters,” featuring an array of woodcrafts, Navajo rugs, jewelry, fish fossils, and photography. He would use his free time in summers to rebuild parts of a ghost town called Ashcroft for the U.S. Forest Service. He charged nothing for his time and labor. For groups venturing up the mountain from Aspen, he and Isabel would cook dinners featuring local foods cooked with style and simmered over great stories about the mountains, the town, and their lives. Stuart was seldom at a loss for words.His living, if that is an appropriate word for a how a Renaissance man earns his keep, was made as a woodworker. He and his sons crafted tables and cabinetwork with exquisite inlaid patterns using an assortment of woods from forests all over the world. A Mace table was like no other, and so was its price. Long before it was de rigueur to do so, Stuart bought his wood from forests managed for long-term ecological health. The calibration between ecological talk and do wasn’t a thing for Stuart. He paid attention to details. I first met Stuart in 1981. I was living in the Ozarks at the time and part of an educational organization that included, among other things, a farm and steam-powered sawmill. In the summer of 1981 one of our projects was to provide two tractor-trailer loads of oak beams for the Rocky Mountain Institute being built near Old Snowmass. Stuart advised us about cutting and handling large timber, about which we knew little. From that time forward Stuart and I would see each other several times a year either when he traveled through Arkansas or when I wandered into Aspen in search of relief from Arkansas summers. He taught me a great deal, not so much about wood per se as about the relation of ecology, economics, craftwork, generosity, and good-heartedness. I last saw Stuart in a hospital room shortly before he died of cancer in June 1993.
Loving Children: The Political Economy of Design
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

We are shocked when violence erupts in schoolyards or when a sixyear- old child kills another in cold blood. But the headlines, which sensationalize such tragedies, reveal only the tip of what appears to be a larger problem that, given our present priorities, will only intensify. Youthful violence is symptomatic of something much bigger evident in diffuse anger, despair, apathy, the erosion of ideals, and rising level of teen suicide (up three-fold since 1960). Nationwide, 17 percent of children are on Ritalin, a central nervous system stimulant. Adults often respond with rejection and hostility, making a bad problem worse. We hire more psychologists and sociologists to study our children and more counselors to advise them about issues such as “anger management.” As a result there are libraries of information about childhood, child psychology, child health, child nutrition, child behavior, and dysfunctional families, much of it quite beside the point. Then in desperation we hire more police to lock children up. We are crossing into a new pattern of relations between the generations, and much depends on how well we understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what is to be done about it. The deeper causes of this situation are not apparent in the daily headlines and news reports. Dysfunctional families, depression, youthful violence, and the rising use of chemicals to sedate children are symptoms of something larger. Without anyone saying as much and without anyone intending to do so, we have unwittingly begun to undermine the prospects of our children and, at some level, I believe that they know it. This essay is a meditation on the larger patterns of our time and their effects on children. My argument is that the normal difficulties of growing up are compounded, directly and indirectly, by the reigning set of assumptions, philosophies, ideologies, and even mythologies by which we organize our affairs and conduct the business of society—what was once called “political economy.” The study of political economy began with Adam Smith and continued on through Marx to the present in the work of scholars such as Yale University political scientist Charles Lindblom. Due to academic specialization and diminished public involvement in politics and community life, the field has declined.
Soils in Archaeological Research
Authors: Holliday Vance T.
Published: November 2020

Soils, invaluable indicators of the nature and history of the physical and human landscape, have strongly influenced the cultural record left to archaeologists. Not only are they primary reservoirs for artifacts, they often encase entire sites. And soil-forming processes in themselves are an important component of site formation, influencing which artifacts, features, and environmental indicators (floral, faunal, and geological) will be destroyed and to what extent and which will be preserved and how well. In this book, Holliday will address each of these issues in terms of fundamentals as well as in field case histories from all over the world. The focus will be on principles of soil geomorphology , soil stratigraphy, and soil chemistry and their applications in archaeological research.
Climate Variability in the North Central Region: Characterizing Drought Severity Patterns
Authors: Gage Stuart H.
Published: November 2020

This chapter examines the spatial and temporal variability and patterns of climate for the period 1972–1991 in the North Central Region of North America (NCR). Since the mid-1970s, climate has become more variable in the region, compared to the more benign period 1950–1970. The regional perspective presented in this chapter characterizes the general climatology of the NCR from 1972 to 1991 and compares the climate to a severe drought that occurred in 1988. This one-year drought was one of the most substantial in the region’s recent history, and it had a significant impact on the region’s agricultural economy and ecosystems. Petersen et al. (1995) characterize the 1988 drought with respect to solar radiation, and Zangvil et al. (2001) consider this drought from the perspective of a large-scale atmosphere moisture budget. A major reason for the seriousness of the drought in 1988 was the fact that May and June were unusually dry and hot (Kunkel and Angel 1989). Drought is defined as a condition of moisture deficit sufficient to adversely affect vegetation, animals, and humans over a sizeable area (Warwick 1975). The condition of drought may be considered from a meteorological, agricultural, and hydrologic perspective. Meteorological drought is a period of abnormally dry weather sufficiently prolonged to a point where the lack of water causes a serious hydrologic imbalance in the affected area (Huschke 1959). Agricultural drought is a climatic digression involving a shortage of precipitation sufficient to adversely affect crop production or the range of production (Rosenberg 1980). Hydrologic drought is a period of below-average water content in streams, reservoirs, groundwater aquifers, lakes, and soils (Yevjevich et al. 1977). All of these drought conditions are mutually linked. The objectives of this chapter are to (1) address the issues of climatic spatial scale to quantify variability of climate in the NCR, (2) examine the characteristics of the 1988 drought as it relates to characteristics of an ecoregion, (3) illustrate a means to quantify drought through a potential plant stress index, and (4) examine the link of regional drought to ecosystem processes. This analysis will provide background and methodology for ecologists, agriculturalists, and others interested in spatial and temporal characterization of climate patterns within large geographic regions.
Short-Term Climatic Events—Synthesis
Authors: Greenland David
Published: November 2020

Short-term climatic events produce some of the most dramatic ecosystem responses. Sometimes the responses may last for a long time into the future. Three themes will be emphasized in this synthesis. The first is that shortterm climatic events have both short- and long-term responses in the ecosystem. Second, the timing of short-term events is important in partially determining the kind and degree of ecosystem response that might occur. A third theme is the importance of putting short-term variability into a long-term context. The chapters about hurricanes and droughts in this section demonstrate that shortterm climatic events may have short- and long-term responses in the ecosystem. Both the short- and long-term responses are important. The short-term responses have noteworthy economic influences in the agricultural ecosystem. One could argue that the ecosystems containing species with short life spans such as grasslands are able to respond and recover from a short-term climatic disturbance more quickly than those ecosystems with longer lived species such as trees. Corn responds quickly to variability in precipitation during important parts of the growing season. Gage believes the long-term effects of a short-term drought on annual rotational agronomic systems are generally minimal. Other LTER studies have documented strong relationships between annual precipitation and grassland aboveground net primary productivity (Knapp et al. 1998). Conversely, the Coweeta study brings to our attention the insidious, long-term effects of drought that quietly kills trees and leaves their dead necromass on the landscape for decades into the future. However, each ecosystem is responding at its own characteristic timescale. Boose notes that the mixed hardwood forests of central New England and the Tabonuco forests of Puerto Rico both exhibit remarkable resiliency to wind damage. In both cases, despite major structural reorganization after a hurricane, there was rapid regeneration of canopy cover through releafing, sprouting, or recruitment, which helped to reduce impacts on soil moisture, temperature, and nutrient cycling processes. Nevertheless, some signs of the hurricane impact are present for decades, although less so in Puerto Rico where decomposition and regeneration rates are much faster than in New England.
Decadal and Century-Long Changes in Storminess at Long-Term Ecological Research Sites
Authors: Hayden Bruce P. , Hayden Nils R.
Published: November 2020

Ecological disturbances at Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites are often the result of extreme meteorological events. Among the events of significance are tropical storms, including hurricanes, and extratropical cyclones. Extratropical storms are low-pressure systems of the middle and high latitudes with their attendant cold and warm fronts. These fronts are associated with strong, horizontal thermal gradients in surface temperatures, strong winds, and a vigorous jet stream aloft. These storms and their attendant fronts generate most of the annual precipitation in the continental United States and provide the lifting mechanisms for thunderstorms that, on occasion, spawn tornadoes. Off the United States West and East Coasts, extratropical storms generate winds, wind waves, wind tides, and long-shore currents that rework coastal sediments, alter landscape morphology, and change the regional patterns of coastal erosion and accretion (Dolan et al. 1988). Although extratropical storms do not match hurricanes in either precipitation intensity or in the strength of the winds generated, they are much larger in size and have a more extensive geographic impact. On occasion, extratropical storms will intensify at an extraordinary rate of 1 millibar (mb) per hour for 24 hours or more. Such storms are classed as “bomb” and are comparable to hurricanes. Extratropical storms occur in all months of the year but are most frequent and more intense in winter when the north-south temperature contrast is large and dynamic support for storm intensification from the stronger jet stream aloft is great. In this chapter, we will explore the history of storminess for those LTER sites in the continental United States at which more than a century of data on storms and their storm tracks are readily available. Specifically, we will look at the record of changes in storminess at both the regional and national scales. During the 1990s, significant storms along the U.S. West Coast and droughts and fires in Florida in an El Niño year led to a hypothesis that El Niño and La Niña conditions were associated with a modulation in the frequency of storms. In addition, it has been suggested that the frequency of El Niño and La Niña events and, by inference, storminess, has increased during the past century.
Millennial and Century Climate Changes in the Colorado Alpine
Authors: Elias Scott
Published: November 2020

Ecosystems are the products of regional biotic history, shaped by environmental changes that have occurred over thousands of years. Accordingly, ecological changes take place at many timescales, but perhaps none is more significant than the truly long-term scale of centuries and millennia, for it is at these timescales that ecosystems form, break apart, and reform in new configurations. This is certainly true in the alpine regions, where glaciations have dominated the landscape for perhaps 90% of the last 2.5 million years (Elias 1996a). In the alpine tundra zone, the periods between ice ages have been relatively brief (10,000–15,000 years), whereas glaciations have been long (90,000–100,000 years). Glacial ice has been the dominant force in shaping alpine landscapes. Glacial climate has been the filter through which the alpine biota has had to pass repeatedly in the Pleistocene. This chapter discusses climatic events during the last 25,000 years (figure 18.1). At the beginning of this interval, temperatures cooled throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere, culminating in the last glacial maximum (LGM), about 20,000–18,000 yr b.p. (radiocarbon years before present). The Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets advanced southward, covering most of Canada and the northern tier of the United States. Glaciers also crept down from mountaintops to fill high valleys in the Rocky Mountains. In the Southern Rockies, the alpine tundra zone crept downslope into what is now the subalpine, beyond the reach of the relatively small montane glaciers. By about 14,000 yr b.p., the glacier margins began to recede, leading eventually to the postglacial environments of the Holocene. It is now becoming apparent that the climate changes that drove these events were surprisingly rapid and intense. This chapter examines the evidence for these climatic changes and the biotic response to them in the alpine zone of Colorado. To reconstruct the environmental changes of this period, we must rely on proxy data, that is, the fossil record of plants and animals, combined with geologic evidence, such as the age and location of glacial moraines in mountain valleys. As of this writing, the principal biological proxy data that have been studied in the Rocky Mountains are fossil pollen and insects.
Introductory Overview
Authors: Greenland David , Goodin Douglas G.
Published: November 2020

The timescale structure of this book has served well to keep the attention of investigators focused on specific aspects of climate variability and ecosystem response. Indeed, judging by the responses received by the editors of this volume, when given a choice between focusing on one timescale or several timescales, the LTER community was far more comfortable dealing with just one scale. There are obvious reasons for this, not the least of which is that focusing on a single scale greatly simplifies things. The real world, however, does not focus on one timescale. Climatic events and ecosystem responses occur simultaneously at a variety of scales. We wished to explore the climatic variability and ecosystem responses at LTER sites across several different timescales, and the two chapters in this part attempt such an exploration. The chapters consider the temperate rainforest of the H. J. Andrews LTER site in Oregon and the tallgrass ecosystem of the Konza Prairie LTER in Kansas. For the Andrews rainforest, and to some extent the Pacific Northwest (PNW) in general, Greenland et al. (chapter 19) discuss climate variability and ecosystem response at the daily, multidecadal, and century to millennial scales. This discussion for the PNW is supplemented in chapters 6 and 13 of this volume by a consideration of the quasi-quintennial scale and an additional ecosystem response at the decadal scale. The forest ecosystem is more complex than the grassland ecosystem. Greenland et al. cover a wide variety of potential ecosystem responses for the PNW Forest, ranging from severe weather events, to pine cone production, to century- and millennial-scale forest fire frequency regimes and their variation. The focus of chapter 19 is on some of the framework questions of this volume. The questions specifically addressed include the following: What preexisting conditions affect the impact of the climatic event or episode? Is the climatic effect on the ecosystems direct or cascading? Does the system return to its original state? The authors also consider potential future climate change and its possible ecosystem effects. They found that timescale becomes important in addressing some of these questions. For example, at century to millennial timescales, it is suggested that there are likely to be no identical past analogs to the ecosystem at any point in time.
Why Geography Matters
Authors: Goldsmith Jack , Wu Tim
Published: November 2020

A visitor to the dell.com web page finds a message prominently displayed in the upper left-hand corner: “Choose a Country/Region.” The cisco.com page likewise asks users to “Select a Location.” Yahoo’s web page has a “Yahoo International” link that connects to a global map with over twenty-five hyperlinks to specialized web pages tied to particular countries (like Denmark, Korea, and Argentina) and regions (like Asia). Everywhere on the web, sites ask viewers to identify their geographical location. Geographical links are puzzling for those who think of the Net as a borderless medium that renders place irrelevant. But the puzzle disappears when we see that, globalization and the supposed death of distance notwithstanding, national borders reflect real and important differences among peoples in different places. As this chapter shows, geographical borders first emerged on the Internet not as a result of fiats by national governments, but rather organically, from below, because Internet users around the globe demanded different Internet experiences that corresponded to geography. Later chapters will show how governments strengthened borders on the Net by employing powerful “top-down” techniques to control unwanted Internet communications from abroad. But in order to understand fully why the Internet is becoming bordered, we must first understand the many ways that private actors are shaping the Internet to accommodate differences among nations and regions, and why the Internet is a more effective and useful communication tool as a result. The most immediate and important difference reflected by borders is language. People in Brazil, Korea, and France don’t want English language versions of Microsoft products. They want a version they can read and understand. Microsoft learned this lesson when it tried to distribute an English version of Windows operating system in tiny Iceland. Redmond executives thought the market of 500,000 worldwide Icelandic speakers did not justify translation costs and figured the English version would suffice because most Icelanders spoke English as a second language. But Icelanders felt that Microsoft’s plan would imperil their language, which has retained basically the same grammar, spelling, and vocabulary for more than a thousand years.
How Governments Rule the Net
Authors: Goldsmith Jack , Wu Tim
Published: November 2020

In 1966 a retired British Major named Paddy Roy Bates took a liking to a small, abandoned concrete platform in the North Sea nicknamed “Rough’s Tower.” Rough’s Tower was a World War II gun tower used by the British to fire at German bombers on their way to London. By 1966, nobody wanted the rusting contraption, so Bates renamed it the “Principality of Sealand” and declared independence from the United Kingdom, six miles away. He awarded himself the title of Prince Roy, and proceeded to issue Sealand passports and Sealand stamps with pictures of his wife, Joan, an ex-beauty queen. Sealand has had a colorful history, but before 1999, nothing suggested that a chunk of concrete and steel off the English coast might have anything to do with the history of the Internet. That year, Bates agreed to let a young man named Ryan Lackey move to Sealand and begin transforming it into a “data haven.” Lackey’s company, “HavenCo,” equipped Sealand with banks of servers, and Internet links via microwave and satellite connections. Borrowing an idea from cyberpunk fiction, HavenCo aimed to rent computer space on Sealand to anyone who wanted to escape the clutches of government. It promised potential clients—porn purveyors, tax evaders, Web gambling services, independence movements, and just about any other government-shy Internet user—that data on Sealand servers would be “physically secure against any legal action.” HavenCo, the company boasted, would be “the first place on earth where people are free to conduct business without someone looking over their shoulder.” HavenCo was the apotheosis of the late 1990s belief in the futility of territorial government in the Internet era. Lackey’s company was premised on the commonplace assumption that governments cannot control what happens beyond their borders, and thus cannot control Internet communications from abroad. “If the king’s writ reaches only as far as the king’s sword, then much of the content of the Internet might be presumed to be free from the regulation of any particular sovereign,” wrote Duke law professor James Boyle, generalizing the point.
Separation and Inclusion
Authors: Hochschild Jennifer L. , Scovronick Nathan
Published: November 2020

IN LOS ANGELES HISPANIC PARENTS PICKET A SCHOOL, demanding that their children be taken out of bilingual education classes and put into regular, English-speaking classes; in Florida the state department of education officially chastises the schools in Orange County for not providing bilingual education classes. A mother hires attorneys and spends two years fighting to have her developmentally disabled teenage daughter placed in a full-time residential facility at public expense; another set of parents pays for neuropsychological testing for their five-year-old son with cerebral palsy so that they can do battle if the Wellesley, Massachusetts, school district tries to move him out of a regular kindergarten class. In Montclair, New Jersey, one parent opposes a plan to eliminate ability grouping in ninth-grade English because he “doesn’t want his daughter jeopardized by the possibility that the new plan isn’t going to work”; another supports the plan because “an end should be put to a [grouping] system that intentionally or unintentionally privileges a small minority and fails to do justice to the rest of the children.” It is extremely hard to figure out how best to educate children who are in some way distinctive in their physical, emotional, or academic capacity, or in their English language proficiency. These children may differ not only from the majority of students but also from those perceived to have the same characteristics. Their advocates sometimes disagree passionately about how the inclusion of students with distinctive characteristics affects their achievement and that of their peers. In addition, the placement of these students is often affected unfairly by the usual racial and class hierarchies. Everyone concurs that whether we help children with distinctive characteristics to achieve their dreams is an important test of our nation’s commitment to the American dream. But deep disagreements remain about how to do it. Most Americans believe, in principle, that interaction in the classroom and playground is the best way for children to learn to appreciate, or at least deal with, people different from themselves. Mixing in this way may even lead students to find new dreams, see new possibilities, invent new futures. This is the premise behind the view that the collective goals of education are best achieved when students are educated together regardless of variations in ethnicity or race, gender or religion, ability or disability, background or beliefs.
Microbial Processes in the Alaskan Boreal Forest
Authors: Schimel Joshua P. , Chapin III F. Stuart
Published: November 2020

Forest ecosystems typically occur in moderate environments where growing season rainfall is adequate to support tree growth and where nongrowing season conditions are not too extreme. The Alaskan boreal forests, however, occur at the limit of the forest biome, in an environment that is climatically extreme, with strong physical gradients. The seasonal variation in temperature is among the greatest on earth, with winter temperatures as low as –50ºC and summer growing season temperatures that can reach +30ºC (Chapter 4). The growing season is short, the climate is semi-arid, and growing season rainfall is limited. Forests exist in the region because evapotranspiration is also limited. Steep south-facing slopes can be too dry to support tree growth (Chapter 6). In contrast, in flat, low-lying areas, low evapotranspiration combined with permafrost produces wetlands despite the low rainfall. Regular drought makes the forest highly susceptible to fires. At large scales (many square kilometers), the boreal forest experiences regular, extensive fires that destroy whole stands, resetting succession (Chapter 17). This regular fire cycle produces a patchwork mosaic of forest stands in different successional stages across the landscape (Dyrness et al. 1986, Kasischke and Stocks 2000; Chapter 7). In large rivers (e.g., the Tanana), the cutting and filling of meander loops washes away some forest stands while depositing new silt bars for colonization and succession (Zasada 1986). At the landscape scale, the biogeochemical cycles in the boreal forest are therefore dominated by landscape structure (e.g., dry uplands vs. wet lowlands) and by disturbance (particularly fire). At smaller scales, however, the strong feedbacks between plant and soil processes control much of the functioning of individual forest stands, and possibly the rate of transition among successional stages. In this chapter, we discuss how microbial processes in the boreal forest produce unusual patterns of nutrient cycling that drive the overall functioning of boreal forest stands. Figure 14.1 illustrates the linkages between plant and microbial communities that dominate the functioning of the boreal forest soil system. In the feedbacks between plant and soil processes, plants drive the loop largely through inputs of organic materials.
Climate Feedbacks in the Alaskan Boreal Forest
Authors: Chapin III F. Stuart , McGuire A. David
Published: November 2020

The boreal forest biome occupies an area of 18.5 million km2, which is approximately 14% of the vegetated cover of the earth’s surface (McGuire et al. 1995b). North of 50°N, terrestrial interactions with the climate system are dominated by the boreal forest biome because of its large aerial extent (Bonan et al. 1992, Chapin et al. 2000b; Fig. 19.1). There are three major pathways through which the function and structure of boreal forests may influence the climate system: (1) water/energy exchange with the atmosphere, (2) the exchange of radiatively active gases with the atmosphere, and (3) delivery of fresh water to the Arctic Ocean. The exchange of water and energy has implications for regional climate that may influence global climate, while the exchange of radiatively active gases and the delivery of fresh water to the Arctic Ocean are processes that could directly influence climate at the global scale. In this chapter, we first discuss the current understanding of the role that boreal forests play in each of these pathways and identify key issues that remain to be explored. We then discuss the implications for the earth’s climate system of likely responses of boreal forests to various dimensions of ongoing global change. Most of the energy that heats the earth’s atmosphere is first absorbed by the land surface and then transferred to the atmosphere. The energy exchange properties of the land surface therefore have a strong direct influence on climate. Boreal forest differs from more southerly biomes in having a long period of snow cover, when white surfaces might be expected to reflect incoming radiation (high albedo) and therefore absorb less energy for transfer to the atmosphere. Observed winter albedo in the boreal forest varies between 0.11 (conifer stands) and 0.21 (deciduous stands; Betts and Ball 1997). This is much closer to the summer albedo (0.08–0.15) than to the winter albedo of tundra (0.6–0.8), which weather models had previously assumed to be appropriate for boreal forests. The incorporation of true boreal albedo into climate models led to substantial improvements in medium-range weather forecasting (Viterbo and Betts 1999).
Phase Behavior and Its Effects on Reactions in Liquid and Supercritical Carbon Dioxide
Authors: Blanchard Lynnette A. , Xu Gang
Published: November 2020

Carbon dioxide, either as an expanded liquid or as a supercritical fluid, may be a viable replacement for a variety of conventional organic solvents in reaction systems. Numerous studies have shown that many reactions can be conducted in liquid or supercritical CO2 (sc CO2) and, in some cases, rates and selectivities can be achieved that are greater than those possible in normal liquid- or gas-phase reactions (other chapters in this book; Noyori, 1999; Savage et al., 1995). Nonetheless, commercial exploitation of this technology has been limited. One factor that contributes to this reluctance is the extremely complex phase behavior that can be encountered with high-pressure multicomponent systems. Even for simple binary systems, one can observe multiple fluid phases, as shown in Figure 1.1. The figure shows the pressure–temperature (PT) projection of the phase diagram of a binary system, where the vapor pressure curve of the light component (e.g., CO2) is the solid line shown at temperatures below TB. It is terminated by its critical point, which is shown as a solid circle. The sublimation curve, melting curve, and vapor pressure curve of the pure component 2 (say, a reactant that is a solid at ambient conditions) are the solid lines shown at higher temperatures on the right side of the diagram; that is, the triple point of this compound is above TE. The solid might experience a significant melting point depression when exposed to CO2 pressure [the dashed–dotted solid/liquid/vapor (SLV) line, which terminates in an upper critical end point (UCEP)]. For instance, naphthalene melts at 60.1 °C under CO2 pressure (i.e., one might observe a three-phase solid/liquid/vapor system), even though the normal melting point is 80.5 °C (McHugh and Yogan, 1984). To complicate things even further, there will be a region close to the critical point of pure CO2 where one will observe three phases as well, as indicated by the dashed–dotted SLV line that terminates at the lower critical end point (LCEP). The dotted line connecting the critical point of the light component and the LCEP is a vapor/liquid critical point locus.
Free-Radical Chemistry in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide
Authors: Tanko J. M.
Published: November 2020

During the 1990s, the chemical industry has focused on ways to reduce and prevent pollution caused by chemical synthesis and manufacturing. The goal of this approach is to modify existing reaction conditions and/or to develop new chemistries that do not require the use of toxic reagents or solvents, or that do not produce toxic by-products. The terms “environmentally benign synthesis and processing” and “green chemistry” have been coined to describe this approach where the environmental impact of a process is as important an issue as reaction yield, efficiency, or cost. Most chemical reactions require the use of a solvent that may serve several functions in a reaction: for example, ensuring homogeneity of the reactants, facilitating heat transfer, extraction of a product (or by-product), or product purification via chromatography. However, because the solvent is only indirectly involved in a reaction (i.e., it is not consumed), its disposal becomes an important issue. Thus, one obvious approach to “green chemistry” is to identify alternative solvents that are nontoxic and/or environmentally benign. Supercritical carbon dioxide (sc CO2) has been identified as a solvent that may be a viable alternative to solvents such as CCl4, benzene, and chloroflurocarbons (CFCs), which are either toxic or damaging to the environment. The critical state is achieved when a substance is taken above its critical temperature and pressure (Tc, Pc). Above this point on a phase diagram, the gas and liquid phases become indistinguishable. The physical properties of the supercritical state (e.g., density, viscosity, solubility parameter, etc.) are intermediate between those of a gas and a liquid, and vary considerably as a function of temperature and pressure. The interest in sc CO2 specifically is related to the fact that CO2 is nontoxic and naturally occurring. The critical parameters of CO2 are moderate (Tc = 31 °C, Pc = 74 bar), which means that the supercritical state can be achieved without a disproportionate expenditure of energy. For these two reasons, there is a great deal of interest in sc CO2 as a solvent for chemical reactions. This chapter reviews the literature pertaining to free-radical reactions in sc CO2 solvent.
Enhancing the Properties of Portland Cements Using Supercritical Carbon Dioxide
Authors: Rubin James B. , Taylor Craig M. V.
Published: November 2020

Supercritical CO2 (sc CO2) is being used to accelerate the natural aging reactions (i.e., carbonation) of Portland cement. This treatment method alters the bulk properties of cement, producing profound changes in both structure and chemical composition. As a result of these changes, the mechanical and transport properties of these cements are also dramatically affected, and they display reduced porosity, permeability and pH, as well as increased density and compressive strength. Two areas of application for the sc CO2 treatment of portland cement have been undergoing investigation. Because the calcium carbonate (CaCO3) formed during the accelerated carbonation reaction is found to have excellent cementing properties, it is possible to replace a large fraction of the relatively expensive Portland cement with industrial waste products, such as fly ash and kiln dusts, which have inherently inferior cementing properties. These modified Portland cements, incorporating significant volume fractions of industrial wastes, can be used as low-cost building materials. The second area of application deals with the enhancement of Portland cements used to encapsulate waste products. Portland cement is used as an immobilization matrix for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste by both the U.S. federal government (Huang et al., 1994) and civilian nuclear power companies in the United States (Wilk, 1997) and abroad (Wilding, 1992). Transportation issues relating to water content, radiolysis, and radionuclide content often preclude the ultimate disposal of these cemented wasteforms (U.S. DOE, 1996). However, the structural and chemical changes produced by accelerated carbonation have been shown to address these problems satisfactorily (Hartmann et al., 1999).