Stakeholder’s opinion of public participation in Thai environmental and health impact assessment

This paper evaluates the efficacy of public participation in the EHIA (environmental and health impact assessment) process of Thailand based on the opinions of 53 interviewees from various stakeholder groups in relation to certain public participation criteria. The evaluation revealed that public participation in Thai EHIA was partially effective. The project proponents provide an opportunity to anybody interested in the project to get involved from the scoping stage onwards. However, the important decisions are already made before the public can get involved. In addition, government officers and non-governmental organizations appear to be able to influence outcomes of public hearings more concretely than the project-affected people due to the highly technical nature of the discussions. The stakeholders were questioned whether their concerns were taken seriously during the decision-making process. In our conclusions, we make three major recommendations to enhance the public participation process and practice in Thai EHIA, based upon: (1) stakeholder analysis, (2) public participation in EHIA guideline revision, and (3) validation the authenticity of the concerns raised by stakeholders.     

Carbon definitions and typologies in environmental impact assessment: greenhouse gas confusion?

Estimation of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) is becoming an established part of assessing sustainability within environmental impact assessment (EIA). However, a comparative study of 25 environmental impact statements (EISs) to analyse the practice of accounting for emissions during the EIA process suggests that consideration of the effects of development on emissions of GHG is poorly understood. The extent to which assessment is actually carried out is also inconsistent and sporadically implemented. A key indicator appears to be the varying and sometimes contradictory use of technical terminology, particularly of the term ‘carbon’ and its similar phraseology. This paper provides a critical evaluation of the differing terminology that is applied to GHG assessments undertaken as part of EIA process and explores the effect that misuse of these terms could have on an impact EIS.     

Prospect of China’s synthetic natural gas from coal gasification technology under consideration of economic,environmental, and security factors

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Synthetic natural gas (SNG) from coal gasification technology has become an alternative method to alleviate China’s natural gas shortage....     

Growing America’s fuel: an analysis of corn and cellulosic ethanol feasibility in the United States

Recent excitement over ethanol in the United States has been unmatched by other alternative energy sources. To a certain extent, the mention of ethanol by President Bush in the past four State of the Union Addresses has politicized the debate and generated a high level of support for increased ethanol production in both Congress and the private sector. In December 2007, President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act, which increased the renewable fuel standard that was mandated under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to 36 billion gallons by 2022. “Growing fuel” has appealed to politicians, the American public, and powerful agricultural interests all for different reasons. Whether or not the large-scale ethanol production and distribution of ethanol is efficient is not easily understood. Corn-based ethanol is so heavily subsidized through federal tax credits and even state credits that its true cost is hard to determine (Gardner in J Agric Food Ind Organ 5:4, 2007). The high corrosiveness of ethanol and its tendency to absorb water damages existing fuel infrastructure and requires special equipment and supply chains for transportation (Rusco and Walls in Biofuels, petroleum refining and the shipping of motor fuels. Institute for Advanced Policy Research, Technical Paper TP-05008, 2008). Perhaps, most importantly, the agricultural availability for energy crops is intertwined closely with food crops; corn prices are influenced by the converging demands of ethanol, feed crops and human consumption. After examining the feasibility of recent goals for alternative fuels in the context of corn and cellulosic ethanol production, we are unable to validate that corn-based ethanol is worthy of continued pursuit as a viable, comprehensive alternative to gasoline. On the other hand, we find the argument for cellulosic production more compelling due to the ubiquitous availability of amounts and variety of feedstock, combined with a high potential for far reaching and decentralized refineries. Our work indicates that a transition to advanced, cellulosic feedstocks for ethanol is absolutely necessary for increased biofuel production and reduced petroleum use to occur. However, in light of the lack of commercial availability of key components needed for cellulosic ethanol production, we conclude that the feasibility of cellulosic ethanol as a mainstream fuel will require many changes in technology and federal funding. Thus, we conclude that, in the short term, ethanol cannot meet the energy security and environmental goals of a gasoline alternative.     

The influence of Elfreda Chatman’s theories: a citation context analysis

The range of theoretical frameworks currently being used by researchers into information behaviour is abundant and diverse. We need to examine thoroughly the contribution of theories and models to further research, as this would help to improve future investigations in the field. This paper adopts this approach, by thoroughly examining the influence that Elfreda Chatman’s three middle-range theories have had on subsequent research. A citation context analysis was carried out on the basis of those received by Information poverty theory, life in the round theory and normative behaviour theory. Analysis covered the year of publication, the type of work and the subject-matter of the citing documents. The cites in context or theoretical incidents were analysed for frequency of citation in citing documents, the content of Chatman’s work being cited, the context co-citation analysis, the citation style and the citation location. The analysis of citation in context has allowed us to draw a distinction between the author and her work, while verifying that not all cites are the same. These differences reflect the unequal relevance of these theories to subsequent research.

     

Use and effectiveness of health impact assessment in the energy and natural resources sector in the United States, 2007 – 2016

Decisions made in the energy and natural resources sector can affect public health. This report reviews the characteristics and assesses the effectiveness of health impact assessments (HIAs) conducted in this sector. A total of 30 HIAs conducted in 14 states in the United States were identified using a targeted literature search. Five HIAs illustrative of the different source and sub-sector categories, and with identifiable impacts on decision-making processes were selected for review. An existing conceptual framework (Wismar) was used to assess the effectiveness of the five selected HIAs on decision-making related to non-renewable energy, renewable energy, mining, and energy conservation. The 30 HIAs were performed for a variety of projects and assessed health impacts ranging from metabolic disorders to community livability. Eight of the 30 reports were incorporated into environmental impact assessments. All five selected HIAs were generally effective and raised awareness of the health effects of the projects being assessed; four were directly effective and led to changes in final project decisions. Their variable effectiveness may be related to the extent of community engagement and consideration of equity issues, differences in the details and quality of monitoring and evaluation plans devised as part of the HIA process, and whether the outcomes of monitoring and evaluation are reported.     

The evaluation of energy–environmental efficiency of China’s industrial sector: based on Super-SBM model

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - With the process of urbanization and industrialization, a growing attention has been paid to the energy–environmental efficiency in China’s...     

Beyond Garfield’s Citation Index: an assessment of some issues in building a personal name Acknowledgments Index

To study patterns of personal acknowledgments in life sciences research and assess the feasibility of a formal Personal Acknowledgments Index, two successive 5-year (1995–1999, 2000–2004) sets of original research articles on zebrafish (Danio rerio) were scanned for acknowledgment statements thanking individuals for various “gifts” of research materials, services, and interpersonal communication. Text areas mined included “Materials and Methods” (M&M) and various text locations of “Acknowledgments” (ACK). Acknowledgment statements were coded using a detailed Personal Acknowledgments Classification. Including the M&M sections increased the number of unique personal names, primarily in classes 1a (experimental animals) and 1b (research materials)—with a few highly acknowledged researchers adding substantially to their tallies. The challenges of locating personal acknowledgment statements, harvesting and disambiguating personal names, determining the level of detail useful in characterizing the nature of the “gifts,” and assessing the level of interest in the potential user community are discussed.     

The impacts of cultural event on networking: Liverpool’s cultural sector in the aftermath of 2008

The aim of this paper is to discuss how the construct of networking and social capital can be used to understand the effect events can have on the cultural sector. Based on case study, this research sought the views of those working in the cultural sector on Liverpool’s year as the European Capital of Culture (ECOC). Methodologically, this study involves literature review to prompt theoretical sensitivity, the collection of primary data via online survey (n = 42) and follow-up telephone interviews (n = 8) to explore the emerging findings in more detail. The findings point to a number of ways in which the ECOC constitutes a boost for networking and its effects on the city’s cultural sector, including organisational learning, aspiration and leadership. The contributions of this study are twofold: (1) evaluating the long-term effects on network formation in the cultural sector following a major event; (2) conceptualising the impact assessment of organisational social capital for future ECOC or similar events.     

Institutional change and scientific research: A preliminary bibliometric analysis of institutional influences on Turkey’s recent social science publications

This paper provides a detailed assessment of recent indexed journal publications by Turkish social scientists. We first present information on SCI, SSCI and AHCI indexed journal articles that were published by Turkish researchers over the past three decades. An inspection of publication statistics indicates a considerable improvement, especially during the last five years of the 1973–2005 period that we examine, in Turkey’s publication record in terms of number of articles authored or co-authored by Turkish researchers. In the next step, we scrutinize institutional sources of this improvement, emphasizing regulatory and organizational changes that have both forced researchers to publish in indexed journals and remunerated those who did so. Finally, we provide a qualitative assessment of recent improvement in publication performance of Turkish researchers by focusing on a particular behavioral consequence of institutional changes and its implications for impact that research from Turkey has on global research activity. Bibliometric analysis of articles published by Turkish researchers in SSCI-indexed journals during 2000–2005 shows that recent regulatory and organizational changes seem to have instituted a particular publication habit, publishing in journals with lower impact factor, which was earlier observed in other parts of the world where publication counts were used for performance evaluation, and that signs of improvement in our select indicators of impact are yet to be observed.     

North–South divide: contrasting impacts of climate change on crop yields in Scotland and England

Effects of climate change on productivity of agricultural crops in relation to diseases that attack them are difficult to predict because they are complex and nonlinear. To investigate these crop–disease–climate interactions, UKCIP02 scenarios predicting UK temperature and rainfall under high- and low-CO₂ emission scenarios for the 2020s and 2050s were combined with a crop-simulation model predicting yield of fungicide-treated winter oilseed rape and with a weather-based regression model predicting severity of phoma stem canker epidemics. The combination of climate scenarios and crop model predicted that climate change will increase yield of fungicide-treated oilseed rape crops in Scotland by up to 0.5 t ha⁻¹ (15%). In contrast, in southern England the combination of climate scenarios, crop, disease and yield loss models predicted that climate change will increase yield losses from phoma stem canker epidemics to up to 50 per cent (1.5 t ha⁻¹) and greatly decrease yield of untreated winter oilseed rape. The size of losses is predicted to be greater for winter oilseed rape cultivars that are susceptible than for those that are resistant to the phoma stem canker pathogen Leptosphaeria maculans. Such predictions illustrate the unexpected, contrasting impacts of aspects of climate change on crop–disease interactions in agricultural systems in different regions.     

Fake news and indifference to scientific fact: President Trump’s confused tweets on global warming,climate change and weather

Scientometrics - A set of 115 tweets on climate change by President Trump, from 2011 to 2015, are analysed by means of the data mining technique, sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the...     

Physico-chemical characteristics of some Lesotho’s clays and their assessment for suitability in ceramics production

The physico-chemical properties of three clays (reddish, yellow and gray) collected at Ha Motloheloa quarry in Lesotho were determined. The main components in all the clays were SiO₂, Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃ and K₂O in the form of mica, CaO, MgO, Na₂O, TiO₂ and P₂O₅ with less than 6% loss of ignition (LOI). The clays showed a wide variation in particle sizes with clay fractions from 15.81% to 27.38%, silt fractions from 41.95% to 52.32% and sand fractions from 30.6% to 31.9%. The surface area of the clays increased with a decrease in particle size. All the clays showed water content below 9% and shrinkage value below 6%. The clays had moderate plasticity indexes between 20 and 25 and less than 9% water content with 17.32%–20.72% water required to produce sufficient workability. Their densities were less than 3?g/cm^?3 and had low green to dry shrinkage (4.19%–5.35%). For all firing temperatures used (950°C–1100°C), the flexural strength varied from 2.3 to 17.6?MPa, while the water content varied from 6.1% to 12.2%. The reddish clay can be used for making perforated/solid bricks and roofing tiles, while yellow and gray clays can be used only for solid bricks.     

Materiality of sustainability reports: an environmental performance analysis’ proposal of wind farms in Southern Brazil using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Sustainability reports are those in which a company discloses its social, environmental or governance performance, and stakeholders identify, in a...     

Carbonation in concrete infrastructure in the context of global climate change – Part 1: Experimental results and model development

There is nearly unanimous consensus amongst scientists that increasing greenhouse gas emissions, including CO₂ generated by human activity, are effecting the Earth’s climate. Increasing atmospheric CO₂ emissions will likely increase the rates of carbonation in reinforced concrete structures. However, there is a lack of reliable models to predict the depth of carbonation as a function of time.To address this deficiency, a numerical model involving simultaneous solution of the transient diffusion and reaction equations of CO₂ and Ca(OH)₂ was developed. The model successfully includes the effects of variations in various properties such as porosity, humidity, temperature, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and chemical reaction rates.The applicability of the model was confirmed after calibration using data from accelerated carbonation experiments, and the model is used to evaluate the possible effects of climate change by inputting various future climate scenarios in Part 2.     

Assessing and predicting the quality of research master’s theses: an application of scientometrics

Scientometrics - The educational quality of research master’s degree can be in part reflected by the examiner score of the thesis. This study focuses on finding positive predictors of this...     

The impact of the national assessment exercises on self-citation rate and publication venue: an empirical investigation on the engineering academic sector in Italy

Thelwall (J Informetr 11(1):128–151, 2017a.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2016.12.002; Web indicators for research evaluation: a practical guide. Morgan and Claypool, London, 2017b) proposed a new family of field- and time-normalized indicators, which is intended for sparse data. These indicators are based on units of analysis (e.g., institutions) rather than on the paper level. They compare the proportion of mentioned papers (e.g., on Twitter) of a unit with the proportion of mentioned papers in the corresponding fields and publication years. We propose a new indicator (Mantel–Haenszel quotient, MHq) for the indicator family. The MHq is rooted in the Mantel–Haenszel (MH) analysis. This analysis is an established method, which can be used to pool the data from several 2?×?2 cross tables based on different subgroups. We investigate using citations and assessments by peers whether the indicator family can distinguish between quality levels defined by the assessments of peers. Thus, we test the convergent validity. We find that the MHq is able to distinguish between quality levels in most cases while other indicators of the family are not. Since our study approves the MHq as a convergent valid indicator, we apply the MHq to four different Twitter groups as defined by the company Altmetric. Our results show that there is a weak relationship between the Twitter counts of all four Twitter groups and scientific quality, much weaker than between citations and scientific quality. Therefore, our results discourage the use of Twitter counts in research evaluation.     

The dynamics of the studies of China’s science,technology and innovation (STI): a bibliometric analysis of an emerging field

Scientometrics - Since 1978, alongside China’s rise as a leading country in science, technology and innovation (STI), the studies of the country’s STI have been emerging as a field...     

Development of an image analysis technique for measurement of Poisson’s ratio for viscoelastic materials: application to leather

The application of a computerised image analysis system to simultaneously measure longitudinal and axial strain in naturally available anisotropic-viscoelastic material like leather is described. The results are used to calculate Poisson’s ratio and indicate that this parameter varies with position and orientation on the hide and depends on the degree of pre-existing fibre orientation. The origins of this dependency can be explained by a simple microstructural model. The practical implication of the findings for detecting lines of tightness (maximum fibre’s orientation) is discussed.