1.3.8 Summary of section During the 1970s and 1980s, countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan benefited from their low-cost advantages in the new global division of labour. Now, however, the gap between rich and poor nations is wider and competition in the world economy greater, prompting campaigning groups to argue that contemporary low-wage economies do not have the options for economic development that their predecessors had. In the face of market fragment
6.6.2 The World Energy Council scenarios What are the possibilities for radical changes in our energy systems when viewed from a world perspective? There have been numerous studies of the various future options for the world's energy systems. One of the most recent and most comprehensive was produced in 1998 by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the World Energy Council (WEC), a version of which was published in 2000 as part of the United Nations’ World Energy Assessment (United Nations Dev
3.2 Fossil fuels So what are the principle energy systems used by humanity at present, and how sustainable are they? Until quite recently, human energy requirements were modest and our supplies came either from harnessing natural processes such as the growth of plants, which provided wood for heating and food to energise human or animal muscles, or from the power of water and wind, used to drive simple machinery. But the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a massive increase in global energy us
2.4.1 The emergence of ecology To help you gain a better perspective on the general progress of scientific development, Table 4 provides a schematic potted history of some of the major ideas coming from science that have sought to guide our actions. It includes both social and natural sciences, though the former really only became distinct ‘science
5 Human influence? Evidence suggests that global temperature is beginning to rise. There are several factors that could cause this. Only one is affected by human activity. Click on 'View document' to view a chart showing the rates of energy gain and loss by the Earth's surface and atmosphere 1 Safety, health and environmental management – a risky business! While views on management differ, Safety, Health and Environmental (SHE) management is merely a subset of management to which the same generalities apply. Indeed, at the end of this unit we will see indications of the integrating concepts being promoted by organisations. However, for the present we can translate the key actions of management into: Plan – anticipate problems before they occur, and plan for prevention rather than remedying pr 4.6 Plants as medicines Plants are already a major source of medicines. In 1990, sales in the USA of prescriptions where material of plant origin was the active ingredient totalled US$141500 million. For many centuries, people around the world have relied on herbal remedies of various kinds in the prevention and cure of ailments and diseases. There are over 211000 medicinal plants named by the World Health Organisation. Although there is some duplication where plants are known by different names in different places, Introduction This unit is from our archive and it is an adapted extract from Human biology and health (SK220), which is no longer in presentation. If you wish to study formally at The Open University, you may wish to explore the courses we offer in this curriculum area. To be able to understand the importance of the environment for our health, we need to know a little about the interdepende 6.3 Sustainable development The third approach to balancing human needs with environmental protection is to try to come to grips with what we mean by sustainability. The most widely quoted definition of sustainable development is the one used by Gro Harlem Brundtland in the highly influential book Our Common Future (Brundtland, 1987): ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present with 4.5 Global climate change I would like to turn now to the possible consequences of our use of energy for global climate change. Our pattern of energy use relies heavily on burning carbon-based fossil fuels, releasing carbon dioxide which spreads evenly around the globe and builds up slowly in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which means that it has the potential both to warm the atmosphere and to change our global climate. It is not the only greenhouse gas but is the most important of those e 3.1 Refrigeration and chlorofluorocarbons A domestic refrigerator consists essentially of two elements. First, it has a well-insulated box that minimises the flow of heat energy from the warmer outside environment to the cold space inside. Second, it has a motor to circulate a cooling liquid or refrigerant which extracts heat from the cold space and carries it to the outside, where it is released, usually through a radiator at the back. Most refrigerators make use of the principle that when liquids vaporise – that is, change 6.2 Some general features of communitarianism and cosmopolitanism There are two very different and sharply contrasting views about how the international arena can be theorised, should be organised and can be described. One side sees the international sphere as made up of a plurality of interacting cultures with incommensurable values, while the other side deploys general concepts of rights and applies these to humanity as a whole. These two constructions rest upon very different views of what human beings are, and how they do and should interact together. 2.1 Background to the idea of international rights The UN Charter and the Declaration form part of a post-Second World War international settlement which established, on the one side, the formal legitimating ideology of the international system, national self-determination and sovereign equality and, on the other, the ideology of universal human rights. The appeal of this set of claims was the hope that different peoples could live together in peace and security. It was an attempt to accommodate difference (through the idea of national self-d 3.1 Voyages of discovery and settlement In Section 2, we saw that there are momentous new and recently transformed flows that are impacting on island territories. Some flows have important precedents, and others may not be quite as novel as they first appear. In this section, we look more closely at some of the flows that have helped make, remake and sometimes 2.1 Issues of responsibility The aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami saw an unprecedented aid effort to assist the affected regions. In the early days after the disaster, pledges of financial assistance from overseas governments were often outstripped by the generosity of their own populaces. This was a case when ordinary people around the world saw and were moved by the tragic circumstances of others far away (Rose, 2006), and they responded with gifts of money and provisions, and even with offers of their own sk 2 The road to Doha The WTO was created by the eighth in a series of multilateral trade negotiations that have taken place since the signing in 1947 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Multilateral trade negotiations take place between many countries simultaneously. (Bilateral negotiations are negotiations between pairs of countries.) The GATT was designed to prevent a repetition of the experience of the 1930s, when individual countries had tried to claw their way out of the widespread u 2.1 Introduction to the problems with the way we think The way in which we think, and the way in which we think about thinking in our Western tradition, can be traced back at least to Parmenides of Elea, a Presocratic Greek philosopher who lived around 500 BC. His influence on our thinking is hard to overestimate – from it grew the notion that what can be known must be real, and what is real is eternal and unchanging. Though many others have contributed since, the Greek philosophers laid the foundation for the way in which we currently think ab 1 Temperature – problem or solution? ‘Have you taken the temperature effects into account?’ (Figure 1) is nearly always a valid question in any discussion about a proposed engineering solution. Everything has a temperature, and everything behaves differently at different temperatures. It therefore deserves its own special plac 3.2.3 Managing group membership The range of people that makes up the membership of a team, and the relationships they have with each other, have great influence on the team's effectiveness. The members should all be able to contribute their skills and expertise to the team's goals to make the best use of the resources. If you are ever in the position of being able to select your own team, you will need to identify your objectives and the methods for achieving your goals. From this will come the competences – the knowledg 2.3.1 The functional team The hierarchical structure described above divides groups of people along largely functional lines: people working together carry out the same or similar functions. A functional team is a team in which work is carried out within such a functionally organised group. This can be project work. In organisations in which the functional divisions are relatively rigid, project work can be handed from one functional team to another in order to complete the work. For example, work on a new product can
