Glossary 6.4 Technology and environment At the start of this unit I asked a simple question: am I damaging the environment by using my fridge? I warned that it wasn't my intention to give a simple answer that we should all stop using refrigerators or all carry on regardless. Instead, we have explored the issue more widely, calling on a range of ideas and background information in the Case Studies. It is time to review some of the concepts we have been using. 6.2 The hierarchy of human needs A second approach is to look at the human needs and wants from a more theoretical perspective. One such model was developed in the 1950s and 1960s by Abraham Maslow. Although it exists in many variants it is generally known as Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. In the most common interpretations it places the fundamental material needs of survival, such as food, shelter and safety at the base of a triangle, rising through social needs of belonging in human society, to 4.4 Discussion In this second case study, I have described two different trends in energy use by cold appliances over the last few decades. On the one hand the efficiency with which appliances use electrical energy has improved but, in spite of this, their consumption of electricity has increased significantly in recent decades. Since 2000 consumption has started to decline, probably as a result of the introduction of minimum energy standards. The trend will only continue if we demand and use the most energ 3.3 Greenfreeze: the Greens fight back Some campaigners were not convinced by the arguments of refrigerator manufacturers and suppliers (who also happened to own some patents for HCFCs and HFCs) that the only solution, in the short to medium term, was to use the transitional compounds. They tried to demonstrate that there were practical alternatives. A group of scientists working with Greenpeace International designed a domestic refrigerator based on the use of hydrocarbons, using a mix of propane and isobutane for the refrigerant 2.2 We are part of nature Take a few minutes to look around at your surroundings before you read on. What do you see? Obviously this depends on where you are at the moment: at home, at work, or perhaps travelling in between, or maybe you have the misfortune to be laid up in hospital. Possibly like me you are at home. I am fortunate to have a study where I do much of my writing and you won't be surprised to hear that I'm looking at a computer screen at the moment. What else can I see? Books and bookshelves, furniture o 5.8 Review of criticisms of international rights Review the four criticisms of rights at the international level discussed in the previous sections. Identify which of these criticisms are objections in principle to the discourse of 5.1 Rights, justice and international politics What happens to notions of rights and justice when we move the discussion to the level of international politics? In fact, three crucial things happen: The meaning of rights takes its bearings from the rights discourse developed from the UN Declaration. We will investigate the effects of this, both on rights and on international politics. We find that it is not always easy to establish who the right can be claimed against. In Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: understand the different interpretations of internationally recognised notions of rights and justice; give examples of implementing justice in an international sphere; investigate questions in international studies; analyse the different agencies of change in the international system. 1.2.3 Climate change: survival at stake Despite efforts to define it, the boundary between land and sea is constantly changing. In the long run the combination of rising sea level, sinking land and possible major storms, such as the one that devastated the Essex coast in 1953 (Figure 16), indicates a battle that the sea must ultimately win. 4.2 Environmental and labour standards Look back at Section 1. Why do trade unions in rich countries take up the cause of poor environmental and working conditions in developing countries as they did at Seattle? And why are developing country governments unwilling 3.2.2 The protection of intellectual property: the costs of TRIPS Apart from the internal redistribution of income resulting from greater exposure to the world economy, the effects of one of the UR agreements in particular have achieved a certain notoriety because the agreement clearly imposes huge costs on farmers and consumers in developing countries, to the benefit of corporations in developed countries. This is the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which strengthens international rules governing patents, tradema Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material within this book. 1.6 Defining global markets Global markets for manufactured goods, as opposed to, say, primary commodities such as oil and timber, arose largely in the second half of the twentieth century as trade between countries intensified. The lowering of transport costs and the relative fall in trade barriers enabled firms in one country to compete wit 1.2 Readings In your studies of the learning units so far, you have investigated a range of factors that may lead up to the ‘perfect storm’: a combination of interlinked environmental, social and economic crises. You have also explored your personal ecology, extending this to incorporate quality of life and environmental impact aspects. You have done this using a range of verbal, visual and mathematical models. You have also become familiar with the fact that our mental models evolve through th 2.4 Oral and written communication Humans use language to communicate. This is an obvious statement, but what is language and how do we use it? Language is basically a set of symbols with associated meanings. These symbols are delivered using a set of rules for stringing the symbols together to generate additional meaning. Humans use mostly sounds to represent these symbols, although as an Italian I can communicate common meanings by only using a range of hand gestures! We string together phonetic sounds to make words, and we 5.5 Summary of Section 5 The phase of a material is characterised by its physical state (e.g. solid, liquid or gas), a distinctive arrangement of the atoms, and its chemical composition. Material properties can change suddenly as the temperature increases or decreases, corresponding to changes of phase and the degree of order associated with the arrangement of atoms. Shape memory alloys are examples of a wide range of useful engineering materials t 5.3 Order and chaos How can we explain a sudden switch of behaviour at a particular temperature? There must be two competing influences (say X and Y) that depend differently on temperature. Figure 23 indicates how a unique temperature (a so-called critical temperature, Tc) arises, 5.1 Sudden changes The third category of thermal effects identified in Section 2 are those associated with sudden changes. Here are some technically important examples where things change suddenly at a particular temperature: Pure water boils at 100 °C (at atmospheric pressure).< 4.3.3 Getting at the activation energy The final trick I want to show you with Arrhenius's law is how to extract the constants r0 and Ea from experimental data. If the Arrhenius equation (Section 4.3.1) is ‘turned inside out’ by taking natural logarithms of both sides it becomes:
Glossary item Definition atom the smallest amount of a chemical element that still retains the properties of that element. biodiversity a contraction of ‘biological diversity’, in general it describes the variety of life on Earth and specifically the total sum of the genes, species, ha
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