|
Showing 1 - 5 of
5 matches in All Departments
The growing number of published works dedicated to global
environmental change leads to the realization that protection of
the natural environment has become an urgent problem. The question
of working out principles of co evolution of man and nature is
being posed with ever-increasing persistence. Scientists in many
countries are attempting to find ways of formulating laws governing
human processes acting on the environment. Numerous national and
international programs regarding biosphere and climate studies
contribute to the quest for means of resolving the conflict between
human society and nature. However, attempts to find efficient
methods of regulating human activity on a global scale encounter
principal difficulties. The major difficulty is the lack of an
adequate knowledge base pertaining to climatic and biospheric
processes as wen as the largely incomplete state of the databases
concerning global processes occurring in the atmosphere, in the
ocean, and on land. Another difficulty is the inability of modern
science to formulate the requirements which must be met by the
global databases necessary for reliable evaluation of the state of
the environ ment and fore casting its development for sufficiently
long time intervals."
This is a timely book in light of increasing concern over global warming and environmental pollution. It describes a simulation system based on sets of computer algorithms for comprehensive analysis of data from global and regional monitoring systems. Chapters in the theoretical part of the book contain descriptions of rigorous algorithms and global environmental models. The applied part considers specific problems of environmental dynamics in areas such as the Arctic and the Caspian-Aral Seas. The purpose of this book is to develop a universal information technology to estimate the state of environmental subsystems functioning under various climatic and anthropogenic conditions. Applied mathematicians, hydrologists, geophysicists, socio-economists and other researchers of global change will find a wealth of information in this book.
Terrorist use of radioactive nuclear materials is a serious threat
for mass destruction or disruption of civil and military
activities. Most worrisome is the use of nuclear devices to cause
massive casualties to people and damage to structures. Fortunately,
the procurement of adequate material and the engineering design,
construction, and transportation and triggering of a nuclear weapon
are all difficult problems for terrorist organizations. More likely
is a device that combines radioactive materials with conventional
explosives to make a radiological dispersion device, commonly
called a "dirty bomb." The procurement of nuclear materials for
this purpose, the construction of the bomb and its use are all
easier than for a nuclear weapon. Fortunately, the effects from the
use of a radiological weapon would be much smaller than from a
nuclear device, although they could still be very disruptive. Thus,
it is important to detect the transport of nuclear weapons and
radiological dispersion devices and the materials for their
construction. These materials emit gamma rays or neutrons, which
can be detected to show the presence and amounts of such materials.
|
|