IS 6.8 BILLON PEOPLE SUSTAINABLE? NASA Composite showing electrical Choke-Chain on Planet Earth. (click for full image) My son called me today to discuss an article he is writing on the subject of sustainability. After some discussion of the problems of fisheries, forest harvesting, and fresh water distribution, we came to the conclusion that sustainability might be best defined as: “Exploiting a system at a rate that is equal to or less than the time required for that system to replenish and heal itself”. I think this idea is closely related to Deming’s concept of systems optimization in which a system must be regarded as whole. We then turned our attention to global warning, wondering if this phenomenon could also be explained in terms of sustainability. We concluded that the same principles are at work, only in the case of global warming, the system that is out of balance is the Earth as a whole. Or will the system collapse and shift to another state altogether?

Pareto principle The Pareto Principle asserts that only a "vital few" peapods produce the majority of peas. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity)[1][2] states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.[3] Management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted the 80/20 connection while at the University of Lausanne in 1896, as published in his first work, Cours d'économie politique. Essentially, Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. It is an axiom of business management that "80% of sales come from 20% of clients".[4] Richard Koch authored the book, The 80/20 Principle, which illustrated some practical applications of the Pareto principle in business management and life.[5] The Pareto principle is only tangentially related to Pareto efficiency. In economics[edit]

Are Market GM Plants an Unrecognized Platform for Bioterrorism and Biocrime? I have always thought of Christmas as the most unkind holiday known to man. As a genetic Jew, meaning that I am of the tribe but do not subscribe to the tribe’s dogma, Christmas has always represented the imposition of unrepentant ritualized bigotry and selfishness, undergirded by superstitious Christian dogma designed to subjugate what is best in the human spirit. At the root of Christianity’s horrid story is the idea that the human experience is one of perpetual conflict between the forces of good and evil. The story goes that humans are born in sin and that life is a battle between the good and godly, who are ever faithful and obedient, and the evil and heretical disciples of Satan. There are reasons why Christian dogma has become so all pervasive. The story is designed to subjugate people to the will of vested interests by dividing them against one another — religions, nations, communities, and individuals. The first 195,000 years (Click Graphic to Play)

Power law An example power-law graph, being used to demonstrate ranking of popularity. To the right is the long tail, and to the left are the few that dominate (also known as the 80–20 rule). In statistics, a power law is a functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a proportional relative change in the other quantity, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one quantity varies as a power of another. For instance, considering the area of a square in terms of the length of its side, if the length is doubled, the area is multiplied by a factor of four.[1] Empirical examples of power laws[edit] Properties of power laws[edit] Scale invariance[edit] One attribute of power laws is their scale invariance. , scaling the argument by a constant factor causes only a proportionate scaling of the function itself. That is, scaling by a constant simply multiplies the original power-law relation by the constant . and A power-law only if Universality[edit]

Kalmička zajednica u Beogradu Beogradski Kalmici. Iz foto-arhiva Politike. Opis života društvene grupe koja se raspala pre više desetleća i zatim se skoro bez tragova zagubila povezan je, bez sumnje, sa posebno vrućim problemima metodološke i metodičke prirode. Moguća je, naime, samo delimična rekonstrukcija, koja je utoliko teža zbog skromnih ili čak nepostojećih primarnih izvora (informatora, arhivskih dokumenata, podataka u štampi) i koja se oslanja pre svega na usmena predanja po sećanju spoljnih posmatrača (1). Subjektivnost takvih interptetacija moguće je samo delimično ispraviti korišćenjem uporedne literature koja se u našem primeru odnosi na kulturu Kalmika u carskoj Rusiji, Sovjetskom Savezu i emigraciji. Uporedna literatura nam u osnovnim crtama takođe pomaže da premostimo praznine u osnovnoj mreži informacija. Većina Kalmika došla je u Jugoslaviju decembra 1920. sa grupom od 22.000 vojnika, u pratnji članova porodice. Glavnina ruskih iseljenika u Jugoslaviji živela je u Beogradu. Fusnote: 1.

January 27, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. This article is adapted from Mark Hertsgaard's HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, published in January by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I didn't realize it at the time, but my daughter was born at a momentous turning point in history. I had been covering the climate story for fifteen years by then, and when Chiara was almost six months old, I went to London to interview Sir David King, then the British government's chief science adviser. My interview with King led me to write HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, which has just been published. Still, I am saddened and angry that we find ourselves in this position in the first place. In my journalism I have frequently pointed out the nefarious role the climate cranks have played in our national politics, but I confess I have often wondered how much good this did.

Preferential attachment Definition[edit] A preferential attachment process is a stochastic urn process, meaning a process in which discrete units of wealth, usually called "balls", are added in a random or partly random fashion to a set of objects or containers, usually called "urns". A preferential attachment process is an urn process in which additional balls are added continuously to the system and are distributed among the urns as an increasing function of the number of balls the urns already have. In the most commonly studied examples, the number of urns also increases continuously, although this is not a necessary condition for preferential attachment and examples have been studied with constant or even decreasing numbers of urns. Linear preferential attachment processes in which the number of urns increases are known to produce a distribution of balls over the urns following the so-called Yule distribution. for k ≥ k0 (and zero otherwise), where B(x, y) is the Euler beta function: History[edit]

Effects of pesticides on our wildlife | Policy and insight We know pesticides harm bees – the evidence is compelling. What about other wild species? When I searched for the effect of pesticides on wildlife, I couldn’t find a good summary so I produced this one. In our new report 'Problems with Pesticides' I’ve pulled together the main findings of recent scientific studies and reviews of evidence from the UK and beyond. From butterflies, beetles, damselflies and hoverflies to earthworms, hedgehogs, frogs and fish – not forgetting the impact on our water and soils – the evidence shows that problems with pesticides go well beyond bees. ...many species have struggled as their habitats have shrunk and climate change and pesticide use have taken their toll. Bees and beyond It’s well known that bees are in trouble and their exposure to pesticides isn’t helping. Pesticides include chemicals that kill insects (insecticides), plants (herbicides) and fungi/moulds (fungicides). They may be unintended victims but are affected because: Key findings: Earthworms

Diatoms are one of the most common types of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton /ˌfaɪtoʊˈplæŋktən/ are the autotrophic components of the plankton community. The name comes from the Greek words φυτόν (phyton), meaning "plant", and πλαγκτός (planktos), meaning "wanderer" or "drifter".[1] Most phytoplankton are too small to be individually seen with the unaided eye. However, when present in high enough numbers, they may appear as a green discoloration of the water due to the presence of chlorophyll within their cells (although the actual color may vary with the species of phytoplankton present due to varying levels of chlorophyll or the presence of accessory pigments such as phycobiliproteins, xanthophylls, etc.). Ecology[edit] Phytoplankton come in many shapes and sizes. Phytoplankton are the foundation of the oceanic food chain. When two currents collide (here the Oyashio and Kuroshio currents) they create eddies. Phytoplankton depend on other substances to survive as well. Aquaculture[edit]

Peter Principle An illustration visualizing the Peter principle The Peter Principle is a concept in management theory in which the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in his or her current role rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and "managers rise to the level of their incompetence." The principle is named after Laurence J. Overview[edit] The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails. Peter suggests that "[i]n time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties"[2] and that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." Responses[edit] There are methods that organizations can use to mitigate the risk associated with the Peter Principle: Research[edit]