ALBERT

Description / Table of Contents: Geochemistry is a science that is based on an understanding of chemical processes in the earth. One of the principal tools available to the chemist for understanding systems at equilibrium is thermodynamics. The awareness and application of thermodynamic techniques has increased at a very fast pace in geosciences; in fact, one may be so bold as to say that thermodynamics in geology has reached the "mature" stage, although much future thermodynamic research is certainly needed. However, the natural processes in the earth are often sluggish enough that a particular system may not reach equilibrium. This observation is being supported constantly by new experimental and field data available to the geochemist e.g. the non-applicability of the phase rule in some assemblages, the compositional inhomogeneities of mineral grains, the partial reaction rims surrounding original minerals, the lack of isotopic equilibration or the absence of minerals (e.g. dolomite), which should be present according to thermodynamics. The need to apply kinetics has produced a large number of papers dealing with kinetics in geochemistry. As an initial response to this growing field, a conference on geochemical transport and kinetics was conducted at Airlie House, VA, in 1973, sponsored by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The papers there dealt with several kinetic topics including diffusion, exsolution, metasomatism and metamorphic layering. Since 1973 the number of kinetic papers has continued to increase greatly. Therefore, the time is ripe for a Short Course in Kinetics, which brings together the fundamentals needed to explain field observations using kinetic data. It is hoped that this book may serve, not only as a reference for researchers dealing with the rates of geochemical processes, but also as a text in courses on geochemical kinetics. One of us has found this need of a text in teaching a graduate course on geochemical kinetics at Harvard and at Penn State during the past several years. Finally, it is our hope that the book may itself further even more research into the rates of geochemical processes and into the quantification of geochemical observations. The book is organized with a rough temperature gradient in mind, i.e. low temperature kinetics at the beginning and igneous kinetics at the end (no prejudices are intended with this scheme!). However, the topics in each chapter are general enough that they can be applied often to any geochemical domain: sedimentary, metamorphic or igneous. The theory of kinetics operates at two complementary levels: the phenomenological and the atomistic. The former relies on macroscopic variables (e.g. temperature or concentrations) to describe the rates of reactions or the rates of transport; the latter relates the rates to the basic forces operating between the particular atomic or molecular species of any system. This book deals with both descriptions of the kinetics of geochemical processes. Chapter one sets the framework for the phenomenological theory of reaction rates. If any geochemical reaction is to be described quantitatively, the rate law must be experimentally obtained in a kinetically sound manner and the reaction mechanism must be understood. This applies to heterogeneous fluid-rock reactions such as those occurring during metamorphism, hydrothermal alteration or weathering as well as to homogeneous reactions. Chapter 2 extends the theory to the global kinetics of geochemical cycles. This enables the kinetic concepts of stability and feedback to be applied to the cycling of elements in the many reservoirs of the earth. Chapter 3 applies the phenomenological treatment of chapter 1 to diagenesis and weathering. The rate of dissolution of minerals as well as the chemical evolution of pore waters are discussed. The atomistic basis of rates of reaction, transition state theory, is introduced in Chapter 4. Transition state theory can be applied to relate the rate constants of geochemical reactions to the atomic processes taking place. This includes not only homogeneous reactions but also reactions that occur at the surface of minerals. Chapter 5 discusses the theory of irreversible thermodynamics and its application to petrology. The use of the second law of thermodynamics along with the expressions for the rate of entropy production in a system have been used successfully since 1935 to describe kinetic phenomena. The chapter applies the concepts to the growth of minerals during metamorphism as well as to the formation of differentiated layers (banding) in petrology. Chapter 6 describes the phenomenological theory of diffusion both in aqueous solutions and in minerals. In particular, the multicomponent nature of diffusion and its consequence in natural systems is elaborated. Chapter 7 provides the atomistic basis for the rates of reactions in minerals. Understanding of the rates of diffusion, conduction, order-disorder reactions or exsolution in minerals depends on proper description of the defects in the various mineral structures. Chapter 8 provides the kinetic theory of crystal nucleation and growth. While many of the concepts in the chapter can be applied to aqueous systems, the emphasis is on igneous processes occurring during crystallization of a melt. To fully understand both the mineral composition as well as the texture of igneous rocks, the processes whereby new crystals form and grow must be quantified by using kinetic theory. Due to space and time limitations (kinetics!) some topics have not been covered in detail. In particular, the mathematical solution of diffusion or conduction equations is discussed very well by Crank in his book, Mathematics of Diffusion, and so is not covered to a great extent here. The treatment of fluid flow (e.g. convection) is also not covered in the text.

Description / Table of Contents: In the first decade of the twentieth century, the world witnessed tremendous upheaval in global energy markets. Oil markets were roiled by war and uprisings in the Middle East while economic expansion helped to push prices to near record (real) highs. Natural gas production in the United States was revolutionized with the emergence of new techniques for extracting shale gas. Nuclear power appeared on the verge of a dramatic expansion before its rise was cast into doubt by the tragic disaster at Fukushima. And renewable energy began to grow from a small contributor to world energy supplies into the one of largest sources of new electricity generation in many markets. Those narratives, for the most part, are well known. But one of the most important stories in modern energy markets remains largely untold and unappreciated, even as it is now reshaping the map of global energy use and the pace of climate change. That story is the story of coal's resurgence.

Description / Table of Contents: "In the first decade of the twentieth century, the world witnessed tremendous upheaval in global energy markets. Oil markets were roiled by war and uprisings in the Middle East while economic expansion helped to push prices to near record (real) highs. Natural gas production in the United States was revolutionized with the emergence of new techniques for extracting shale gas. Nuclear power appeared on the verge of a dramatic expansion before its rise was cast into doubt by the tragic disaster at Fukushima. And renewable energy began to grow from a small contributor to world energy supplies into the one of largest sources of new electricity generation in many markets. Those narratives, for the most part, are well known. But one of the most important stories in modern energy markets remains largely untold and unappreciated, even as it is now reshaping the map of global energy use and the pace of climate change. That story is the story of coal's resurgence"--

Description / Table of Contents: "Advances in qualitative methods and recent developments in the philosophy of science have led to an emphasis on explanation via reference to causal mechanisms. This book argues that the method known as process tracing is particularly well suited to developing and assessing theories about such mechanisms.The editors begin by establishing a philosophical basis for process tracing - one that captures mainstream uses while simultaneously being open to applications by interpretive scholars"--

Description / Table of Contents: "This examination of the role of litigation in addressing the problem of climate change focuses not only on how the massive and growing number of lawsuits influences regulation directly but also on how the lawsuits shape corporate behavior and public opinion. It provides readers with an understanding of how these lawsuits have shaped approaches to mitigation and adaptation and have been used to try to force and to block regulation. There is a particular emphasis on lawsuits in the United States and Australia, the two jurisdictions that have had the most climate change litigation in the world, and the lessons supply broader insights into the role of courts in addressing climate change"--

Description / Table of Contents: Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity; a definitive manifestation of the well-worn links between progress and devastation. This book explores the complex relationship that the corporate world has with climate change, and examines the central role of corporations in shaping political and social responses to the climate crisis. The book's principal message is that despite the need for dramatic economic and political change, corporate capitalism continues to rely upon the maintenance of 'business as usual'. The authors explore the different processes through which corporations engage with climate change. Key discussion points include climate change as business risk; corporate climate politics; the role of justification and compromise; and managerial identity and emotional reactions to climate change. Written for researchers and graduate students, this book moves beyond descriptive and normative approaches to provide a sociologically and critically informed theory of corporate responses to climate change.

Description / Table of Contents: Es werden geometrische Eigenschaften der räumlichen Bahnkurven der durch die 2 - 10s - Mikroseismik verursachten Bodenschwingungen untersucht. Dabei ergeben sich für Stationen im Inneren des Kontinents ebene, polarisierte Schwingungen, deren Polarisation von der Wetterlage über dem Nordatlantik abhängt. Davon ausgehend wird ein neues Verfahren zur Erhöhung des seismischen Signal-Rausch-Verhältnisses (SNR) entwickelt. Eine Übersicht über das Quellenproblem der Mikroseismik schließt sich an.

Description / Table of Contents: The author has investigated geometrical quantities of the spatial particle orbits of 2 - 10s microseisms. For stations in the interior of the Continent these orbits are plane and polarized. The polarization depends on the weather situation over the Northern Atlantic. The paper presents a new method for signal-to-noise ratio augmentation, which is based on the found polarization phenomenon. A chapter follows on nature and sources of microseisms.

Description / Table of Contents: "Large modern cities have effectively declared their independence from nature. But while they take up only three to four percent of the world's land surface, their ecological footprints cover the entire globe. With current methods of resources use, cities are undermining the ecological basis of their own existence. To meet the aspirations of city people in developing as well as developed countries, bold new initiatives are needed. Mere 'sustainable development' is not enough. The planning of new cities, as well as the retrofit of existing cities, needs to undergo a profound paradigm shift. Instead of simply using resources more sustainably, cities need to take responsibility for their use of resources, making 'regenerative development' into an organising principle. We need to move away from linear systems of resource use, and assure that cities operate as circular systems. Creating Regenerative Cities is a concise, solution-oriented manual for creating regenerative urbanisation. In our urbanising world a wide range of technical, management and policy solutions already exist, but implementation has been too slow and too little, in large part because the kinds of holistic approaches needed are still unfamiliar to fragmented and process driven urban policy making and governance. Herbert Girardet's 30 year experience as an ecologist, thinker and consultant to cities around the world has created this unique combination of tried and tested best practices and policies with the fundamental shift needed in the way we think about our cities"--

Description / Table of Contents: A new experimental method for measuring the soil-water diffusivity of frozen soil under isothermal conditions is introduced. The theoretical justification of the method is presented and the feasibility of the method is demonstrated by experiments conducted using marine-deposited clay. The measured values of the soil-water diffusivity are found comparable to reported experimental data.

Description / Table of Contents: "In 2004, Kentaro Toyama, an award-winning computer scientist, moved to India to start a new research group for Microsoft. Its mission: to explore novel technological solutions to the world's persistent social problems. Together with his team, he invented electronic devices for under-resourced urban schools and developed digital platforms for remote agrarian communities. But after a decade of designing technologies for humanitarian causes, Toyama concluded that no technology, however dazzling, could cause social change on its own. Technologists and policy-makers love to boast about modern innovation, and in their excitement, they exuberantly tout technology's boon to society. But what have our gadgets actually accomplished? Over the last four decades, America saw an explosion of new technologies - from the Internet to the iPhone, from Google to Facebook - but in that same period, the rate of poverty stagnated at a stubborn 13%, only to rise in the recent recession. So, a golden age of innovation in the world's most advanced country did nothing for our most prominent social ill. Toyama's warning resounds: Don't believe the hype! Technology is never the main driver of social progress. Geek Heresy inoculates us against the glib rhetoric of tech utopians by revealing that technology is only an amplifier of human conditions. By telling the moving stories of extraordinary people like Patrick Awuah, a Microsoft millionaire who left his lucrative engineering job to open Ghana's first liberal arts university, and Tara Sreenivasa, a graduate of a remarkable South Indian school that takes children from dollar-a-day families into the high-tech offices of Goldman Sachs and Mercedes-Benz, Toyama shows that even in a world steeped in technology, social challenges are best met with deeply social solutions. "--

Description / Table of Contents: Das Standardwerk existiert seit über 50 Jahren und bietet einen ausführlichen und gründlichen Überblick zur Laborarbeit im Bereich der organischen Chemie. (2)

Description / Table of Contents: Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist: more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon. His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Own story: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest, climbed the world's highest volcanoes and inspired princes and presidents, scientists and poets alike. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, 'the greatest man since the Deluge'. Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps - racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers alive with crocodiles - Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today. Humboldt predicted human-induced climate change as early as 1800, and 'The Invention of Nature' traces his ideas as they go on to revolutionize and shape science, conservation, nature writing, politics, art and the theory of evolution. He wanted to know and understand everything and his way of thinking was so far ahead of his time that it's only coming into its own now. Alexander von Humboldt really did invent the way we see nature

Description / Table of Contents: Assumed comparable environmental conditions of early Mars and early Earth in 3.7 Ga ago – at a time when first fossil records of life on Earth could be found – suggest the possibility of life emerging on both planets in parallel. As conditions changed, the hypothetical life on Mars either became extinct or was able to adapt and might still exist in biological niches. The controversial discussed detection of methane on Mars led to the assumption, that it must have a recent origin – either abiotic through active volcanism or chemical processes, or through biogenic production. Spatial and seasonal variations in the detected methane concentrations and correlations between the presence of water vapor and geological features such as subsurface hydrogen, which are occurring together with locally increased detected concentrations of methane, gave fuel to the hypothesis of a possible biological source of the methane on Mars. Therefore the phylogenetically old methanogenic archaea, which have evolved under early Earth conditions, are often used as model-organisms in astrobiological studies to investigate the potential of life to exist in possible extraterrestrial habitats on our neighboring planet. In this thesis methanogenic archaea originating from two extreme environments on Earth were investigated to test their ability to be active under simulated Mars analog conditions. These extreme environments – the Siberian permafrost-affected soil and the chemoautotrophically based terrestrial ecosystem of Movile cave, Romania – are regarded as analogs for possible Martian (subsurface) habitats. Two novel species of methanogenic archaea isolated from these environments were described within the frame of this thesis. It could be shown that concentrations up to 1 wt% of Mars regolith analogs added to the growth media had a positive influence on the methane production rates of the tested methanogenic archaea, whereas higher concentrations resulted in decreasing rates. Nevertheless it was possible for the organisms to metabolize when incubated on water-saturated soil matrixes made of Mars regolith analogs without any additional nutrients. Long-term desiccation resistance of more than 400 days was proven with reincubation and indirect counting of viable cells through a combined treatment with propidium monoazide (to inactivate DNA of destroyed cells) and quantitative PCR. Phyllosilicate rich regolith analogs seem to be the best soil mixtures for the tested methanogenic archaea to be active under Mars analog conditions. Furthermore, in a simulation chamber experiment the activity of the permafrost methanogen strain Methanosarcina soligelidi SMA-21 under Mars subsurface analog conditions could be proven. Through real-time wavelength modulation spectroscopy measurements the increase in the methane concentration at temperatures down to -5 °C could be detected. The results presented in this thesis contribute to the understanding of the activity potential of methanogenic archaea under Mars analog conditions and therefore provide insights to the possible habitability of present-day Mars (near) subsurface environments. Thus, it contributes also to the data interpretation of future life detection missions on that planet. For example the ExoMars mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos which is planned to be launched in 2018 and is aiming to drill in the Martian subsurface

Description / Table of Contents: Viele Ansätze der 〉〉Qualitativen Sozialforschung〈〈 bleiben vage, unsystematisch und schwer nachvollziehbar. Die 〉〉Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse〈〈 hingegen bietet als explizit theorie- und regelgeleitete Analyse die Möglichkeit einer systematischen, strukturierten Arbeit mit unterschiedlichstem sprachlichen Material. - - Die überarbeitete 12. Auflage beschreibt Grundlagen und Vorgehensweise der 〉〉Qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse〈〈 auf der Basis der drei Grundformen Zusammenfassung, Explikation und Strukturierung.