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Understanding the system of connections between societal contexts and policy outcomes in municipal governments provides important insights into how community sustainability happens, and why it happens differently in various communities. A growing body of research in recent years has focused on understanding the socio-economic characteristics of communities and cities that are recognized as policy leaders in sustainability. In this paper, we expand the focus beyond the leaders in sustainability as we apply a selection of socio-demographic influences of community sustainability to a large sample of U.S. communities using community classification analytics to identity a range of community types and levels of engagement with sustainability. Our typology presents an integrated and comprehensive perspective on the structure of community sustainability in the United States, highlighting key points of comparison between human capital factors such as population size and density, affluence, home ownership, and adoption of sustainability policy. The analysis provides new insights not only about community leaders in sustainability, but also communities with the civic and social capacity to do more, and the challenges that may inhibit sustainability efforts in others.

The problems of environmental pollution in the conditions of high dust content in the air during the development of coal mines in the territory of the Czech Republic are considered. A mechanism for making managerial decisions was developed using an integrated approach using the new technological process Nastup Tušimice (DNT) aimed at eliminating pollutant emissions and managing workers in dusty conditions in mining operations. The recommendations of active and passive measures aimed at reducing dustiness in the process of coal mining have also been developed.

Quarterly sampling campaigns were carried out during year 2019 to study the effects of organic pollution on the diversity and abundance of meiofauna from a polluted coastal system in north-western Mexico. Amongst harpacticoids, the family Miraciidae Dana 1846 was by far the most abundant and diverse, and several new species and the proposal of some new genera of Stenheliinae Brady 1880 and Diosaccinae Sars 1906 will be published elsewhere. Amongst the Diosaccinae, the genus Robertgurneya Apostolov & Marinov 1988 was one of the most abundant. This genus was proposed and diagnosed by Lang (1944, 1948) but after a complex taxonomical history, was made available by Apostolov & Marinov (1988) who proposed an amended diagnosis and designated R. similis similis (Scott A. 1896) as the type species of the genus. Here I propose a new species, Robertgurneya mexicana sp. nov., and give a fully illustrated record of the widely distributed R. rostrata (Gurney 1927). The relationships amongst the species of Robertgurneya are not clear, but the new Mexican species shares with R. falklandiensis (Lang 1936) the elongated inner dimorphic spine on the basis of the male P1. Additionally, a new amended diagnosis for the genus Robertgurneya, as well as the reallocation of R. soyeri (Apostolov 1974) into Typhlamphiascus Lang 1944, and the creation of a new genus, Robertgurneyella gen. nov., for R. spinulosa (Sars 1911) are proposed. 

Improving access to sustainable energy services and reducing the carbon footprint and deforestation of developing countries presents a substantial challenge to the development industry. This paper aims to critically assess two prevalent business models emerging to meet this challenge: financial institution–technology provider partnerships and the one-stop-shop, pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model. The authors find that collaborations between financial institutions and energy providers need to address grey areas such as product quality standards, marketing, and post-sales services, and incorporate feedback loops to continually evaluate the performance of the partnership. Pay-as-you-go presents an intriguing business case to leapfrog more traditional energy access programmes. However, more robust results from the field need to be reported before the PAYG movement can claim success. Ultimately, collaborative and integrated actions by all stakeholders are needed to achieve universal energy access.

Recent geomorphic evidence from the inner shelf and shoreface to the east of Long Island's barrier island system indicates that reworking of glacial outwash deposits at the inner shelf-shoreface transition, as sea level rises, may be supplying much of the sediment needed to maintain barrier islands to the west. A conceptual model describing sediment dispersal from outwash source areas was developed from this hypothesis. It was reasoned that outwash sediments ranging from silts to coarse gravels would be subject to differential transport paths across and along the shoreface upon reworking. Coarser grain sizes would move onshore toward the intertidal beach, whereas finer sediments would move offshore. Sand of intermediate grain size would be concentrated in the surf zone an move alongshore in wave-generated longshore currents. To test this model, 400 samples from the beach and shoreface of Long Island were analyzed for grain-size frequency distribution and each grain-size class was examined for frequency of occurrence in the cross-shore and alongshore directions. On a spatially averaged basis, grain-size classes displayed peak abundance in specific zones across the shoreface as predicted by the model, but alongshore trends could not be recognized among the "noisy" data. Therefore, empirical orthogonal functions (EOF) were used to examine uncorrelated (orthogonal) modes of variability in the occurrence of each grain-size class in the alongshore direction. The first function, representing more than 60% of the variability among the data, showed that grain sizes subject to longshore transport in the surf zone i crease in frequency in the alongshore direction relative to coarser grain sizes. Results also show that peak concentrations of coarse sediments correspond to zones subject to frequent overwashing. It is concluded that EOF analysis of individual grain-size classes holds promise for extracting trends from noisy data sets. End_of_Article - Last_Page 318------------

The aim of this research study was to investigate the energy recovery potentials in ventilation systems under different climatic conditions. The well-known heating degree day from the literature was updated using the weather data of cities with different climates from the past 40 years. As the novelty of this research with the developed procedure drawn up in this study, the energetic possibilities of heat recovery under various climate and operating conditions may be examined in more detail and more realistically than with the methods and available information of current engineering practices. To achieve this long-term and high definition the weather data of several cities are processed in order to evaluate the possibilities of heat recovery on a daily and annual basis.

[EN]A systematic approach is developed for the conceptual optimal design of biomethane production via carbon capture. A hybrid heuristic-mathematical procedure is proposed to determine the optimal technology and operating conditions. The heuristic step consists of a literature-based screening of the available technologies. After the prescreening stage, the technologies selected are amine absorption, pressure swing adsorption (PSA), and membrane separation. The mathematical stage is composed of two steps. First, different alternatives for each technology are modeled based on first principles and rules of thumb. These models are used to select the optimal configuration for each process considered. Second, a superstructure model for biomethane production is developed integrating the pre-selected upgrading technologies to select the optimal process, as well as to determine the optimal operating conditions. Four waste sources are analyzed: cattle manure, swine manure, municipal food waste, and sludge. The results suggest that the best amine is diethanolamine (DEA), the best membrane material is the polyimide, and the suggested zeolite is 13X among the ones studied. Finally, among the three technologies, the overall results show that carbon capture using a PSA system using zeolite 13X results in lower production and investment costs, but very close to the use of membranes. The results indicate that food waste shows the lowest production cost for biomethane 0.36 €/Nm3, due to the largest organic matter content, whereas the investment costs are 67 M€, considering a biogas production rate of 0.035 kg of biomethane per kg of waste and the processing of 311 kt/yr of food waste. Credits or incentives are still needed for biomethane to be competitive with fossil natural gas. Junta de Castilla y León y USAL

As the US biofuels market struggles in the wake of a drought crisis, conditions in Europe have improved. Major barriers to growth remain though, says Toby Cohen.