Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Environmental Hazards and Their Management
Published in Danny D. Reible, Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering, 2017
Developed western nations have tended to view global environmental degradation as a problem strongly associated with population growth. Population growth in less developed countries is about 2.1% per year, 2.4% if the growth rate in China is not included in this total (Population Reference Bureau, 1989). In the more developed countries, the average population growth rate is only about 0.6% per year (Population Reference Bureau, 1989). In addition, the less developed countries, including China, contain about 80% of the world’s population. With an average growth rate of 2.1% per year, the more than 4 billion people in less developed countries would double to more than 8 billion in about 33 years. Growth that is proportional to the current population is referred to as exponential growth. Mathematically it can be written () dPdt=kP
The Internet of Life
Published in Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design, 2017
Driven partly by substantial investments in ICT, the world’s two most populous developing countries now share 24.59% of global GDP (Statista, n.d.). China is also predicted to become the world largest economy, and India the third largest, by 2028 in market exchange rate terms (“The World,” 2015). Given their relatively robust performance amid global economic uncertainty, China and India also serve as role models for the rest of the developing world (Santos-Paulino and Wan, 2011), notwithstanding the environmental issues their surging economies have created. Moreover, because of cultural proximity and/or economic and political interdependencies, the developmental trajectories of ten highly populous developing economies, namely, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, Egypt, and Ethiopia, will likely be influenced by the next moves made by China and India (“World Economic,” 2014). Hence, we are likely to soon witness the ripple effects of the consumption induced by these two “southern giants.” Among those effects may be exponential growth in demand for natural resources and energy and global-scale environmental depletion and degradation. These are the biggest challenge the global community may confront in the near future.
The Environmental ImPACT
Published in John C. Ayers, Sustainability, 2017
Malthus predicted future food shortages because population grows faster than food supply. Population grows exponentially, while food supply grows arithmetically (linearly). Why the difference? A quantity grows exponentially when its increase is proportional to what is already there. In exponential growth, the amount of increase rises from one period to the next, while in linear growth the amount of increase per unit time remains the same. Absent limits, everything that reproduces grows in number at an exponential rate because individuals added to the population also reproduce. Compound interest works the same way: interest added to the principal each year also draws interest in future years.
Interpreting and tailoring affordance based design user-centered experiments
Published in International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation, 2020
Mo Chen, Ivan Mata, Georges Fadel
The exponential growth in today’s technology development promotes fast and very frequent product updating. This, in turn, shifts some of the users’ demands from performance goals assumed to be adequate in many of today’s products to an increase in ease of use, aesthetics and additional affordances. In fact, many products have evolved into what appears to provide effortless interaction and a plethora of functions for some users. A cellular telephone, for instance, is no longer primarily purchased to provide the ability to call someone, which is assumed to be a basic feature of the product; rather it is a computer providing access to the web, GPS, compass, games, etc … A car is purchased less for its capability to transport a person from one point to another, which is assumed it will certainly accomplish, rather it is a practical, beautiful, safe product that also provides a myriad of options to the user. For designers, the challenge is how to better address the users’ interaction with artifacts, and enable these users to achieve what they feel is a great experience. Therefore, designers need to better understand how users interact with a product or what is an expected user behavior when interacting with a product, and they need a systematic approach to acquire this understanding. With such an understanding, they can translate the users’ feedback into engineering specifications and design a new successful variant.
Extraction of Cr (VI) by pickering emulsion liquid membrane using amphiphilic silica nanowires (ASNWs) as a surfactant
Published in Journal of Dispersion Science and Technology, 2019
Murugan Perumal, Bhuvaneshwari Soundarajan, Nihal Thazhathuveettil Vengara
Environmental deterioration is due to exponential growth of population and the development of industries. The environmental pollution because of heavy metals containing wastewater is a masterpiece problem in recent decades. This poses a vast environmental and health hazards to the living organisms because of instinctive toxicity, combined with carcinogenicity and mutagenicity of these heavy metals. Heavy metals are hazardous in nature as they get bio accumulated. Strict environmental regulations and increasing public consciousness, in current period, have become major driving force for adopting new treatment techniques for these heavy metal containing wastewaters.[1]