John Ollason wrote:
The maintenance issue is one which makes Pascal, in my view, an outstanding programming language. I became interested in a problem to do with the distribution of foraging animals in a heterogeneous environment in the early '80s, published a paper on the subject, and lost interest in the problem, but around 2000, I returned to the problem, returned to the programs I had written 20 years before and could still understand and run them, and indeed used them as the foundation for the programs used in the research that revisited the problem. The only modification that was needed was to the file connexion procedure that connected internal Pascal files to the outside world, this despite the change of hardware from a Honeywell big iron machine, to Sun Pascal, to GPC, by courtesy of ISO Pascal.
John O.
I have an agricultural biomodeling problem for you.
Currently, the oceans absorb excess heat and carbon dioxide. Also, the vast majority of sunlight (for photosynthesis) hits the oceans. Also, the erosion of mineral nutrients (phosphate) ends up in the ocean. Further, the oceans offer depth, so marine agriculture is a 3D construct. Clearly, marine agriculture deserves interest. Yet the oceans are dying.
It is hard to politely discuss the global bio-opportunity (vs. bio-problem) in such a context as listed below.
It might be a good demo in your upcoming book.
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Dear Colleagues,
As part of IREE's spring seminar series, we are pleased to welcome Robert P. Anex to the University of Minnesota on April 6, 2005. Professor Anex will be giving a presentation titled: "Biorenewable Resource Policy in a Resource-Constrained World: Economics, Thermodynamics and Biorenewable Resources" (details below and at www.iree.umn.edu/events.htm http://www.iree.umn.edu/events.htm).
To download the flyer for this event, please go to:
http://www1.umn.edu/iree/docs/iree_april_seminars.doc
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**April 6, 2005* - IREE Seminar with Robert P. Anex, Associate Professor, Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies, Iowa State University
Title*: Biorenewable Resource Policy in a Resource-Constrained World: Economics, Thermodynamics and Biorenewable Resources
*Description*: The use of biorenewable resources for the production of power, fuel and products is promoted in the United States through a variety of state and federal policies. Justifications for these policies include concerns over finite supplies of fossil resources, global climate change, and support of agricultural production. The nature of these concerns is that they involve (possibly irreversible) impacts that extend into the distant future. Making economically justifiable decisions about investment in biorenewable technologies is thus complicated by these long-lived impacts that raise questions of intergenerational equity and the technical capacity to use substitution and innovation to offset social, environmental and resource degradation. In this respect, the economics of biorenewables well illustrates the issues of sustainability economics. This talk will briefly review the incompatible and often polarized economic viewpoints on the issue of sustainability and how biorenewables can be seen from these different perspectives. Whether recent developments in biorenewable technologies should be seen as endogenous technical progress and a source of substitution possibilities that justify the 'weak sustainability perspective, or rather represents simply a shifting of degradation and depletion from one set of inherently limited resources to another remains an empirical question that must be addressed. Valuation of the environmental impacts of biobased production is complicated by the complex, non-linear nature of agroecosystems.
*When*: 3:00-4:00 p.m.
*Where*: Cargill Building for Microbial and Plant Genomics, Seminar Room 105, U of MN, St. Paul Campus
*Registration*: The workshop is free and open to the public. Registration is not required.
*For more information*, please visit www.iree.umn.edu http://www.iree.umn.edu/
Sue Lewis University of Minnesota Center for Microbial and Plant Genomics IREE - Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment 1500 Gortner Avenue St. Paul, MN 55108
612-624-6198 (phone) 612-624-6264 (fax) lewis495@umn.edu www.iree.umn.edu