Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes
Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes

Author: National Academy of Sciences

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2001-06-12

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 0309170729

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As the world's population exceeds an incredible 6 billion people, governmentsâ€"and scientistsâ€"everywhere are concerned about the prospects for sustainable development. The science academies of the three most populous countries have joined forces in an unprecedented effort to understand the linkage between population growth and land-use change, and its implications for the future. By examining six sites ranging from agricultural to intensely urban to areas in transition, the multinational study panel asks how population growth and consumption directly cause land-use change, and explore the general nature of the forces driving the transformations. Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes explains how disparate government policies with unintended consequences and globalization effects that link local land-use changes to consumption patterns and labor policies in distant countries can be far more influential than simple numerical population increases. Recognizing the importance of these linkages can be a significant step toward more effective environmental management.

Race, Rigor, and Selectivity in U. S. Engineering
Race, Rigor, and Selectivity in U. S. Engineering

Author: Amy E. Slaton

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-06-01

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9780674054639

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Despite the educational and professional advances made by minorities in recent decades, African Americans remain woefully underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, mathematics, and engineering. Even at its peak, in 2000, African American representation in engineering careers reached only 5.7 percent, while blacks made up 15 percent of the U.S. population. Some forty-five years after the Civil Rights Act sought to eliminate racial differences in education and employment, what do we make of an occupational pattern that perpetually follows the lines of race? Race, Rigor, and Selectivity in U.S. Engineering pursues this question and its ramifications through historical case studies. Focusing on engineering programs in three settings--in Maryland, Illinois, and Texas, from the 1940s through the 1990s--Amy E. Slaton examines efforts to expand black opportunities in engineering as well as obstacles to those reforms. Her study reveals aspects of admissions criteria and curricular emphases that work against proportionate black involvement in many engineering programs. Slaton exposes the negative impact of conservative ideologies in engineering, and of specific institutional processes--ideas and practices that are as limiting for the field of engineering as they are for the goal of greater racial parity in the profession.