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Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for Business

Download this white paper to find out how to connect technology to strategies that support the evolution of a CFO to a “wizard”— someone who performs the role of trusted advisor, prophet, sorcerer, and more. Understand how taking a fresh look at current business processes and wisely choosing which ones to improve can ensure an escape from the transaction-focused bean counter role. The 5 strategies include: Improving visibility and context of the data employees need to succeed Identifying and resolving a business pain that is reducing profits Ensuring financial goals and business goals are linked —and attained Being a watchdog and vocal supporter of projects that support regulatory compliance (IFRS) and technology investment (XBRL) Empowering the organization: ensuring decisions can be made at the right levels Explore why these topics are most critical in creating order and direction in a changing and sometimes chaotic business climate, and also which technologies can be most helpful in the CFO’s pursuit of success and impact. Request Free!

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Bean Counter to Business Leader: The Changing Role of the CFO

Environmental engineering is one of the most popular, complex and fast growing disciplines in engineering. The scope of environment includes issues from public health, aesthetics, and impact of all development activities, pollution control legislation, standards, regulations, guidelines and their enforcement. Traditionally the application of engineering principles for the protection and enhancement of the quality of environment and protection of public health was called as sanitary engineering or public health engineering. Around 1968 this was changed to environmental engineering.

For conceiving environmental engineering, one has to consider the definition of engineering itself. Engineering may be defined as the application, under limits of scientific principles for the planning, design, execution, operation and maintenance of structures, equipment and systems for the development and benefit of the society. Here the word benefit is more important than the development. The so-called development in some cases may not be in real benefit of the society.

The environmental engineer plans, designs, executes, operates and maintains the water, wastewater and solid waste management plants. Clean, bacteriologically safe, potable drinking water protects and enhances public health. Liquid and solid waste management is a necessary step for healthy living. They also deal with air pollution control. The resulting pure cleaner air is conducive to people’s good health and prevents the building and other materials from the harmful effects of air pollution. The environmental engineer cares for the energy requirements of the society and the ways and means to protect the environment against the various pollutions created through the production and consumption of various goods and comfort conditions. It is the duty of environment engineer to assess the environmental impacts of the various development and other activities. In general one has to work to have sustainable and holistic development. Of course there are always constraints of resources, knowledge, human nature, social and racial considerations that limit the achievement of these goals.

Therefore the environmental engineering is defined as the application of scientific and engineering principles, under limits, for the protection and enhancement of the environment that includes the biotic and abiotic both components.

The environment exists in dynamic equilibrium of its biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) elements. The solar energy induced photosynthesis synthesizes the carbon as the plant tissue and we get matter in various forms from the trees. The carnivores, humans and animals consume the edible matter. They convert it into the energy required to sustain their lives. Their excreta comes near to the nature and the natural scavengers, bacteria and others convert it into inorganic matter like nutrients due to the biological decomposition. The roots of the plants, to form the edible matter again, extract these nutrients. Like this the nutrient cycle, material cycle, energy cycle and other cycles like hydrological cycle keep on existing until there is a great shock given by the human beings.

“Nature has enough for satisfying everybody’s need but not for anybody’s greed”. Human beings have lost their natural wisdom in want of power to overcome the nature. Since mid century the word has lost nearly one fifth of the topsoil from its cropland, a fifth of its tropical rainforests and animal species. Rapid industrialization and urbanization has increased carbon dioxide levels to the
point where global climate is being affected. The protective ozone shield is being depleted because of the chlorofluorocarbons. The forest, which is a complete ecosystem, is being converted into dead forests. The biodiversity is reducing everywhere in the world.

Biodiversity gives strength to the ecosystem against crisis. Only a well-diversified community can sustain against the extreme conditions. In quest of comfort conditions and well-secured life we have adopted a system, which is completely away from nature. We have made computers for paper less office work but the energy in making and running the computers is more than the savings made.

Of course there are other advantages of computers in computation, up keeping of data etc. But the materials used in making the computer and the disposal of the obsolete ones are drastically against the environment.

The quest of more and more comfort has fetched us far away from natural environment. The input of energy in building sector is increasing day by day. The requirements of both heating and cooling are becoming more and more energy exhaustive. At present the energy requirement in whole world is mainly met by fossil fuels. Nature has created the coal and petroleum in millions of years and we have exhausted them in hundreds of years. In the last 300 years we have consumed most of the coal and almost all of the petroleum products.

Out of the 1,30,000 MW installed capacity of electricity production in India about 66% is by fossil fuels (coal+ petroleum products), 24% by hydropower, 4% by nuclear means and only 6% by renewable energy resources like solar, wind, biomass including small hydropower plants. Still there is a very large potential of renewable energy resources unutilized but the present availability of fossil fuels and the present high cost of electricity production through R.E.S. has restrained their share to only 6%. With the advancement of technology and scarcity of fossil fuels the cost of RES will come down and there share shall increase, but is it the sustainable development? In modern context the idea of sustainable development immerged in the Earth Summit at Rio-De-Janeiro in June 1992 that let us plan a development in which the generations to come, may not become deprived of the resources which we are using today. To achieve this aim we have to control our present rate of consumption of the available resources like the fossil fuels, ground water and conserve the bio diversity and the natural cycles like the hydrological cycle.

While considering the production, consumption or utilization we have also to consider the other part that is pollution. Mixing of unwanted hazardous elements in anything is known as pollution, like mixing of sewage in fresh body of water, mixing of gases, like oxides of nitrogen, oxides of sulphur etc. in the air, increase of noise level etc. Actually the present trend of living is a serious cause of creating pollution in all spheres of life. Today the prosperity, wealth or living standard of a country is measured in terms of the per capita electricity consumption per year. That way India with its per capita consumption of 350 Kwh per year is considered far behind the U.S. which has around 20 times more than this. The advancement of a society is measured in terms of the measures of comfort like air conditioners, or conveyance like bigger and bigger expensive luxury cars. Taller buildings, more and more precious artificial fabric and so on. Production and maintenance of all these has created so much land, water and noise pollution that has overcome the advantages of all these so called advancements. Thus the challenging aspect of environmental engineering is to make balance between the rapid changes in the field of science, technology, health etc. and the very existence of life. Though environmentalism or the environmental consciousness is ancient the environmentalism became an organized force only in 1960s. It started with the publication of the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson on the pesticide DDT in 1962. Actually the exponential growth of population and the worldwide consumerism imposed a great load on earth’s natural resources and waste management systems.

This text aims at the fundamental, primary knowledge for every one who has a concern about environment. The chapters have been designed to quench the thrust of knowledge of a person, let it be a scientist, an engineer or any one who is concerned about protection of environment and thus a well wisher of society.

This book has been written after gaining 10 years experience of working in the public health engineering department of Rajasthan and 20 years experience of teaching civil engineering students, subjects like environmental engineering, ecology and environmental dynamics, solid waste management etc. Recently environmental engineering has been introduced as a primary course common to first year students of all branches who opt for it. This text is on basic environmental engineering that covers the syllabus of first year semester scheme of the Rajasthan Technical University and other universities. Some portion of the martial presented in this book has bean derived from the work of others, their contribution is greatly ackoweldged. The recommendation of manual of water supply and treatment, manual on Sewerage and Sewage Treatment and manual on Solid Waste Management prepared by the Central public Health and Environmental Engineering organization, Government of India, Ministry of urban development have been closely followed.

I acknowledge my debts to my parents for their blessings, my wife Bharati for her constant support, my daughter Ruchira for her help on computer, my son Saurabh and daughter-in law Surabhi for encouragement. I express my deep sense of gratitude to my teacher Prof. Damodar Sharma, Vice chancellor Rajasthan Technical University, Kota for being a constant source of inspiration for me. I thank Prof. M. P. Poonia Principal Engineering College Bikaner for his valuable suggestions. I thank Dr. A. K. Mathur and other colleagues of my department for their help. I thank Mr. S. Gupta, Managing Director, New Age International Publishers, New Delhi for prompt publication.

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Preparing for the Upswing

In the United States auto market, the highest selling luxury brand is the Lexus. The brand is a division of the Japanese car company Toyota Motor Corporation. Its popularity among luxury car buyer is evident on the increasing acceptance of the Japanese brand in the United States auto scene.

One of the most notable models from the brand is the LS 460. The model is the ultra-luxury model of the brand. It made its debut at the 2006 New York International Auto Show (NYIAS) and since then has received positive reviews and feedbacks from consumers. Recently, the vehicle is named as the 2007 Best Engineered Vehicle by the Automotive Engineering International Magazine.

The Lexus LS 460 received the distinction after it received the most votes from AEI’s subscribers. Kevin Jost, the Editor-In-Chief of the magazine, has this to say about the award: “The voters had good reason for choosing the Lexus LS 460. ‘The LS 460 brings consumers at least nine world-firsts, including safety breakthroughs such as an advanced obstacle-detection system, emergency-steering assist and rear pre-crash systems. For driving pleasure, there’s also an eight-speed automatic transmission.” Indeed, the LS 460 is packed with a variety of features never before seen in a luxury vehicle.

One of the cutting edge features employed by the Lexus LS 460, as stated by Jost, is the eight-speed automatic transmission. This technology allows the vehicle to accelerate quickly since it provides smooth gear changes in with a wide variety of gear ratios. The smooth transmission also reduces the amount of power wasted thus increasing fuel efficiency.

The pre-crash safety systems are also a first for an automobile and the LS 460 provides such. This means that the vehicle not only provides a good performance but also protects its occupants. The obstacle-detection system provides drivers with sufficient warning to avoid possible accidents. The driver-monitoring system is also a feature of the Lexus LS 460. With this technology, safety can be checked basing on the driver’s capacity to properly drive the vehicle.

Safety features also include the emergency-steering assist which checks oversteer and understeer. With the use of sensors and advanced electronic programs, this vehicle can provide valuable steering assistance to avoid or minimize the risk of accidents.

Aside from the said features, the Lexus LS 460 also employs an intelligent powertrain control system. This system adapts to the engine’s need for power and other variables to provide good performance and respectable fuel efficiency. Rear collisions are also one of the most dangerous accidents a motorist can encounter.

To reduce the risk of severe injury caused by rear end collisions, the Lexus LS 460 features a rear pre-crash safety system. Its roof climate diffusers are also one of the advanced features that the LS 460 boasts of. Another advanced feature that made the LS 460 the top choice for most luxury car owners is the VVT-IE electrically actuated camshaft phasers. These features fused with Lexus performance parts truly make this one of the most advanced cars in the world today.

Winning the coveted title is made even sweeter by the fact that it outclassed some of the most famous vehicles. The Lexus LS 460 took the first spot with the Chevy Silverado/GMC Sierra taking the second spot. The Silverado and the Sierra are acknowledged for their remarkable fuel efficiency.

These General Motors vehicles are known to squeeze 20 miles for every gallon. This is despite the fact that the Sierra and the Silverado are both full-size pickup trucks equipped with humongous V8 engines. Taking the third spot is the sports car from German car manufacturer Porsche, the Porsche 911 Turbo. The sports car made is acknowledged as one of the best engineered vehicles due to its advanced materials and aerodynamic engineering.