Download or read book Taming the Wild Field written by Willard Sunderland and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stretching from the tributaries of the Danube to the Urals and from the Russian forests to the Black and Caspian seas, the vast European steppe has for centuries played very different roles in the Russian imagination. To the Grand Princes of Kiev and Muscovy, it was the "wild field," a region inhabited by nomadic Turko-Mongolic peoples who repeatedly threatened the fragile Slavic settlements to the north. For the emperors and empresses of imperial Russia, it was a land of boundless economic promise and a marker of national cultural prowess. By the mid-nineteenth century the steppe, once so alien and threatening, had emerged as an essential, if complicated, symbol of Russia itself.Traversing a thousand years of the region's history, Willard Sunderland recounts the complex process of Russian expansion and colonization, stressing the way outsider settlement at once created the steppe as a region of empire and was itself constantly changing. The story is populated by a colorful array of administrators, Cossack adventurers, Orthodox missionaries, geographers, foreign entrepreneurs, peasants, and (by the late nineteenth century) tourists and conservationists. Sunderland's approach to history is comparative throughout, and his comparisons of the steppe with the North American case are especially telling.Taming the Wild Field eloquently expresses concern with the fate of the world's great grasslands, and the book ends at the beginning of the twentieth century with the initiation of a conservation movement in Russia by those appalled at the high environmental cost of expansion.

Download or read book Exergy Method written by Jan Szargut and published by WIT Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The exergy method makes it possible to detect and quantify the possibilities of improving thermal and chemical processes and systems. The introduction of the concept thermo-ecological cost (cumulative consumption of non-renewable natural exergy resources) generated large application possibilities of exergy in ecology. This book contains a short presentation on the basic principles of exergy analysis and discusses new achievements in the field over the last 15 years. One of the most important issues considered by the distinguished author is the economy of non-renewable natural exergy. Previously discussed only in scientific journals, other important new problems highlighted include: calculation of the chemical exergy of all the stable chemical elements, global natural and anthropogenic exergy losses, practical guidelines for improvement of the thermodynamic imperfection of thermal processes and systems, development of the determination methods of partial exergy losses in thermal systems, evaluation of the natural mineral capital of the Earth, and the application of exergy for the determination of a pro-ecological tax.A basic knowledge of thermodynamics is assumed, and the book is therefore most appropriate for graduate students and engineers working in the field of energy and ecological management.

Download or read book Flowers of Greece and the Balkans written by Oleg Polunin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1987 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flowers of Greece and the Balkans is a unique field guide by one of the best-known botanists of our time. First published in 1987 and never surpassed, this volume names and describes nearly 3,000 species of flowering plants in the region. Many of the richest plant hunting areas in southeast Europe are described firsthand, and each description is accompanied by several line drawings. The book's most outstanding feature is 80 pages of color plates containing almost 500 photographs of flowers in their natural settings. The only comprehensive field guide for the region, this reissued version will delight all botanists, gardeners, conservationists, and naturalists interested in the flora of southeastern Europe.

Download or read book Steam and Gas Turbines written by A. Kostyuk and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: