Urban Dog Parks

Urban dog parks play a few roles within a community, including a sense of belongingness in the community and a movement towards a more sustainable future.

At a dog park, there are many interactions between people that take place. People's dogs run around together and the dogs act as a bridge for people talk to each other. Another way is that if some one's dog is cute, people want to go up to the dog to pet it. That allows strangers to interact with each other and create a relationship that wasn't there before.

The dog park can also create a movement towards a more sustainable future because it is in an urban setting. Some people living in an urban environment have lacked the opportunity to explore and experience nature. Usually dog parks are small areas but they have grass, trees, and various other plants. They are also a fairly quiet area where some people can get away from the urban life. Their experience with this could be used as a driving force to save places similar to this and reduce the amount of expansion that is taking place around cities.

Overall I believe that a dog park is a good thing to have within a community because it brings people closer together and it allows some residents to experience a small portion of what is beyond the buildings and asphalt roads.

Community Gardens

Community gardens play a few roles within a neighborhood or community. One of them is it brings the people in the community closer together. A community garden is usually a small parcel of land that is built by the community so people can grow their own vegetables if they don't have enough space in their back yard. It provides communication and relationship building opportunities between one another. Some people may ask for help from each other which will build relationships, and others may become social friends, planning on times to go to the garden each day to talk and tend to their plants.

Another role that a community garden plays is that it conserves a small green space in the area. The garden provides a view of where our food comes from, some people who are city dwellers are oblivious and think that vegetables and food just appear in the grocery store. Being able for someone to go through the process of watching plants grow and creating their own food might foster a new idea or opinion about nature and what goes on around them.

Air Quality

As I clicked on the interactive world map of air quality, the first area that popped up was the United States. I began to scan across the nation in search of the worst air quality to find the cause and location of it. The only red hazardous tag that I saw was located in the Southwest corner of the nation in Riverside, California. After doing some research, I found that the local municipal Airport was causing the Hazard. Everything was normal on the charts except the PM2.5. That is what set off the hazard tag being measured at 830. All of the other sections of pollution and air measurement were normal including the ozone and nitrous oxide.

Global Climate Change

 

Medieval Global Temperature Optimum:

The Medieval Global Temperature Optimum was a time period that lasted from 950 AD to 1250 AD. The area that it covered was that mainly of the North Atlantic region, but it could have been related to other climate changes in California and China. Although these were the warmest temperatures prior to the 20th century, they were cooler averages than the recent global temperatures of the 20th century. This era gave birth to the Little Ice Age which followed the next hundreds of years.

 

 

Little Ice Age:

The Little Ice Age occurred during the time period of 1300-1870 which North America and Europe were subject to much cooler temperatures than that of the 20th Century. The average temperature was one degree Celsius cooler which caused a domino effect of bodies of water in Europe freezing over and shortening the growing season by several weeks. Iceland was one of the hardest hit areas. Crops were almost impossible to grow including wheat and even hay crops. Sea Ice also became a big challenge, which extended a lot farther south than it had in the previous years. The deadly combination caused Iceland to loose half of its population.  

Osmium

Osmium

 

 

History:

Osmium is a chemical element with symbol Os and atomic number 76. It is a hard and brittle transition metal in the platinum group. Osmium is the densest naturally occurring element, with a density of 22.59 g/cm³. This metal was first discovered in 1803 by Smithson Tennant and William Hyde Wollaston in London, England. Osmium was discovered along side other metals like platinum and those that are in the platinum group.

 

Occurrence:

Osmium is the least abundant stable element in Earth's crust with an average mass fraction of 50 parts per trillion in the continental crust. It is found in three main areas on earth. These areas include:  igneous deposits (crustal intrusions from below), impact craters, and deposits reworked from one of the former structures. The largest known primary reserves are in the Bushveld igneous complex in South Africa. There are smaller reserves in the United states.

Mining and Production:
Osmium is obtained commercially as a by-product from nickel and copper mining and processing. During electro refining of copper and nickel, metals in the platinum group sink down to the bottom portion of the cell in something called anode mud. From there, osmium is still surrounded by other metals of similar properties. There is a series of different solutions that are used to dissolve osmium away from the other metals and once dissolved, the product is reduced using hydrogen, yielding the metal as a powder or sponge that can be treated using powder metallurgy techniques.

Application:
Because of the extreme toxicity of its oxide, osmium is rarely used in its pure state, and is instead often alloyed with other metals. Uses include: finger printing identification, detecting fatty cells in electron microscopes, osmium coated mirrors were flown in several space missions due to the high UV light reflection.

Price:
Osmium is usually sold as a minimum 99.9% pure powder. It is measured by troy weight and by grams. Its price in 2012 was about $400 per troy ounce (or about $13,000 per kilogram).

History timeline

                                    Here is my time line for different periods in history.

Issue of sustainability

The area that I chose to discuss for this weeks blog is the Amazon Rainforest. I addressed this area as one with an issue of sustainability. Deforestation is causing a large impact on not only the environment in the Amazon but also its people. Every hour an area of 200 football fields is being cleared in the Amazon; a reported 20 percent of the rainforest has been cleared in the last 40 years. Scientists say that if the deforestation continues to occur at this rate the rainforest will no longer exist and a large scale drought will take place. The large amount of precipitation is caused from the heat and moisture that is released into the atmosphere from the forest, if the forest is cut down, the source of moisture and heat will also diminish. The Amazon is home to a great diversity of animals, hopefully it will stay that way.