Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists最新文献

{"title":"Blockchain beyond cryptocurrency: A revolution in information management and international security","authors":"C. Vestergaard, Lovely Umayam","doi":"10.1080/00963402.2022.2090116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2022.2090116","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Public attention on blockchain is currently centered on the erratic fluctuation of cryptocurrency, overshadowing other potential use-cases that can have significant impact on global security, including the tracking, accounting, and securing of sensitive assets such as nuclear material and facilities.","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"78 1","pages":"198 - 202"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43652383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"After the fall: Bitcoin’s true legacy may be blockchain technology","authors":"Eswar S. Prasad","doi":"10.1080/00963402.2022.2087371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2022.2087371","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Bitcoin and its peers have set off a technological revolution that will transform money, finance, and society. However, the future of cryptocurrencies as financial assets is far from certain – as can be seen from Bitcoin’s halving in value in six months since November 2021; the total value of all cryptocurrencies fell from $3 trillion to $1.3 trillion over this period. Rather, it is the underlying technology that enables cryptocurrency – the blockchain – that is likely to prove its true legacy.","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"78 1","pages":"187 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45812542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"Tobacco denormalization at home\": the contribution of the smoking ban in enclosed workplaces in Brazil.","authors":"André Salem Szklo, Tânia Maria Cavalcante, Neilane Bertoni Dos Reis, Mirian Carvalho de Souza","doi":"10.1590/0102-311X00107421","DOIUrl":"10.1590/0102-311X00107421","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Estimates suggest that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is related to 1.2 million deaths per year worldwide. Synergy between various anti-smoking legislative and educational measures is essential to stimulate cessation and prevent initiation. This article aimed to explore how legislative protection from exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in enclosed workplaces in Brazil, whose strengthening occurred in a phased manner between 1996 and 2014, possibly contributed to the protection from passive smoking at home. We evaluated, via generalized linear models, the absolute and relative differences in the proportion of individuals living in smoke-free homes between those exposed and not exposed to passive smoking in enclosed workplaces, both crude and adjusted by sociodemographic and smoking behavior variables, and stratified by non-smokers and smokers. Data from three national surveys conducted in 2008, 2013, and 2019 were used. Regardless of smoking status and year when the data were analyzed, individuals who were employed in smoke-free workplaces were more likely to live in smoke-free homes than smokers who were employed in workplaces that allowed smoking. Adjusted absolute difference increased from +5.5% in 2008 to +10.5% in 2013 among non-smokers, and from +7.1% in 2013 to 15.6% in 2019 among smokers (p-values for additive interaction ≤ 0.05). Strengthening the Brazilian smoke-free legislation was likely associated with a reduction in passive smoking at home, which, therefore, may also reduce the burden of mortality, morbidity, and costs for society related to smoking.</p>","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"66 1","pages":"e00107421"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91270253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wood-burning: Carbon hero or carbon villain. Q&A with forest modeling scientist Michael Ter-Mikaelian","authors":"D. Drollette","doi":"10.1080/00963402.2022.2065061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2022.2065061","url":null,"abstract":"Proponents of replacing fossil fuel with wood often envision vast plantations producing plant matter exclusively to fuel converted coal-fired power plants. They argue that the forests are renewable and restorable, and that tree restoration is the most effective solution to climate change to date. But others say this may not be the best way to deal with climate change and may even make the problem worse, because clear-cutting removes existing forest land – which has been actively removing carbon emissions from the atmosphere – for prolonged periods. Much of the promise of burning wood in place of fossil fuel hinges upon the assumption that the trees will grow back quickly enough to take more carbon out of the atmosphere. Researcher Michael Ter-Mikaelian, of the Ontario Forest Research Institute in Canada, talks with the Bulletin’s Dan Drollette Jr. about some of the problems to determining if burning wood makes sense to fight climate change. He and his team discovered that much depends upon the original reference points, the conditions under which the trees were grown and harvested, the length of the time frame used in calculating carbon emissions and uptake, and what would have happened to the forest had it not been harvested.","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"78 1","pages":"158 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48381410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Can we grow and burn our way out of climate change?","authors":"D. Drollette","doi":"10.1080/00963402.2022.2066808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2022.2066808","url":null,"abstract":"To help fight climate change, the world needs to burn less coal, oil, and natural gas. The reasons are twofold: When burned, these fossil fuels emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. Also, the carbon they contain was originally formed by the decay of plants and animals that were alive before the age of the dinosaurs – hence the adjective “fossil.” During all the time that passed since they died, the carbon contained in those organisms was safely locked away deep underground – but now that it’s extracted and burned, that material becomes a fresh source of carbon in the atmosphere, one that had not been in play for millennia. Saying that the world has to stop using fossil fuels is simple, but implementing a new energy system built largely on renewable energy is difficult, as anyone knows who follows the news from Washington, D. C. One possible solution that has gained traction in the last decade involves replacing the burning of coal in electrical generating plants with the burning of wood – or any other kind of vegetation, including corn, sunflower stalks, grapevines, soybeans, and other forms of what is technically known as “biomass.” In the most financially successful version of this technology to date, huge swathes of forests in North America are clearcut and ground into little wood pellets that look like the dry feed available at the corner pet store. These pellets are then shipped thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean to generate electricity at power plants in Europe – the most well-known of which is probably the one located in the town of Drax in the United Kingdom. Formerly one of the largest coal-burning power plants in the world, the Drax facility has been retrofitted at a cost of an estimated $1 billion to burn wood pellets. The promoters of this technology have been heavily touting Drax as the prototype of a so-called “green” way to combat climate change, claiming that the power plant merely re-uses carbon that is already in the carbon cycle rather than consuming fossilized carbon; policy makers in the UK and EU agree with them and have given Drax massive subsidies and tax writeoffs. This facility is just one – albeit the biggest and most (in)famous – of several such power plants. Intuitively, cutting down trees to burn them seems nonsensical in a climate change context. Trees are, after all, elegant, living systems that extract carbon from thin air and sequester it in solid form: wood. But the question of whether biomass burning can truly be green generates strong reactions, both pro and con. To lead off this special issue, Oxford University physics professor and Bulletin Science and Security Board member Ray Pierrehumbert lays out some of the key issues involved in replacing fossil fuel with biomass and explains what biomass burning is and why it could work – at least in theory. In his article “Plant power: Burning biomass instead of coal can help fight climate change, but only if done right,” Pierrehumbert argues that the answe","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"78 1","pages":"123 - 124"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45689276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When burning wood to generate energy makes climate sense","authors":"R. Abt, Christopher S. Galik, Justin Baker","doi":"10.1080/00963402.2022.2062941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2022.2062941","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Over the last 20 years, IPPC reports have made it clear that the world must move beyond simply reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere to actively removing it from the skies. (Solar and wind can reduce carbon emissions, but they do not remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere). New BioEnergy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) technologies have been emerging that can remove carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere and sequester them permanently underground. Indeed, many long-term scenarios for transitioning from today’s fossil fuel-dependent society to a future net zero society hinge on BECCS. But a key question is what bioenergy feedstock to use. In some cases, powering these facilities by burning biomass that comes from plantations in the US South is an option. Consequently, the study of the origins, production, and use of the fuel consumed by the world’s largest biomass-fired power plant in Drax, England, provides a useful case study of the potential advantages and disadvantages of the burning of biomass – wood pellets made from trees, bark, roots, stumps, millwaste, sawdust, and other woody vegetation – in place of fossil fuel to generate power for processes such as BECCS.","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"78 1","pages":"152 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46419977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Sustainable” biomass: A paper tiger when it comes to reducing carbon emissions","authors":"Mary S. Booth","doi":"10.1080/00963402.2022.2062938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2022.2062938","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As the tragedy in Ukraine deepens, it’s clear that the world should end its dependency on Russian oil. It will be ironic, however, if nations disentangling themselves from this compromised energy source instead turn to another energy source with destructive impacts: harvesting and burning forest wood for fuel, which increases carbon emissions compared to fossil fuels, and degrades forests.","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"78 1","pages":"139 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46689135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Does wood bioenergy help or harm the climate?","authors":"J. Sterman, W. Moomaw, J. Rooney-Varga, L. Siegel","doi":"10.1080/00963402.2022.2062933","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2022.2062933","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The EU, UK, US, and other nations consider wood to be a carbon neutral fuel, ignoring the carbon dioxide emitted from wood combustion in their greenhouse gas accounting. Many countries subsidize wood energy – often by burning wood pellets in place of coal for electric power – to meet their renewable energy targets. But can wood bioenergy help cut greenhouse emissions in time to limit the worst damage from climate change? The argument in favor seems obvious: wood, a renewable resource, must be better than burning fossil fuels. But wood emits more carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour than coal – and far more than other fossil fuels. Therefore, the first impact of wood bioenergy is to increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, worsening climate change. Forest regrowth might eventually remove that extra carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but regrowth is uncertain and takes time – decades to a century or more, depending on forest composition and climatic zone – time we do not have to cut emissions enough to avoid the worst harms from climate change. More effective ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions are already available and affordable now, allowing forests to continue to serve as carbon sinks and moderate climate change.","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"78 1","pages":"128 - 138"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42609427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"United States nuclear weapons, 2022","authors":"Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda","doi":"10.1080/00963402.2022.2062943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2022.2062943","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, and Matt Korda, a senior research associate with the project. The Nuclear Notebook column has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987. This issue examines the status of the US nuclear arsenal. The US nuclear arsenal remained roughly unchanged in the last year, with the Defense Department maintaining an estimated stockpile of approximately 3,708 warheads. Of these, only about 1,744 warheads are deployed, while approximately 1,964 are held in reserve. Additionally, approximately 1,720 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement, giving a total inventory of approximately 5,428 nuclear warheads. Of the approximately 1,744 warheads that are deployed, 400 are on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, roughly 944 are on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 300 are at bomber bases in the United States, and 100 tactical bombs are at European bases.","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"78 1","pages":"162 - 184"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47042981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Burning biomass: A Drax-tic idea, and bad for environmental justice","authors":"S. Koester","doi":"10.1080/00963402.2022.2062939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2022.2062939","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The world is in a scramble for energy, with governments looking at every possible source to fulfill their energy needs. Concerns about environmental justice, biodiversity, and the protection of our natural resources are at risk of being shunted aside. And while energy sources such as biomass are being marketed as lower-carbon alternatives, they must be looked at extra closely to make sure that the cure is not worse than the disease – especially in communities of color.","PeriodicalId":46802,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists","volume":"78 1","pages":"148 - 151"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46818247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}