To analyze the effect of an increase in the quantity or quality of public investment on growth, this paper extends the World Bank’s Long-Term Growth Model (LTGM), by separating the total capital stock into public and private portions, with the former adjusted for its quality. The paper presents the LTGM public capital extension and accompanying freely downloadable Excel-based tool. It also constructs a new infrastructure efficiency index, by combining quality indicators for power, roads, and water as a cardinal measure of the quality of public capital in each country. In the model, public investment generates a larger boost to growth if existing stocks of public capital are low, or if public capital is particularly important in the production function. Through the lens of the model and utilizing newly-collated cross-country data, the paper presents three stylized facts and some related policy implications. First, the measured public capital stock is roughly constant as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) across income groups, which implies that the returns to new public investment, and its effect on growth, are roughly constant across development levels. Second, developing countries are relatively short of private capital, which means that private investment provides the largest boost to growth in low-income countries. Third, low-income countries have the lowest quality of public capital and the lowest efficient public capital stock as a share of GDP. Although this does not affect the returns to public investment, it means that improving the efficiency of public investment has a sizable effect on growth in low-income countries. Quantitatively, a permanent 1 ppt GDP increase in public investment boosts growth by around 0.1–0.2 ppts over the following few years (depending on the parameters), with the effect declining over time.

Control of key technological and benchmark flows of polymer fluids poses a number of challenges. Some of them are nowadays under active investigation and rather far from complete under­stan­ding. This review considers such phenomena as both practically important and governed by funda­mental laws of rheology and non-linear fluid mechanics. We observe, shear bands in polymeric and other complex structured fluids (like wormlike micellar solutions or soft glassy materials), birefrigerent strands, peculiarities of stress and pressure losses in fluids moving through com­plex shape domains. These and other processes involve in­ho­mo­geneity, in­stabilities and tran­sient modes creeping in flow fields. In practical aspect this is of interest in such industrial process as polymer flooding for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), where a flow inhomogeneity affects a poly­mer solution injectivity and residual oil saturation. The value of viscoelasticity in the polymer flooding is estimated. The obser­va­tion is con­clu­ded by some new results on relation between polymer concentration in solutions and viscoelastic traits of benchmark flows.

Attempts were made in the present study to design and develop skeletally modified ether linked tetraglycidyl epoxy resin (TGBAPSB), which is subsequently reinforced with different weight percentages of amine functionalized mullite fiber (F-MF). The F-MF was synthesized by reacting mullite fiber with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) as coupling agent and the F-MF structure was confirmed by FT-IR. TGBAPSB reinforced with F-MF formulation was cured with 4,4’-diamino diphenyl methane (DDM) to obtain nanocomposite. The surface morphology of TGBAPSB-F-MF epoxy nanocomposites was investigated by XRD, SEM and AFM studies. From the study, it follows that these nanocomposite materials offer enhancement in mechanical, thermal, thermo-mechanical, dielectric properties compared to neat (TGBAPSB) epoxy matrix. Hence we recommend these nanocomposites for a possible use in advanced engineering applications that require both toughness and stiffness.

Soil and groundwater remediation Act was enacted in year 2000. More than ten years has already passed,  Monitoring project has been completed,pollution status has been defined,contaminated sites depollution have been launched,a great progress has been made. This paper majorly to depict the extensive farmland soil qauality monittoring which is unpredent in Taiwan and believe has never been done worldwide.

This project was initiated from February 8^th, 2002 to August 8^th, 2002. The project tasks including digitalization of cadastre, farmland listing, basic information collecting, field investigation, sampling & analysis planning, field sampling, soil sample analysis, data evaluation, suggestion of contaminated farmland control, and analysis of potential pollution sources and transfer routes.

2,251 soil samples,had been sampled from Chang-Hwa County, Yun-Lin County, Nan-Tao County, and Chia-Yi City, and been analyzed in this project. 44% of these samples concentration exceed the soil pollution control standard (Table 1), including 492 farmlands (125.65 ha registered) with total contaminated farming area of 108.38 ha in Chang-Hwa, and 6 farmlands (0.39 ha registered) with total contaminated farming area of 0.39 ha in Nan-Tao County. However, the concentration of samples from Ynu-Lin County and Chia-Yi City do not exceed the soil pollution control standard.

To coordinate with the investigation results of the relative project regarding to water and sediment quality of irrigation channels in Chang-Hwa area, the pollution sources are preliminary concluded to be the irrigation channels surrounding the farmlands in Chang-Hwa area. As to the Nan-Tao County, the abandoned brick furnace plants neighboring the farmland are suspected to be the pollution sources.

The results show that the soil of the investigation area in Chang-Hwa County is the most polluted. Base on the Geostatistics study and the distribution of the irrigation channels; the area neighboring the investigated farmland in this project is suspected being polluted. For the farmlands exceeding soil control standard, Geostatistics method is suggested to coordinate with the information of the irrigation system to clarify the contaminated area so as to be the basis of land control and remediation work. As to the farmlands, not being investigated in this project but with high pollution potential according to the Geostatistics study, detail investigations are suggested. Regarding to soil pollution remediation, it is suggested to coordinate with the effluent control and irrigation channel remediation to achieve an all-out success.

The management of Mediterranean mountains need to know whether or not the flora is adapted to respond to fire and, if so, through what mechanisms. Serpentine outcrops constitute particular ecosystems in the Mediterranean Basin, and plants need to make an additional adaptive effort. The objective of this study is to know the response to fire of the main members of the group of serpentine plants, which habit the Spanish Mediterranean ultramafic mountain, to help in their management. For this purpose, monitoring plots were established on a burned ultramafic outcrop, which was affected by fire in August 2012.They were located in the Mediterranean south of the Iberian Peninsula, Andalusia region. The dominant vegetation of this serpentine ecosystem had been studied previously to fire; it was a shrubland composed of endemic serpentinophytes (small shrubs and perennial herbs) included in Digitali laciniatae-Halimietum atriplicifolii plant association (Cisto-Lavanduletea class) in an opened pine forest. The post-fire response of the plants was studied in the stablished burned plots by field works through permanent 200 x 10 m transect methods, consisting on checking whether they were resprouters, seeders, both of them or if they showed no survival response. Additional information about fire related functional traits is provided for the studied taxa from other studies. Of the total of plants studied (23 taxa), 74% acted as resprouters, 30% as seeders, some of which also had the capacity to resprout (13%), and only 9% of the plants did not show any survival strategy. The presence of a resprouting burl was not high (17%), although serpentine small shrubs such as Bupleurum acutifolium and the generalist Teucrium haenseleri had this kind of organ. The herbaceous taxa Sanguisorba verrucosa, Galium boissieranum and Linum carratracense were seen to be resprouters and seeders. The serpentine obligated Ni-accumulator, Alyssum serpyllifolium subsp. malacitanum, did not show any survival strategy in the face of fire and therefore their populations need monitoring after fires. In the studied ecosystems no species had traits that would protect the aerial part of the plant against fire, although most of the species are capable of post-fire generation by below ground buds. Our results show that the ecosystem studied, composed of taxa with a high degree of endemism and some of them threatened, is predominantly adapted to survival after a fire, although their response capacity may be decreased by environmental factors.