Imagination and desire

The more you imagine, the less you feel like doing something. This is what scientists call habituation. And the less you imagine, the more you feel compelled to act. This is the phenomenon of sensitization.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6010/1530.short

Determing a community structure

Biodiversity increases the costs of educating predators but decreases competition for food. The opposite is true. Uniformity decreases the costs of educating predators but increases competition for food.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v469/n7328/full/nature09660.html

Flow and Storage

We know very little about the impact of our actions on the environment. This occurs because we do not know exactly how much carbon dioxide we emit into the atmosphere and how much of it is offset by the nature. Science will provide us an exact number of our decisions when scientists understand better the flow and storage of carbon in the natural system.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6013/50.abstract

The number of leaders and coordination

In “Evolution of personality differences in leadership” Johnstone and Manica define leadership and the relation of conflict with the number of leaders and the challenge of coordination.

Leader is the person able to impose his/her preferences on followers and coordinate effectively.

A society has more leaders as more conflicts emerge. However, the higher the number of conflicts and leaders, the more difficult becomes coordination. The opposite is also true.

http://www.pnas.org.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/content/108/20/8373.full?sid=dad64573-2768-4516-9e51-56c980fcd293

"Measuring Environmental Performance"

“Measuring Environmental Performance (MEP)” is about the design of a metrics program. Metrics is a set of standards for measurement.

The favorable context of MEP is i) the increasing costs of environmental operations ii) market & regulatory & public pressures iii) international standards (ie ISO 14001) and iv) voluntary initiatives.

There are two types of MEP indicators i) leading, which is an in-process management indicator and ii) lagging, which is an end-of-process measurement. The percentage of facilities conducting self environmental auditing is type of leading indicator and the output of chemicals released in air an example of lagging indicator.

Considering this context and indicators, the application of MEP leads to i) measurement of progress against other companies & average industrial performance (benchmark) ii) compliance with trade associations & principles, goals, and Corporate Social Responsibilities iii) designing of more efficient processes iv) decreasing of material usage and environmental impact & increasing yield and profitability.

A successful MEP program follows this order i) design ii) implementation iii) evaluation iv) improvements.

http://www.gemi.org/resources/MET_101.pdf