The Basin Hopping search method is used to find the global minima (GM) and map the energy landscapes of thiocyanate-water clusters, (SCN)(H2O)n with 3–50 water molecules, with empirical potentials describing the ion-water and water-water interactions. (It should be noted that beyond n = 23, the lowest energy structures were only found in 1 out of 8 searches so they are unlikely to be the true G...

Platinum is an active catalyst for a large number of (electro)chemical reactions in aqueous solution. The observed catalytic activities result from an interplay between the intrinsic adsorption properties of platinum surfaces and their interaction with the aqueous environment. Although water networks have been extensively studied on close-packed surfaces, little is known about high-coverage sol...

Infrastructure sectors such as energy, gas or water supply, waste water treatment or telecommunication provide us with services that are essential for modern life and for industrialized societies. In order to better understand the opportunities and limits of transformation processes in infrastructures, we will explore the particularities of these sectors. We introduce and discuss five dimension...

It is the purpose of this chapter to provide standards for the functional properties of packaging systems used for solid oral dosage forms (SODF) and liquid oral dosage forms (LODF) for pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements. Definitions that apply to this chapter are provided in Packaging and Storage Requirements á659ñ. The tests that follow are provided to determine the moisture vapor transm...

"Bottom-up" approaches to the many-body physics of fermions have recently demonstrated precise number and site-resolved preparations with tunability of interparticle interactions in single-well, SW, and double-well, DW, nanoscale confinements created by manipulating ultracold fermionic atoms with optical tweezers. These experiments emulate an analogue-simulator mapping onto the requisite micros...

Human health is greatly affected by inadequate access to sufficient and safe drinking water, especially in low and middle-income countries. Drinking water governance improvements may be one way to better drinking water quality. Over the past decade, many projects and international organizations have been dedicated to water governance; however, water governance in the drinking water sector is un...

A comparative study was conducted in this work in order to investigate the current situation in the Nile river basin (NRB) regarding the institutional and legal arrangements needed to support the adaptive integrated water resources management (AIWRM) strategy. Two similar river basins were selected to achieve this comparison and to introduce suggestions to reform the current situation in the ba...

Why GIWA? Six years ago several people had their doubts as to whether a Global International Waters Assessment would be worth the money and effort. Nowadays, it is no longer necessary to justify the creation of GIWA. On the contrary, we will show how important it was that the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and UNEP, constituted GIWA. Countless water-related assessments focus on specific re...

[1] Among countries with river basin organizations to manage their water resources, Spain’s experience is one of the longest. One of the first basin agencies established in Spain was for the Guadalquivir River in the south. A case study of that river basin and its management indicates how basin management is shaped by political economy factors such as the historical path of the agency’s evoluti...