Tech. Lit. Crit. - The Drafting Table

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Tech. Lit. Crit.

A collection of 11 posts

My Erdős #

I only found out last year (at the Water Chair 3oth reunion) that I had one. An Erdős number is a measure of someone's degree of separation from the prolific mathematician Paul Erdős. Coauthorship on the same peer-reviewed paper counts as a link. A related concept is the

Harvesting Algae and Other Parts of the Biosphere

This post is a rambling review of a couple of books and a technical paper that are all around a common theme of obtaining renewable resources from photosynthesis. The books I'll be covering in this post are Harvesting the Biosphere by Vaclav Smil [http://vaclavsmil.com/2012/12/

Irrigation, untitled

Recently I read a few journal articles analyzing some historical instances of irrigation. My notes and some thoughts are shared below. The first article [https://doi.org/10.3406/rbph.2013.8411] was "Rome and Agriculture in Africa Proconsularis: Land and Hydraulic Development" by Arbia Hilali in Revue

Words on Biofilm

The past couple of weeks I've been on some business trips and haven't had time to write any posts. However, I did have time on a flight to read a technical paper that I want to discuss below (I also finished reading a book that I&

Delving into the fundamentals of anaerobic digestion

On the heels of my previous post [https://danbscott.ghost.io/weftec-2017/], I wanted to write something else related to the science of wastewater treatment. The two papers I discuss below are ones that I've read in the past, but haven't shared any notes on before.

WEFTEC 2017

At the start of the month, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I attended a big wastewater conference in Chicago. Note: everything on this blog is solely my own view and is written in my own capacity. I was one of over 22,000 people to attend WEFTEC

Research on MBR Costs

This post is a review of a paper reviewing the costs of membrane bioreactor (MBR) and reverse osmosis (RO) technology and how research could positively influence those costs. "Membrane technology costs and me [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135417303846]", by Dr. Simon Judd was published in

Water, Energy, Food

From time to time, I like to read a journal article and share a review. Toward the end of this post you can also find some related and random links. "The Water-Energy-Food Nexus and the Transboundary Context: Insights from Large Asian Rivers", by Keskinen, Guillaume, Kattelus, Porkka, Räsänen,

Ice-Out Dates in Oromocto Lake

I just got back from vacation, which is why I haven't had a post for a while. I plan to write some posts about my trip, but first I wanted to share this, since it is well-suited for this time of year. In a paper titled "Influence

WEFTEC 2014

This past week I had the opportunity to attend the WEFTEC conference and tradeshow in New Orleans, Louisiana. This post will hopefully convey a bit of this great experience. WEFTEC [http://www.weftec.org/about_weftec/default.aspx] (the Water Environment Foundation's Technical Exhibition and Conference) is the

An Academic Look at the Hydraulic Hypothesis

As promised in my review of Water: the Epic Struggle by Steven Solomon [https://danbscott.ghost.io/history-through-a-liquid-lens/], here is a more scholarly look at the hydraulic hypothesis. As I wrote before, "The hydraulic hypothesis says that large-scale irrigation works that supported the land-based empires of the ancient world