Coal Seam Gas Essay -- Environment

With environmental sustainability a key focus for the future the need for cleaner forms of power generation have resulted in a number of gas exploration projects in Australia (Department of Infrastructure and Planning, 2008). With Australia having potentially vast untapped reserves of coal seam methane beds it must be asked whether there are any negative impacts associated with coal seam methane (CSM) before the energy industry moves into a new technology. Coalification, the geologic process that progressively converts plant material to coal, generates large quantities of natural gas, which are subsequently stored in the coal seams. The increased pressures from water in the coal seams force the natural gas to adsorb to the coal. The natural gas consists of approximately 96 percent methane, 3.5 percent nitrogen, and trace amounts of carbon dioxide (U.S. EPA, 2004a). Also known as Coal bed methane (CBM), CSG is released by removing water from the stratum which reduces the pressure on the coal seam (Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation QLD, 2012). Over the past 15 years and despite the recent global economic downturn the CSG industry has continued to grow rapidly in both development and exploration. The Queensland’s coal seam gas overview shows this clearly with the annual number of wells drilled has increased from 10 in the early 1990s to nearly 600 in 2011 (Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation QLD, 2012). As a result of this rapid growth it is necessary to evaluate the current CSG industry to establish and minimise the current and future environmental impacts of CSG mining. Literature Review Many studies have been conducted into the environmental impacts of downhole ... ... treatments in the Oak Grove Field, Black Warrior Basin, In Situ, J. of Coal Research. 17:(3). 273-309. United States Environmental Protection Agency. 2000. Study Design for Evaluating of Impacts to Underground Sources of Drinking Water by Hydraulic Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Reservoirs. America: EPA. Ardis, L. 2006. Clash Over Coalbed Methane. The Tyee. http://thetyee.ca/News/200 6/11/14/CBM/. (Accessed Thursday 31st May 2012). Razowska L, 2000. Journal of Hydrology: Changes of groundwater chemistry caused by the flooding of iron mines (Czestochowa Region, Southern Poland). 244(200). 17-32. Polish Geological Institute. Montana Department of Environmental Quality, 2007. Coal Bed Methane Federal, State, and Local Laws, Regulations, and Permits - That May Be Required http://www.deq.mt.gov/coalbedmethane/cbm_water_quality.mcpx (Accessed Tuesday, 29th May, 2012).

Seamus Heaneys Poems Essay -- Seamus Heaney Poetry Poets Essays

Seamus Heaney's Poems Heaney was born on April 13 1939. He was the eldest of nine children. In modern day society it is common to have 2 or 3 children, and to have eight or nine children is considered very unusual. Heaney lived on the family farm, Mossbawn, about thirty miles northwest of Belfast, in County Derry. The majority of UK residents live in urban areas, and a small minority live in rural areas. It used to be more popular in the past to live in a rural area. People in rural areas live, and have lived, in a totally different culture to that of the people in urban, industrialized areas. Heaney is Irish, which is also another culture to that of the English, today. The conflict in Northern Ireland is almost always a backdrop to his work, stated or implicit. Heaney's Poems are based on real life experiences, which can be related to in only so many ways, because of the differences in lifestyle, culture etc. For example in 'Blackberry Picking', he is talking of picking berries as a boy, and then hoarding them until they rot. This may imply that he went berry picking just for the fun of it, but today it is unusual for children to go berry picking, let alone without an adult. The adult would have known to store the berries properly, but in Heaney's day berry picking was a ritual for children only. To my knowledge, the majority of Heaney's poems were written/ published between 1960 and 1990, though many of the poems refer to his childhood in the 1940's. Therefore, even though he is writing from a child's perspective, he has the understanding of an adult. He is also able to recall events in more detail. Many of the poems I have read are about his parents or major events in his childhood, e.g. 'Foll... ...e poems are written specifically about his childhood, and the third one links in. They tell of his loss of innocence, 'The Early Purges' tells us of his loss of sentimentality, loss of idealism as he grows up 'bloody pups', 'Blackberry Picking' tells us of his loss of optimism and idealism ' each year I hoped knew they would not' 'The past is another country and they do things differently there' This is a very true phrase. Heaney's has a very different past from us. Therefore, his poems even though some have been written fairly recently, can only be related to in context. People living an urban life and childhood, would have very different views on life and death, than Heaney does in his poems. The past is certainly another country, they didn't have the technology that we have today. And foreign countries also have different ways of living than we do.

Divine Evil by Nora Roberts Essay

â€Å"Divine Evil† is an interesting novel about crime and romance, written by the popular American author Nora Roberts. She is one of the world’s most successful and best-loved novelists and has more than 201 million copies of her books in print. The book is about several murders that happened in a small town, called Emmitsboro and the people who were affected by them. In the beginning of the story, Clare Kimball, who was a sculptor, went back to her home-town Emmitsboro to rest from the big city and focus on her work. She hadn’t gone back there in years, due to her father’s suicide. She re-opened her father’s house to live in and started to get re-acquainted with the people from the town. She met Cameron Rafferty, who was the town’s sheriff. He was a smart and influential man. Cameron knew Clare from before – they used to be intimate friends in high-school. She seemed really different to him now, more mature and established as an artist. Clare was really his type – good-looking and well-off. Soon after Clare’s arrival, unpleasant things started happening in Emmitsboro. Carly Simon, a troubled fifteen-year old teenager, came up missing one evening. For months no one saw her , and her body wasn’t found. Almost at the same time another person was severely killed. His name was Biff Stokey, Cameron’s step-father. Cameron had lost his real father when he was ten years old. That was when his mother Jane remarried Biff Stokey. He was a loud and rough guy, who became a decent husband to Jane, but never really loved Cameron as his son. As Cameron grew older, him and Biff started being enemies. While investigating Biff’s murder, Cameron started to get involved with Clare emotionally and sexually. He met her assistant from New York, Angie LeBeau and her husband Jean-Paul. They had come to visit Clare for the weekend and check on her sculpting. Clare’s brother Blaire also came in town to visit his sister. All four of them were really concerned with Cameron’s investigation. The suspense in the book escalated when Clare almost crashed into a scared woman on the highway. Lisa was running away from two men in masks, who had chased her in the woods, after her car had broken down. Clare drove Lisa to the nearest hospital. After that she phone-called Cameron to report the crime. Soon after that the plot started unveiling itself. Cameron found a whole bunch of evidence in Biff’s basement that he used to be involved in something not legal. He found pictures of naked women, together with books on worshipping the devil. Similar type of satanic literature was found in Jack Kimball’s attic that no one in Clare’s family had destroyed for years. The investigation discovered the existence of a satanic cult in Emmitsboro. The cult consisted of men, who worshipped the devil. These man gathered late at night in the fields to chant and make human sacrifices. They were also allowed to rape women before they kill them. Biff Stokey was apparently one of their guys and they had sacrificed him.

Night vs the Color of Water Essay

Religion is one of the many aspects that make up a person’s identity. Religion plays a major role in the search for identity of Ruth McBride, in James McBride’s The Color of Water, and Elie Wiesel, in his memoir, Night. Elie is tortured an dehumanized in concentration camps because he’s a Jew. He was seen as inferior because of his religion. Ruth was restricted from doing what her heart truly believed in because she was controlled by her Jewish faith. Her father represented the constraint of Judaism because he was a rabbi. Both stories prove religion can have a hindering effect on a person’s search for identity. Elie’s identity was changed greatly due to the effects of Judaism and the Holocaust. His identity was changed because he’d lost his innocence. â€Å"The student of Talmud the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded – and devoured – by a black flame†, is Elie’s way of explaining that he’s no longer a child and had lost his faith in god’s justice (Wiesel, 37). He felt as though he was no longer a child or a student, he was a prisoner like any Jew. It made him angry to see what was happening to all the people in the camps. Elie began to question God and asked,â€Å"Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for? † as he was entering Birkenau (Wiesel, 33). From this point on, Elie began to lose his unconditional devotion to God. Although he lost his faith, he continued to pray for strength to stay by his father’s side to support him because he was the most important person in his life. He said,†in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed† because he was praying for a way to preserve his humanity in a prison where every man would fend for themselves (Wiesel, 91). Judaism affected Ruth McBride deeply in various ways. She felt very restricted growing up in a Jewish Orthodox family and she complained that, †there were too many rules to follow, too many forbiddens and ‘you can’ts’ and ‘you mustn’ts’† (McBride, 2). Her father was a very unloving person who would mistreat Ruth and her mother by doing things such as threatening to send Ruth back to Europe. He would also sexually abuse Ruth without her mother knowing. He would threaten her and she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. She was â€Å"afraid of Tateh and had no love for him at all† (McBride, 42). Ruth tried to stay strong for her mother who was sick with polio, so she hid everything she was feeling. She was the type of person to always be running away and she had very low self esteem, which most likely came as a habit from her childhood. Her son James said that she had a bicycle and she would just ride around all the time and he â€Å"always thought mother was strange. She never cared to socialize with our always thought [his] mother was strange. She never cared to socialize with our neighbors† (McBride, 9). The bicycle symbolized her constant need for movement in order to deal with her stress and depression. If her life had been different, maybe she would’ve been able to find her true identity instead of being molded by fear and humiliation. Even though both Elie and Ruth weren’t able to be who they wanted to be because of their religion, both characters put family before themselves. Ruth always cared about her family, but her son would â€Å"starve for love and affection [but] didn’t get [any] of that† (McBride, 83). She didn’t show her children any love because that’s not how she was raised. Ruth would descibe herself as a â€Å"running-type person† (McBride, 42). Elie loved his father and wanted to take care of him even though his father wanted otherwise. When Elie wanted to watch over his father while they were freezing in a shed, his father said, â€Å"‘Don’t worry son. Go to sleep. I’ll watch over you’† and when Elie said otherwise, his father refused to take no for an answer (Wiesel, 89). Elie Wiesel and Ruth McBride both had their identity effected by religion. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he explained that he lost his faith because of all the killings and injustices done to his fellow Jews. He was prosecuted for being a Jew and was dehumanized. In The Color of Water by James McBride, Ruth Jordan describes the hardships that Judaism meant for her. It stood for her father and all the unreasonable rules she had to follow throughout the course of her childhood. Religion hindered both Ruth and Elie as they grew, but it formed the strong people they became as adults.

Gender Communication Essay

Women are continually hammering against a glass ceiling and also their advancement is usually hindered by a promotion bottleneck in the middle management and a sticky floor. According to a recent research on an analysis of careers from a number of employees, it was found out that the rates of promotion for men from the start of their careers to senior management was higher as compared to women who started at the same level. Majority of men were promoted as compared to women who had equivalent experience and education. This has adversely affected gender communication by way of intimidation whereby the women are left feeling inferior (Ivy, 28). I picked this topic so that I can comprehend deeply on the effects of glass ceiling and sticky floors approach to communication, and how it is related to gender communication. Knowledge about this topic would adequately prepare me for the world since I would be knowledgeable on how to handle various aspects of my life which include my workplace and my relationships. I came to discover that the glass ceiling and sticky floors issues had only been studied at a high level especially at the top of the management. Women are only promoted to very top positions only if they have successfully made it through at the middle management level (Wood, 157). From my conclusive research I discovered that there is usually a floor that is men dominated by the men in regards to promotions. Unfortunately for women, it is extremely difficult to penetrate through this floor due to the fact that there is a lot biases towards women promotions. Men are easily promoted whereas for women, they have to demonstrate capabilities beyond reasonable doubt that they deserve a promotion. I learnt that there is also the challenge of a mid- level bottleneck towards women which ideally favored men. This concept ensured that few women were promoted from the mid-level management to senior management. This meant that a lot of women were stuck at the mid-level management and they did not progress further from this level. However, this was not same case with men who had similar credentials to the women regardless of both sexes having similar qualifications academically and  experience (Krolokke and Ann, 58). I was deeply surprised by the aforementioned findings and I had to ask myself various questions about the topic. I still have not understood where there should be that prejudice towards women yet there is an affirmative action regarding women. I am yet to establish effective solutions to the link between challenges of gender communication in relation to the glass ceiling and sticky floors approach to communication. A number of areas need to be researched thoroughly so that the relation of the two aspects are understood and practice to the letter. Challenges that face the two aspects should be dealt with through consensus so that there can be a win- win solution where both parties, that is the male and female live and work in harmony (Wood, 159). In conclusion, I wish to strongly suggest that the gender equality aspect should be practiced and women should effectively be given equal opportunities like their male counterparts. Gender communication needs to be a two way traffic and both the male and female should have equal opportunities to express themselves. The barriers that create the glass ceiling and sticky floors approach to communication should be eradicated. Everyone should be given equal opportunities for harmony between both sexes to prevail. Works Citied Ivy, Diana K. Genderspeak: Personal Effectiveness in Gender Communication. Boston: Pearson Education, 2012. Print. Krolà ¸kke, Charlotte, and Ann S. Sà ¸rensen. Gender Communication Theories & Analyses: From Silence to Performance. Thousand Oaks, Calif. [u.a.: SAGE, 2006. Print. Wood, Julia T. Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Belmont, CA: Thompson/Wadsworth, 2008. Print. Wood, Julia T. Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage, 2013. Print.

Marriage in Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour”

In Kate Chopping â€Å"The Story of an Hour, the author uses irony and symbolism in order to emphasize her argument: even the kindest and most loving of marriages can be oppressive. In this short story, Mrs.. Mallard, who Is the main character, is a middle-class woman who has just lost her husband In a terrible accident. Her sister and one of her late husband's friends are there, and It Is they who break the news to her, being careful about It since she has heart problems. â€Å"Knowing that Mrs.. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. (p. L). Knowing about her husband's death, she (Mrs.. Mallard) locks herself in her room to apparently mourn and instead realizes that she has escaped from the grasps of marriage and is â€Å"free, free, free! † at last. She embraces her newly found freedom and triumphantly gazes at the life ahead. Near the end, she comes out of her room and walks arm In arm with her sister down the stairs to find her late husband at the door, which causes her heart to give way, in what the doctors proclaimed â€Å"of heart disease?of joy that kills. When she is first told of her husband's death, she retreats into her room and locks the door behind her, biding to be left alone. Once on her chair, she starts to let her feelings flow through her, at first, there is sadness and mourning, but later on she realizes that she doesn't feel all that bad about her husband passing away, Instead, she feels happy and rejoiced, and starts to look forwards to those days she had dreaded the day before. â€Å"She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. † She looks out of the open window in her room and sees the permitting in its bloom, with birds flying about, sparrows singing softly, patches of clear blue sky showing here and there. All of these are symbols for hope and freedom. Birds are creatures without boundaries, without limits and unbound to the ground, which we could take to mean marriage. She now feels Like a bird, able to fly off into the sky, leaving her grounding marriage behind.It is basically a symbol of freedom and hope for the future. This also tells us that her marriage, even though it wasn't a violent and unloving marriage was an oppressive one. † She knew that she loud weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. † And â€Å"And yet she had loved him?sometimes. Often she had not. What did It matter! † These unable to do as her heart desires, bound to an unloving marriage forever.Now, she has been given the chance to be free, to choose herself what she truly wants and the open window is the symbol for that. Outside of it lie all of her possible futures. Finally, she finishes by accepting her freedom and whispe rs the words she dreaded o much to say â€Å"free, free, free! † Finally, the cause of her death is her failing heart. She dies when she realizes that all of her dreams of freedom and independence have been shattered by the appearance of her undead husband. There is a kind of sick irony in this.First off, we thought it was he who had died, but at the end their roles are reversed and it is she who ends up dying. Next, the doctors assume that she died of â€Å"Joy that kills†, in other words, she was too happy of seeing her husband well and alive that is was too much of her heart. The reader, who has had access to ere thoughts and desires, knows that she dies of sadness of not being able to carry on living freely and independently without him. She dies because he shatters her dreams, not because he fulfills them.This takes us to Chopping second argument, that death is the only way out of the confinements of marriage. For all we know, Mrs.. Mallard stays at home quite a w hile, since her chair is â€Å"sunken in† which leads us to believe that it is frequently used and therefore she spends most of her time at home. This confinement is what she can't stand of marriage, unable of doing the thing she wants when she wants to do them. The only way she is able to escape this imprisonment is by the death of her husband, which sets her free.Chopin is basically arguing the old saying â€Å"The truth shall set you free†. Knowing that her husband has died, she lets the truth take hold of her, realizing that she's finally going to be happy. But when Mr.. Mallard strides unknowingly through the door, she collapses on the floor and dies. The truth, that he wasn't actually dead has set her free, has parted her from her oppressive marriage. At the very beginning of the story, in fact, the very first thing we know about Mrs.. Mallard is that she has heart problems â€Å"Knowing that Mrs.. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble†¦ In this short story, Mrs.. Mallard's heart disease is a symbol for her marriage and marriage in general in the technetium, in which marriage lies at the heart of society. Marriage is the beating heart of society, what binds it together, and is therefore an unbreakable bond, if you were to go against it you would go against society itself. This, from Chopping (Kate) point of view is unacceptable; marriage should be kept only if there is love, unlike Mrs.. Mallard and her husband. â€Å"And yet he had loved him?sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! The author makes the heart represent marriage, and to show that it is a broken institution she gives Mrs.. Mallard heart problems. This is a clear statement against marriage, telling us that it has lost its meaning and has become a sickly form of binding people together. In the story, it also foreshadows the events that happen later on, namely, her death due to a corrupt and broken marriage. In her short story, Kate Chopin tells us that wome n feel oppressed by marriage whether it is a loving marriage or not, and hey crave for freedom and independence.She does this with the help of symbols such as the open window, representing spring, freedom, hope, independence, and the possibilities of her new life and breaking the bonds of an oppressive marriage, the heart problem that afflicts Mrs.. Mallard which represents how marriage is â€Å"sick† only way a woman can escape marriage by having her die instead of him who supposedly died at the beginning of the story. All in all, she tells us that all marriages confine women and deprive them of their freedom and independence, that oppression is in the very nature of every marriage.

Advantages of Online Shopping

Advantages of online shopping: Online shopping is accessible round the clock. You can buy whatever you want even at 3 a. m. in the morning. You can choose from a wider variety of things available for you to shop which may not be available in the local brick and mortar stores. You also have the benefit to do all from the comfort of your own home. When you buy from online store you have the comfort to take your time while checking for the things of your choice, this will lead you to a simple and quick way to perform price comparison unlike the dissatisfied and hurried shopping you do in the local stores.In addition, unlike local stores, you can avail discount coupons and get a thing at a lower rate when shopping online. Besides, when shopping online you can also avoid long lines to wait in and the unnecessary contact with cranky people. If you feel uncomfortable dragging your kids for shopping, online shopping is the best way to counter that. Most of us are sometimes concerned with pri vate shopping; online shopping offers you a great platform to do so with comfort. Also, when you are buying gifts, online mode is the perfect way to send your distant friends or relatives the gift you wanted to send.When it comes to payment, you can use anyone's credit card when shopping online. A lot of us are concerned about the identity theft when hear about online shopping. Identity theft cases take place in reality in brick and mortar store itself and not online. Websites are secure these days with powerful encryption procedures that keep your identity safe and secure. Although there are a few where your information may not be secure, you can take a peaceful breathe when dealing with the vast majority of online shopping website.Consider websites that offer free shipping and this is definitely the way to go. As the price of gas is increasing, shipping and handling might be cheaper anyway. Disadvantages of online shopping: Although online shopping is 24/7 available, you cannot fe el or touch items rather can just see what is present on a webpage whereas in brick and mortar stores you can see many things at a glance and buy after you feel or touch the product. As the term suggests, online shopping is only possible through the internet, therefore, the connection speed matter a lot here.Unlike conventional stores which don't close unexpectedly, online stores incurs frequent malfunction. The most common grumble people have with online stores is regarding warranties and some sort of guarantees, which they fail to offer in most cases. Apparently, these would mean nothing if the online store went bankrupt. Similarly returns are also very much difficult on online stores than in local stores. It very normal that many online stores don't accept cash or checks, although some sites do, you still have to use the credit cards.When purchasing online, billing errors are the common things you may encounter whereas in local stores these errors are nearly impossible. The very big disadvantage an online website may have is the credit card security issue, despite the fact that how secure the website claims to be, you can not always trust them. There have been many cases where people realized that their credit card number has been stolen and has been used by others. The bottom line is, online shopping is the ultimate solution people are finding today, but conventional stores are still here to stay.