The market for durable products using modified wood has increased substantially during the last few years. This is partly because of the restriction on the use of toxic preservatives due to environmental concerns, and to lower maintenance cost and time. Furthermore, as sustainability becomes a greater concern, the environmental impact of construction and interior materials is factored in planning by considering the whole life cycle and embodied energy of the materials used. Wood is modified to improve its intrinsic properties, enhance the range of applications of timber, and to acquire the form and functionality desired by engineers without calling the environmental friendliness into question. Wood modification processes are at various stages of development, and the challenges faced in scaling up to industrial applications differ. The aim of this book is to put together the key elements of the changes of wood constituents and the related changes in wood properties of modified wood. Further, a selection of the principal technologies implemented in wood modification are presented. This work is intended for researchers, professionals of timber construction, as well as students studying the science of materials, civil engineering and architecture. This work is not exhaustive, but intends to deliver an outline of the scientific disciplines necessary to apprehend the technologies of wood modification and its behavior during treatment, as well as during its use.

Based on his extensive investigation of the global environmental crisis, in which he explored five continents, "Earth Odyssey" recounts Hertsgaard's search for the answer to the essential question of our time: Is the future of the human species at risk?

City leaders now confront a global competition for economic investment, and urban elites are casting about for strategies that promise to secure a share of this future of global economic growth. However, many of these strategies are largely symbolic in nature. City leaders, for example, compete for the Olympics so they can broadcast spectacular urban vistas to global television audiences. Officials pour public funds into tourist amenities to cultivate an image of vitality and renewal. But how are the local politics of urban redevelopment intertwined with the global politics of circulating vital urban images? Urban Communication brings together scholars from communication, cultural studies, and urban sociology to explore the symbolic dimensions of contemporary city-building, drawing on case studies from around the world.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 The city and its regulations: Unexpected margins -- Part I Space and state regulation: The urban interstices -- 2 Markets and marginality in Beirut -- 3 The tremendous making and unmaking of the peripheries in current Istanbul -- 4 Resilient forms of urbanity on the margins? Al-Kherba: A vivid market in a damaged section of the medina of Tunis -- 5 Whose margins? Marginality, poverty and the moral geography of pre-Soviet Bukhara -- 6 On the margins of the city: Izmir Prison in the late Ottoman Empire -- Part II Diversity and moral policing: Making claims through marginalisation -- 7 'Texas': An off-centre district at the heart of nightlife in Odienné -- 8 The Manyema in colonial Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) between urban margins and regional connections -- 9 On the margins: Suburban space and religious deviancy in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur -- 10 Ethnic differentiation and conflict dynamics: Uzbeks' marginalisation and non-marginalisation in southern Kyrgyzstan -- Index