Energy costs represent a significant component of the total costs of operations for Canada’s mining sector. Directly and indirectly, the energy use in the mining sector is also a significant contributor to Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. Improving energy efficiency reduces greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate changes.

The Be mineral beryl and its colored variants emerald, aquamarine, and “chrysoberyl” (= golden beryl, not the present chrysoberyl) were known to the ancients, and Pliny the Elder had noted that many persons considered emerald and beryl “to be of the same nature” (Sinkankas 1981, p. 20; also Dana 1892; Weeks and Leicester 1968). However, not until 1798 was it realized that beryl contained a previously unknown constituent; analyses before then yielded only silica, alumina, lime and minor iron oxide (Vauquelin 1798; Anonymous 1930; Weeks and Leicester 1968; Greenwood and Earnshaw 1997).

A number of functional materials based on rare earth oxides have been developed in various fields. Up to 1990, many review articles describing rare earth oxides have been reported and several intensive articles deal the properties e.g. preparation, structure and transformation and have been published early nineteen nineties. In these ten years, much progress has been made in the characterization of rare earth oxides from high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM), as well as in a unique preparation of ultra-fine particles and in the theoretical calculation.

Since fossil vertebrates were first discovered at Porcupine Cave on the rim of South Park, Colorado, in 1981, the site has become the world’s most important source of information about animals that lived in the high elevations of North America in the middle part of the ice ages, between approximately one million and 600,000 years ago. Beginning in 1985, teams of scientists and volunteers from three major research institutions —the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the University of California Museum of Paleontology—spent some 15 field seasons excavating and studying tens of thousands of fossil specimens that have opened a window onto past evolutionary and ecological adjustments. This window into the past allows us to visualize how ongoing global change could affect our living communities. This book reports the results of nearly two decades of research and has been written to appeal to three overlapping audiences