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Abstract Bisphenol A (BPA), a well-known endocrine disruptor, is used as a color developer in thermal paper. More recently, some emerging structural analogues have been introduced to replace BPA due to the strengthened regulations concerning thermal paper. Nevertheless, very limited data are available regarding their occurrence and potential health risks. Here, thirteen potentially toxic compounds were investigated in paper products (120 thermal papers and 81 nonthermal papers) collected in Beijing, China. The results indicated that the replacement of BPA by alternatives such as Bisphenol S (BPS), Bis(2-chloroethyl)ether-4,4″-dihydroxydiphenyl sulfone copolymer (D-90), 4-hydroxyphenyl 4-isoprooxyphenylsulfone (D-8), Bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)sulfonylphenyl (BPS-MAE) and Bis-(3-allyl-4-hydroxyphenyl) sulfone (TGSA) has been significantly advanced in several types of thermal paper (i.e., market weight stickers, train tickets, express labels, air boarding passes and lottery tickets). The mean value for the total analyte concentrations in thermal paper was 6.06 mg/g, and the highest level found was 26.0 mg/g. In addition, the frequent detection of these chemicals in nonthermal paper (>80%, n = 81) demonstrated that the contamination in thermal paper can be spread into other recycled paper, such as corrugated boxes, newspapers, food contact papers, etc. The estimated daily intake of BPA and its alternatives through the handling of thermal paper was 0.025 μg/kg bw/day for the general population. This is the first report on the occurrence of various new BPA alternatives in paper products from China, which will be helpful for further risk assessment and making responsible replacement decisions. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • A large-scale survey of BPA and alternatives in 201 paper products is reported. • D-90, D-8, BPS-MAE and TGSA were detected in paper products from China. • Thermal paper is a source for contamination of recycled papers with BPA and alternatives. • Dermal daily intake of ∑TAs was estimated to be 1.77 μg/day for the general population. First identification of several new bisphenol A alternatives in paper products from China and the dermal daily intake of ∑TAs was estimated to be 0.025 μg/kg bw/day for the general population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary role of semen processing and preservation is to maintain a high proportion of structurally and functionally competent and mature spermatozoa, that may be used for the purposes of artificial reproduction when needed, whilst minimizing any potential causes of sperm deterioration during ex vivo semen handling. Out of a multitude of variables determining the success of sperm preservation, bacterial contamination has been acknowledged with an increased interest because of its often unpredictable and complex effects on semen quality. Whilst antibiotics are usually the most straight-forward option to prevent the bacterial contamination of semen, antimicrobial resistance has become a serious threat requiring widespread attention. As such, besides discussing the consequences of bacteriospermia on the sperm vitality and the risks of antibiotic overuse in andrology, this paper summarizes the currently available evidence on alternative strategies to prevent bacterial contamination of semen prior to, during, and following sperm processing, selection, and preservation. Alternative antibacterial supplements are reviewed, and emphasis is given to modern methods of sperm selection that may be combined by the physical removal of bacteria prior to sperm preservation or by use in assisted reproductive technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epistemological contextualism states that propositions about knowledge, expressed in sentences like “S knows that P,” are context-sensitive. Schaffer (2005) examines whether one of Lewis’ (1996), Cohen’s (1988) and DeRose’s (1995) influential contextualist accounts is preferable to the others. According to Schaffer, Lewis’ theory of relevant alternatives succeeds as a linguistic basis for contextualism and as an explanation of what the parameter that shifts with context is, while Cohen’s theory of thresholds and DeRose’s theory of standards fail. This paper argues that Schaffer’s analysis is unsatisfactory since it fails to show that thresholds and standards cannot cope with skepticism, as it is ultimately the conversation participants who control how the conversation plays out. Moreover, Schaffer fails to show that gradability is of no importance in inquiries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2020 5(3), 1573-1576 | European Forum Highlight of 4 November 2020 | (Abstract) This Highlight introduces the European papers special focus on pre-trial detention and its alternatives under EU law. It frames the highly controversial topic of overuse of pre-trial custodial measures within the Unions system of judicial cooperation in criminal matters. Specific attention is devoted to the European supervision Order and to the vertical division of competences between the EU and its Member States in its sensitive domain.

Nigeria is a country blessed with vast oil and natural gas resources, due to inadequate management of resources most of the natural gas is flared. One of the most pressing challenges today is global warming. Gas flaring has been known to deliver carbon dioxide and other ozone depleting substances which cause unnatural weather change. This paper focuses on gas flaring; its definition, composition, types and classifications. It also highlights the policies that have been made in Nigeria concerning gas flaring and provides alternative solutions to gas flaring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Espanola de Linguistica is the property of Sociedad Espanola de Linguistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper we argue that for the (probabilistic) interpretation of generic sentences of the form " G s are f ," three types of alternatives play a role: (i) alternative features of f , (ii) alternative groups, or kinds, of G , and (iii) alternative causal background factors. In the first part of this paper we argue for the relevance of these alternatives. In the second part, we describe the results of some experiments that empirically tested in particular the second use of alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural plastic mulching is an important horticultural process for increasing crop yields because it preserves soil moisture, soil temperature, and nutrients, and avoids the need for weed herbicides. However, there are risks to using plastic mulch, since residual macroplastic (MaP), microplastic (MP), and nanoplastic (NP) in fields have a significant negative impact on the environment, causing damage to soil properties, harming microorganisms in the soil, and entering the human body via the food chain. Plastic mulch is often disposed of in landfills or used in techniques like the thermal process to gain energy or recycling to generate plastic granules for the plastic industry. Pretreatments are occasionally required before recycling, such as cleaning the mulch from the soil to fit the recycling process. This review provides an overview of the quantities and negative impacts of plastic, especially plastic mulch films after use, as well as their decomposition products, on the environment, soil, and human health, and presents alternatives. The possibilities and problems of collecting and recycling films are discussed in addition to the alternatives, for example, the use of biodegradable films. Overall, agricultural advancements to reduce plastic waste in the environment by using thicker films, collection after use, and recycling in developed countries are on a good path. However, NP poses a risk, as it is still completely unclear how it affects human health. Alternatives to plastic mulch have found little acceptance so far due to the significantly higher material costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-attribute decision analysis is an approach to decision support in which decision alternatives are evaluated by multi-criteria models. An advanced feature of decision support models is the possibility to search for new alternatives that satisfy certain conditions. This task is important for practical decision support; however, the related work on generating alternatives for qualitative multi-attribute decision models is quite scarce. In this paper, we introduce Bayesian Alternative Generator for Decision Support Models (BAG-DSM), a method to address the problem of generating alternatives. More specifically, given a multi-attribute hierarchical model and an alternative representing the initial state, the goal is to generate alternatives that demand the least change in the provided alternative to obtain a desirable outcome. The brute force approach has exponential time complexity and has prohibitively long execution times, even for moderately sized models. BAG-DSM avoids these problems by using a Bayesian optimization approach adapted to qualitative DEX models. BAG-DSM was extensively evaluated and compared to a baseline method on 43 different DEX decision models with varying complexity, e.g., different depth and attribute importance. The comparison was performed with respect to: the time to obtain the first appropriate alternative, the number of generated alternatives, and the number of attribute changes required to reach the generated alternatives. BAG-DSM outperforms the baseline in all of the experiments by a large margin. Additionally, the evaluation confirms BAG-DSM's suitability for the task, i.e., on average, it generates at least one appropriate alternative within two seconds. The relation between the depth of the multi-attribute hierarchical models—a parameter that increases the search space exponentially—and the time to obtaining the first appropriate alternative was linear and not exponential, by which BAG-DSM's scalability is empirically confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Filología Italiana is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Antibiotics are widely used for infectious diseases and feed additives for animal health and growth. Antibiotic resistant caused by overuse of antibiotics poses a global health threat. It is urgent to choose safe and environment-friendly alternatives to antibiotics to promote the ecological sustainable development of the pig industry. Phytochemicals are characterized by little residue, no resistance, and minimal side effects and have been reported to improve animal health and growth performance in pigs, which may become a promising additive in pig production. This paper summarizes the biological functions of recent studies of phytochemicals on growth performance, metabolism, antioxidative capacity, gut microbiota, intestinal mucosa barrier, antiviral, antimicrobial, immunomodulatory, detoxification of mycotoxins, as well as their action mechanisms in pig production. The review may provide the theoretical basis for the application of phytochemicals functioning as alternative antibiotic additives in the pig industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article to the special issue contributes to ongoing debates on pesticides in agriculture by focusing on their alternatives. Through a literature review, we explore the pluralism of those alternatives and the socio-political processes that support or hinder their expansion. The first section examines the obstacles encountered by public policies aimed at reducing pesticide use. Resistances are both external to public decision-making, i.e. agricultural players, agrochemical firms, and internal, related to the existing regulatory mechanisms, including the scientific expertise used to assess risks. The second section introduces the two main families of alternatives to pesticides, and their respective political and scientific underpinnings. On the one hand, solutions based on substitution through alternative technologies, such as biocontrol. On the other hand, solutions based on the systemic redesign of agricultural systems, such as organic farming or agroecology. The third section presents the contributions that make up this special issue. We highlight the political work carried out at the interface between policies, expertise and markets in order to legitimise one or the other alternative. Beyond a strictly technological approach, the papers stress the importance of considering the diversity of components, stakeholders and processes involved at the whole food system level. Farmers and practitioners make complex production choices and trade-offs. These decisions are influenced by policies and upstream companies, which offer inputs or plant health diagnostic technologies, and by downstream actors, i.e.processors, retailers and policymakers, who shape the markets for pesticide-free food. The approach we propose here calls for a fresh sociological look at policymaking and expertise involved in identifying and dealing with pesticides issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gestión y Ambiente is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: Due to the large number of applications of bisphenol-A (BPA), the human exposure routes are multiple. We aimed to review shortly the food and non-food sources of BPA, and to evaluate their contribution to the human exposure. Food sources discussed here include epoxy resins, polycarbonate and other applications, such as paperboard and polyvinylchloride materials. Among the non-food sources, exposures through dust, thermal paper, dental materials, and medical devices were summarized. Based on the available data for these exposure sources, it was concluded that the exposure to BPA from non-food sources is generally lower than that from exposure from food by at least one order of magnitude for most studied subgroups. The use of urinary concentrations from biomonitoring studies was evaluated and the back-calculation of BPA intake seems reliable for the overall exposure assessment. In general, the total exposure to BPA is several orders of magnitude lower than the current tolerable daily intake of 50μg/kgbw/day. Finally, the paper concludes with some critical remarks and recommendations on future human exposure studies to BPA. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This issue's "From the Editors…" column is coauthored with Managing Editor Kelly Kophazi. In addition to introducing our articles, we report here on the past year from the perspective of the editorial office. The authors of the first three articles conducted laboratory experiments to examine decision behavior in financial investment decisions, bidding in auctions, and inventory ordering decisions. First, Dennis Vrecko, Alexander Klos, and Thomas Langer report on the "Impact of Presentation Format and Self-Reported Risk Aversion on Revealed Skewness Preferences." Our second article is "A Direct Test of Risk Aversion and Regret in First Price Sealed-Bid Auctions," by Richard Engelbrecht-Wiggans and Elena Katok. The third article, by Srinagesh Gavirneni and Yusen Xia, is on "Anchor Selection and Group Dynamics in Newsvendor Decisions—A Note." Our final article, describing the application of decision analysis for an Italian waste processing decision, is "Resource-Limited Multiattribute Value Analysis of Alternatives for Immobilizing Radioactive Liquid Process Waste Stored in Saluggia, Italy," by Alan J. Brothers, Shas V. Mattigod, Denis M. Strachan, Gordon H. Beeman, Paul K. Kearns, Angelo Papa, and Carlo Monti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnesium alloys are inherently negative electrochemical potential and are very reactive compared to other engineering metals. They are prone to galvanic corrosion and micro cracks. Various coating materials or Alternatives and the required criteria and sub-criteria for the selection of Alternatives for AZ31B magnesium alloy substrate are identified by means of literature review. Criteria weight and the rank of the alternatives are usually vague and hence uncertainty prevails. The best Alternative from several potential "Candidates", subject to several criteria and sub-criteria, needs to get decided. In such cases, multi criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques help in determining the MOST suitable coating material. This paper concentrates on the selection of coating material for the magnesium alloy substrate. The problem is subjective, uncertain and equivocal in nature. Hence in this study, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to obtain the weights of criteria and technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solutions (TOPSIS) is utilised for ranking the Alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research paper is focused on how to choose the most suitable renewable energy solution using multi-criteria analysis for a district heating system. Making choices is based on indicators – economic, environmental and social. In this case, the study used five indicators: resources costs, totals investments, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, specific weight of renewable energy resources and impact on utilized land. Three situations have been compared – current situation: gas boiler, planned: solar collectors 21 595 m2 + accumulation tank 8000 m3 and alternatives: solar PV panels 5504 m2 – heat pump COP 3 are used in the estimation. The multi-criteria decision-making analysis shows that solar collectors 21 595 m2 + accumulation tank 8000 m3 are considered as the best alternative. The methodology is based on choosing a solution for a district heating company in Latvia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plural definite descriptions give rise to homogeneity effects: the positive The trucks are blue and the negative The trucks aren't blue are both neither true nor false when some of the trucks are blue and some are not, that is, when the group of trucks is not homogeneous with respect to the property of being blue (Löbner, 1987, 2000; Schwarzschild, 1994; Križ, 2015b). The only existing acquisition studies related to the phenomenon have examined children's comprehension only of the affirmative versions of such sentences, and moreover have yielded conflicting data; while one study reports that preschoolers interpret definite plurals maximally (Munn et al., 2006, see also Royle et al., 2018), two other studies report that preschoolers allow non-maximal interpretations of definite plurals where adults do not (Karmiloff-Smith, 1979; Caponigro et al., 2012). Moreover, there is no agreed upon developmental trajectory to adult homogeneity. In this paper, we turn to acquisition data to investigate the predictions of a recent analysis of homogeneity that treats homogeneous meanings as the result of a scalar implicature (Magri, 2014). We conducted two experiments targeting 4- and 5-year-old French-speaking children's interpretations of plural definite descriptions in positive and negative sentences, and tested the same children on standard cases of scalar implicature. The experiments revealed three distinct subgroups of children: those who interpreted the plural definite descriptions existentially and failed to compute implicatures; those who both accessed homogeneous interpretations and computed implicatures; and finally, a smaller subgroup of children who appeared to access homogeneous interpretations without computing implicatures. We discuss the implications of our findings, which appear to speak against the implicature theory as the adult-like means of generating homogeneous meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Engineering Research (2307-1877) is the property of Kuwait University, Academic Publication Council and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Polarity items have been analyzed as existential quantifiers that introduce alternatives into the semantic derivation (Krifka 1991; 1995; Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002; Chierchia 2013). Under this approach, variation in the polarity system can be reduced to variation in the types of alternatives that polarity items introduce (Chierchia 2013). We present a case of dialectal variation within the polarity system that can be treated along these lines. The paper focuses on Spanish siquiera, a concessive scalar particle. Concessive scalar particles (Slovenian magari, Greek esto, and Spanish siquiera) (Crnič 2011a; b) are polarity items licensed in a variety of downward entailing environments, where they can be paraphrased with English even, and in modal environments, where they can be paraphrased with English at least. The paper shows that the interpretation and distribution of Spanish siquiera differs between Iberian and Andean Spanish. We propose that siquiera shares the same assertive core across dialects, but differs in the types of alternatives that it introduces.

How can critique in responsible innovation (RI) become generative? The anything-but-neutral relations between science, technology and society, at the core of science and technology studies, have led to the development of different repertoires of critique. None of them fitted the configurations in the biomedical practices we came to study. There, biomedical experts presented us with an analysis of the power relations perpetuated through the mainstream practices in their fields and had built socio-material alternatives to the common forms of practicing biomedicine. The paper suggests conceptualising critical observations voiced by experts embedded into socio-material alternatives as ‘critique from within’ yielding collateral goods and bads. Rather than asking how to foster responsibility conditions in RI, the paper suggests modestly reclaiming critique by articulating already existing forms of responsibility practices developed by experts themselves and analysing the ambivalent effects they engender.

Copyright of HOLOS is the property of Instituto Federal do Rio Grande do norte - IFRN and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There is a growing interest in the potential of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) to mainstream ecosystem services (ES) concerns in decision-making. Experiences in this field have begun to emerge, showing the need for comprehensive guidance. This paper addresses this need by proposing a conceptual approach to integrate ES effectively in SEA. The approach is structured in the following four stages, each comprising specific tasks: establish the ES context; determine and assess priority ES; identify alternatives and assess impacts on ES; follow up on ES. The first stage includes the identification and mapping of ES and beneficiaries for the region affected by the strategic action and the identification of links with other strategic actions. The second stage aims at generating detailed information on a limited set of priority ES, which are considered relevant for shaping and informing the development of the strategic action. This requires determining the priority ES, reviewing existing regulations concerning these services and assessing their baseline conditions and trends. In the third stage, possible alternatives to enhance ES, or at least to minimise negative effects on them, are identified and their impacts assessed. Finally, during the fourth stage, the effects on ES are monitored and managed and the overall quality of the SEA process is tested. The paper concludes by discussing how the stages and their tasks require feedback and interactions and how they can contribute to achieve a better inclusion of concerns about ES (and their beneficiaries) into strategic decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psycholinguistic research has long established that focus-marked words have a processing advantage over other words in an utterance, e.g., they are recognized more quickly and remembered better. More recently, studies have shown that listeners infer contextual alternatives to a focused word in a spoken utterance, when marked with a contrastive accent, even when the alternatives are not explicitly mentioned in the discourse. This has been shown by strengthened priming of contextual alternatives to the word, but not other non-contrastive semantic associates, when it is contrastively accented, e.g., after hearing "The customer opened the window," salesman is strongly primed, but not product. This is consistent with Rooth's (1992) theory that focus-marking signals the presence of alternatives to the focus. However, almost all of the research carried out in this area has been on Germanic languages. Further, most of this work has looked only at one kind of focus-marking, by contrastive accenting (prosody). This paper reports on a cross-modal lexical priming study in Mandarin Chinese, looking at whether focus-marking heightens activation, i.e., priming, of words and their alternatives. Two kinds of focus-marking were investigated: prosodic and syntactic. Prosodic prominence is an important means of focus-marking in Chinese, however, it is realized through pitch range expansion, rather than accenting. The results showed that focused words, as well as their alternatives, were primed when the subject prime word carried contrastive prosodic prominence. Syntactic focus-marking, however, did not enhance priming of focused words or their alternatives. Non-contrastive semantic associates were not primed with either kind of focus-marking. These results extend previous findings on focus and alternative priming for the first time to Chinese. They also suggest that the processing advantages of focus, including priming alternatives, are particularly related to prosodic prominence, at least in Chinese and Germanic languages. This research sheds light on what linguistic mechanisms listeners use to identify important information, generate alternatives, and understand implicature necessary for successful communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Emancipação is the property of Revista Emancipacao - Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Port of Šventoji is a maritime facility in the settlement of Šventoji, located within the country Lithuania, near the seaside resort town of Palanga. In this paper five Port of Šventoji development alternatives are overviewed using a multi-criteria decisionmaking (MCDM) method. The results will be compared with the ones found in “Port of Šventoji reconstruction feasibility study” (liet. Šventosios jūrų uosto atstatymo galimybių studija). Criteria weights of the analysed alternatives are determined using the entropy method. Alternative analysis is carried out using the TOPSIS multicriteria method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, 98% of all plastics are fossil-based and non-biodegradable, and globally, only 9% are recycled. Microplastic and nanoplastic pollution is just beginning to be understood. As the global demand for sustainable alternatives to conventional plastics continues to rise, biobased and biodegradable plastics have emerged as a promising solution. This review article delves into the pivotal concept of carbon recycling as a pathway towards achieving a zero-waste future through the production and utilization of high-value bioplastics. The review comprehensively explores the current state of bioplastics (biobased and/or biodegradable materials), emphasizing the importance of carbon-neutral and circular approaches in their lifecycle. Today, bioplastics are chiefly used in low-value applications, such as packaging and single-use items. This article sheds light on value-added applications, like longer-lasting components and products, and demanding properties, for which bioplastics are increasingly being deployed. Based on the waste hierarchy paradigm—reduce, reuse, recycle—different use cases and end-of-life scenarios for materials will be described, including technological options for recycling, from mechanical to chemical methods. A special emphasis on common bioplastics—TPS, PLA, PHAs—as well as a discussion of composites, is provided. While it is acknowledged that the current plastics (waste) crisis stems largely from mismanagement, it needs to be stated that a radical solution must come from the core material side, including the intrinsic properties of the polymers and their formulations. The manner in which the cascaded use of bioplastics, labeling, legislation, recycling technologies, and consumer awareness can contribute to a zero-waste future for plastics is the core topics of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I give an analysis of neg-raising inferences as scalar implicatures. The main motivation for this account as opposed to a presupposition-based approach like Gajewski (Linguist Philos 30(3):289-328, ) comes from the differences between presuppositions and neg-raising inferences. In response to this issue, Gajewski () argues that neg-raising predicates are soft presuppositional triggers and adopts the account of how their presuppositions arise by Abusch (J Semantics 27(1):1-44, ). However, I argue that there is a difference between soft triggers and neg-raising predicates in their behavior in embeddings; a difference that is straightforwardly accounted for in the present approach. Furthermore, by adopting Abusch's () account of soft triggers, Gajewski () inherits the assumptions of a pragmatic principle of disjunctive closure and of a non-standard interaction between semantics and pragmatics-assumptions that are not needed by the present proposal, which is just based on a regular theory of scalar implicatures. I also show that the arguments that Gajewski () presents in favor of the presuppositional account can be explained also by the scalar implicatures-based approach proposed here. Finally, while the main point of the paper is a comparison with the presuppositional account, I sketch a preliminary comparison with more syntactic approaches to neg-raising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flooding due to extreme rain events in urban environments is a problem and a growing concern. There is an increasing demand for a new paradigm to improve flood-mitigation decision processes that calls for riskreduction strategies at several levels. Therefore is a challenge in assessing and comparing different flood mitigation measures. The aim of this paper is to explore a new method to improve an environmental impact assessment of flood-mitigation measures in decision processes by risk analysis method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the possibility of understanding and measuring well-being as a result of "progress" on the basis of today's dominant epistemological framework. Market criteria distort social values by allowing purchasing power to define priorities, likening luxury goods to basic needs; in the process they reinforce patterns of discrimination against disadvantaged social groups and women, introducing fatal distortions into the analysis. Similarly, because there are no appropriate mechanisms to price natural resources adequately, the market overlooks the consequences of the abuse of natural resources, degrading the quality of life, individually and collectively, or-in the framework of Latin American indigenous groups-foreclosing the possibility of "living well". We critique the common vision of the official development discourse that places its faith on technological innovations to resolve these problems. The analysis points to the need for new models of social and environmental governance to promote progress, approaches like those suggested in the paper that are inconsistent with public policies currently in place. At present, the social groups forging institutions to assure their own well-being and ecological balance are involved in local processes, often in opposition to the proposals of the political leaders in their countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the challenges and lessons from recent practice and experience of applying tools such as Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Sustainability Appraisal at the policy level in the UK and Europe. It investigates whether or not these tools have been effective and helped to deliver more sustainable development at the high level of national policy development. The analysis is illustrated by case examples from the UK, such as Eco-towns and Energy Planning. The paper concludes that the current performance by the UK Government in implementing the SEA Directive for national level strategic actions is far from exemplary. At the root of the problem is the poor consideration and evaluation of reasonable alternatives, the fundamentally weak conception of sustainability adopted and the apparent perception that having to undertake an assessment and comply with the SEA Directive is a hurdle, rather than a useful mechanism for helping to deliver better and more sustainable evidence-based policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his recent paper on the symmetry problem Roni Katzir argues that the only relevant factor for the calculation of any Quantity implicature is syntactic structure. I first refute Katzir’s thesis with three examples that show that structural complexity is irrelevant to the calculation of some Quantity implicatures. I then argue that it is inadvisable to assume—as Katzir and others do—that exactly one factor is relevant to the calculation of any Quantity implicature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particles such as German auch ('also') establish an additive relation between expressions in their scope (added constituent, AC) and context alternatives against the background of shared information (common denominator). In spoken interaction, however, explicit alternatives are not necessarily present and expressions can be construed as alternatives against different variants of a common denominator. It is the aim of the present paper to investigate to what extent the presence of alternatives influences the construction of utterances containing an additive particle. This is particularly relevant for German, where speakers can choose between an unstressed and stressed version of auch. We ask whether properties of the alternatives and their common denominators influence the choice to use stressed or unstressed auch. In a corpus study on spoken language, we classified the versions of auch, the particles AC, the alternatives in the preceding context and their common denominator. The results show that the speaker's choice is influenced by the relation of the utterance to context alternatives. Specifically, the degree of explicitness of alternatives, the number of alternatives, and the degree of abstractness of the common denominator influence the continuation of the discourse, measured by the preference for one of the two variants of the particle auch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heat exposure is a well-known health hazard, which causes several problems ranging from thermal discomfort or productivity reduction to the aggravation of existing illnesses and death. Climate projections foresee an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat-related impacts on human health. To reduce these climate risks, governments need a better understanding of not only the scale and the factors affecting those risks, but also how to prepare and protect the city and citizens against these risks and prevent them through effective policy making. Therefore, climate adaptation decisions need to be made in complex systems with manifold uncertainties. In response to these deep uncertainties, different planning approaches have been developed to assist policymakers in decision making. This paper is focused on one of the dynamic adaptive policy planning approaches: the adaptation pathway. This approach allows designing alternative feasible plans that are flexible and can respond when new information appears or when conditions in the environment change. This paper presents a structured methodology for designing adaptation pathways. The work describes a high-level adaptation pathway covering heatwave impacts on productivity and health at city level in Antwerp to ensure the city adapts to future conditions. Lastly, a summary is provided of the lessons learned and the challenges of this approach are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balancing in general and balancing alternatives and variants can be seen as a core component of the work of planners. Against the backdrop of current social challenges, the complexity of these balancing processes is increasing. From a planning science perspective, however, the question of the balancing process has only begun to be analysed. To date, there are only a few empirical studies that have explicitly focussed on balancing processes in Germany. This is where this paper starts by focusing on urban planning, investigating what planners understand by balancing alternatives and variants and how the balancing process is presented in everyday planning. To this end, 19 qualitative interviews were conducted with public and private sector planners. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data. The results confirm the central role of balancing processes in everyday planning and emphasise the need for further research to understand these processes’ complexity and significance.

Simple Summary: The welfare of research animals should be a top priority in any research program, and that includes their long-term welfare. Animals may be used in multiple experiments or used for training purposes, which may lead to cumulative suffering. To prevent this, humane endpoints need to be defined specifying limits on experiments, procedures, and time that animals are used for research. There are few resources available for deciding which criteria to use when making endpoint decisions. The purpose of this paper is to present results of a survey identifying laboratory animal professionals' attitudes and institutional strategies regarding cumulative endpoints, review regulations and tools addressing cumulative welfare in research animals and provide recommendations for how to move forward addressing this issue. While institutions may have endpoint guidelines in place, many of them only cover certain species or may be informal. There is a need for more specific guidelines that allow for the diversity of experiments using animals. Welfare assessment tools could help provide objective guidance on humane endpoints for research animals. Further research on which tools are the most efficient and comprehensive would be beneficial in improving animal welfare as well as the quality of the science using research animals. Research animals are important for scientific advancement, and therefore, their long-term welfare needs to be monitored to not only minimize suffering, but to provide positive affective states and experiences. Currently, there is limited guidance in countries around the world on cumulative and experimental endpoints. This paper aims to explore current opinions and institutional strategies regarding cumulative use and endpoints through a scoping survey and review of current regulations and welfare assessment tools, and ultimately to provide recommendations for assessment of cumulative and lifetime use of research animals. The survey found that only 36% of respondents indicated that their institution had cumulative use endpoint policies in place, but these policies may be informal and/or vary by species. Most respondents supported more specific guidelines but expressed concerns about formal policies that may limit their ability to make case-by-case decisions. The wide diversity in how research animals are used makes it difficult for specific policies to be implemented. Endpoint decisions should be made in an objective manner using standardized welfare assessment tools. Future research should focus on robust, efficient welfare assessment tools that can be used to support planning and recommendations for cumulative endpoints and lifetime use of research and teaching animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: While the adolescents are trying to adapt to changing life styles and emerging challenges, they are also becoming increasingly aggressive/violent. This is largely attributable to increased competition, stress, and anxiety, besides poor parenting methods. Several studies seek to understand the causes for this delinquency and search for preventive interventions. Indian traditional texts claim that yoga is one of the important preventive interventions. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of yoga in addressing the non-clinical adolescents' beliefs about aggression and alternatives compared to physical exercises (PE). Materials and Methods: One hundred and fifty eight normal healthy adolescents participated in this 'Randomized Control Trial' design study (Yoga: 76, aged 14.03±1.00 years; PE: 82, aged 14.06 +/- 1.03 years). Yoga/PE intervention was for one hour a day, five days a week, for four weeks. Adolescents' 'beliefs about aggression and alternatives' were measured using 'beliefs about aggression and alternatives scale' developed by Multisite violence prevention project (2004). Data analysis was done using SPSS 21.0. Results: Yoga practitioners significantly decreased their overall beliefs supporting aggression (p<.05) and significantly increased their beliefs favoring alternatives to aggression (p<.05), compared to PE practitioners. Conclusion: Four weeks yoga practice significantly reduces the adolescents' beliefs supporting aggression and increases their beliefs supporting alternatives to aggression compared to PE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper shows a design conception for an existing warehouse. The conception can be applied to define an optimal storage structure based on a given warehouse floor area and available forecasts relating to types and volume of loading units (LU) to be stored. The study shows 6 possible alternatives for storage structure. Longitudinal and transversal twin racking arrangements with narrow and wide aisles were taken into consideration. Structure alternatives were compared based on storage capacity, specific storage capacity and utilization of floor area. The optimal storage structure was defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the implementation of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methodologies, particularly the fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), in prioritizing technosignatures (TSs) for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). By incorporating expert opinions and weighted criteria based on the established Axes of Merit, our analysis offers insights into the relative importance of various TSs. Notably, radio and optical communications are emphasized, in contrast to dark side illumination and starshades in transit. We introduce a new axis, Scale Sensitivity, designed to assess the variability of TS metrics. A sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of our approach. Our findings, especially the highlighted significance of artifacts orbiting Earth, the Moon, or the Sun, indicate a need to broaden evaluative criteria within SETI research. This suggests an enhancement of the Axes of Merit, with a focus on addressing the plausibility of TSs. As the quest to resolve the profound question of our solitude in the cosmos continues, SETI efforts would benefit from exploring innovative prioritization methodologies that effectively quantify TS search strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine previous claims by Menéndez-Benito (2005; 2010) and Dayal (2013) that You may read any book entails Every book may be read on its own. In light of several key counterexamples, including those raised by Chierchia (2013) and Szabolcsi (2019), I argue that this is not an entailment at all, but a particularly robust implicature that arises in the pragmatics. In order to derive this implicature, I combine Szabolcsi’s semantics for universal free choice items (FCIs) with a formal pragmatic model in the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework. I update Champollion et al.’s (2019) RSA model of free choice with technical innovations from Franke & Bergen (2020) to model how a listener interprets an utterance containing the universal FCI any given a range of possible exhaustified parses. This pragmatic model predicts the robustness of the implicature observed by Menéndez-Benito and Dayal, and further predicts that it is more stable across varied contexts than other implicatures arising from the same utterance.

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Nowadays, because of the undeniable impact of the Internet on all aspects of human life, security preserving has received more attention. To reach an acceptable level of security, Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computer and Human Apart or simply CAPTCHA as a security preserving tool has been tailored for situations that need to prevent bots from doing a specific action; for example, signing up and downloading. Simultaneously, it should be also designed in such a way to allow humans to perform the same action. Despite its advantageous applications, there are several important issues such as security, usability, and accessibility that make its use controversial. In this paper, attempts were made to do a comprehensive review on various aspects and state-of-the-art of CAPTCHA in general and its alternatives in particular to help researchers easily focus on specific issues for the sake of proposing new solutions and ideas. Regarding the advancement in CAPTCHA development, new classifications were proposed to categorize different variations of CAPTCHAs and their problems and then compare them. Moreover, different types of CAPTCHAs' alternatives were classified and evaluated by introducing several proposed measures. This evaluation could come in handy for future studies that aim to develop new techniques for overcoming current deficiencies. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community service as a penal option for criminal offending is at a crossroads in Ireland. Though available as a sanction in court since 1983 as a direct alternative to a custodial sentence, under-utilisation and economic prioritisation have, in recent times, prompted government policy to promote community service as a cost-effective penalty and as a measure to alleviate a burgeoning prison population. New legislation and the development of a prisoner resettlement programme incorporating unpaid community work signal an anticipated significant increase and a broadening of the participant base. However, several problematic issues exist. Its penal philosophy is obscure, its aims are variable according to different stakeholder audiences, and the absence of clarity in effectiveness poses definition and measurement dilemmas. This paper seeks to locate community service as a penal sanction in its current context in Ireland, to identify influencing factors and to ask key questions to determine the way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that for the (probabilistic) interpretation of generic sentences of the form “Gs are f,” three types of alternatives play a role: (i) alternative features of f, (ii) alternative groups, or kinds, of G, and (iii) alternative causal background factors. In the first part of this paper we argue for the relevance of these alternatives. In the second part, we describe the results of some experiments that empirically tested in particular the second use of alternatives.

In order to reduce animal testing, companies registering chemical substances under the EU REACH legislation must propose rather than conduct certain tests on animals. Third parties can submit "scientifically valid information" relevant to these proposals to the Agency responsible, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), who are obliged to take the information into account. The European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE) provided comments on nearly half of the 817 proposals for vertebrate tests on 480 substances published for comment for the first REACH deadline (between August 1, 2009 and July 31, 2012). This paper summarizes the response by registrants and the Agency to third party comments and highlights issues with the use of read-across, in vitro tests, QSAR, and weight of evidence approaches. Use of existing data and evidence that testing is legally or scientifically unjustified remain the most successful comments for third parties to submit. There is a worrying conservatism within the Agency regarding the acceptance of alternative approaches and examples of where registrants have also failed to maximize opportunities to avoid testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a method for decision making using fuzzy integral and distance function is presented. Case studies of multiple-response process with correlated responses are used to illustrate the effective application of the proposed approach. The efficacy of this method is compared with the existing methods of MCDM like TOPSIS and GRA. The proposed method is robust, requires less information and less complex as compared to many existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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