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Marine litter has been a serious and growing problem for some decades now. Yet, there is still much speculation among researchers, policy makers and planners about how to tackle marine litter from land-based sources. This paper provides insights into approaches for managing marine litter by reporting and analyzing survey results of litter dispersal and makeup from three areas along an Arab-Israeli coastal town in view of other recent studies conducted around the Mediterranean Sea. Based on our results and analysis, we posit that bathing beach activities should be a high priority for waste managers as a point of intervention and beach-goers must be encouraged to take a more active role in keeping beaches clean. Further, plastic fragments on the beach should be targeted as a first priority for prevention (and cleanup) of marine litter with plastic bottle caps being a high priority to be targeted among plastics. More survey research is needed on non-plastic litter composition for which amounts and geographic dispersal in the region vary greatly from place to place along Mediterranean shores. In general, findings of this study lead us to recommend exploring persuasive beach trash can design coupled with greater enforcement for short term waste management intervention while considering the local socio-economic and institutional context further for long-term efforts.

Background: Data entry at the point of collection using mobile electronic devices may make data-handling processes more efficient and cost-effective, but there is little literature to document and quantify gains, especially for longitudinal surveillance systems. Objective: To examine the potential of mobile electronic devices compared with paper-based tools in health data collection. Methods: Using data from 961 households from the Rufiji Household and Demographic Survey in Tanzania, the quality and costs of data collected on paper forms and electronic devices were compared. We also documented, using qualitative approaches, field workers, whom we called ‘enumerators’, and households’ members on the use of both methods. Existing administrative records were combined with logistics expenditure measured directly from comparison households to approximate annual costs per 1,000 households surveyed. Results: Errors were detected in 17% (166) of households for the paper records and 2% (15) for the electronic records (p

Tensions in the field have emerged over how best to communicate to the public about genomic discoveries in an era of direct-to-consumer (DTC) DNA testing services available through the Internet. Concerns over what the psychological and behavioral response might be to a nuanced, multiplex risk message have spurred some to offer caution in communicating to the public about personalized risk until the necessary research has been completed on how to communicate effectively. The popularization of DTC testing services, along with a spreading Internet culture on transparency for personal data, may make ‘waiting to communicate’ a moot point. To steer communication efforts in the midst of increasing access to personal genomic information, a self-regulation framework is presented. The framework emphasizes the importance of presenting a coherent message in all communiqués about public health genomics. Coherence should be based on an evidence-based model of how the public processes information about health conditions and an emphasis on risk-to-action links. Recommendations from the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology are reviewed as a way of identifying targets of opportunity for structured communications both within the healthcare system and in the broader external ecosystem of publicly available health information technologies.

Despite the essential role of ecosystem goods and services in sustaining all human activities, they are often ignored in engineering decision making, even in methods that are meant to encourage sustainability. For example, conventional Life Cycle Assessment focuses on the impact of emissions and consumption of some resources. While aggregation and interpretation methods are quite advanced for emissions, similar methods for resources have been lagging, and most ignore the role of nature. Such oversight may even result in perverse decisions that encourage reliance on deteriorating ecosystem services. This article presents a step toward including the direct and indirect role of ecosystems in LCA, and a hierarchical scheme to interpret their contribution. The resulting Ecologically Based LCA (Eco-LCA) includes a large number of provisioning, regulating, and supporting ecosystem services as inputs to a life cycle model at the process or economy scale. These resources are represented in diverse physical units and may be compared via their mass, fuel value, industrial cumulative exergy consumption, or ecological cumulative exergy consumption or by normalization with total consumption of each resource or their availability. Such results at a fine scale provide insight about relative resource use and the risk and vulnerability to the loss of specific resources. Aggregate indicators are also defined to obtain indices such as renewability, efficiency, and return on investment. An Eco-LCA model of the 1997 economy is developed and made available via the web (www.resilience.osu.edu/ecolca). An illustrative example comparing paper and plastic cups provides insight into the features of the proposed approach. The need for further work in bridging the gap between knowledge about ecosystem services and their direct and indirect role in supporting human activities is discussed as an important area for future work.

Taiwan's EPA has implemented a new guideline called the “Plastic Products Restriction Policy”, prohibiting some industries to use plastics as packaging materials for the sake of sustainable use of resources. The significant effect resulting from this policy is the substitution of plastic products with paper products. Is this policy beneficial to achieve future sustainability? I attempt to analyze the resource choice between renewable resources and exhaustible resources for production of final products and services in case of exhaustion of natural resources. In this paper, I develop a framework to examine the dynamic responsiveness of a socio-economical system in facing a continual depletion of natural resources provided by an environmental system. In this framework, the status of an environmental system in terms of carrying capacity is affected by the cumulative impacts caused from human activities, including environmental pollution and resource exploitation. Conversely, it also affects the growth of renewable resources. This framework can serve as a guideline to construct indicators to measure the status of the environmental system and the socio-economical system in order to support a policy planner that formulates an appropriate environmental policy. Based on this framework, I also develop a mathematical model to determine the optimal ratio of resources choice between renewable resources and exhaustible resources. Keywords: Renewable resources, Exhaustible resources, Carrying capacity, Resilience

Highly significant evidence of the intellectual and cultural efforts of the human race is contained in documents. They take many forms, from papyri through paper to modern magnetic media and optical records. These items are mainly made of organic materials many of which contain polymers, which span from cellulose and its derivatives to synthetic resins. As with other manmade objects, however, documentary heritage is susceptible to chemical, physical, and biological damage. For the colonization and establishment of any biological community, the composition of materials used, their status of conservation, and environmental and climatic factors, such as temperature and humidity, are important elements to take into account. This article covers the scientific investigation of microbial degradation of documents, which is one of the most serious and underappreciated sources of damage to library and archival materials. In particular, although less known, modern records, including compact discs, are also subjected to biodeterioration. Archival and library material preservation broadly encompasses those activities and functions designed to produce a suitable and safe environment that extends the life of collections in useable condition for as long as is feasible. In the literature quoted, key information is also provided to avoid or limit microbial growth and some conservation treatments are also reported.

The clinical utility of genetic tests is determined by the outcomes following test use. Like other measures of value, it is often contested. Stakeholders may have different views about benefits and risks and about the importance of social versus health outcomes. They also commonly disagree about the evidence needed to determine whether a test is effective in achieving a specific outcome. Questions may be presented as factual disagreements, when they are actually debates about what information matters or how facts should be interpreted and used in clinical decision-making. Defining the different issues at stake is therefore an important element of policy-making. Key issues include evidence standards for test use, and in particular, the circumstances under which prospective controlled data should be required, as well as evidence on feasibility, cost and equitable delivery of testing; the goals of population-based screening programs, and in particular, the role of social outcomes in evaluating test value; and the appropriate uses and funding of tests that inform non-medical actions. Addressing each of these issues requires attention to stakeholder values and methods for effective deliberation that incorporate consumer as well as health professional perspectives.

With the domestic and international proliferation of biobanks and their associated connections to health information databases, scholarly attention has been turning from the ethical issues arising from the construction of biobanks to the ethical issues that emerge in their operation and management. Calls for greater transparency in governance structures, coupled with stern reminders of the value of maintaining public trust, are seen as critical components in the success of these resources. Two different approaches have been adopted for addressing these types of ethical issues: the first is a ‘top-down’ approach which focuses on developing policy, procedures, regulations and guidelines to aid decision-makers. The second is a ‘bottom-up’ approach, which begins with those who are most affected by the issues and attempts to inductively develop consensus recommendations and policy. While both approaches have merit, I argue that more work needs to be done on ‘bottom-up’ strategies if trust and transparency are to be more than mere slogans. Using 2 case examples from Indiana, the paper summarizes data from a set of surveys we recently conducted that address issues arising from biobanks that provide some insight into issues associated with trust and transparency.

An industry-funded, long-term, receiving water study was initiated in 1998/1999 to adress questions about the potential effects of pulp and paper mill effluent discharges on US receiving waters. Although the study continues, the knowledge gained to date provides an opportunity to reflect on the study development process, its progress, and its outcomes. As a backdrop to a series of articles in this special issue describing study results, this article describes the process by which study information objectives were identified as well as the process by which the experimental design was developed. A review of past literature and research identified gaps in long-term population/community data about effluent effects and that, consequently, emerged as a primary information objective. The selected streams for study included 1) Codorus Creek (Pennsylvania, USA), 2) Leaf River (Mississippi, USA), 3) McKenzie River (Oregon, USA), and 4) Willamette River (Oregon) represent a blend of mill process types, coldwater and warmwater stream types, and a range of effluent concentrations. Measurements included numbers of periphyton, macroinvertebrate, and fish communities; the assessment of water and effluent quality; laboratory bioassays; and fish full-life-cycle assays. Information objectives included addressing natural variability and, consequently, the study included long-term temporal (>10 y) and watershed-scale spatial frameworks. Regional-scale ecological risk assessments were performed for each site that aided in placing each site in an ecological and regulatory context. An adaptive-management process is described that allowed for modifications over time as a result of lessons learned as the study progressed. Results from the initial 7 to 8 y of monitoring, as described in the series of articles in this special issue, provide a unique data set with respect to addressing point-source pulp and paper mill effluent discharge concerns and may serve as a template for others to use in developing monitoring or management programs to assess or address water quality conditions or concerns.

Waste prevention is a principle means of achieving the goals of waste management and a key element for developing sustainable economies. Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) contribute substantially to environmental degradation, often not even being aware of their environmental effects. Therefore, several initiatives have been launched in Austria aimed at supporting waste prevention measures on the level of SMEs. To promote the most efficient projects, they have to be evaluated with respect to their contribution to the goals of waste management. It is the aim of this paper to develop a methodology for evaluating waste prevention measures in SMEs based on their goal orientation. At first, conceptual problems of defining and delineating waste prevention activities are briefly discussed. Then an approach to evaluate waste prevention activities with respect to their environmental performance is presented and benchmarks which allow for an efficient use of the available funds are developed. Finally the evaluation method is applied to a number of former projects and the calculated results are analysed with respect to shortcomings and limitations of the model. It is found that the developed methodology can provide a tool for a more objective and comprehensible evaluation of waste prevention measures.

Husbandry conditions in a laboratory environment can be barren and monotonous. Improving those conditions by providing opportunities for laboratory mice to engage in species-specific behavior can improve their mental and physical well-being 1 . Giving the animals choices and control over their environment is key to reducing stress 2 . Nesting is a normal behavior of mice, and giving mice nesting opportunities allows them to choose how and where to create their nest and provides them a means of thermoregulation in their microenvironment.

A regional-scale watershed assessment using the relative risk model has now been performed on each of the watersheds that are part of the Long-Term Receiving Waters Study (LTRWS) to generate patterns of risk at each study site. The watersheds assessed included the lower McKenzie and mid-Willamette rivers in Oregon, USA; Codorus Creek in Pennsylvania, USA; and the Leaf River in Mississippi, USA. In each case, the goal was to put the LTRWS into a watershed and regional context, including multiple sources, stressors, habitats, and assessment endpoints. In each instance, the relative risk model provided measures of relative risk and testable hypotheses about patterns within the watersheds. There were similarities among the 3 risk studies. First, land use within the watershed was the most important driver of risk in each instance, even compared with point sources. Second, the list of endpoints was similar for each risk assessment. Water quality was held as important, along with populations critical to recreation or commercial use. At each site, data from the LTRWS and other sources could be used to support the risk patterns predicted from the risk assessment process. However, the sampling design of the LTRWS prevented the confirmation of specific cause-effect relationships. A fundamental conclusion is that risk assessment, using an adaptation of the relative risk model, should be performed as an integral part of any watershed assessment and management effort. These initial watershed risk assessments have led to similar assessments across the world.