Misspecification of within-area exposure distribution in ecological Poisson models

Ecological studies enable investigation of geographic variations in exposure to environmental variables, across groups, in relation to health outcomes measured on a geographic scale. Such studies are subject to ecological biases, including pure specification bias which arises when a nonlinear individual exposure-risk model is assumed to apply at the area level. Introduction of the within-area variance of exposure should induce a marked reduction in this source of ecological bias. Assuming several measurements per area of exposure and no confounding risk factors, we study the model including the within-area exposure variability when Gaussian within-area exposure distribution is assumed. The robustness is assessed when the within-area exposure distribution is misspecified. Two underlying exposure distributions are studied: the Gamma distribution and an unimodal mixture of two Gaussian distributions. In case of strong ecological association, this model can reduce the bias and improve the precision of the individual parameter estimates when the within-area exposure means and variances are correlated. These different models are applied to analyze the ecological association between radon concentration and childhood acute leukemia in France.

Fate of 17β-estradiol in terrestrial model ecosystems amended with contaminated composted biosolids

Biosolids spread onto agricultural soils are potential sources of steroidal hormones that are able to adversely affect the soil ecosystem. Here we studied the fate of the [4-¹⁴C]-17-β-estradiol hormone in laboratory experiments. First, our results show that only 2.9% of the hormone was mineralized in the soil from a French vineyard. By contrast, the mineralization increased to 7.1% when the hormone was provided in composted biosolids. Second, we found that only a minor part of the estradiol-derived ¹⁴C was mobile and partly transferred to soil leachates. Indeed, the hormone was mainly stabilized in the soil as non-extractable residues. Overall, our findings show that estradiol undergoes two main processes, complete degradation and stabilisation. We therefore conclude that the environmental risk of hormones provided to the soil through composted biosolids is negligible under the conditions of our experiments.     

Impact of UV-irradiation on the formation of odorous chloroaldimines in drinking water

In order to explain some of the possible origins of an odor episode which took place in a drinking water supply in the region of Paris (France), the impact of disinfection on the formation of odorous by-products was investigated. We have previously established that very odorous and stable chloroaldimines are formed during amino acid chlorination in conditions relevant to those of drinking water treatment. As chlorination is preceded by a UV-irradiation step, we examined here the impact of this irradiation on the formation of chloroaldimines. Irradiation (30 m W cm(-2)) of various amino acids (glycine, valine, phenylalanine) and peptides (Phe-Gly-Gly-Phe, Phe-Ala) led to a degradation of the compounds but it was negligible at the doses applied in drinking water supplies. As peptides were concerned, contrary to what we previously expected, the degradation did not involve the peptidic bond breaking: irradiation induces therefore no increase in the quantity of free amino acids, precursors of odorous chloroaldimines. However chlorination of peptides (Phe-Ala-Ala-Val, Phe-Gly-Gly-Phe and Ala-Phe) showed that chloroaldimines are also probably formed during combined amino acids chlorination.     

Estimating the safety performance of urban intersections in Lisbon,Portugal

According to official statistics, a large percentage of crashes in Portugal are reported on urban roads. For instance, from 2004 to 2007, about 70% of all injury accidents and 43% of the fatalities occurred inside urban agglomerations. This important safety problem has also been observed on the urban network of Lisbon. Understanding this significant problem, the Government of the Portuguese Republic via its research grant agency – The Foundation for Science and Technology – funded a project whose primary objective consists of developing tools that would help estimating the safety performance of various components of the urban highway system in Lisbon. This paper documents one component of the safety tools that were developed and describes the steps that were taken to develop predictive models for estimating the safety performance of signalized and unsignalized intersections of Lisbon. Several crash predictive models were developed using the Poisson-gamma modeling framework. Two types of models were estimated: flow-only and models with covariates. They were estimated using crash and other related data collected at 44 three-legged and 50 four-legged intersections for the years 2004–2007, inclusively. It was found that some highway geometric design characteristics were associated with the crashes occurring at urban three- and four-legged intersections in Lisbon.     

Spatial interpolation of air temperature using environmental context: Application to a crop model

The air temperature is one of the main input data in models for water balance monitoring or crop models for yield prediction. The different phenological stages of plant growth are generally defined according to cumulated air temperature from the sowing date. When these crop models are used at the regional scale, the meteorological stations providing input climatic data are not spatially dense enough or in a similar environment to reflect the crop local climate. Hence spatial interpolation methods must be used. Climatic data, particularly air temperature, are influenced by local environment. Measurements show that the air above dry surfaces is warmer than above wet areas. We propose a method taking into account the environment of the meteorological stations in order to improve spatial interpolation of air temperature. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of these corrected climatic data in crop models. The proposed method is an external drift kriging where the Kriging system is modified to correct local environment effects. The environment of the meteorological stations was characterized using a land use map summarized in a small number of classes considered as a factor influencing local temperature. This method was applied to a region in south-east France (150×250 km) where daily temperatures were measured on 150 weather stations for two years. Environment classes were extracted from the CORINE Landcover map obtained from remote sensing data. Categorical external drift kriging was compared to ordinary kriging by a cross validation study. The gain in precision was assessed for different environment classes and for summer days. We then performed a sensitivity study of air temperature with the crop model STICS. The influence of interpolation corrections on the main outputs as yield or harvest date is discussed. We showed that the method works well for air temperature in summer and can lead to significant correction for yield prediction. For example, we observed by cross validation a bias reduction of 0.5 to 1.0°C (exceptionally 2.5°C for some class), which corresponds to differences in yield prediction from 0.6 to 1.5 t/ha.     

Dwelling and the experience of burglary

This study attempts to define the fundamental dimensions of the home experience through its dramatization, in this case, when one is burgled. It is based on thirty-six interviews conducted with middle-class urban dwellers who had been burgled a year prior to the interview. The analysis of the data was mainly thematic and hermeneutical. It shows that the dwelling experience is the experience of boundaries, the door being a limit between inside and outside, and also a limit within oneself. Moreover, the uncontrolled access by another person to the hidden/secret subspaces of the dwelling incites reactions which reveal the importance of the dweller's visibility. Lastly, the re-appropriation processes which take place after the burglary show that dwelling is essentially a sum of future-orientated actions.     

Heavy metal load and effects on biochemical properties in urban soils of a medium-sized city,Ancona, Italy

Environmental Geochemistry and Health - Urban soils are often mixed with extraneous materials and show a high spatial variability that determine great differences from their agricultural or natural...     

Evaluation of the best compromise between the urban air quality monitoring resolution by diffusive sampling and resource requirements

The need to collect data representative of overall urban pollution is all-important in order to monitor the population exposure. High spatial resolution monitoring using diffusive samplers allows studying of the urban pollutant distribution, thus enabling deeper investigation of their generation and diffusion mechanisms. Nevertheless, such a monitoring campaign has a certain cost. In this study we point out how to find the best compromise between the number of necessary measurements and the affordable costs for monitoring campaigns. We also describe an innovative method for the proper design of a fixed urban monitoring network by means of preliminary high spatial resolution campaigns using diffusive samplers. Four European capital cities (Dublin, Madrid, Paris and Rome) were monitored six times, each time for seven days. Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes (BTEX) and NO(2) concentrations were measured at 146 sites in Dublin, 293 in Madrid, 339 in Paris and 290 in Rome. Multiscale grids have been drawn which ranged in mesh size from 500 m to 2 km. The statistical processing of data produced a twofold result: the creation of isoconcentration maps with geostatistical procedures, and an algorithm aimed at locating the minimum number of sampling sites where the fixed monitoring stations should be placed. Average urban levels estimated on the basis of these selected sites differ by less than 8% from those calculated on the whole populations of the sampled points. The aim of this work is to investigate how far the resolution of a monitoring campaign of urban pollution by diffusive sampling can be reduced, thus making the monitoring less expensive in terms of human and financial resources, while preserving the same quality of the results that could be achieved with a higher resolution. We found that there is no significant loss of information when the resolution of the monitoring grid for BTEX is lowered to a mesh size of 1.85 km, that is a sampling site each 3.4 km(2), and that the minimum number of sampling sites to be used is N = 0.29 A, where A is the urban surface to be monitored (in km(2)). As the spatial distribution of NO(2) is less sensitive to the distance from the emission source than that of BTEX, this relationship could be retained as a valid lower limit for the mesh grid size also for NO(2) monitoring.     

Genetic evidence for mixed parentage in nests of the emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae)

Parentage in emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae) was examined by microsatellite analysis using four independent loci. Of 106 chicks sampled in one breeding season from 18 nests, 54 (51%) were not fathered by the nesting male, 12 (11%) were not from the observed mate of the sitting male, and 9 (8%) represented intra-specific brood parasitism, having no alleles in common with either nest parent. Some males (11%) fathered all chicks in their nests, but the majority showed high levels of cuckoldry. Those males commencing incubation earliest in the season tended to have the highest levels of paternity in their own nests. These results reveal a high frequency of extra-pair fertilisations and resultant cuckoldry in a predominantly socially monogamous bird and support recent reports which have described the emu mating system as a complexity of polyandrous, promiscuous and monogamous behaviour. Parentage assignment of chicks resulting from extra-pair fertilisations revealed an evenly scattered pattern of paternity that did not show any particular male dominance in reproductive success. These results lead to a reassessment of behavioural observations of emus, the consequences of parentage distribution, and theories about mating systems and sexual selection. The frequency of extra-pair copulations and intra-specific brood parasitism suggests patterns of descent that differ greatly from those implied by social monogamy. Received: 27 November 1999 / Received in revised form: 8 January 2000 / Accepted: 8 February 2000