Radiological Dispersion Devices: are we prepared?

Already before the events of September 11th 2001 concern was raised about the spread of orphan sources and their potential use in Radiological Dispersion Devices by terrorist groups. Although most of the simulated scenarios foresee a rather limited direct health impact on the population, the affected region would suffer from the indirect consequences such as social disruption, cleanup requirements and economic costs. The nature of such a radiological attack would anyway be different compared to conventional radiological accidents, basically because it can happen anywhere at any time. Part of the response resides in a general preparedness scheme incorporating attacks with Radiological Dispersion Devices. Training of different potential intervention teams is essential. The response would consist of a prioritised list of actions adapted to the circumstances. As the psychosocial dimension of the crisis could be worse than the purely radiological one, an adapted communication strategy with the public aspect would be a key issue.     

Water Appropriation Systems for Adapting to Water Shortages in Iraq

Climate variability and population growth have intensified the search internationally for measures to adapt to fluctuations in water supplies. An example can be found in the lower part of the transboundary Tigris‐Euphrates Basin where water shortages in 2008‐2009 resulted in high economic costs to irrigation farmers. Losses to irrigators in the lower basin have made a compelling case to identify flexible methods to adapt to water shortage. Few published studies have systematically examined ways to enhance the flexibility of water appropriation systems to adapt to water shortage. This article addresses an ongoing challenge in water governance by examining how profitability at both the farm and basin levels is affected by various water appropriation systems. Four water appropriation systems are compared for impacts on farm income under each of three water supply scenarios. Results show that a (1) proportional sharing of water shortages among provinces and (2) unrestricted water trading rank as the top two appropriation systems. The shadow price of water for irrigation rises from zero at a full water supply level to US$93/1,000 m³ when supply falls to 20% of full levels. Similar methods could be used to analyze challenges facing the design or implementation of water appropriation systems in the world's irrigated regions.     

Hybrid governance tensions fuelling self-reflexivity in Alternative Food Networks: the case of the Brussels GASAP (solidarity purchasing groups for peasant agriculture)

This paper applies the concept of Hybrid Governance to the analysis of the GASAP (Groupe d’Achats Solidaires de l’Agriculture Paysanne), a solidarity-based producers–consumers network established in Brussels in 2006. The Hybrid Governance concept allows to capture the role of key governance tensions in driving the self-organisation, scaling out and self-reflexive dynamics of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). The approach provides a multifaceted and sound socio-political account of the ways AFNs arise, self-organise, associate and build networks in the pursuit of their food allocation objectives, often facing a contradictory socio-institutional environment. Three types of governance tensions, i.e. organisational, resource, and institutional, as well as the interactions among them, are analysed throughout the life-course of the GASAP network. The analysis identifies three phases in the GASAP’s life-course, showing how governance tensions and their interrelations arise and play a critical role in conditioning the overall development of the organisation through time. The paper concludes with highlighting prospective values of the hybrid governance approach for the analysis of AFNs in general. These values relate to: the role of the hybrid approach in illuminating on key drivers behind the scaling out of AFNs; the hybrid governance as a tool to conceptualise and sustain the self-reflexive capacity of local food initiatives and the ways by which this approach unravels challenges to build cooperative alliances and networks among a diversity of agents in the food arena.     

Evaluation of a population mobility,mortality, and birth surveillance system in South Kivu,Democratic Republic of the Congo

Prospective, community-based surveillance systems for measuring birth, death, and population movement rates may have advantages over the ‘gold-standard’ retrospective household survey in humanitarian contexts. A community-based, monthly surveillance system was established in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in partnership with a local implementing partner and the national ministry of health. Data were collected on the occurrence of births, deaths, arrivals, and departures over the course of one year, and a retrospective survey was conducted at the end of the period to validate the information. Discrepancies between the two approaches were resolved by a third visit to the households with discordant records. The study found that the surveillance system was superior in terms of its specificity and sensitivity in measuring crude mortality and birth rates as compared to the survey, demonstrating the method's potential to measure accurately important population-level health metrics in an insecure setting in a timely, community-acceptable manner.     

Quality Control for Environmental Policy Appraisal Tools: An Empirical Investigation of Relations Between Quality,Quality Control and Effectiveness

The spectre of regulatory reform carried out in a range of Western countries has generated concern amongst parts of the environmental policy community. Quality and effectiveness are said to be at stake, but empirically there is a dearth of data on the relationship between provisions for quality control and the effects on quality and effectiveness. This research addresses this lacuna by analysing the effects of different quality control provisions in the Netherlands and Denmark for a globally institutionalized environmental appraisal tool—Environmental Assessment (EA). Extensive technical provisions for quality control in the Netherlands have led to it being described as the ‘Rolls Royce’ of EA systems, while in Denmark the polity is expected to take charge of quality control. The effects of quality control are investigated through surveys and in-depth interviews with actors centrally engaged with EA implementation. The results show that quality control provisions are poorly related to the perceived quality and effectiveness of EA. Only the appropriateness of the scope of EA reports is perceived to be strongly related to quality control provisions. The findings are relevant for environmental policy communities concerned with quality control systems and effectiveness of policy appraisal tools and policy-makers contemplating regulatory reforms.     

THOR dummy chest deflection response in oblique and lateral far-side sled tests

Abstract

Objective: The focus of this study is side impact. Though occupant injury assessment and protection in nearside impacts has received considerable attention and safety standards have been promulgated, field studies show that a majority of far-side occupant injuries are focused on the head and thorax. The 50th percentile male Test Device for Human Occupant Restraint (THOR) has been used in oblique and lateral far-side impact sled tests, and regional body accelerations and forces and moments recorded by load cells have been previously reported. The aim of this study is to evaluate the chestband-based deflection responses from these tests.

Methods: The 3-point belt–restrained 50th percentile male THOR dummy was seated upright in a buck consisting of a rigid flat seat, simulated center console, dashboard, far-side side door structure, and armrest. It was designed to conduct pure lateral and oblique impacts. The center console, dashboard, simulated door structure, and armrest were covered with energy-absorbing materials. A center-mounted airbag was mounted to the right side of the seat. Two 59-gage chestbands were routed on the circumference of the thorax, with the upper and lower chestbands at the level of the third and sixth ribs, respectively, following the rib geometry. Oblique and pure lateral far-side impact tests with and without airbags were conducted at 8.3 m/s. Maximum chest deflections were computed by processing temporal contours using custom software and 3 methods: Procedures paralleling human cadaver studies, using the actual anchor point location and actual alignment of the InfraRed Telescoping Rods for the Assessment of Chest Compression (IR-TRACC) in the dummy on each aspect—that is, right or left,—and using the same anchor location of the internal sensor but determining the location of the peak chest deflection on the contour confined to the aspect of the sensor; these were termed the SD, ID, and TD metrics, respectively.

Results: All deformation contours at the upper and lower thorax levels and associated peak deflections are given for all tests. Briefly, the ID metrics were the lowest in magnitude for both pure lateral and oblique modes, regardless of the presence or absence of an airbag. This was followed by the TD metric, and the SD metric produced the greatest deflections.

Conclusion: The chestbands provide a unique opportunity to compute peak deflections that parallel current IR-TRACC-type deflections and allow computation of peak deflections independent of the initial point of attachment to the rib. The differing locations of the peak deflection vectors along the rib contours for different test conditions suggest that a priori attachment is less effective. Further, varying magnitudes of the differences between ID and TD metrics underscore the difficulty in extrapolating ID outputs under different conditions: Pure lateral versus oblique, airbag presence, and thoracic levels. Deflection measurements should, therefore, not be limited to an instrument that can only track from a fixed point. For improved predictions, these results suggest the need to investigate alternative techniques, such as optical methods to improve chest deflection measurements for far-side occupant injury assessment and mitigation.     

Learning from local knowledge: modeling the pastoral-nomadic range management of the Himba, Namibia.

It is widely accepted that successful grazing management strategies in semiarid ecosystems need to be adapted to the highly temporal and spatially heterogeneous forage production. Nevertheless, a full understanding of the key factors and processes for sustainable adaptive management has yet to be reached. The investigation of existing, successful range management systems by simulation models may help to derive general understanding and basic principles. The semi-nomadic Himba in northern Namibia applied a sophisticated management system until the mid-1990s which combined season-dependent pasture use (resulting in rainy-season pastures and dry-season pastures), preservation of reserves for drought and sanctions for rule breaking. A stochastic ecological simulation model has been developed here which represents the main aspects of this management system. With this model we analyze (1) which components of the traditional Himba strategy are essential for sustainability and (2) what happens to the state of the rangeland system under socioeconomic changes. This study shows that temporally and spatially heterogeneous pasture use yields higher productivity and quality of a pasture area than the pressure of homogeneous permanent grazing. Two aspects are of importance: (1) intra-annual heterogeneous use (resting of the dry-season pastures during the rainy season) and (2) interannual heterogeneous use (spatial extension of grazing in years of drought). This management system leads to an effective build-up and use of a buffer in the system: the reserve biomass (the non-photosynthetic reserve organs of the plants), an indicator for grazing and management history. Analyzing purchase as one form of socioeconomic change, we demonstrate that easier market access to purchase livestock may lead to a decline in vegetation quality. However, cattle production increases as long as rest periods on parts of the pasture during the rainy season are granted. Methodologically, we emphasize that simulation models offer an excellent framework for analyzing and depicting basic principles in sustainable range management derived from local knowledge. They provide the opportunity of testing whether these basic principles are also valid under different ecological and socioeconomic settings.     

Nesting success of rufous-naped wrens (Campylorhynchus rufinucha) is greater near wasp nests

Summary Rufous-naped wrens (Campylorhynchus rufinucha) in northwestern Costa Rica build breeding nests most frequently in ant-acacia trees (Acacia collinsii) and occasionally near wasp nests in ant-acacia trees. By moving occupied wasp nests (Polybia rejecta) to randomly chosen ant-acacia trees with wren nests, I tested the hypothesis that wrens nesting near wasp nests were more likely to fledge young than wrens not nesting near wasp nests. Wrens whose nests were near experimentally relocated wasp nests were significantly more likely to fledge young (37.5% of 16 attempts in 1987 and 75% of 12 attempts in 1988) than were wrens whose nests had no wasp nests placed near them (0% of 16 attempts in 1987 and 20% of 15 attempts in 1988). In 15 cases, repeated nesting attempts occurred in the same trees both with and without experimentally-placed wasp nests. Analysis of these data allowed a comparison of the effect of wasp nests on fledging success while differences among trees were controlled. Within the same tree, nesting attempts associated with wasp nests were significantly more likely to fledge young than nesting attempts without wasp nests. Predation was the primary cause of nest failure, and within forest, white-faced monkeys (Cebus capucinus) were the most important predators. The difference in success of wren nests with and without wasps and observations of predators indicate that enhancement of fledging success was due to deterrence of predatory vertebrates by wasps.