A Special Issue from the NARSTO Symposium on Tropospheric Aerosols

This dedicated issue of the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association contains nine peer-reviewed scientific papers that were presented at the NARSTO Symposium on Tropospheric Aerosols: Science and Decisions in an International Community, held October 24-26, 2000, in Querétaro, Mexico.¹ Other peer-reviewed papers^2-9 appear in a companion issue of Science of the Total Environment to be published in February 2002. More than 130 papers were presented in platform and poster sessions at the meeting. Approximately 28% of the technical presentations dealt with topics from Mexico, and 15% related to Canada, with the remainder discussing U.S. and global topics.     

Contrasting the core beliefs regarding the effective implementation of wind power. An international study of stakeholder perspectives

This paper analyses patterns in beliefs about the implementation of wind power as part of a geographical comparison of onshore wind power developments in the Netherlands, North-Rhine Westphalia and England. Q methodology is applied, in order to systematically compare the patterns in stakeholder views on the institutional conditions and changes in the domains of energy policy, spatial planning and environmental policy. Three factors represent support for wind power implementation from fundamentally different perspectives. The fourth perspective is critical opposed to wind power developments as well as critical to the manner in which wind projects are proposed, planned and implemented. These four perspectives exist across the geographical cases; however, some perspectives are prominent in one case and marginal in another. This relates to different legacies and varying implementation achievements in the three cases. The analysis shows that an approach that focuses on implementing as much wind power as possible, relying on technocratic reasoning and hierarchical policies is in practice the least successful, whereas collaborative perspectives with more emphasis on local issues and less on the interests of the conventional energy sector were particularly dominant in the most successful case, North-Rhine Westphalia.     

Adolescent driving: Characteristics associated with single-vehicle and injury crashes

The high motor-vehicle crash rate of young drivers may be attributed to both driving inexperience and a greater tendency to engage in risk-taking behavior. This study examines risk-taking behavior, as indicated by single-vehicle crashes and injury crashes, and factors associated with these behaviors, based on measures of demographic, psychosocial, and substance use obtained from high school senior questionnaires. Because previous work indicated different predictors for young men and young women, separate logistic regression analyses were conducted. For young women, propensity toward cigarette use was associated with higher rates of single-vehicle crashes; while race, alcohol misuse, and friends' involvement with alcohol and marijuana were associated with injury crashes. For young men, availability of substances, driving frequency, alcohol misuse, and propensity toward marijuana use were associated with higher rates of single-vehicle crashes. Young men's living situation, availability of substances, and marijuana use were related to injury crashes.     

Recursive residuals and model diagnostics for normal and non-normal state space models

Model diagnostics for normal and non-normal state space models are based on recursive residuals which are defined from the one-step ahead predictive distribution. Routine calculation of these residuals is discussed in detail. Various diagnostic tools are suggested to check, for example, for wrong observation distributions and for autocorrelation. The paper also discusses such topics as model diagnostics for discrete time series and model discrimination via Bayes factors. The case studies cover environmental applications such as analysing a time series of the number of daily rainfall occurrences and a time series of daily sulfur dioxide emissions.     

Copper ecotoxicology of marine algae: a methodological appraisal

The production of accurate and reliable data on copper ecotoxicology of marine algae depends on the use of trace metal clean techniques during experimentation. We reviewed the methodologies used in the literature on copper ecotoxicology of marine macro- and microalgae, specifically the use of trace metal clean procedures such as the labware used (glassware vs. plasticware), methods of cleaning the labware (acid soaking and ultrapure water rinsing), stock solution preparation (copper source and acidification), and measurement and reporting of dissolved copper concentrations. In terms of taxonomic classification, the most studied algal groups were the Phyla Ochrophyta, Bacillariophyta, Rhodophyta, and Chlorophyta. In terms of methodology, ～50% of the articles did not specify the labware, ～25% used glassware, and ～25% plasticware; ～30% of the studies specified cleaning protocols for labware to remove trace metal impurities; the copper form used to prepare the stock solutions was specified in ～80% of studies but acidification to stabilise the dissolved copper was performed in only ～20%; and the dissolved copper concentration was measured in only ～40% of studies. We discuss the importance of following trace metal clean techniques for the comparison and interpretation of data obtained on copper ecotoxicology in algae.