Synthesis of hydroxylated PCB metabolites with the Suzuki-coupling

An improved synthesis of hydroxylated polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) which are structurally related to the major hydroxy PCB congeners identified in human plasma is described. The coupling of (chlorinated) aryl boronic acids with bromochloro anisoles using the standard conditions of the Suzuki coupling gave the desired hydroxylated PCB metabolites in good to excellent yields. The approach offers the advantage of high selectivity and good yields compared to conventional methods such as the Cadogan reaction and allows the use of less toxic starting materials.     

Health risks of residential wood heat

The resurgence in the use of wood in the United States for residential heating has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in deaths and injuries from residential fires. Toxic materials present in woodsmoke also appear to present a significant public health hazard. As a result of these factors, production of residential wood heat can be up to two orders of magnitude more hazardous than generation of an equivalent amount of electric energy at a coal-fired power plant. Proper care in installation and operation of wood stoves, as well as technological innovations that control wood-stove emissions, can greatly reduce the health and safety hazards of residential heating with wood.     

Geographic information systems (GIS) based model of dairy manure transportation and application with environmental quality consideration

Survey information was used to develop a minimum cost spatial dairy manure transportation model where environmental quality and crop nutrient requirements were treated as constraints. The GIS model incorporated land use types, exact locations of dairy farms and farmlands, road networks, and distances from each dairy farm to receiving farmlands to identify dairy manure transportation routes that minimized costs relative to environmental and other constraints. Our analyses indicated that the characteristics of dairy manure, its bulk and relatively low primary N, P₂O₅ and K₂O nutrient levels limit the distribution areas or distances between the farms and the land over which the manure can be economically spread. Physical properties of the land limit the quantities of nutrients that can be applied because of excess nutrient buildup in soil and potential to harm nearby waterbodies and downstream people and places. Longer distances between dairy and farmland favor the use of commercial fertilizers due to the high cost of manure transportation. At $0.08 per ton per km transportation cost, the optimal cut-off distances for dairy manure application is 30 km for N and 15 km each for P₂O₅ and K₂O consistent rules. An analysis of dairy manure application to different crop types suggest that, on average, 1 ha of land requires 61 tons of dairy manure to meet the recommended N, P₂O₅ and K₂O needs.     

Water Resource Management in Botswana: Balancing Sustainability and Economic Development*

Botswana is a rapidly developing country in southern Africa. Over the last three decades, diamond mining and tourism have provided double-digit rates of economic growth. Yet most of Botswana’s land is in the Kalahari desert where the climate is subject to sustained periods of severe drought. In this environment, water resources are the most crucial of all environmental resources. Water use directly affects economic development because water utilization impacts all the major national economic sectors. A sustainable water use resource management plan must stretch several decades into the future to assure the availability of adequate supplies of water to future generations while not compromising the ability of the current generation to reasonable rates of economic development. Yet thinking about sustainability is present in Botswana water policy mostly only in rhetoric. A series of cultural traditions and political constraints, coupled with bureaucratic managerial weaknesses, serve to maintain a system of water allocation that is unsustainable in the long run and inefficient in the short-term. Unless sustainable water use patterns are adopted, the results for the short-term, as well as the long-term, will be devastating. Drawing on data obtained through a series of interviews with government officials, leaders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and water resource researchers, this paper explores water policy in Botswana within the larger context of sustainable natural resource management practice and the pressures of economic development. This research was partially funded under U.S. Department of State, College and University Affiliations Grant # ASCS-1095.     

Ecology and Conservation of the Endangered American Burying Beetle (Nicrophorus americanus)

Field studies were conducted on the western population of the endangered American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) in Oklahoma and Arkansas to determine its habitat affinities. A common cause of declining populations is some specialized adaptation that makes it difficult to respond to a rapidly changing habitat. We evaluated the hypothesis that N. americanus is a habitat specialist in its search for food, preferring mature forests with deep, humic soils. This hypothesis was rejected. Based on comparisons of niche breadth among syntopic congeners and niche overlap, N. americanus is relatively generalized in its use of a range of habitats when searching for food. It is likely that the generalist nature and the endangered status of N. americanus both derive from the fact that it is the largest member of its guild. In comparison to smaller species, N. americanus breeds on larger carcasses, which are more unpredictable in space and time. It is likely, therefore, that N. americanus must search over a larger area and greater diversity of habitats than its smaller congeners.     

Analysis of a Fisheries Model for Harvest of Hawksbill Sea Turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata)

The hawksbill sea turtle ( Eretmochelys imbricata ) is valued for its mottled shell, called bekko in Japan. Populations of hawksbills have declined worldwide, and currently there is a ban on all international trade of hawksbill shell and products (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). In 1992 the Bekko Association of Japan introduced a fisheries model for hawksbill sea turtles in Cuba. The model estimated a sustainable yield of 5500 turtles from Cuban feeding grounds. We examined the model to determine whether this level of harvest was reasonable. Little biological information is available for hawksbills, so the model contained a number of simplifying assumptions, and several of its parameters were unsupported by data. The population was assumed to be at equilibrium, with a constant number of recruits (1-year-old turtles) and constant annual survival and growth rates. We analyzed the model to see how population size and sustainable yield results were affected by changes in various model parameters, and we found that the model was most sensitive to annual survival probability, which was assumed to be a constant 90% per year for all turtles greater than 1 year old. When we entered growth curves generated by mark-recapture data from other hawksbill populations, the model predicted a wide range of population sizes and sustainable yields. We determined that the assumptions of the current model make it unreliable for predicting sustainable yield of hawksbills, and that much research is needed to produce a more accurate model for management of this endangered species.     

On the extraction of an exhaustible resource by a monopoly

Hotelling's r-percent rule does not hold for monopoly extractors of durable exhaustible resources. An example with a nondurable resource in which the rule also fails to hold is presented. An economy with a fixed average propensity to save is modelled. The monopoly extractor recognizes that resource extraction, by affecting output and hence capital accumulation, affects future demand. The firm exploits this effect by causing the marginal profitability of extraction to grow faster or slower than the rate of interest, depending upon initial conditions. Conditions are developed under which the growth rate will be less than the interest rate.     

Variations in Densities of Invertebrate Benthos of the Clyde Estuary Tidal Flats

The Clyde Estuary is recognised as an important area for overwintering flocks of ducks and waders (Smyth et al., 1974. Here we draw attention to some of the spatial and temporal variations in the invertebrate populations on which these birds feed. Smyth et al. (1977) discuss possible relationships between the bird populations and their invertebrate prey. A 12-month survey, 1976-77, provides the main information on numbers of feeding birds (Halliday, 1978), complemented by sampling over the estuarine flats for invertebrate prey species and for chemical environmental factors: salinity, organic carbon, organic nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, as well as sediment grades. Although there is no constant monitoring shceme for the estuarine flats, a series of surveys provide data over the period 1973-1981.