Biodiversity and biotechnology

The maintenance of biodiversity is urged from many quarters and on grounds ranging from aesthetic considerations to its usefulness, particularly for biotechnology. But regardless of the grounds for preserving biodiversity, writers are generally in agreement that it should be preserved. But, in examining the various references biodiversity, such as species diversity, genetic diversity, and habitat diversity, it is apparent that we cannot aim to preserve biodiversityas such, since there are a number of conflicts in any such undertaking. In preserving one aspect of biodiversity, we damage another aspect. Five arguments which attempt to ground our moral concern for biodiversity are reviewed and critiqued, not only for their consistency but also for their power to move us to action. The final section of the paper shows how conflicts in the values of personal and environmental health can impair ethical action and especially policy formation.An earlier version of this paper was read at the conference on Agriculture, Food, and Human Values: Tradition and Change, Orlando, Florida, October 7–9, 1987.     

Mosaic triple trisomy in amniocytes from a phenotypically and karyotypically normal fetus

We report the detection of a mosaic triple trisomy, 46, XY/49, XY, + 13, +20, +21, in two amniotic fluid specimens obtained from a pregnancy that yielded a normal infant. Traditional cytogenetic methods failed to detect the abnormal cell lineage in fetal blood, foreskin, amnion, umbilical cord, and three different biopsies of the chorion. In addition, fluorescence in situ hybridization study of cells from a buccal smear showed no evidence of cells with three copies of chromosome 20.     

Discrimination and bias in the vegan ideal

The vegan ideal is entailed by arguments for ethical veganism based on traditional moral theory (rights and/or utilitarianism) extended to animals. The most ideal lifestyle would abjure the use of animals or their products for food since animals suffer and have rights not to be killed. The ideal is discriminatory because the arguments presuppose a male physiological norm that gives a privileged position to adult, middle-class males living in industrialized countries. Women, children, the aged, and others have substantially different nutritional requirements and would bear a greater burden on vegetarian and vegan diets with respect to health and economic risks, than do these males. The poor and many persons in Third World nations live in circumstances that make the obligatory adoption of such diets, where they are not already a matter of sheer necessity, even more risky.Traditional moral theorists (such as Evelyn Pluhar and Gary Varner whose essays appear in this issue) argue that those who are at risk would beexcused from a duty to attain the virtue associated with ethical vegan lifestyles. The routine excuse of nearly everyone in the world besides adult, middle-class males in industrialized countries suggests bias in the perspective from which traditional arguments for animal rights and (utilitarian) animal welfare are formulated.     

Soxhlet extraction of organic compounds associated with soil water repellency

The study of compounds associated with soil water repellency usually involves removing organic material from a sample by some extraction procedure. An evaluation of the kinetics and efficiency of Soxhlet extraction using an isopropanol-aqueous ammonia mixture is given here. Increasing extraction time caused an increase in the mass of material extracted and a decrease in soil water repellency. The same compound types were detected by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry in all extracts, but their proportions varied with extraction time. In particular, the removal of alkanes from the soil sample was less rapid than that of more polar compounds.     

Nontarget-plant risk assessment for pesticide registration

The approach developed by Environment Canada to assess risk to aquatic and terrestrial plants in nontarget habitats potentially exposed to pesticides evaluated for registration is described. An anonymous sample of pesticide submissions is used to illustrate the approach and to examine its merits and limitations in relation to test species, response variability, testing protocols, ecological relevance, and comparability with other regulatory agencies. Future directions are identified, particularly in relation to impending nontarget-plant testing guidelines for pesticide registration in Canada. This approach incorporates some of the latest research and developments in the field of risk assessment for plants. The novelty of this approach also lies in the use of the plant screening data routinely generated by chemical pesticide companies, which is intended to provide a maximum amount of information to evaluators at minimal increment cost to registrants. The proposed approach can serve as a basis for guideline development and modernization for other jurisdictions.     

Creating and validating GIS measures of urban design for health research

Studies relating urban design to health have been impeded by the unfeasibility of conducting field observations across large areas and the lack of validated objective measures of urban design. This study describes measures for five dimensions of urban design - imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency, and complexity - created using public geographic information systems (GIS) data from the US Census and city and state government. GIS measures were validated for a sample of 588 New York City block faces using a well-documented field observation protocol. Correlations between GIS and observed measures ranged from 0.28 to 0.89. Results show valid urban design measures can be constructed from digital sources.     

The ethical contours of research in crisis settings: five practical considerations for academic institutional review boards and researchers

The number of research studies in the humanitarian field is rising. It is imperative, therefore, that institutional review boards (IRBs) consider carefully the additional risks present in crisis contexts to ensure that the highest ethical standards are upheld. Ethical guidelines should represent better the specific issues inherent to research among populations grappling with armed conflict, disasters triggered by natural hazards, or health‐related emergencies. This paper seeks to describe five issues particular to humanitarian settings that IRBs should deliberate and on which they should provide recommendations to overcome associated challenges: staged reviews of protocols in acute emergencies; flexible reviews of modification requests; addressing violence and the traumatic experiences of participants; difficulties in attaining meaningful informed consent among populations dependent on aid; and ensuring reviews are knowledgeable of populations' needs. Considering these matters when reviewing protocols will yield more ethically sound research in humanitarian settings and hold researchers accountable to appropriate ethical standards.     

Wildlife contact analysis: emerging methods, questions, and challenges

Recent technological advances, such as proximity loggers, allow researchers to collect complete interaction histories, day and night, among sampled individuals over several months to years. Social network analyses are an obvious approach to analyzing interaction data because of their flexibility for fitting many different social structures as well as the ability to assess both direct contacts and indirect associations via intermediaries. For many network properties, however, it is not clear whether estimates based upon a sample of the network are reflective of the entire network. In wildlife applications, networks may be poorly sampled and boundary effects will be common. We present an alternative approach that utilizes a hierarchical modeling framework to assess the individual, dyadic, and environmental factors contributing to variation in the interaction rates and allows us to estimate the underlying process variation in each. In a disease control context, this approach will allow managers to focus efforts on those types of individuals and environments that contribute the most toward super-spreading events. We account for the sampling distribution of proximity loggers and the non-independence of contacts among groups by only using contact data within a group during days when the group membership of proximity loggers was known. This allows us to separate the two mechanisms responsible for a pair not contacting one another: they were not in the same group or they were in the same group but did not come within the specified contact distance. We illustrate our approach with an example dataset of female elk from northwestern Wyoming and conclude with a number of important future research directions.     

A female preference for experienced males in the almond moth, Cadra cautella

Male mating status can affect female reproductive output if male ejaculate investment declines over consecutive matings. Accordingly, females are predicted to mate preferentially with virgin males. In mildly polyandrous lepidopterans, female fitness is less affected by reduced male investment than in more polyandrous species, and so the predictions for female mating preferences are less clear. We examined female mating preferences in the mildly polyandrous almond moth, Cadra cautella, in which ejaculate size does not affect female reproductive output. First, we allowed females to mate with virgin or once-mated males, in which the males were presented individually or simultaneously. We recorded the latency to mating and, in the case of the simultaneously presented trials, the identity of the successful, copulating male. We found that females mated more frequently with mated males (when simultaneously presented with both males), yet females did not differ in the time taken to initiate copulation with any male. We further examined if this mated male advantage was due to differential mate detection or locomotory behaviour of the male treatments. We tested the ability of virgin and mated males to locate a receptive female within a wind tunnel using long-distance pheromone cues and recorded their activity budget. We found no difference in the ability of mated or virgin males to locate or approach a receptive female, or in their activity levels. These data suggest a female preference for mated males in this species, a preference that may minimise other potential costs of mating.