Weighing the pig never made it heavier: Auditing OHS,social auditing as verification of process in Australia

South Australian organizations assess their OHSMS through audits as evidence of risk control and to help make workplaces healthy and safe. Auditing is an evaluative process regarded as an important step in the cycle of continuous improvement in OHS. Auditing began with financial audits conducted for reasons of corporate governance: for accountability, to inform management decisions and to provide market confidence. Society expects audits to be a tool of regulation, governance and accountability, but celebrated failures of audits to warn of impending financial collapse in organizations in recent years appears to have led to an increased fervour for auditing, rather than a decline. Social audits, including auditing of OHSMS, are intended to determine that an organization is meeting its corporate social responsibilities; but what is audited is often contested and requires subjective analysis. Financial and social audits are subject to failure: unintentional errors, deliberate fraud, financial interests causing undue influence, and undue influence from personal relationships between the auditor and client. We identify five further categories of failure: lack of worker participation; paperwork for the sake of the audit; goal displacement of audit scoring; confusion of audit criteria; and lack of auditor independence and skill. There has been a shift in focus: the current demand and preparation for auditing distracts organizations from the primary goal of making the workplace healthy and safe. We argue that auditing OHSMS has become a ritual rather than a means of improving workplace health and safety and should at least be treated with caution.     

Quantifying the effects of trampling and habitat edges on forest understory vegetation – A field experiment

We investigated the effects of human trampling on boreal forest understory vegetation on, and off paths from suburban forest edges towards the interiors and on the likelihood of trampling-aided dispersal into the forests for three years by carrying out a trampling experiment. We showed that the vegetation was highly sensitive to trampling. Even low levels of trampling considerably decreased covers of the most abundant species on the paths. Cover decreased between 10 and 30% on paths which had been trampled 35 times, and at least by 50% on those trampled 70–270 times. On-path vegetation cover decreased similarly at forest edges and in the interiors. However, some open habitat plant species that occurred outside the forest patches and at forest edges dispersed into the forests, possibly through the action of trampling. A higher cover percentage of an open habitat species at the forest edge line increased its probability to disperse into the forest interior. The vegetation community on, next to, and away from lightly trampled paths remained the same throughout the trampling experiment. For heavily trampled paths, the community changed drastically on the paths, but stayed relatively similar next to and away from the paths. As boreal vegetation is highly sensitive to the effects of trampling, overall ease of access throughout the forest floor should be restricted to avoid the excessive creation of spontaneous paths. To minimize the effects of trampling, recreational use could be guided to the maintained path network in heavily used areas.     

Determining residential firewood consumption

Household firewood use has become increasingly popular in the United States over the past few years. Significant problems remain in estimating firewood consumption. Methods of determining the amount of wood consumed vary from state to state. Units used for measuring firewood vary, but the cord remains the researcher's favorite. Factors used for converting other units, such as pickup truck loads to cords also vary. People who do not use firewood are less likely to respond to mailed surveys, resulting in potential overestimates of statewide consumption. This paper identifies some problems associated with estimating household firewood consumption and recommends methods of dealing with them.     

Evaluation and valuation of wildlife resources

Issues of resource conservation and development are essentially about choice between alternative uses of land. Resource evaluation in rural planning has usually been based on assessments of land quality or capability in relation to a variety of alternative uses. In the case of wildlife, choices have to be made as to whether the wildlife resource is worth conserving at all and if so, which sites should be used. Considerable efforts have been made to rationalise, improve and make explicit the way in which choices are made, and this paper reviews the current position and draws attention to issues and developments which could lead to improvements in current practice.     

Bioproduction strategies for rare hexose sugars

A new strategy for the bioproduction of all ketohexoses was developed using hexitols as intermediates. Biocatalysts used to employ the strategy were D-tagatose 3-epimerase, which epimerizes ketohexoses at the C-3 position, and oxidoreductases, which catalyze oxidation-reduction reactions between ketohexoses and the corresponding hexitols. Arranging all the ketohexoses and hexitols in a symmetric ring and connecting them with 20 biochemical reactions, I was able to construct a design for the bioproduction of all the rare ketohexoses. Various aldose isomerases transform ketohexoses into the corresponding aldohexoses, so the strategy is useful for the bioproduction of all the rare hexose sugars. Furthermore, the design revealed that there are four routes to the L-hexose world from the D-hexose one.     

Spatial differences of chemical features of atmospheric deposition between rainy season and winter in the areas facing to the Japan Sea, Japan

Atmospheric deposition was collected using filtrating bulk samplers at 32 sites in the areas facing to the Japan Sea (AFJS) from April 1991 to March 1994. The data were analyzed for winter (January and February) and the rainy season (June and July) when the climate is just the opposite. The AFJS was geographically divided into five areas, that is western Tohoku (WT), Hokuriku (HR), eastern San-in (ES), western San-in (WS) and northern Kyushu (NK). WT, HR and ES receive more precipitation than other regions in winter. H+ depositions increase in winter except NK. This is mainly due to high winter H+ concentrations. In spite of large amounts of precipitation in WT, HR and ES in winter, nss-SO4(2-) concentration was nearly equal to the average throughout Japan. Namely, nss-SO4(2-) depositions in these areas were nearly twice the national mean. In WT, HR and ES, nss-Ca2+ concentrations in winter are lower than the average of the whole country (less than the half). This may be the cause of the lower potentials of neutralization and the higher remaining acid concentrations in WT, HR and ES than NK and WS.     

Interrelationship of macropores and subsurface drainage for conservative tracer and pesticide transport

Macropore flow results in the rapid movement of pesticides to subsurface drains, which may be caused in part by a small portion of macropores directly connected to drains. However, current models fail to account for this direct connection. This research investigated the interrelationship between macropore flow and subsurface drainage on conservative solute and pesticide transport using the Root Zone Water Quality Model (RZWQM). Potassium bromide tracer and isoxaflutole, the active ingredient in BALANCE herbicide [(5-cyclopropyl-4-isoxazolyl) [2(methylsulfonyl)-4-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl] methanone], with average half-life of 1.7 d were applied to a 30.4-ha Indiana corn (Zea mays L.) field. Water flow and chemical concentrations emanating from the drains were measured from two samplers. Model predictions of drain flow after minimal calibration reasonably matched observations (slope = 1.03, intercept = 0.01, and R(2) = 0.75). Without direct hydraulic connection of macropores to drains, RZWQM under predicted bromide and isoxaflutole concentration during the first measured peak after application (e.g., observed isoxaflutole concentration was between 1.2 and 1.4 mug L(-1), RZWQM concentration was 0.1 mug L(-1)). This research modified RZWQM to include an express fraction relating the percentage of macropores in direct hydraulic connection to drains. The modified model captured the first measured peak in bromide and isoxaflutole concentrations using an express fraction of 2% (e.g., simulated isoxaflutole concentration increased to 1.7 mug L(-1)). The RZWQM modified to include a macropore express fraction more accurately simulates chemical movement through macropores to subsurface drains. An express fraction is required to match peak concentrations in subsurface drains shortly after chemical applications.