The future place of recycling in household waste policy: the case of France

To be rightly implemented, an environmental policy ought to set an institutional framework (goals, rules and instruments) which incents decentralised actors to adopt the appropriate range of technologies. In the household waste management policy, the development of valorisation techniques (and particularly recycling) must be supported by convenient instruments and incentives. The paper analyses the problems encountered with the French household waste policy to ensure the takeoff of recycling techniques. At the moment, a rather under-proportioned institutional setting leads to favour the adoption of incineration with energy recovery at the expenses of recycling. This tends to create a structural bias in favour of incineration.     

A design of experiments for statistically predicting risk of adverse health effects on drivers exposed to vertical vibrations

An injury risk factor (IRF), which indicates the risk of adverse health effect to lumbar rachis arising from mechanical vibrations, is developed. Experiments have been conducted that consider acceleration levels at the seat of drivers, posture, morphology, density, damping rate and body mass as independent variables. A parametric finite-element model of the lumbar rachis has been generated. It is shown that the IRF increases with ageing and an IRF of 30% is proposed as a threshold for fatigue purposes. This level is reached if a peak acceleration level greater than 3 m/s2 is applied to a light (55 kg) and an old driver with a low bone density and a damping rate of 20%. This vibration threshold must be reduced to 2.7 m/s2 if the driver?s weight increases to 75 kg and to 2 m/s2 if the driver is heavy (98 kg).     

Direct evidence for maternal inheritance of bacterial symbionts in small deep-sea clams (Bivalvia: Vesicomyidae)

Bacterial symbiont transmission is a key step in the renewal of the symbiotic interaction at each host generation, and different modes of transmission can be distinguished. Vesicomyidae are chemosynthetic bivalves from reducing habitats that rely on symbiosis with sulfur-oxidizing bacteria, in which two studies suggesting vertical transmission of symbionts have been published, both limited by the imaging techniques used. Using fluorescence in situ hybridization and transmission electron microscopy, we demonstrate that bacterial symbionts of Isorropodon bigoti, a gonochoristic Vesicomyidae from the Guiness cold seep site, occur intracellularly within female gametes at all stages of gametogenesis from germ cells to mature oocytes and in early postlarval stage. Symbionts are completely absent from the male gonad and gametes. This study confirms the transovarial transmission of symbionts in Vesicomyidae and extends it to the smaller species for which no data were previously available.