Greenhouse gas fluxes and mitigation potential for managed lands in the Russian Federation

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change - This work aims to assess the dynamics of net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals, as well as analyse the mitigation potential for...     

Assessment of microbiological and parasitological quality of composted wastes: health implications and hygienic measures.

Feedstock and compost samples were collected from twenty composting plants and analysed from the microbiological point of view. Faecal indicator organisms were determined in order to evaluate the efficacy of processes for the removal of pathogenic micro-organisms with similar survival characteristics and to verify their suitability as appropriate markers of microbial quality of composted products. In addition to the classical bacterial indicators, selected organisms, such as Salmonella, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, Clostridium spores and helminth ova, were investigated. Statistically significant differences in the removal of the different micro-organisms were observed with regard to both the different composting plants (P < 0.05) and feedstock composition (P < 0.05). In fact, compost obtained by feedstock containing sewage sludge was shown to have a better hygienic quality in comparison with compost containing green discards and municipal solid waste as raw matter. Giardia cysts, Cryptosporidium oocysts and helminth ova were not effective indicators of hygienic quality of compost, whereas Clostridium perfringens spores, because of their high resistance to treatments, could be considered as an additional model for assessing the composting process, especially with regard to more resistant pathogen reduction.     

Relationship between loudness and annoyance for ten community sounds

The aim of this experiment was to investigate the relationship between perceived annoyance and perceived loudness for complex community sounds. The two perceptual attributes were scaled by the method of magnitude estimation. In all, forty subjects scaled ten different tape recorded sounds presented at two different Zwicker loudness values. The results show that for physically loud sounds only the perceived annoyance may be exchanged for perceived loudness, while for physically soft sounds, the perceived annoyance deviates greatly from perceived loudness. Thus, for physically soft sounds, more attention is paid to other aspects of the sound, such as the perceptual counterpart of the physical parameter sharpness, than to the loudness-related sound pressure level. This means that the physically determined Zwicker loudness is inappropriate to use for predicting the perceived annoyance of complex sounds.