Is there a link between children's motor abilities and unintentional injuries?

PROBLEM: The common view is that clumsy children experience unintentional injury more frequently. Empirical evidence supporting this position is mixed. METHOD: One hundred 6- and 8-year-olds completed a battery of nine tasks designed to assess motor ability. Mothers completed a lifetime injury history measure about their children and families completed a 2-week injury diary assessing frequency and severity of daily injuries. RESULTS: Internal reliability for the motor ability battery was good. Correlations between motor ability measures and injury risk were nonsignificant and near zero. DISCUSSION: Motor ability does not appear to be directly related to injury risk. Possible explanations include: (a) coordinated and clumsy children engage in hazardous activities with differing frequency; or (b) other individual difference factors may interact with motor ability to explain children's injury risk. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: Children's motor abilities do not appear to be directly linked to rate of unintentional injury, but instead may influence risk for injury in conjunction with other factors. Results could have implications to the engineering of children's toys and playground equipment and to the design of appropriate supervision strategies for children engaging in potentially dangerous activities.     

Prenatal sonographic assessment of early,rapidly growing fetal cervical teratoma

Although malignant transformation of fetal cervical teratoma is extremely rare, perinatal morbidity is high and usually related to the size of the tumour, which may compromise fetal swallowing and subsequently lead to upper airway obstruction. We present a case in which mid-trimester serial sonography demonstrated markedly rapid early growth of a lesion of this type between 17 and 19 weeks' gestation indicating the aggressive nature of this tumour, assisting parental decision to terminate the pregnancy. Histopathology confirmed grade 3 immaturity of the lesion.     

A study of the effect of physical and chemical stressors on biological integrity within the San Diego hydrologic region

Environmental agencies across the United States have searched for adequate methods to assess anthropogenic impacts on the environment. Biological assessments, which compare the taxonomic composition of an aquatic assemblage to relevant biocriteria, have surfaced as an effective method to assess the ecological integrity of US waterbodies. In this study, bioassessment data were collected and analyzed in conjunction with physical habitat and chemical stressor data for streams and rivers within the San Diego basin from 1998 through 2005. Physical stressors such as sediment loading, riparian destruction, and in-stream habitat homogenization affect many locations in the region. However, physical habitat measures alone were found to frequently overestimate the biological integrity of streams in the region. Many sites within the San Diego Basin, although unaffected by physical stressors, continue to exhibit low biological integrity scores. Sites with low biological integrity tend to possess higher specific conductance and salinity compared to sites with high biological integrity. We suggest that one possible reason for these differences is the source water used for municipal purposes.     

Identification of a floral-derived kairomone for currant clearwing, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Synanthedon tipuliformis</Emphasis>

The currant clearwing Synanthedon tipuliformis (Clerck) (Sesiidae) is a worldwide pest of black currants, Ribes nigrum. This moth has been observed to feed on nectar of inflorescences of Canada thistles, Cirsium arvense (L.) Scop. This work was undertaken to identify floral compound(s) produced by Canada thistles inflorescences that mediate the response of the currant clearwing. Floral volatiles were collected during the day and analysed by coupled gas chromatography/electroantennographic detection (GC/EAD) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Three compounds consistently elicited EAD response from moth antennae and were identified by GC/MS as phenylacetaldehyde, methyl salicylate and dimethyl salicylate. When the compounds were tested individually or in various combinations in field trapping experiments, a 3-component blend attracted the largest number of female and male currant clearwings. Subsequent field trapping experiments were conducted to determine the optimal attraction dose for the ternary blend using three loadings of 1, 10 and 100 mg loaded into a polyethylene sachet. The highest catches were in traps baited with the 100 mg loading. In all trials, males and mated females were caught in significant numbers, while very low numbers of virgin females were found in the traps. In recent years the efficacy of mating disruption against currant clearwing has been reported as declining. The new kairomone blend identified in this study can be used with the sex pheromone to provide an effective control option for this important pest.     

Importance of information on tillage practices in the modelling of environmental processes and in the use of environmental indicators

Tillage has been and will always be integral to crop production. Tillage can result in the degradation of soil, water, and air quality. Of all farm management practices, tillage may have the greatest impact on the environment. A wide variety of tillage equipment, practices and systems are available to farmers, providing opportunities to enhance environmental performance. These opportunities have made tillage a popular focus of environmental policies and programs such as environmental indicators for agriculture. This paper provides a very brief examination of the role of tillage in crop production, its effect on biophysical processes and, therefore, its impact on the environment. Models of biophysical processes are briefly examined to demonstrate the importance of tillage relative to other farm management practices and to demonstrate the detail of tillage data that these models can demand. The focus of this paper is an examination of the use of information on tillage in Canada's agri-environmental indicators initiative, National Agri-environmental Health Analysis and Reporting Program (NAHARP). Information on tillage is required for several of the indicators in NAHARP. The type of data used, its source, and its quality are discussed. Recommendations regarding the collection of tillage data and use of tillage information are presented.     

The effects of soil amendments on heavy metal bioavailability in two contaminated Mediterranean soils

Two heavy metal contaminated calcareous soils from the Mediterranean region of Spain were studied. One soil, from the province of Murcia, was characterised by very high total levels of Pb (1572 mg kg(-1)) and Zn (2602 mg kg(-1)), whilst the second, from Valencia, had elevated concentrations of Cu (72 mg kg(-1)) and Pb (190 mg kg(-1)). The effects of two contrasting organic amendments (fresh manure and mature compost) and the chelate ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) on soil fractionation of Cu, Fe, Mn, Pb and Zn, their uptake by plants and plant growth were determined. For Murcia soil, Brassica juncea (L.) Czern. was grown first, followed by radish (Raphanus sativus L.). For Valencia soil, Beta maritima L. was followed by radish. Bioavailability of metals was expressed in terms of concentrations extractable with 0.1 M CaCl2 or diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA). In the Murcia soil, heavy metal bioavailability was decreased more greatly by manure than by the highly-humified compost. EDTA (2 mmol kg(-1) soil) had only a limited effect on metal uptake by plants. The metal-solubilising effect of EDTA was shorter-lived in the less contaminated, more highly calcareous Valencia soil. When correlation coefficients were calculated for plant tissue and bioavailable metals, the clearest relationships were for Beta maritima and radish.     

The importance of small urbanized watersheds to pollutant loading in a large oligotrophic subalpine lake of the western USA

Urban land use has been implicated as a major contributor of nonpoint source pollution in aquatic systems. Through increased nonpoint delivery of pollutants, including constituents found in stormwater, Lake Tahoe is undergoing a marked decline in its transparency, primarily due to increasing production of algae from enhanced nutrient loading and delivery of fine particles to the lake from the watershed. In response to these findings, a regional restoration effort is underway to improve basin watersheds and the water quality in Lake Tahoe. In this study, stormwater autosamplers were used to collect flow-weighted composite samples that characterized event mean concentrations for event and nonevent conditions within a small, urbanized watershed in the Tahoe basin. An event-specified constant-concentration water quality model was then applied to the event mean concentration and continuous streamflow data to estimate pollutant loads for nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, orthophosphate, and suspended sediment. These data were compared with previously reported load estimates from 10 primary monitored streams in larger watersheds of the Tahoe basin. Results from a linear regression analysis demonstrate strong and significant relationships between watershed impervious area and pollutant loadings from Lake Tahoe watersheds. These small, urbanized watersheds and intervening zones, which only comprise 10 % of the total Lake Tahoe drainage area, include a significant portion of the total Lake Tahoe impervious area. The findings of this study suggest that small, urbanized watersheds and intervening zones are disproportionately important contributors of nonpoint source pollution, including nutrients and suspended particles.     

A comparison of the physical, chemical, and biological properties of sludges from a complete-mix activated sludge reactor and a submerged membrane bioreactor.

The properties of sludges from a pilot-scale submerged membrane bioreactor (SMBR) and two bench-scale complete-mix, activated sludge (CMAS) reactors treating municipal primary effluent were determined. Compared with the CMAS sludges, the SMBR sludge contained a higher amount of soluble microbial products (SMP) and colloidal material attributed to the use of a membrane for solid-liquid separation; a higher amount nocardioform bacteria, resulting from efficient foam trapping; and a lower amount of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), possibly because there was no selective pressure for the sludge to settle. High aeration rates in both the CMAS and SMBR reactors produced sludges with higher numbers of smaller particles. Normalized capillary suction time values for the SMBR sludge were lower than for the CMAS sludges, possibly because of its lower EPS content.     

Ethanol fuels: Energy security,economics, and the environment

Problems of fuel ethanol production have been the subject of numerous reports, including this analysis. The conclusions are that ethanol: does not improve U.S. energy security; is uneconomical; is not a renewable energy source; and increases environmental degradation. Ethanol production is wasteful of energy resources and does not increase energy security. Considerably more energy, much of it high- grade fossil fuels, is required to produce ethanol than is available in the energy output. About 72% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy in a gallon of ethanol. Ethanol production from corn is not renewable energy. Its production uses more non- renewable fossil energy resources in growing the corn and in the fermentation/distillation process than is produced as ethanol energy. Ethanol produced from corn and other food crops is also an unreliable and therefore a non-secure source of energy, because of the likelihood of uncontrollable climatic fluctuations, particularly droughts which reduce crop yields. The expected priority for corn and other food crops would be for food and feed. Increasing ethanol production would increase degradation of agricultural land and water and pollute the environment. In U.S. corn production, soil erodes some 18- times faster than soil is reformed, and, where irrigated, corn production mines water faster than recharge of aquifers. Increasing the cost of food and diverting human food resources to the costly and inefficient production of ethanol fuel raise major ethical questions. These occur at a time when more food is needed to meet the basic needs of a rapidly growing world population.