Physical Effects of New Devices for Bricklayers

Bricklaying is a physically demanding job. Bricklayers frequently flex their trunk to pick up bricks and mortar and position these in a wall. The experienced workload is highest working with bricks at 0 to 50 cm from the floor. In this study the effects of 2 devices that have proven to be feasible in practice are evaluated.

The 50 cm raise due to the 2 devices is experienced as comfortable, the estimated lumbar compression force was reduced, and observations indicate likewise. It is discussed that the field experiments have many drawbacks. Nevertheless, based on this study in combination with other literature the improvements could be recommended.     

Leveraging foodways for health and justice

ABSTRACT

The global industrial food system is increasingly recognised as a source of poor health that deepens social and economic inequity. Health advocates, policy makers, and food activists strive to improve nutrition and food access across racial and ethnic divides; however, given established approaches, they may miss fundamental pathways for improving health and justice comprehensively. While food access and nutrition are often identified as primary concerns for marginalised communities and the reason for food insecurity and food-related illness, critical food justice scholars use a more expansive lens to suggest a democratised food system is needed, and that solutions based solely in access to healthy food can undermine more systemic approaches. Our research extends this analysis, highlighting the importance of endemic food culture (foodways) as a tool for retaining identity, building community, and maintaining health among refugee populations in one community in Salt Lake City, Utah. Further, this work suggests that community engagement and expertise is essential in leveraging foodways such that marginalised communities can effectively resist cheap, unhealthy, and placeless calories.     

Deriving Chesapeake Bay Water Quality Standards

Achieving and maintaining the water quality conditions necessary to protect the aquatic living resources of the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries has required a foundation of quantifiable water quality criteria. Quantitative criteria serve as a critical basis for assessing the attainment of designated uses and measuring progress toward meeting water quality goals of the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership. In 1987, the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership committed to defining the water quality conditions necessary to protect aquatic living resources. Under section 303(c) of the Clean Water Act, States and authorized tribes have the primary responsibility for adopting water quality standards into law or regulation. The Chesapeake Bay Program partnership worked with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop and publish a guidance framework of ambient water quality criteria with designated uses and assessment procedures for dissolved oxygen, water clarity, and chlorophyll a for Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries in 2003. This article reviews the derivation of the water quality criteria, criteria assessment protocols, designated use boundaries, and their refinements published in six addendum documents since 2003 and successfully adopted into each jurisdiction's water quality standards used in developing the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load.     

The influence of geomorphology on the role of women at artisanal and small‐scale mine sites

The geologic and geomorphic expressions of a mineral deposit determine its location, size, and accessibility, characteristics which in turn greatly influence the success of artisans mining the deposit. Despite this critical information, which can be garnered through studying the surficial physical expression of a deposit, the geologic and geomorphic sciences have been largely overlooked in artisanal mining‐related research. This study demonstrates that a correlation exists between the roles of female miners at artisanal diamond and gold mining sites in western and central Africa and the physical expression of the deposits. Typically, women perform ore processing and ancillary roles at mine sites. On occasion, however, women participate in the extraction process itself. Women were found to participate in the extraction of ore only when a deposit had a thin overburden layer, thus rendering the mineralized ore more accessible. When deposits required a significant degree of manual labour to access the ore due to thick overburden layers, women were typically relegated to other roles. The identification of this link encourages the establishment of an alternative research avenue in which the physical and social sciences merge to better inform policymakers, so that the most appropriate artisanal mining assistance programs can be developed and implemented.     

Can fine particulate matter explain the paradoxical ozone associations?

Our previous paper entitled "Paradoxical ozone associations could be due to methyl nitrite from combustion of methyl ethers or esters in engine fuels" (Env. Int.. 2007;33;1090) reviewed 11 studies of the impact of ozone on human health that, paradoxically, found a negative coefficient for ozone-morbidity associations. We argued that the most likely explanation for this effect would be methyl nitrite (MN) as an unsuspected exhaust component of engines with methyl ether in the fuel. The basis of the argument was the fact that MN is rapidly destroyed by sunlight, so that MN would be negatively correlated with ozone. All (but one) of the reviewed studies concluded that criterion pollutants could not explain the negative slope. The argument was strengthened by the observation that such paradoxical ozone associations have not been found in regions without significant methyl ether in gasoline. Left unaddressed in the previous paper was the possibility that fine particulate matter (FPM) might explain the POA. If this were true, then it would be necessary that the FPM be negatively correlated with ozone in those regions that found a POA. The current paper reviews data on FPM-ozone correlations in those regions where a POA was identified. The results show that FPM was, in most cases, positively correlated with ozone and so could not explain the POA.     

Hydropower development in the lower Mekong basin: alternative approaches to deal with uncertainty

Governments in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) face decisions that involve trade-offs between the economic benefits from hydropower generation and potentially irreversible negative impacts on the ecosystems that provide livelihoods and food security to the rural poor. As a means of comparing these trade-offs, a sensitivity analysis of the benefit-cost analysis of certain Basin Development Plan (BDP) scenarios was undertaken. By changing some key assumptions in the BDP about discount rates, the value of lost capture fisheries, future aquaculture production in the LMB, and the value of lost ecosystem services from wetlands to reflect the full range of uncertainty, at the extremes, there could be a reversal of the Net Present Value (NPV) estimates of the scenarios from a positive $33 billion to negative $274 billion. This report recommends when dealing with large-scale, complex projects: a more comprehensive, integrated human and natural systems framework and adaptive management approach to LMB planning and development that deals with the entire watershed; a more comprehensive analysis and treatment of risk and uncertainty; a more thorough assessment of the value of direct and indirect ecosystem services; a broader set of scenarios that embody alternative models of development, broader stakeholder participation; and better treatment of the effects of infrastructure construction on local cultures and the poor.     

Assessment of regional climate change impacts on Hungarian landscapes

The assessment of regional climate change impacts combined with the sensitivity of landscape functions by predictive modelling of hazardous landscape processes is a new fundamental field of research. In particular, this study investigates the effects of changing weather extremes on meso-regional-scale landscape vulnerability. Climatic-exposure parameter analysis was performed on a predicted climate change scenario. The exposure to climate change was analysed on the basis of the original data of the meso-scale IPCC A1B climate scenario from the REMO and ALADIN regional models for the periods of 2021–2050 and 2071–2100, and the regional types of climate change impacts were calculated by using cluster analysis. Selected climate exposure parameters of the REMO and ALADIN models were analysed, in particular, for extreme events (days with precipitation greater than 30 mm, heat waves, dry periods, wet periods) and for daily temperature and precipitation. The landscape functions impacted by climate change are proxies for the main recent and future problematic processes in Hungary. Soil erosion caused by water, drought, soil erosion caused by wind, mass movement and flash floods were analysed for the time periods of 1961–1990, 2021–2050 and 2071–2100. Based on the sensitivity thresholds for the impact assessments, the landscape functional sensitivity indicators were interpreted, and an integrative summary of the five indicators was made, differentiating the regions facing only a few or multiple sensitivities. In Central Hungary, the increasing exposure and sensitivity to droughts will be a serious problem when following the REMO scenario. In several regions, most indicators will change the sensitivity threshold from a tolerable risk to an increased or very high risk.     

Water quality requirements for sustaining aquifer storage and recovery operations in a low permeability fractured rock aquifer

A changing climate and increasing urbanisation has driven interest in the use of aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) schemes as an environmental management tool to supplement conventional water resources. This study focuses on ASR with stormwater in a low permeability fractured rock aquifer and the selection of water treatment methods to prevent well clogging. In this study two different injection and recovery phases were trialed. In the first phase ~1380 m(3) of potable water was injected and recovered over four cycles. In the second phase ~3300 m(3) of treated stormwater was injected and ~2410 m(3) were subsequently recovered over three cycles. Due to the success of the potable water injection cycles, its water quality was used to set pre-treatment targets for harvested urban stormwater of ≤ 0.6 NTU turbidity, ≤ 1.7 mg/L dissolved organic carbon and ≤ 0.2 mg/L biodegradable dissolved organic carbon. A range of potential ASR pre-treatment options were subsequently evaluated resulting in the adoption of an ultrafiltration/granular activated carbon system to remove suspended solids and nutrients which cause physical and biological clogging. ASR cycle testing with potable water and treated stormwater demonstrated that urban stormwater containing variable turbidity (mean 5.5 NTU) and organic carbon (mean 8.3 mg/L) concentrations before treatment could be injected into a low transmissivity fractured rock aquifer and recovered for irrigation supplies. A small decline in permeability of the formation in the vicinity of the injection well was apparent even with high quality water that met turbidity and DOC but could not consistently achieve the BDOC criteria.     

Monitoring nitrogen loading and retention in an urban stormwater detention pond

Stormwater detention ponds have become ubiquitous in urbanized areas and have been suggested as potential hotspots of N transformation within urban watersheds. As a result, there is a great deal of interest in their use as structural best management practices to reduce the excessive N export from these watersheds. We conducted continuous monitoring of the influent and effluent N loads of a stormwater detention pond located on the Princeton University campus in Princeton, New Jersey. Our monitoring was conducted during four 21-d periods representing the four seasons of the northeastern United States. Water quality samples were collected and analyzed for nitrate (NO3-) during all four monitoring periods. During two of these periods, loads of ammonium (NH4+), dissolved organic N, and particulate N (PN) were measured. Our results show that NO3- dominated the influent N load, particularly in dry weather inflows to the detention pond. However, PN, which is often neglected in stormwater quality monitoring, made up as much as 30% of the total load and an even greater fraction during storm events. The results of our monitoring suggest that seasonal variation may play an important role in N retention within the detention pond. Although retention of NO3-, the most dominant fraction of N in the influent stormwater, was observed during the summer sampling period, no significant NO3- retention was observed during the spring or the two cold-weather sampling periods.     

Modeling sediment and nitrogen export from a rural watershed in eastern Canada using the soil and water assessment tool

Watershed simulation models can be used to assess agricultural nonpoint-source pollution and for environmental planning and improvement projects. However, before application of any process-based watershed model, the model performance and reliability must be tested with measured data. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool version 2005 (SWAT2005) was used to model sediment and nitrogen loads from the Thomas Brook Watershed, which drains a 7.84 km rural landscape in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, Canada. The Thomas Brook SWAT model was comprised of 28 subbasins and 265 hydrologic response units, most of them containing agricultural land use, which is the main nonpoint nitrogen source in the watershed. Crop rotation schedules were incorporated into the model using field data collected within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Watershed Evaluation of Beneficial Management Practices program. Model calibration (2004-2006) and validation (2007-2008) were performed on a monthly basis using continuous stream flow, sediment, and nitrogen export measurements. Model performance was evaluated using the coefficient of determination, Nash-Sutcliff efficiency (NSE), and percent bias (PBIAS) statistics. Study results show that the model performance was satisfactory (NSE > 0.4; > 0.5) for stream flow, sediment, nitrate-nitrogen, and total nitrogen simulations. Annual corn, barley, and wheat yields were also simulated well, with PBIAS values ranging from 0.3 to 7.2%. This evaluation of SWAT demonstrated that the model has the potential to be used as a decision support tool for agricultural watershed management in Nova Scotia.