Design and validation of a practical index for trauma assessment

In the past 20 years a variety of indices have been suggested for measuring the severity of trauma, however none of them meets the requirement of being a simple and objective instrument that can be utilized efficiently by lay persons and providers of health services without previous experience in triaging. A new system has been proposed which meets this requirement and which has been validated with 197 injured persons at the emergency ward of the Valle University Hospital in Call, Colombia. The instrument showed a high level of concordance with the conventional triaging method and classifies victims into four categories: critical with recovery unlikely, critical but recoverable, moderately serious, and ambulatory. There is discussion on the reliability of this instrument and it is recommended that it be validated with victims from larger disasters. Regardless, it has the advantage of being specific and free of the subjectivity that characterizes other indices.     

Agriculture and food security in ethiopia

Food security in Ethiopia is discussed in the context of the repeated famines and the international responses both to them and to the socialist agricultural policies being pursued by Ethiopia. Increasing concern has been expressed by the international donor community regarding the ability of Ethiopia to absorb development funds without a major shift in emphasis in agricultural policy-making. The background to Ethiopia's present vulnerability is shown both in terms of the size of the vulnerable population and in terms of the poor performance of the agricultural sector in the last decade. The author looks at the present agricultural and marketing policy reforms and questions whether they are sufficient to generate the sort of international response needed to create the level of food security that would be required to avert future famines.     

Rate-temperature responses in scyphozoan medusae and polyps

The effects of temperature on oxygen consumption and spontaneous rhythmic activity have been investigated in various stages of the life histories of 3 species of jellyfish from the Chesapeake Bay, USA. All 3 species clearly show the ability to acclimate positively to temperature change. Thermal sensitivity of metabolism in the winter medusa Cyanea capillata fulva is fairly low at temperature intervals which are experienced in nature. Polyps of the two summer medusae, Chrysaora quinquecirrha and Aurelia aurita, show reduced metabolic sensitivity at temperatures normally accompanying high developmental activity and the onset of strobilation.     

Disappearance of bromopropylate residues in artichokes, strawberries and beans

Residues of Bromopropylate were determine in artichokes, strawberries and beans after foliar spray of acaricide at two rates. The rates used were 1 g/l formulated product (normal recommended) and 1.5 g/l. The residue levels of bromopropylate in the three crops after 14 days were lower than 0.7 ppm and did not exceed the Maximum Residual Level (MRL) recommended by FAO. In the artichokes and strawberries, the total concentration of residues decreased by 50% of the initial level after 2-3 days. Only trace levels of the bromopropylate residues (less than 0.01 ppm) were detected in the "hearts" of the artichokes. Bromopropylate residues in the green beans were also less than 0.8 ppm after the first day of foliar spraying. The kinetic of degradation occurred in two different steps. In the first step (4-6 days) the dissipation of bromopropylate was faster whereas in the second step (7-14 days) the loss of residues was much slower.     

Problems of correlation of global and local monitoring of air pollution

1. The Air Polluttion Monitoring System has got a significant development of late, which is in direct relation with a considerable extention and improvement of the observation network in cities and industrial areas, with creation of a new network for assessing regional and global background of the atmosphere pollution, as well as with the wide involvement of meteorologists to monitoring organization.
2. While developing a new global monitoring system, it is necessary to take into account its relationship with the local monitoring within the region of air pollution sources, i.e. at the \lsimpact\rs level. The need in such an account is dictated first of all by the physics of pollutant spreading that states: changes in air pollution over large territories must be in a certain agreement with greater changes in the vicinity of emission sources. Methods applied in the global and local monitoring have also a number of common peculiarities. White organizing regional network for observations of the background pollution of the atmosphere twin stations (one of the pair of stations located outside the city boundaries in a small community, and the other, in the nearest city with the population of 200–400 thousand inhabitants) were established in the U.S.S.R. and in a number of socialist countries in Europe.
3. Implementation of the twin-station principles in the U.S.S.R. has contributed to data interpretation and representativity assessment as well as to correction of the station location. Observation results from the Soviet background stations and those abroad have been compared by now according to a number of indices.
4. The correlation of monitoring systems of various scales tells positively both on mutual improvement and completion of observational methods. The methods of obtaining integral characteristics of air pollution were used for the global monitoring, in particular spectral actinometric observations and chemical analysis of the precipitation composition. Now they find still wider employment. Thus methods of spectral actinometric measurements and data processing were used to estimate the degree of aerosol pollution of a number of industrial centres. The theory of solar radiation spreading and aerosol contents determination in urban atmosphere has also been developed. It is a generalization of an earlier developed theory, used to estimate global atmosphere pollution basing on actinometric data. The organization of precipitation collection and analysis on a network of stations around Leningrad and in Donbass area enables us to compare the admixture content in precipitations falling in industrial and agricultural areas.
5. A considerable increase of possibilities to measure microconcentrations of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and of a number of other pollutants is connected with the use of solid solvents for sampling. Their use will allow to avoid establishment of special laboratories at background stations and only send samples by post for their analysis in centralized laboratories.

They will also allow to considerably increase precision and accuracy of measurements. The international comparisons of methods of air pollution measurements on the background level allow to judge about the effiency of these methods.     

Efficient search procedures for extreme pollutant values

Extreme pollutant values are of great interest in water quality monitoring because of their frequent toxicological significance. The principal barrier to the detection of these values, however, is the cost of extensive and comprehensive monitoring. This paper demonstrates an efficient method to determine the maximum sample measurement from a finite set of sequential samples without explicitly testing them all. It is assumed that the process of sample measurement is distinct from collection and has higher costs. It is further assumed that the measurements have high positive autocorrelation.A methodology is presented based on a common industrial testing procedure referred to as composite sampling—the physical pooling or compositing of a set of sequential samples before measurement. A method known as primary first order compositing (PFOC) was found to be superior to the traditional technique of random sampling, particularly if small composite sizes are utilized.The authors are, respectively, operations research analyst, Vancouver, B. C.; Associate Professor and Chairman, Policy Analysis Division, Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration, University of British Columbia; and Associate Professor, Management Science Division, Faculty of Commerce, U.B.C.