Planning and Creating Eco-cities: indicators as a tool for shaping development and measuring progress

Eco-cities strive to become more liveable, enjoyable, and healthy. Indicators can be an effective mechanism for understanding people's values, needs, concerns, and expectations; guiding development decisions; evaluating progress and making revisions; and gaining support for desired actions. This Viewpoint describes how sustainability indicators can be developed to measure a community's environment, economy, quality of life, and governance. Five helpful hints are offered to guide this process.     

Perils of using speed zone data to assess real-world compliance to speed limits

Objective: Real-world driving studies, including those involving speeding alert devices and autonomous vehicles, can gauge an individual vehicle's speeding behavior by comparing measured speed with mapped speed zone data. However, there are complexities with developing and maintaining a database of mapped speed zones over a large geographic area that may lead to inaccuracies within the data set. When this approach is applied to large-scale real-world driving data or speeding alert device data to determine speeding behavior, these inaccuracies may result in invalid identification of speeding. We investigated speeding events based on service provider speed zone data.

Methods: We compared service provider speed zone data (Speed Alert by Smart Car Technologies Pty Ltd., Ultimo, NSW, Australia) against a second set of speed zone data (Google Maps Application Programming Interface [API] mapped speed zones).

Results: We found a systematic error in the zones where speed limits of 50–60 km/h, typical of local roads, were allocated to high-speed motorways, which produced false speed limits in the speed zone database. The result was detection of false-positive high-range speeding. Through comparison of the service provider speed zone data against a second set of speed zone data, we were able to identify and eliminate data most affected by this systematic error, thereby establishing a data set of speeding events with a high level of sensitivity (a true positive rate of 92% or 6,412/6,960).

Conclusions: Mapped speed zones can be a source of error in real-world driving when examining vehicle speed. We explored the types of inaccuracies found within speed zone data and recommend that a second set of speed zone data be utilized when investigating speeding behavior or developing mapped speed zone data to minimize inaccuracy in estimates of speeding.     

Diversity and adaptation of shelters in transitional settlements for IDPs in Afghanistan

The diversity of shelters used in transitional settlements for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Herat, Afghanistan is described. The information is based on a field survey undertaken in March 2002 and highlights the adaptation techniques, which IDPs undertake to improve any provided shelter. Potential areas for improvement are indicated; for example, the possibility for using insulated, demountable liners to prevent cold-related deaths without sacrificing shelter flexibility along with the likely need for better agency coordination of the shelter responses they provide. The wider context in which the technical recommendations would be implemented must also be considered. Such issues include agency resources, political impediments to providing the desired option, and the preference of many IDPs that the best shelter would be their home.     

Just and Sustainable? Examining the Rhetoric and Potential Realities of UK Food Security

The dominant discourse in 20th century UK food and agricultural policies of a liberal, free trade agenda was modified at the turn of the 21st to embrace ecological sustainability and “food security.” The latter term has a long international history; the relationship between issues of technical production and equality of distributional access are also much debated. The paper examines shifts in UK policy discourse in the context of international research, policy, and initiatives to promote food security, and highlights the implications for social justice in and through the food system.     

The impact of iodinated X-ray contrast agents on formation and toxicity of disinfection by-products in drinking water

The presence of iodinated X-ray contrast media (ICM) in source waters is of high concern to public health because of their potential to generate highly toxic disinfection by-products (DBPs). The objective of this study was to determine the impact of ICM in source waters and the type of disinfectant on the overall toxicity of DBP mixtures and to determine which ICM and reaction conditions give rise to toxic by-products. Source waters collected from Akron, OH were treated with five different ICMs, including iopamidol, iopromide, iohexol, diatrizoate and iomeprol, with or without chlorine or chloramine disinfection. The reaction product mixtures were concentrated with XAD resins and the mammalian cell cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of the reaction mixture concentrates was measured. Water containing iopamidol generated an enhanced level of mammalian cell cytotoxicity and genotoxicity after disinfection. While chlorine disinfection with iopamidol resulted in the highest cytotoxicity overall, the relative iopamidol-mediated increase in toxicity was greater when chloramine was used as the disinfectant compared with chlorine. Four other ICMs (iopromide, iohexol, diatrizoate, and iomeprol) expressed some cytotoxicity over the control without any disinfection, and induced higher cytotoxicity when chlorinated. Only iohexol enhanced genotoxicity compared to the chlorinated source water.     

How do fighting ability and nest value influence usurpation contests in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Polistes</Emphasis> wasps?

Most research on animal contests has focused on the factors that influence the intensity and outcome of aggressive contests within nonsocial species, while relatively little is known about contests in social taxa. Here, we examine contests among queens of the social paper wasp, Polistes dominulus. Queens use multiple reproductive strategies, including nesting alone, usurping established colonies, and cooperatively joining other queens. We stage contests between a nesting queen and a challenger to test how resource value (RV) and resource holding potential (RHP) influence (a) who occupies the nest at the end of the contest and (b) the extent of conflict between the queen and challenger. We found that RHP, as measured by individuals’ facial patterns and body size, influenced the outcome of the contest. Challengers with high RHP were more likely to successfully usurp the nest than challengers with low RHP. Interestingly, queens with relatively high RHP were more likely to form a cooperative association with the challenger than queens with lower RHP, suggesting that queens may evict individuals that are an aggressive threat. RV influenced the intensity of conflict. There was more aggressive conflict over large nests than over small nests. Overall, social taxa have complex contest dynamics with important parallels to contests in nonsocial taxa. Studying contests in social taxa provides an important perspective on the factors that influence individual decisions about conflict versus cooperation.