First trimester screening cannot predict adverse outcomes yet

The use of first trimester screening to detect aneuploidy has become an integral part of prenatal care. The application of similar screening algorithms to identify women at the highest risk for other adverse pregnancy outcomes in the first trimester could potentially have a major clinical impact. There has been much investigation into the ability to identify patients early in pregnancy at high risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes who may benefit from further surveillance and/or intervention. For this to be the case, however, as is true of any useful screening test, effective interventions need to be available. Unfortunately, for fetal growth restriction and stillbirth, no such interventions exist short of delivery. For preeclampsia, low dose aspirin has been demonstrated to be of benefit in specific subgroups. For preterm birth, although there are efficacious treatments, first trimester serum markers or cervical length measurements do not add significantly beyond historical or demographic factors, in prediction of preterm birth. Given the current evidence, first trimester screening, via serum or ultrasound markers, does not have sufficiently high enough positive predictive values for the development of preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction, preterm birth or stillbirth. In order to develop effective screening algorithms for adverse pregnancy outcomes in the first trimester, understanding the heterogeneous phenotype of these complications and the underlying pathophysiology is needed. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influences, practices and opportunities for environmental supply chain management in Nova Scotia SMEs

Executives are increasingly paying attention to the importance of supply chain management [Lambert DM, Cooper MC. Issues in supply chain management. Industrial Marketing Management 2000;29(1):65–83; Hagelaar GJLF, van der Vorst JGAJ. Environmental supply chain management: using life cycle assessment to structure supply chains. International Food and Agribusiness Management Review 2002;4:399–412]. The management of the supply chain can be a central aspect of a company's competitive advantage [Preuss L. Rhetoric and reality of corporate greening: a view from the supply chain management function. Business Strategy and the Environment 2005;14:123–139]. SCM also offers considerable opportunities to reduce a company's environmental impact. The supply chains of three small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in the Burnside Industrial Park in Nova Scotia, Canada were investigated to explore the opportunities to improve environmental performance of SMEs linked in supply chains. This study confirmed that time and, to a lesser degree, financial resources to address solid waste and energy issues are the greatest limiting factors. Small suppliers, and even to a certain degree medium-sized enterprises, have difficulties in allocating resources to initiatives that are not viewed as directly related to their core function, namely manufacturing the product or providing the service. This study clearly demonstrated that opportunities exist to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and solid waste. Although, the benefits that would be gained from the implementation of any of the individual actions in the supply chains explored in this study are individually small, the cumulative benefits that could be achieved among supply chains and within industrial parks are substantial, given the number of small- and medium-sized enterprises.     

Divergent foraging strategies of three co-occurring north Pacific flatfishes

Despite facing similar constraints imposed by the environment, significant variation in life history traits frequently exists among species generally considered to comprise a single ecological guild. For juvenile flatfishes, constraints on foraging activity include variation in light and prey availability, as well as predation risk. This paper describes the visual constraints on, and divergent foraging strategies of three co-occurring north Pacific flatfish species, northern rock sole (Lepidopsetta polyxystra), Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis), and English sole (Pleuronectes vetulus). Visual foraging abilities measured in the laboratory decreased rapidly below 10⁻⁴ μmol photons·m⁻² s⁻¹, and were similar among species. Despite similar sensory constraints, field sampling in August 2004 at a Kodiak Island nursery site (Holiday Beach, 57^o41.2′ N, 152^o27.7′ W) identified species differences in diets, diel foraging patterns, and within-nursery depth distributions. Northern rock sole and English sole fed primarily on bivalve siphons and polychaetes, whereas mysids dominated the diets of Pacific halibut. Northern rock sole were geographically the most widespread but feeding activity was temporally restricted to the dusk period. Pacific halibut were rare in shallow depths (<5 m) and fed most intensively prior to dusk. English sole fed throughout the daylight hours and were abundant only in the shallowest (<5 m) habitats. These differences in diets, foraging times, and habitat use appear related to previously documented species-specific behavioral characteristics as well as general spatial (increasing with depth) and temporal (increasing during foraging activity) variations in predation risk. At one extreme, the conservative behavioral strategy of northern rock sole may permit use of a broader range of foraging habitats, whereas English sole may be restricted to shallow water by limited behavioral responses to predation threat. These observations demonstrate that the appearance of habitat partitioning is not due to differences in sensory ability, but reflects multi-faceted, species-specific responses to the ecological tradeoffs between foraging and predation risks.     

GIS, modeling, and politics: on the tensions of collaborative decision support

A tension exists at the heart of efforts to support collaboration with GIS. Many scholars and practitioners seek to support two separate objectives: (1) problem solving and (2) the exploration of diverse problem understandings. GIS applications designed for problem solving often pre-define the problem space by structuring the kind of information that can be considered or the way in which the problem is conceptualized. In doing so, they necessarily privilege particular perspectives and understandings of the problem while marginalizing others. As a result, these initiatives undermine their second objective. This is problematic in the context of contentious environmental decisions which have broad-reaching impacts on people with diverse perspectives and interests. In such contexts, I argue that equitable collaboration is impossible without first emphasizing the exploration of diverse problem understandings. I support this argument theoretically by turning to the literatures on collaborative planning and spatial decision support, and empirically in my analysis of a case study of an effort to construct a GIS for supporting collaborative water resource management in rural Idaho. Reflecting upon the case, I provide a set of recommendations to those seeking to better negotiate the tensions of supporting collaboration with GIS in the context of contentious environmental and natural resource decisions.     

Comparison of Analytical Techniques for Measuring Hydrocarbon Emissions from the Manufacture of Fiberglass-Reinforced Plastics

ABSTRACT

Research Triangle Institute and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted several projects to measure hydrocarbon emissions associated with the manufacture of fiberglass-reinforced plastics. The purpose of these projects was to evaluate pollution prevention techniques to reduce emissions by altering raw materials, application equipment, and operator technique. Analytical techniques were developed to reduce the cost of these emission measurements. Emissions from a small test mold in a temporary total enclosure (TTE) correlated with emissions from full-size production molds in a separate TTE. Gravimetric mass balance measurements inside the TTE generally agreed to within ± 30 % with total hydrocarbon (THC) measurements in the TTE exhaust duct. Pure styrene evaporation tests served as quality control checks for THC measurements and generally agreed to within ± 5 %.     

Accumulation of radiocesium by mushrooms in the environment: a literature review

During the last 50 years, a large amount of information on radionuclide accumulators or "sentinel-type" organisms in the environment has been published. Much of this work focused on the risks of food-chain transfer of radionuclides to higher organisms such as reindeer and man. Until the 1980s and 1990s, there were few published data on the radiocesium ((134)Cs and (137)Cs) accumulation by mushrooms. The present review of published data for (134,137)Cs accumulation by mushrooms in nature discusses the aspects that promote (134,137)Cs uptake by mushrooms and focuses on mushrooms that demonstrate a propensity for use in the environmental biomonitoring of radiocesium contamination. Transfer factors (TF, as dry weight concentration in fruiting body divided by concentration in substrate) ranged up to 24 (unitless), and aggregate transfer factors (T(ag), as Bq(137)Cs/kg dw in fruiting body divided by the aerial deposition as Bq/m(2)) ranged up to 8m(2)/kg dw.     

Collection of Fly Ash with High Electrical Resistivity in a Pilot Plant Electrostatic Precipitator Preceded by the EPA/SoRI Precharger

It is well known that dust with high electrical resistivity is difficult to collect in electrostatic precipitators (ESP). The difficulty is primarily due to poor particle charging. This poor particle charging is not because particles having high electrical resistivity are intrinsically difficult to charge, but because back corona (which results from deposition of material on the collection electrode) produces a bipolar ion field. When ions of both positive and negative polarity are present in the charging region, the competing effects of the two, plus low values of electric field, produce low electrical charge on particles.     

Habitat association studies in conjunction with adaptive cluster samples

Habitat association studies investigate the relationships between habitat characteristics and animal usage of study regions. These studies are often conducted in conjunction with surveys designed primarily to estimate population totals. This paper shows that habitat association studies may proceed from surveys using adaptive cluster sampling. The manner in which units appear in the sample turns out not be relevant to the habitat association study, which proceeds as though the units came from a simple random sample. However, it is also shown that the information about the habitat association parameters is greater than one would expect from a simple random sample of the same general size.     

Trap mortality in mark-recapture studies

When animals die in traps in a mark-recapture study, straightforward likelihood inferences are possible in a class of models. The class includes M₀, M_t, and M_b as reported by White et al. (Los Alamos National Laboratory, LA-8787-NERP, pp 235, 1982), those that do not involve heterogeneity. We include three Markov chain “persistence” models and show that they provide good fits in a trapping study of deer mice in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument of Southern Oregon where trapping mortality was high.