Anheuser-busch's a pledge and a promise: Total employee involvement

Anheuser-Busch is a large, diversified corporation, both in its products and in its environmental efforts. It is well-known that Anheuser-Busch is the world'S largest brewer, with twelve operating breweries and a thirteenth under construction. It also operates the largest aluminum can recycling network in the world, Anheuser-Busch Recycling (A-BR). A-BR recycled more than 600 million pounds of aluminum in 1991, or more than 17 billion cans. This article describes how Anheuser-Busch has put TQEM ideas into practice involving all of its employees.     

Distractions and the risk of car crash injury: the effect of drivers' age

PROBLEM: Motor-vehicle accidents are one of the major causes of injury in most motorized countries. Driver distractions have been suggested as a contributor to traffic accidents. Moreover, age of the driver seems to have a role in the relationship between distractions and car crashes. But very few studies have investigated the effect of driver's age on this relationship. This exploratory study investigated the association between distractions, both inside and outside the vehicle, and the increased risk of car crash injury among drivers across different ages. METHOD: This study used a case series design to analyze data routinely collected by the NSW police in Australia. A special focus of this study was on how drivers' age affects the risk of car crash injury, which was determined by using a well-documented risk estimation methodology. RESULTS: The results obtained indicated that drivers of all ages, on the whole, are more susceptible to distractions inside the vehicle than distractions coming from outside. Age was shown to affect the relationship between in-vehicle distraction and the risk of car crash injury. A separate analysis was also conducted on hand-held phone usage while driving with results supplementing previous findings reported in the literature. IMPACT TO INDUSTRY: Safety strategies to countermeasure in-vehicle distractions have been suggested and discussed.     

PLANNING LEVEL ESTIMATES OF THE VALUE OF RESERVOIRS FOR WATER SUPPLY AND FLOW AUGMENTATION IN NEW HAMPSHIRE1

: In general, the choice among reservoirs for water supply or flow augmentation is a multiobjective problem. Choices are based in part on the yield available from water supply reservoirs or, in the case of flow augmentation reservoirs, on the increase in low flows at downstream locations. Detailed estimates of these effects may be too costly for basin planning purposes. Thus this paper presents methods for rapid estimation of those quantities for New Hampshire. For water supply reservoirs, a composite empirical relation between Y95 (the draft available 95 percent of the time) and storage ratio, S*, is developed from previous studies in the region. For flow augmentation reservoirs, empirical relations between S* and degree of regulation, R*, are applied to each upstream regulating reservoir. Values of regulation arc then summed and divided by the mean flow at the downstream reach of interest. This parameter, (ΓR)*, is then related to increase in flow available 95 percent of the time by an empirical relation.     

Adapting to changing climate risk by local government in New Zealand: institutional practice barriers and enablers

Adaptation to climate change has been reviewed in several developed nations, but in none where consideration of the effects of climate change is required by statute and devolved to local government. We examine the role of institutional arrangements, the players operating under them, the barriers and enablers for adaptation decision-making in the developed nation of New Zealand. We examine how the roles and responsibilities between national, regional and local governments influence the ability of local government to deliver long-term flexible responses to changing climate risk. We found that the disciplinary practices of law, engineering and planning, within legal frameworks, result in the use of static mechanisms which create inflexible responses to changing risk. Several enablers are identified that could create greater integration between the different scales of government, including better use of national policy instruments, shared professional experience, standardised information collection and risk assessment methods that address uncertainties. The framing of climate risk as dynamic and changing that differentiates activities over their lifetime, development of mechanisms to fund transitions towards transformational change, are identified as necessary conditions for delivering flexible responses over time.     

Dispersal: an alternative mating tactic conditional on sex ratio and body size

Summary Small male milkweed beetles are less successful at obtaining mates than are larger males. Larger males usually win fights and prevent smaller males from obtaining mates and from choosing larger more fecund females as mates. When sex ratios are male-biased, smaller males are particularly likely to experience these mating disadvantages. It follows that smaller males should be especially responsive to their local competitive environment and behave so as to minimize the mating disadvantages of their smaller size. This paper tests the hypothesis that smaller males disperse from host plant patches with male-biased sex ratios and remain in patches with female-biased sex ratios more readily than larger males.Results show both larger and smaller males disperse from patches with male-biased sex ratios more frequently than from patches with femalebiased sex ratios. As predicted, however, small males are more likely to disperse from patches with male-biased sex ratios and remain in patches with female-biased sex ratios than are larger males.The data also show that smaller males dispersing from patches with male-biased sex ratios obtain more matings than non-dispersing males.For milkweed beetles, moving between patches can be viewed as an alternative mating tactic conditional on male body size and local sex ratio.     

The top ten reasons why phase I environmental assessment reports miss the mark

Recently, there has been considerable professional concern over many of the issues associated with environmental assessments, including report writing. Unfortunately there still are no nationally recognized published guidelines on what constitutes an acceptable report. In this article the authors show how reports can be vastly improved to help companies evaluate risks and make better business decisions. Their guidance can be applied to a broad range of auditing and assessment activity to improve environmental quality performance.