A cognitive approach to the post-Soviet Central Asian pasture puzzle: new data from Kyrgyzstan

Regional Environmental Change - Despite internationally recognized definitions, there remains debate over what constitutes ‘actual’ degradation in various agro-pastoral contexts. This...     

ASSESSMENT USING GIS AND SEDIMENT ROUTING OF THE PROPOSED REMOVAL OF BALLVILLE DAM,SANDUSKY RIVER,OHIO1

ABSTRACT: The proposed removal of Ballville Dam was assessed by (1) using a new Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based method for calculating reservoir sediment storage, (2) evaluating sediment properties and contamination from core data, and (3) assessing downstream impacts from sediment routing calculations. A 1903 (pre‐dam) map was manipulated using GIS to recreate the reservoir bathymetry at time of dam construction and used in combination with a detailed 1993 bathymetric survey to calculate sediment volumes and thickness. Reservoir sediment properties and geochemistry were determined from 14 sediment vibracores. Annual sedimentation rates varied from 1.7 to 4.3 g/cm²/yr based on Cesium‐137 (¹³⁷Cs) and Lead‐210 (²¹⁰Pb) geochronology and dated flood layers. The pore fluid geochemistry (Ba, Co, Cu, Mn) of four cores showed surficial enrichments in Cu, while Co and Mn show secondary peaks within the sediments. GIS calculations showed that a designed channel through the former reservoir able to accommodate the 10 percent Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) would require removing approximately 0.35 million m³ of sediment (27 percent of the reservoir fill), either by dredging at a cost of up to $6.3 million or by releasing fine grained sediment downstream. A sediment routing model was applied for the critical 6 km downstream using four cross sections. The sediment routing model predicts that, for flows exceeding minimum Mean Daily Flow (1924 to 1998 data), greater than 90 percent of this sediment would be transported through downstream reaches into Lake Erie (Sandusky Bay).     

Adaptive response criteria in road hazard detection among older drivers

Objectives: The majority of existing investigations on attention, aging, and driving have focused on the negative impacts of age-related declines in attention on hazard detection and driver performance. However, driving skills and behavioral compensation may accommodate for the negative effects that age-related attentional decline places on driving performance. In this study, we examined an important question that had been largely neglected in the literature linking attention, aging, and driving: can top-down factors such as behavioral compensation, specifically adaptive response criteria, accommodate the negative impacts from age-related attention declines on hazard detection during driving?

Methods: In the experiment, we used the Drive Aware Task, a task combining the driving context with well-controlled laboratory procedures measuring attention. We compared younger (n = 16, age 21–30) and older (n = 21, age 65–79) drivers on their attentional processing of hazards in driving scenes, indexed by percentage of correct responses and reaction time of hazard detection, as well as sensitivity and response criteria using signal detection analysis.

Results: Older drivers, in general, were less accurate and slower on the task than younger drivers. However, results from this experiment revealed that older, but not younger, drivers adapted their response criteria when the traffic condition changed in the driving scenes. When there was more traffic in the driving scene, older drivers became more liberal in their responses, meaning that they were more likely to report that a driving hazard was detected.

Conclusions: Older drivers adopt compensatory strategies for hazard detection during driving. Our findings showed that, in the driving context, even at an older age our attentional functions are still adaptive according to environmental conditions. This leads to considerations on potential training methods to promote adaptive strategies that may help older drivers maintain performance in road hazard detection.     

International Diffusion of Open Path FTIR Technology and Air Monitoring Methods: Taiwan (Republic of China)

Abstract

International cooperation and diffusion of environmental technologies is a central goal of the U.S. EPA Environmental Technology Initiative, and is of great interest to many countries. One objective is to exchange knowledge and skills concerning new monitoring technologies. In this case, the technology was open path Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (op-FTIR).

Taiwan is a high-technology, newly industrialized country. Because of air pollution problems, it is interested in obtaining skills, knowledge, and instrumentation for monitoring air pollutants. In April 1994, the Industrial Technology Research Institute, Center for Industrial Safety and Health Technology (ITRI/CISH) in Hsinchu, Taiwan, requested intensive training in op-FTIR. Training was held between September 30,1994 and October 29,1994.

During the stay, the instructor provided intensive training on op-FTIR theory as well as an introduction to available instrumentation and software. The training concluded with a field demonstration of the instrumentation in a manufacturing facility. This report gives an overview of the training methods, structure, and materials in the op-FTIR training course. It will also address various problems encountered while teaching this course. In addition, the potential use for this technology in industry as well as by the Taiwanese government will be explained.     

Generating sustainable towns from Chinese villages: a system modeling approach

The great majority of China's developing towns will be extensions of already existing villages. With the prospect of hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers projected to leave their villages to become industrial workers in new and expanded towns within the next few years, new challenges will be faced. As expansion and modernization progress, this development moves from the traditional village model that operates not far from resource sustainability to increasingly unsustainable patterns of commerce, urban development, and modern life. With such an unprecedented mass migration and transformation, how can Chinese culture survive? What is to become of the existing million plus agricultural villages? How can these massively unsustainable new industrial towns survive? In the European Commission sponsored research program SUCCESS, researchers worked from the scale of the Chinese village to find viable answers to these questions.     

A mechanism of injury to the forefoot in car crashes

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine a mechanism of injury of the forefoot due to impact loads and accelerations as noted in some frontal offset car crashes. METHODS: The impact tests conducted simulated knee-leg-foot entrapment, floor pan intrusions, whole-body deceleration, muscle tension, and foot/pedal interaction. Specimens were impacted at speeds of up to 16 m/s. To verify this injury mechanism research was conducted in an effort to produce Lisfranc type injuries and metatarsal fractures. A total of 54 lower legs of post-mortem human subjects were tested. Two possible mechanisms of injury were investigated. For the first mechanism the driver was assumed to be braking hard with the foot on the brake pedal and at 0 deg plantar flexion (Plantar Nominal Configuration) and the brake pedal was in contact with the foot behind the ball of the foot. The second mechanism was studied by having the ball of the foot either on the brake pedal or on the floorboard with the foot plantar-flexed 35 to 50 deg (Plantar Flexed Configuration). RESULTS: The Plantar Nominal injury mechanism yielded few injuries of the type the study set out to produce. Out of 13 specimens tested at speeds of 16 m/s, three had injuries of the metatarsal (MT) and tarsometatarsal joints. The Plantar Flexed Configuration injury mechanism yielded 65% injuries at high (12.5-16 m/s) and moderate (6-12 m/s) speeds. CONCLUSION: It is concluded that Lisfranc type foot injuries are the result of impacting the forefoot in the Plantar Flexed Configuration. The injuries were consistent with those reported by physicians treating accident victims and were verified by an orthopedic surgeon during post impact x-ray and autopsy. They included Lisfranc fractures, ligamentous disruptions, and metatarsal fractures.     

Sea otters,social justice,and ecosystem‐service perceptions in Clayoquot Sound,Canada

We sought to take a first step toward better integration of social concerns into empirical ecosystem service (ES) work. We did this by adapting cognitive anthropological techniques to study the Clayoquot Sound social‐ecological system on the Pacific coast of Canada's Vancouver Island. We used freelisting and ranking exercises to elicit how locals perceive ESs and to determine locals’ preferred food species. We analyzed these data with the freelist‐analysis software package ANTHROPAC. We considered the results in light of an ongoing trophic cascade caused by the government reintroduction of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) and their spread along the island's Pacific coast. We interviewed 67 local residents (n = 29 females, n = 38 males; n = 26 self‐identified First Nation individuals, and n = 41 non‐First Nation individuals) and 4 government managers responsible for conservation policy in the region. We found that the mental categories participants—including trained ecologists—used to think about ESs, did not match the standard academic ES typology. With reference to the latest ecological model projections for the region, we found that First Nations individuals and women were most likely to perceive the most immediate ES losses from the trophic cascade, with the most certainty. The inverse was found for men and non‐First Nations individuals, generally. This suggests that 2 historically disadvantaged groups (i.e., First Nations and women) are poised to experience the immediate impacts of the government‐initiated trophic cascade as yet another social injustice in a long line of perceived inequities. Left unaddressed, this could complicate efforts at multistakeholder ecosystem management in the region.