Ergonomics and safety of manual bag sealing.

A variety of seals is used to close bags. Each seal has advantages and disadvantages. For shop assistants sealing bags could be a repetitive physically demanding action. Opening and closing the bags again can cause some discomfort or annoyance for consumers. Besides, it is an activity which can endanger safety, i.e., knives being used in opening, children swallowing the systems of sealing. To prevent these problems a new sealing system was developed. In this paper the opinion of shop assistants, consumers and experts on several bag sealing systems was studied. It appeared that for sealing plastic bags, adhesive tape with paper is the best out of 4 systems, closely followed by adhesive tape. It is discussed that for the elderly, there is still room for improvement in opening bag seals.     

Sustainability and education for sustainability: An analysis of publications from the last decade

This study analyzes the characteristics of publications on sustainability topics and education for sustainability in the Web of Science (WOS) database during the period ranging from 2005 to 2014. We identified the topics that are being studied within those subjects and other relevant topics. We also analyzed a special edition of the Journal of Cleaner Production on “Higher Education for Sustainable Development: Emerging areas,” published in January, 2014. Our approach was both qualitative and quantitative and aimed at qualifying and quantifying certain variables related to the scientific literature on the broad subject of sustainability. The number of published pieces in the WOS focusing on sustainability issues during the period from 2005 to 2014 was 5,924. In our analysis of the special edition of the Journal of Cleaner Production, we found and analyzed 17 abstracts and full papers. The main results of our survey highlight the education, educational research, environmental sciences, ecology, and engineering areas as including the greatest number of publications. Articles, as opposed to conference proceedings or reviews, accounted for 63% of the published documents, and the year 2013 showed the largest number of publications. Huisingh, Suciu, Katane, and Barth are the most published authors on these topics. Furthermore, management, environmental studies, ecology, and environmental sciences are the “hot topics” with the best search results, meaning articles of impact and high quality. Finally, it should be emphasized that publications on the subject of sustainability appear most often in the sciences.     

Strategies for controlling hazards at work

This paper presents an heuristic framework for analyzing hazards (potential for loss or harm) and strategies that may be developed to control their realization. Two basic forms of intervention for hazard control (anticipation and reaction) are identified. Three broad anticipative strategies are discussed: (1) elimination of the source of the hazard, (2) containment of the risk of its realization, and (3) mitigation of likely consequences. The communication and judgmental processes involved in decisions about strategies are shown to be embedded in the organizational “political” context, in which a variety of interests backed by varying sources of power and influence are represented. The development, implementation, and monitoring of any strategies that are decided upon are then discussed, including the fact that such actions and events may not produce the intended results. Comments are also made on the need for data provided by monitoring to be evaluated and appropriate adaptations made. Finally, a brief section of the paper discusses reactive strategies.     

Protected Area as an Indicator of Ecological Sustainability? A Century of Development in Europe’s Boreal Forest

Protected area (PA) is an indicator linked to policies on ecological sustainability. We analyzed area, size, and categories of PAs in the European boreal forest biome in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia from 1900 to 2010. The PA increased from 1.5 × 10³ ha in 1909 to 2.3 × 10⁷ ha in 2010. While the total PA in the boreal biome was 10.8 %, the figures ranged from 17.2 % in the northern, 7.9 % of the middle, and 8.7 % of the southern boreal sub-regions. The median size of PAs varied from 10 to 124 ha among countries. The categories of less strictly PAs increased over time. The proportion of area occupied by PAs is an important response indicator for conservation efforts. However, the use of PA as an indicator of ecological sustainability needs to consider ecosystem representation, functional connectivity and management categories.     

Microbial transformation products of benzoxazolinone and benzoxazinone allelochemicals--a review

Cyclic hydroxamic acids and lactams are allelochemicals present in the common agricultural crops wheat, rye, and maize. The hydroxamic acids are mainly present in the plants as glucosides. Upon injury or insect attack or when exuded to the soil environment, the hydroxamic acids occur in their unstable agluconic form. In the first step in the transformation of hydroxamic acids, benzoxazolinones are formed spontaneously. It is necessary to elucidate the further microbial transformation of these compounds in the soil environment for a purposeful exploitation of the allelopathic properties of wheat, rye, and maize. In the present paper, the existing knowledge on microbial transformation products of benzoxazolin-2-one (BOA), 6-methoxy-benzoxazolin-2-one (MBOA), and 2-hydroxy-1,4-benzoxazin-3-one (HBOA) was reviewed. Three main groups of transformation products were identified: aminophenoxazinones, malonamic acids, and acetamides. Future research needs concerning the transformation of these chemicals in soil are discussed, when their properties for suppressing weeds and soil-borne diseases are going to be exploited.     

Simulations of the flow in the Mahakam river–lake–delta system,Indonesia

Large rivers often present a river–lake–delta system, with a wide range of temporal and spatial scales of the flow due to the combined effects of human activities and various natural factors, e.g., river discharge, tides, climatic variability, droughts, floods. Numerical models that allow for simulating the flow in these river–lake–delta systems are essential to study them and predict their evolution under the impact of various forcings. This is because they provide information that cannot be easily measured with sufficient temporal and spatial detail. In this study, we combine one-dimensional sectional-averaged (1D) and two-dimensional depth-averaged (2D) models, in the framework of the finite element model SLIM, to simulate the flow in the Mahakam river–lake–delta system (Indonesia). The 1D model representing the Mahakam River and four tributaries is coupled to the 2D unstructured mesh model implemented on the Mahakam Delta, the adjacent Makassar Strait, and three lakes in the central part of the river catchment. Using observations of water elevation at five stations, the bottom friction for river and tributaries, lakes, delta, and adjacent coastal zone is calibrated. Next, the model is validated using another period of observations of water elevation, flow velocity, and water discharge at various stations. Several criteria are implemented to assess the quality of the simulations, and a good agreement between simulations and observations is achieved in both calibration and validation stages. Different aspects of the flow, i.e., the division of water at two bifurcations in the delta, the effects of the lakes on the flow in the lower part of the system, the area of tidal propagation, are also quantified and discussed.     

Photodegradation of sulfonamides and their N 4-acetylated metabolites in water by simulated sunlight irradiation: kinetics and identification of photoproducts

Once released into the aquatic environment, pharmaceuticals may undergo different degradation processes. Photodegradation, for example, might be an important elimination process for light-sensitive pharmaceuticals, such as antibiotics. In this study, the fate of sulfonamides (sulfamethazine, sulfadiazine, and sulfamethoxazole) and their N ⁴-acetylated metabolites (N ⁴-acetylsulfadiazine, N ⁴-acetylsulfamethazine, and N ⁴-acetylsulfamethoxazole) under simulated sunlight irradiation was investigated. The irradiation resulted in total or almost total degradation (88 to 98 %) of the pharmaceuticals tested, except for sulfamethazine (52 %), during 24 h of irradiation. The photoproducts of all investigated pharmaceuticals have been analyzed using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry. Structure elucidation performed from photodegradation products of both, sulfonamides and their N ⁴-acetylated metabolites, clearly showed two major formation pathways. These were cleavage of the sulfonamide bond as well as SO₂ extrusion. In total, nine photoproducts were elucidated. Among these photoproducts, the tautomers of sulfamethoxazole and desulfonated products of sulfadiazine and sulfamethazine were also present. Tautomers of sulfadiazine and sulfamethazine have been characterized here for the first time as well as some photoproducts of sulfadiazine, sulfametoxazole, and their metabolites N ⁴-acetylsulfadiazine and N ⁴-acetylsulfametoxazole. The obtained results are an important piece in the complex puzzle for assessing the environmental fate of sulfonamides and their metabolites in the environment.     

Baselines for land-use change in the tropics: application to avoided deforestation projects

Although forest conservation activities, particularly in the tropics, offer significant potential for mitigating carbon (C) emissions, these types of activities have faced obstacles in the policy arena caused by the difficulty in determining key elements of the project cycle, particularly the baseline. A baseline for forest conservation has two main components: the projected land-use change and the corresponding carbon stocks in applicable pools in vegetation and soil, with land-use change being the most difficult to address analytically. In this paper we focus on developing and comparing three models, ranging from relatively simple extrapolations of past trends in land use based on simple drivers such as population growth to more complex extrapolations of past trends using spatially explicit models of land-use change driven by biophysical and socioeconomic factors. The three models used for making baseline projections of tropical deforestation at the regional scale are: the Forest Area Change (FAC) model, the Land Use and Carbon Sequestration (LUCS) model, and the Geographical Modeling (GEOMOD) model. The models were used to project deforestation in six tropical regions that featured different ecological and socioeconomic conditions, population dynamics, and uses of the land: (1) northern Belize; (2) Santa Cruz State, Bolivia; (3) Paraná State, Brazil; (4) Campeche, Mexico; (5) Chiapas, Mexico; and (6) Michoacán, Mexico. A comparison of all model outputs across all six regions shows that each model produced quite different deforestation baselines. In general, the simplest FAC model, applied at the national administrative-unit scale, projected the highest amount of forest loss (four out of six regions) and the LUCS model the least amount of loss (four out of five regions). Based on simulations of GEOMOD, we found that readily observable physical and biological factors as well as distance to areas of past disturbance were each about twice as important as either sociological/demographic or economic/infrastructure factors (less observable) in explaining empirical land-use patterns. We propose from the lessons learned, a methodology comprised of three main steps and six tasks can be used to begin developing credible baselines. We also propose that the baselines be projected over a 10-year period because, although projections beyond 10 years are feasible, they are likely to be unrealistic for policy purposes. In the first step, an historic land-use change and deforestation estimate is made by determining the analytic domain (size of the region relative to the size of proposed project), obtaining historic data, analyzing candidate baseline drivers, and identifying three to four major drivers. In the second step, a baseline of where deforestation is likely to occur–a potential land-use change (PLUC) map—is produced using a spatial model such as GEOMOD that uses the key drivers from step one. Then rates of deforestation are projected over a 10-year baseline period based on one of the three models. Using the PLUC maps, projected rates of deforestation, and carbon stock estimates, baseline projections are developed that can be used for project GHG accounting and crediting purposes: The final step proposes that, at agreed interval (e.g., about 10 years), the baseline assumptions about baseline drivers be re-assessed. This step reviews the viability of the 10-year baseline in light of changes in one or more key baseline drivers (e.g., new roads, new communities, new protected area, etc.). The potential land-use change map and estimates of rates of deforestation could be re-done at the agreed interval, allowing the deforestation rates and changes in spatial drivers to be incorporated into a defense of the existing baseline, or the derivation of a new baseline projection.