Cancer risks from exposure to vehicular air pollution: a household level analysis of intra-ethnic heterogeneity in Miami,Florida

Quantitative environmental justice (EJ) research has relied on aggregated data from census units to determine disproportionate hazard exposure. Additionally, variables typically used to analyze ethnic inequities in exposure (e.g., percent Hispanic) are too broad and assume a degree of homogeneity that may not exist, given the diversity of ethnic minority populations. We address these limitations through a study that utilizes primary household level survey data and cancer risk estimates from the National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) to analyze intra-ethnic inequities in exposure to vehicular air pollutants in the Miami metropolitan area, Florida. Our analysis disaggregates the Hispanic category based on five characteristics (language proficiency, U.S. citizenship, nativity, unemployment status, and national origin) and finds that risk burdens are significantly higher for Hispanic respondents who are foreign-born, unemployed, and of Cuban origin. Findings highlight the advantages of downscaling EJ analyses to the household level and considering intra-ethnic heterogeneity in EJ research and policy.     

The Global Distribution of Secondary Particulate Matter in a 3-D Lagrangian Chemistry Transport Model

A global 3-D Lagrangian chemistry-transport model STOCHEM is used to describe the tropospheric distributions of four components of the secondary atmospheric aerosol: nitrate, sulphate, ammonium and organic compounds. The model describes the detailed chemistry of the formation of the acid precursors from the oxidation of SO₂, DMS, NO_x, NH₃ and terpenes and their uptake into the aerosol. Model results are compared in some detail with the available surface observations. Comparisons are made between the global budgets and burdens found in other modelling studies. The global distributions of the total mass of secondary aerosols have been estimated for the pre-industrial, present day and 2030 emissions and large changes have been estimated in the mass fractions of the different secondary aerosol components.     

Middle Paleozoic paleomagnetism of east Kazakhstan: post-Middle Devonian rotations in a large-scale orocline in the central Ural–Mongol belt

In order to test different hypotheses concerning the Paleozoic evolution of the Ural–Mongol belt (UMB) and the amalgamation of Eurasia, we studied Middle Devonian basalts from two localities (11 sites) and Lower Silurian volcanics, redbeds, and intra-formational conglomerates from three localities (20 sites) in the Chingiz Range of East Kazakhstan. The Devonian rocks prove to be heavily overprinted in the late Paleozoic, and a high-temperature, presumably primary, southerly, and down component is isolated at only four sites from a homoclinal section. Most Silurian redbeds are found to be remagnetized in the late Paleozoic; in contrast, a bipolar near-horizontal remanence, isolated from Silurian volcanics, is most probably primary as indicated by positive tilt and conglomerate tests. Analysis of paleomagnetic data from the Chingiz Range shows that southward-pointing directions in Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian rocks are of normal polarity and hence indicate large-scale rotations after the Middle Devonian. The Chingiz paleomagnetic directions can be compared with Paleozoic data from the North Tien Shan and with the horseshoe-shaped distribution of subduction-related volcanic complexes in Kazakhstan. Both paleomagnetic and geological data support the idea that today's strongly curved volcanic belts of Kazakhstan are an orocline, deformed mostly before mid-Permian time. Despite the determination of nearly a dozen new Paleozoic paleopoles in this study and other recent publications by our team, significant temporal and spatial gaps remain in our knowledge of the paleomagnetic directions during the middle and late Paleozoic. However, the paleomagnetic results from the Chingiz Range and the North Tien Shan indicate that these areas show generally coherent motions with Siberia and Baltica, respectively.     

Challenges in urban water management in the United States

The growing intensity of use of water in the urban environment of the United States is posing significant challenges for its supply, utilization, and protection. The development of traditional water sources is becoming more difficult, and water suppliers are turning to conservation and reuse as alternatives. Price disincentives and better water use management are being utilized to attempt to deal with limited capacity for distribution of water in periods of high demand. Urban runoff presents significant localized flooding problems. Management of floods and floodplains is given focus under the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, which has as its goal the deterrence of development in flood-prone areas. Water quality goals, being developed and pursued under the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, are becoming more encompassing as the breadth of pollutants identified in the urban environment expands. Wastewater control strategies developed under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 are expanding their emphasis upon nonpoint source pollution, as opposed to traditional emphasis upon point source pollution. Integrated management of the water resource will become increasingly necessary to adequately address water problems in the urban environment. State and local responsibilities for urban water management and control will likely increase.     

珠江三角洲世界工厂的非正规职业中介及其作用——以广东省东莞市塘厦镇为例

国内外现有研究认为,农民工的求职渠道非常单一,主要依赖社会关系网络。本文选取典型的珠江三角洲世界工厂所在地——广东省东莞市塘厦镇为案例,对非正规职业中介机构进行了深入调查研究。发现非正规中介机构在农民工的求职过程中发挥着重要作用,帮助农民工实现灵活、即时的就业,其存在是在我国转型期市场改革不断深入的背景下,企业/工厂的用工需求、农民工的求职需要、中介机构的逐利目的和地方政府的宽容态度共同作用的结果。非正规职业中介机构是市场动力作用下的新型农民工非正规求职渠道,是原有的社会关系网络求职渠道的延伸。研究表明,在现阶段中国城市化过程中,非正规的动力在解决农民工求职乃至城市化过程中具有重要的作用。     

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987114001601

Data from a migmatised metapelite raft enclosed within charnockite provide quantitative constraints on the pressure-temperature-time[P-T-t) evolution of the Nagercoil Block at the southernmost tip of peninsular India.An inferred peak metamorphic assemblage of garnet,K-feldspar.sillimanite,plagioclase,magnetite,ilmenite,spinel and melt is consistent with peak metamorphic pressures of 6-8 kbar and temperatures in excess of 900℃.Subsequent growth of cordierite and biotite record high-temperature retrograde decompression to around 5 kbar and 800 C.SHRIMP U-Pb dating of magmatic zircon cores suggests that the sedimentary protoliths were in part derived from felsic igneous rocks with Palaeoproterozoic crystallisation ages.New growth of metamorphic zircon on the rims of detrital grains constrains the onset of melt crystallisation,and the minimum age of the metamorphic peak,to around560 Ma.The data suggest two stages of monazite growth.The first generation of REE-enriched monazite grew during partial melting along the prograde path at around 570 Ma via the incongruent breakdown of apatite.Relatively REE-depleted rims,which have a pronounced negative europium anomaly,grew during melt crystallisation along the retrograde path at around 535 Ma.Our data show the rocks remained at suprasolidus temperatures for at least 35 million years and probably much longer,supporting a long-lived high-grade metamorphic history.The metamorphic conditions,timing and duration of the implied clockwise P-T-t path are similar to that previously established for other regions in peninsular India during the Ediacaran to Cambrian assembly of that part of the Gondwanan supercontinent.     

Gravel transport,gravel harvesting,and channel-bed degradation in rivers draining the southern olympic mountains,Washington, U.S.A.

The potential for gravel extraction to adversely affect anadromous fish habitat in three gravel-bed rivers of southwestern Washington, U.S.A., prompted the need to determine sustainable rates of gravel removal. This was accomplished by evaluating the components of a long-term sediment mass balance for the three rivers. Average annual gravel transport was determined by three independent methods. The closely agreeing results indicate that annual bedload supply decreases downstream through deposition and storage in response to declining gradient and from attrition during transport, as confirmed by laboratory experiments. A survey of gravel-bar harvesting operations indicates that the annual replenishment rate has been exceeded for up to three decades, often by more than tenfold. Analysis of data from nine stream gauging stations over a 55-yr period indicates degradation of about 0.03 m/yr in these reaches and suggests that bed degradation has produced the difference between the replenishment rates and the volumes of gravel harvested from the river beds and bars.     

Sampling Strategies for Estimation of Parameters Related to Ground Water Quality

Multiple theoretical sampling designs are studied to determine whether sampling designs can be identified that will provide for characterization of ground water quality in rural regions of developing nations. Sampling design in this work includes assessing sampling frequency, analytical methods, length of sampling period, and requirements of sampling personnel. The results answer a set of questions regarding whether using innovative sampling designs can allow hydrogeologists to take advantage of a range of characterization technologies, sampling strategies, and available personnel to develop high-value, water-quality data sets. Monte Carlo studies are used to assess different sampling strategies in the estimation of three parameters related to a hypothetical chemical observed in a ground water well: mean concentration (MeanC), maximum concentration (MaxC), and total mass load (TML). Five different scenarios are simulated. These scenarios are then subsampled using multiple simulated sampling instruments, time periods (ranging from 1 to 10 years), and sampling frequencies (ranging from weekly to semiannually to parameter dependent). Results are analyzed via the statistics of the resulting estimates, including mean square error, bias, bias squared, and precision. Results suggest that developing a sampling strategy based on what may be considered lower quality instruments can represent a powerful field research approach for estimating select parameters when applied at high frequency. This result suggests the potential utility of using a combination of lower quality instrument and local populations to obtain high frequency data sets in regions where regular monitoring by technicians is not practical.     

A Rising Tide in Bangladesh: livelihood adaptation to climate stress

ABSTRACT

Bangladesh is at the forefront of countries experiencing and debating climate change, despite having contributed little to global emissions, and has the greatest vulnerability to climate change due to inadequate institutional support for the dense population dispersed in low-lying terrain. A micro-level study of livelihoods in the Panpatti Union, a district of the coastal zone exposed to climate stress and an array of other social, economic and political stresses, demonstrated that adaptation strategies to a range of shocks were both reactive and proactive. The persistent nature of shocks, and the limited margins in which to respond, meant that achieving sustainable long-term livelihoods was unusually difficult. Despite cases of dynamism and flexibility, where livelihoods had been effectively diversified, rural people largely failed to reduce their exposure to vulnerability. That was especially true of extremely poor, landless and female-headed households. In such challenging circumstances external interventions were required to ensure sustainable development, but were unlikely because of the isolation of Panpatti and the number of villages and people in similar circumstances. This emphasised the need to develop a more robust livelihoods framework to support the most vulnerable communities in severe economic and environmental contexts where climate change is likely to exacerbate all existing problems.