Familiarity breeds context – delivering environmental education through local awareness

With community concerns about environmental issues such as global warming receiving scientific and political priority, there is a corresponding demand for mainstream environmental education initiatives. The plethora of information available regarding broad environmental issues can be intimidating to educators keen to foster an informed sense of stewardship in their students. We discuss how using local examples to illustrate more general environmental science provides a sensible and necessary approach to environmental education. Natural resource management based on sound science requires a knowledge of local biodiversity and sustainable agriculture. We present a case study in Far North Queensland where the Regional NRM body (Terrain NRM) facilitates partnerships with community and industry groups to provide teachers with access to relevant and accurate information, providing support and building capacity for educators. We describe how local learnings at the catchment scale build social capital around community awareness and vitality

A comparison of the biodegradation of phenol and o-chlorophenol using a municipal mixed liquor and three commercial microbial preparations

The biodegradation of phenol and O-chlorophenol was studied in six-liter batch reactors, using a municipal mixed liquor (from the Livingston, NJ treatment plant) that had not previously been exposed to either of the substrates. In addition, three commercial microbial preparations: BI-CHEM (Sybron), Hydrobac (Polybac), and LLMO (General Environmental Science), were tested alone and in combination with the municipal mixed liquor. It was found that the municipal mixed liquor performed significantly better than any of the commercial preparations by themselves. When the commercial preparations were mixed with the municipal mixed liquor in a ratio of 1:10 it was found that the rate of degradation of each substrate increased over the rate of the municipal mixed liquor by itself. However, the increase in rate would not be great enough to justify the cost of using the commercial preparations

The Meaning of Urban Environmental Justice

Environmental justice is redress for the structures and situations arising from environmental discrimination and, particularly, environmental racism. Environmental discrimination is actions and practices, arising from both individual ideologies and social structures that preserve and reinforce domination of subordinate groups with respect to the environment, while such discrimination with respect to race is environmental racism. Part I of this Essay discusses how environmental injustice is a three-dimensional nexus of economic injustice, social injustice and an unjust incidence of environmental quality, all of which overwhelmingly assures the continued oppression of communities of color and low-income communities on environmental matters. Part II of this Essay seeks to understand urban environmental justice in the context of this nexus. Part III describes the backdrop against which urban environmental justice movements must struggle. Part IV highlights some specific urban environmental problems that affect communities of color and low-income people in cities. Part V summarizes some of the strategies being used in urban areas by grassroots environmental activists

ECUT: Energy Conversion and Utilization Technologies program. Industry, university and research interest in the US Department of Energy ECUT biocatalysis research activity

The results of a Research Opportunity Notice (RON) disseminated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy Conversion and Utilization Technologies (ECUT) Program's Biocatalysis Research Activity are presented. The RON was issued in late April of 1983 and solicited expressions of interest from petrochemical and chemical companies, bioengineering firms, biochemical engineering consultants, private research laboratories, and universities for participating in a federal research program to investigate potential applications of biotechnology in producing chemicals. The RON results indicate that broad interest exists within the nation's industry, universities, and research institutes for the Activity and its planned research and development program

Excellence Mapping: Bibliometric study of the productivity and the impact of scientific publications of the JRC: Mapping of scientific areas and application areas: Volume 2: Analysis of the JRC collaborations with world academic institutions

The present report is the second volume of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) excellence mapping. While the first volume concentrates on the productivity and the impact of the JRC scientific work, in terms of publications and citations, in general, the present volume analyses a particular subset of publications that have been jointly produced with scientists from other organisations. In particular, it analyses the co-authored publications between the JRC and the world academic institutions, which are highly ranked in different world university rankings. In the context of this analysis, three different rankings have been used (Times higher education ranking, QS world university ranking and Academic ranking of world universities) and the Top-100 academic institutions in each of them have been analysed in order to investigate: 1) the existence of formal agreements with the JRC; 2) number of co-authored publications with the JRC and 3) the scientific areas where the collaborations occur.JRC.A.2-Planning, Evaluation and Knowledge Managemen

Value of Certification: The Occupational Safety and Health Professional

This presentation provides information about the importance and value of attaining certification to determine health and safety issues in the environment. It also explains the advantages of attaining certification from different organizations, salary-wise. Attaining a certificate gives individuals the standardized knowledge needed to determine if situations/substances are harmful to human well being or the environment

Perceived Transformational Teacher Leadership and Students’ Motivation, Academic Performance, and Intent to Persist in STEM Education at a Community College

The transformational teacher leadership style has been identified as having a positive impact on student motivation, academic performance, and persistence. This study served to determine if there is a relationship between perceived transformational teacher leadership and student motivation, academic performance, and STEM persistence intentions for students in transferable general education biological science courses offered at community colleges. This quantitative research study was conducted in two phases at one campus of a large, multi-campus community college in a major urban area in a Mid-Atlantic state. In the initial phase, the researcher administered the survey to students who volunteered to participate in the study. The students who participated were enrolled in a transferable general education biological science course at the study location during the final four weeks of the semester. In the first phase, a survey containing 34 statements from the MLQ 5X-short, the MSLQ, and demographic information was administered to 178 students enrolled in transferable general education biological science courses. In the second phase, data on the student’s final numerical course grade was collected from the instructor. A regression analysis was conducted to determine if such a relationship exists. The study did not find a statistical relationship between perceived transformational teacher leadership and academic success or intent to persist in STEM coursework. The study, however, did find a relationship between perceived transformational teacher leadership and student motivation. This study has provided additional insight as to what factors influence students in a biological community college classroom. While this study may not be generalizable to all academic subjects or student populations, it does serve to offer researchers additional knowledge in an effort to further support and retain students in higher education settings

Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior in Environmental Science: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis.

Since the theory of planned behavior (TPB) was proposed by Ajzen in 1985, it has attracted extensive interest and been widely applied worldwide. Although an increasing number of studies have employed the TPB in the domain of environmental science, there have been no attempts to retrospectively analyze existing articles. The current study aimed to holistically understand the application status of the TPB in environmental science from a knowledge domain visualization perspective. A total of 531 journal articles were obtained through the Scopus database to perform a bibliometric analysis and content analysis. The results showed that waste management, green consumption, climate and environment, saving and conservation, and sustainable transportation are the primary research topics; the United States (U.S.), Mainland China, the United Kingdom (UK), and Malaysia are the most productive countries/regions. Moreover, the cross-disciplinary situations, main source journals, and key articles were revealed. Furthermore, the extended factors, integrated theories, major methods, specific groups, and control variables of environmental science research using the TPB were elaborated and integrated into a comprehensive application framework. Constructive criticisms were ultimately discussed. The findings contribute in several ways to help relevant researchers learn about the application of TPB to environmental science and provide new insights and holistic references for further research on environment-related behavior

Annual report 1983 Somersworth, New Hampshire.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire