Proceedings of IIASA Workshop on Road Traffic Safety in Europe

Road traffic safety represents one of the most perplexing dilemmas for modern man. On the one hand, the invention of the automobile has undoubtedly contributed to the exponential growth of civilization achieved in this century. On the other hand, this invention had introduced massive undesirable side effects, among the most notable of which are noise and air pollution. From the public health viewpoint, road traffic accidents are among the leading causes of deaths in advanced countries, in addition to causing vast amounts of disability. Recognizing these problems, the European Regional Office of the World Health Organization sought to initiate a research effort aimed at ameliorating some of them. The Austrian Government, noting the high rate of road accidents in Austria, was also keenly interested. It was thus agreed that the IIASA Bio-Medical Project and the Austrian Kuratorium fuer Verkehrssicherheit would carry out such a study in cooperation with WHO. This workshop was organized in order to discuss the overall traffic safety efforts currently underway in Europe and to point out some open areas of research in which the system-analytic approach may be useful. It is anticipated that this will be the first step in a long-term research effort, possibly funded by WHO

The Biological Basis for Standard Setting for Environmental Pollutants: A Critique

In this paper, an attempt is made to review some of the principles that underlie physiological responses following exposure to environmental agents. The review takes the form of the comparison of the health effects from two often competing fuel cycles, nuclear and coal. In addition, efforts will be reviewed to assess the current literature of the health effects of energy systems. This review will not be comprehensive, but will rather indicate briefly those areas where there is general agreement and those where the data are inadequate. Although each individual pollutant, whether it be chemical, biological, radioactive, gaseous or solid, has its own peculiarities which requires individual consideration, there are underlying principles which are useful in evaluating and understanding all of them. It was intended, that, by focusing on these two energy systems, theses principles, their uses and abuses could be illustrated

Energy Consumption as an Indicator of Longevity

This report is one in a series by the authors describing their work on the relationship between health and energy. Using cross-sectional as well as longitudinal data, the series examines the role of economic development in improving health. The national data used here extended over the period 1900 to 1975 and covered 99 percent of the world population. The study is a "first cut" at analyzing the relationship between commercial energy consumption and health. As measures of the latter, both infant mortality and longevity data from birth of 150 countries have been used. Both show strong relationships to energy, describing logistic functions with an upper plateau at 2000 kg coal equivalent beyond which no further improvement occurs. When the regression of longevity on energy consumption is examined over previous decades, a shift is observed in that the energy requirements for any given level of longevity or infant mortality are shown to be declining. Using 1950 data for energy consumption, approximately half of the subsequent improvements in health could be predicted. The residual is ascribed to a poorly defined "time effect", which is non-economic in character and which has improved health measures among all countries regardless of level of development

Energy and Literacy: An Index of Health Development

This report is one in a series by the authors describing their work on the relationship between health and energy. Using cross-sectional as well as longitudinal data, the series examines the role of of economic development in improving health. In previous reports (PP-78-6, RM-78-41, and RM-78-42), percent literacy and per-capita commercial energy consumption were found to have the strongest association with longevity and infant mortality among a large number of explanatory variables. In this report we derive on a statistical basis a Health Development Index which is linear in literacy and logistic in energy consumption. A country moving from the lowest to the highest points on the INDEX is expected to increase the longevity of its population by 36 years and reduce infant mortality by 150 deaths per 1000 live births. In addition, we found evidence of a "time effect" operating since the turn of the century, independently of economic development. This effect accounts for an increase in longevity of 18 years and a decrease in infant mortality of 100 deaths since 1900

Health and Economic Development I: Infant Mortality

This report is one in a series describing the authors' work on the relationship between health and energy. Using cross- sectional as well as longitudinal data, the series examines the role of economic development in improving health. The national data used here extended over the period 1900 to 1975 and covered 99 percent of the world population. In a previous report (Energy Consumption as an Indicator of Longevity, PP-78-6) the relationship betwenn energy consumption and health was described. In this follow-up study, certain independent variables are examined in order to ascertain the mechanisms underlying the effect of development of infant mortality. Those variables include: nutrition, medical care, education, religion, urbanization, and gross national product. The study population consists of all nations for which data were available. Statistical analysis is both cross-sectional and longitudinal. The authors conclude from this analysis that economic development is responsible for approximately half of the reduction that has occured over the past few decades, and that, of the intervening variables tested, energy consumption and literacy bear a strong and predictive relationship to declining infant death rates. In addition, other still unidentified factors are operating to reduce death rates throughout the world

Health and Economic Development II: Longevity

This report is one in a series by the authors describing their work on the relationship between health and energy. Using cross-sectional as well as longitudinal data, the series examines the role of economic development in improving health. The national data used here extended over the period 1900 to 1975 and covered 99 percent of the world population. Previous reports (PP-78-6, PP-78-7, RM-78-41) describe initial studies of the relationship between energy consumption, economic development, and health, and present data on infant mortality as it is influenced by development. Here, longevity from birth is used as the dependent variable. Unlike infant mortality, which represents death rates within a single age group, namely 0 to 1, longevity from birth is an aggregate of death rates at all ages. From both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses which include a large number of independent variables, it is concluded that longevity is strongly influenced by development. Both per capita energy consumption and literacy show strong interactions with longevity, but approximately half of the improvements in the death rates that have occured since 1950 remain unexplained

Teneur du muscle en glycogène et identification des viandes falsifiées

Une épreuve chimique permettant de déterminer la teneur totale en glycogène des muscles de différents animaux domestiques est décrite. La différenciation dépend de la variation de l'intensité de la couleur mesurée au colorimètre. L'épreuve peut être utilisée pour la diagnose de la viande foetale (non comestible) et de toutes les autres variétés de viande. Elle peut également permettre de différencier très bien la viande de buffle de celle du boeuf, et cette dernière de celle du chameau. La différenciation entre la viande de chameau et de buffle devra être confirmée par d'autres méthodes. Les résultats obtenus avec la viande de mouton et celle de chèvre sont presque semblables et se superposent à ceux obtenus avec la viande de veau. L'analyse statistique des valeurs obtenues à la suite des mesures effectuées sur différentes régions du corps et chez différents animaux est enregistré

Assessment of Cultivar Distinctness in Alfalfa: A Comparison of Genotyping‐by‐Sequencing, Simple‐Sequence Repeat Marker, and Morphophysiological Observations

Cultivar registration agencies typically require morphophysiological trait-based distinctness of candidate cultivars. This requirement is difficult to achieve for cultivars of major perennial forages because of their genetic structure and ever-increasing number of registered material, leading to possible rejection of agronomically valuable cultivars. This study aimed to explore the value of molecular markers applied to replicated bulked plants (three bulks of 100 independent plants each per cultivar) to assess alfalfa ( L. subsp. ) cultivar distinctness. We compared genotyping-by-sequencing information based on 2902 polymorphic single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers (>30 reads per DNA sample) with morphophysiological information based on 11 traits and with simple-sequence repeat (SSR) marker information from 41 polymorphic markers for their ability to distinguish 11 alfalfa landraces representative of the germplasm from northern Italy. Three molecular criteria, one based on cultivar differences for individual SSR bands and two based on overall SNP marker variation assessed either by statistically significant cultivar differences on principal component axes or discriminant analysis, distinctly outperformed the morphophysiological criterion. Combining the morphophysiological criterion with either molecular marker method increased discrimination among cultivars, since morphophysiological diversity was unrelated to SSR marker-based diversity ( = 0.04) and poorly related to SNP marker-based diversity ( = 0.23, < 0.15). The criterion based on statistically significant SNP allele frequency differences was less discriminating than morphophysiological variation. Marker-based distinctness, which can be assessed at low cost and without interactions with testing conditions, could validly substitute for (or complement) morphophysiological distinctness in alfalfa cultivar registration schemes. It also has interest in sui generis registration systems aimed at marketing alfalfa landraces