An Evaluation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) as a Policy Option for Compostable Plastics in California

This research project evaluates Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in California as a viable option to address the end-of-life management challenges identified for compostable plastics. The evaluation is done in three ways (1) review the main challenges identified for managing compostable plastics against the existing California EPR laws for mercury thermostats, agricultural pesticide containers, carpet, paint and mattresses to look for overlap in issues EPR has been used to address, (2) review compostable plastics in the context of the Product Selection Criteria used by California, (3) Look at the California Framework for setting up an EPR program to lay out what an EPR program for compostable plastics could look like. Implementing EPR for compostable plastics now, while the product is emerging on the market, would help producers organize around addressing the challenges their products are creating and enable them to agree on and implement solutions that would contribute to an increased ability to identify and manage compostable plastics. This would decrease contamination and unwanted material at compost and recycling facilities and help ensure these items are not disposed of in a landfill. The outcome of the evaluations shows that EPR for compostable plastics would be successful in addressing two of the five challenges identified for compostable plastics: education and identification. When taken into consideration against other products in the waste stream, compostable plastics would not be a priority based on the initial product selection criteria provided by CalReycle. The framework shows that compostable plastics fit the mold and are able to meet the general requirements of an EPR program in California

Farmland protection and the next generation: what do younger farmers and heirs to farmland think about farmland protection?

Farmland protection has become a major issue across the nation as urban development spreads further from it\u27s metropolitan center into rural, farm areas. In response to this problem, numerous programs have been proposed or initiated in an effort to protect farmland from development. This study explored the knowledge of and attitudes towards farmland protection by younger and older farmers and farmland heirs in the community of Mechanicsburg ~ a rural farming community west of Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is the State\u27s capitol and has been rapidly growing in all directions. Farmland protection was explored in general and for three particular protection programs proposed for use in the State of Ohio purchase of development rights, 30-year land use tax credit and agricultural zoning. The study found that knowledge of farmland protection programs was high and there was interest in farmland protection by both younger and older farmers and heirs. Although there was an overall interest in protection, no overwhelming response was found for any one of the programs discussed, but agricultural zoning (or some form of land regulation) appeared to be more acceptable than purchase of development nights or 30-year land use tax credit programs. The study also found there were differences in attitudes between the younger generation of farmers and the older farmers ~ the older farmers had more negative attitudes towards the three programs while younger farmers were generally more positive towards each of the protection initiatives. The heirs were found to be interested in protection but were divided in their responses to the specific protection initiatives ~ some more positive and some more negative. Farmland protection may have the interest of the farmland community, but that community is not a homogeneous group m terms of their attitudes, interests and concerns for specific protection initiatives Understanding the differences and where support and opposition is likely to come from provides targets for developing effective strategies and for promoting and initiating protection programs. To reach these findings the study used a case study approach focusing on qualitative research methods. Interviews were conducted with individuals representative of older farmers, younger farmers and heirs to farmland

Soil Oxygen Dynamics: Patterns and Lessons from Six Years of High Frequency Monitoring

Soil oxygen (O2) is a fundamental control on terrestrial biogeochemical cycles including processes producing and consuming greenhouse gases (GHG), yet it is rarely measured. Instead, soil O2 is assumed to be proportional to soil moisture and physical soil properties. For example, soil O2 is often inferred from a 25-year old steady-state diffusion model; however, few data exist to test this model in stochastic systems. The variability of soil O2 may be particularly important to GHG emissions from aquatic-terrestrial interface zones because of the convergence of variable hydrology and rapid biogeochemical processing. Our objective is to gain a better understanding of soil O2 variation and its role in controlling GHG emissions across aquatic-terrestrial interface zones. Specifically, we hypothesize that in aquatic-terrestrial interface ecosystems, soil moisture predicts O2 concentration under stable conditions, but under dynamic conditions (e.g., water table fluctuations or precipitation) heterogeneous distributions of water-filled soil pore space complicate this prediction. Furthermore, we hypothesize that GHG emissions will correspond to variation in soil O2. Twenty-four near-continuous (30-minute frequency) soil O2 and moisture sensors were monitored for more than six years. The sensors were installed at 10 cm of depth across an aquatic-terrestrial interface of a constructed wetland in April 2012 and removed in July 2018. Diurnal, precipitation and drainage events, seasonal, and longer-term patterns were in soil O2 observed. Drought conditions (2012) resulted in minimal soil O2 variation; however, a diurnal pattern of lower soil O2 during the day was observed. When precipitation increases within and among sensor soil O2 variation increases. The relationship between soil moisture and soil O2 was non-linear during periods of soil drainage and precipitation. Commonly, a rapid (change of 10% over <24 hours) increase in soil O2 occurred during soil drainage near a common threshold. As soil moisture increased due to precipitation, soil O2 decreased slower than predicted by simple diffusion models. Soil O2 was an important predictor of weekly methane and nitrous oxide emissions correspond to variation in soil O2. These soil O2 data will be useful for understanding multiple soil biogeochemical functions

The Rhodomonas salina mitochondrial genome: bacteria-like operons, compact gene arrangement and complex repeat region

To gain insight into the mitochondrial genome structure and gene content of a putatively ancestral group of eukaryotes, the cryptophytes, we sequenced the complete mitochondrial DNA of Rhodomonas salina. The 48 063 bp circular-mapping molecule codes for 2 rRNAs, 27 tRNAs and 40 proteins including 23 components of oxidative phosphorylation, 15 ribosomal proteins and two subunits of tat translocase. One potential protein (ORF161) is without assigned function. Only two introns occur in the genome; both are present within cox1 belong to group II and contain RT open reading frames. Primitive genome features include bacteria-like rRNAs and tRNAs, ribosomal protein genes organized in large clusters resembling bacterial operons and the presence of the otherwise rare genes such as rps1 and tatA. The highly compact gene organization contrasts with the presence of a 4.7 kb long, repeat-containing intergenic region. Repeat motifs ∼40–700 bp long occur up to 31 times, forming a complex repeat structure. Tandem repeats are the major arrangement but the region also includes a large, ∼3 kb, inverted repeat and several potentially stable ∼40–80 bp long hairpin structures. We provide evidence that the large repeat region is involved in replication and transcription initiation, predict a promoter motif that occurs in three locations and discuss two likely scenarios of how this highly structured repeat region might have evolved

A conserved filamentous assembly underlies the structure of the meiotic chromosome axis.

The meiotic chromosome axis plays key roles in meiotic chromosome organization and recombination, yet the underlying protein components of this structure are highly diverged. Here, we show that 'axis core proteins' from budding yeast (Red1), mammals (SYCP2/SYCP3), and plants (ASY3/ASY4) are evolutionarily related and play equivalent roles in chromosome axis assembly. We first identify 'closure motifs' in each complex that recruit meiotic HORMADs, the master regulators of meiotic recombination. We next find that axis core proteins form homotetrameric (Red1) or heterotetrameric (SYCP2:SYCP3 and ASY3:ASY4) coiled-coil assemblies that further oligomerize into micron-length filaments. Thus, the meiotic chromosome axis core in fungi, mammals, and plants shares a common molecular architecture, and likely also plays conserved roles in meiotic chromosome axis assembly and recombination control

Novel pathogen introduction rapidly alters the evolution of movement, restructuring animal societies

Animal social interactions are the outcomes of evolved strategies that integrate the costs and benefits of being sociable. Using a novel mechanistic, evolutionary, individual-based simulation model, we examine how animals balance the risk of pathogen transmission against the benefits of social information about resource patches, and how this determines the emergent structure of spatial social networks. We study a scenario in which a fitness-reducing infectious pathogen is introduced into a population which has initially evolved movement rules in its absence. Pathogen introduction leads to a rapid evolutionary shift, within only a few generations, in animal social-movement strategies. Generally, animals adopt a dynamic social distancing behaviour, trading more movement away from individuals (and less intake) for lower infection risk, but there is considerable individual variation in these social movement strategies. Pathogen-adapted populations are more widely dispersed over the landscape, and thus have lessclustered social networks than their pre-introduction, pathogen-naive ancestors. Running simple epidemiological models on these emergent social networks, we show that diseases do indeed spread more slowly through pathogen-adapted animal societies. The post-introduction, pathogen-adapted movement strategy mix is stongly influenced by a combination of landscape productivity and diseasecost. Our model suggests how the introduction of an infectious pathogen to a population rapidly changes social structure. While such events might make populations more resilient to future disease outbreaks, this is at the cost of social information benefits. Overall, we offer both a general modelling framework and initial predictions for the evolutionary consequences of wildlife pathogen spillovers

Evolved Gas Measurements Planned for the Lower Layers of the Gale Crater Mound with the Sample Analysis at Mars Instrument Suite

The lower mound strata of Gale Crater provide a diverse set of chemical environments for exploration by the varied tools of the Curiosity Rover of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Mission. Orbital imaging and spectroscopy clearly reveal distinct layers of hydrated minerals, sulfates, and clays with abundant evidence of a variety of fluvial processes. The three instruments of the MSL Sample Analysis at aMars (SAM) investigation, the Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (QMS), the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS), and the Gas Chromatograph (GC) are designed to analyze either atmospheric gases or volatiles thermally evolved or chemically extracted from powdered rock or soil. The presence or absence of organic compounds in these layers is of great interest since such an in situ search for this type of record has not been successfully implemented since the mid-60s Viking GCMS experiments. However, regardless of the outcome of the analysis for organics, the abundance and isotopic composition of thermally evolved inorganic compounds should also provide a rich data set to complement the mineralogical and elemental information provided by other MSL instruments. In addition, these evolved gas analysis (EGA) experiments will help test sedimentary models proposed by Malin and Edgett (2000) and then further developed by Milliken et al (2010) for Gale Crater. In the SAM EGA experiments the evolution temperatures of H2O, CO2, SO2, O2, or other simple compounds as the samples are heated in a helium stream to 1000 C provides information on mineral types and their associations. The isotopic composition of O, H, C, and S can be precisely determined in several evolved compounds and compared with the present day atmosphere. Such SAM results might be able to test mineralogical evidence of changing sedimentary and alteration processes over an extended period of time. For example, Bibring et al (2006) have suggested such a major shift from early nonacidic to later acidic alteration. We will illustrate through a variety of evolved gas experiments implemented under SAM-like gas flow and temperature ramp conditions on terrestrial analog minerals on high fidelity Sam breadboards the type of chemical information we expect SAM to provide

Spatiotemporal predictions of soil properties and states in variably saturated landscapes

Understanding greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes from landscapes with variably saturated soil conditions is challenging given the highly dynamic nature of GHG fluxes in both space and time, dubbed hot spots, and hot moments. On one hand, our ability to directly monitor these processes is limited by sparse in situ and surface chamber observational networks. On the other hand, remote sensing approaches provide spatial data sets but are limited by infrequent imaging over time. We use a robust statistical framework to merge sparse sensor network observations with reconnaissance style hydrogeophysical mapping at a well‐characterized site in Ohio. We find that combining time‐lapse electromagnetic induction surveys with empirical orthogonal functions provides additional environmental covariates related to soil properties and states at high spatial resolutions (~5 m). A cross‐validation experiment using eight different spatial interpolation methods versus 120 in situ soil cores indicated an ~30% reduction in root‐mean‐square error for soil properties (clay weight percent and total soil carbon weight percent) using hydrogeophysical derived environmental covariates with regression kriging. In addition, the hydrogeophysical derived environmental covariates were found to be good predictors of soil states (soil temperature, soil water content, and soil oxygen). The presented framework allows for temporal gap filling of individual sensor data sets as well as provides flexible geometric interpolation to complex areas/volumes. We anticipate that the framework, with its flexible temporal and spatial monitoring options, will be useful in designing future monitoring networks as well as support the next generation of hyper‐resolution hydrologic and biogeochemical models

The sonographic quantitative assessment of the deltoid muscle to detect type 2 diabetes mellitus: a potential noninvasive and sensitive screening method?

BACKGROUND: In our previous published study, we demonstrated that a qualitatively assessed elevation in deltoid muscle echogenicity on ultrasound was both sensitive for and a strong predictor of a type 2 diabetes (T2DM) diagnosis. This study aims to evaluate if a sonographic quantitative assessment of the deltoid muscle can be used to detect T2DM. METHODS: Deltoid muscle ultrasound images from 124 patients were stored: 31 obese T2DM, 31 non-obese T2DM, 31 obese non-T2DM and 31 non-obese non-T2DM. Images were independently reviewed by 3 musculoskeletal radiologists, blinded to the patient\u27s category. Each measured the grayscale pixel intensity of the deltoid muscle and humeral cortex to calculate a muscle/bone ratio for each patient. Following a 3-week delay, the 3 radiologists independently repeated measurements on a randomly selected 40 subjects. Ratios, age, gender, race, body mass index, insulin usage and hemoglobin A(1c) were analyzed. The difference among the 4 groups was compared using analysis of variance or chi-square tests. Both univariate and multivariate linear mixed models were performed. Multivariate mixed-effects regression models were used, adjusting for demographic and clinical variables. Post hoc comparisons were done with Bonferroni adjustments to identify any differences between groups. The sample size achieved 90% power. Sensitivity and specificity were calculated based on set threshold ratios. Both intra- and inter-radiologist variability or agreement were assessed. RESULTS: A statistically significant difference in muscle/bone ratios between the groups was identified with the average ratios as follows: obese T2DM, 0.54 (P \u3c 0.001); non-obese T2DM, 0.48 (P \u3c 0.001); obese non-T2DM, 0.42 (P = 0.03); and non-obese non-T2DM, 0.35. There was excellent inter-observer agreement (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.87) and excellent intra-observer agreements (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.92, 0.95 and 0.94). Using threshold ratios, the sensitivity for detecting T2DM was 80% (95% CI 67% to 88%) with a specificity of 63% (95% CI 50% to 75%). CONCLUSIONS: The sonographic quantitative assessment of the deltoid muscle by ultrasound is sensitive and accurate for the detection of T2DM. Following further studies, this process could translate into a dedicated, simple and noninvasive screening method to detect T2DM with the prospects of identifying even a fraction of the undiagnosed persons worldwide. This could prove especially beneficial in screening of underserved and underrepresented communities