Air pollutant production by algal cell cultures

The production of phytotoxic air pollutants by cultures of Chlorella vulgaris and Euglena gracilis is considered. Algal and plant culture systems, a fumigation system, and ethylene, ethane, cyanide, and nitrogen oxides assays are discussed. Bean, tobacco, mustard green, cantaloupe and wheat plants all showed injury when fumigated with algal gases for 4 hours. Only coleus plants showed any resistance to the gases. It is found that a closed or recycled air effluent system does not produce plant injury from algal air pollutants

Supersymmetric Leptogenesis

We study leptogenesis in the supersymmetric standard model plus the seesaw. We identify important qualitative differences that characterize supersymmetric leptogenesis with respect to the non-supersymmetric case. The lepton number asymmetries in fermions and scalars do not equilibrate, and are related via a non-vanishing gaugino chemical potential. Due to the presence of new anomalous symmetries, electroweak sphalerons couple to winos and higgsinos, and QCD sphalerons couple to gluinos, thus modifying the corresponding chemical equilibrium conditions. A new constraint on particles chemical potentials corresponding to an exactly conserved $R$-charge, that also involves the number density asymmetry of the heavy sneutrinos, appears. These new ingredients determine the $3\times 4$ matrices that mix up the density asymmetries of the lepton flavours and of the heavy sneutrinos. We explain why in all temperature ranges the particle thermodynamic system is characterized by the same number of independent quantities. Numerical differences with respect to usual treatment remain at the ${\cal O}(1)$ level.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures. Typos corrected, one reference added. Version published in JCA

Leptogenesis from Soft Supersymmetry Breaking (Soft Leptogenesis)

Soft leptogenesis is a scenario in which the cosmic baryon asymmetry is produced from a lepton asymmetry generated in the decays of heavy sneutrinos (the partners of the singlet neutrinos of the seesaw) and where the relevant sources of CP violation are the complex phases of soft supersymmetry-breaking terms. We explain the motivations for soft leptogenesis, and review its basic ingredients: the different CP-violating contributions, the crucial role played by thermal corrections, and the enhancement of the efficiency from lepton flavour effects. We also discuss the high temperature regime $T > 10^7$ GeV in which the cosmic baryon asymmetry originates from an initial asymmetry of an anomalous $R$-charge, and soft leptogenesis reembodies in $R$-genesis.Comment: References updated. Some minor corrections to match the published versio

Dangerous women of Hong Kong? Media construction of stigma in female sex workers

This study used a cultural model analysis to examine the Hong Kong print media's social construction of stigma in respect to female sex workers. An analysis was conducted on captions and main headlines of two newspaper (Chinese and English) media in Hong Kong between the years 2003-2006. A total of 591 articles on sex workers were recruited in the analysis with 422 located from the Ming Pao and 169 articles from the SCMP. In Hong Kong, as in elsewhere, sex workers were commonly labeled as the sources of sexually transmitted diseases and as women who endangered the public safety through socially unacceptable occupations. They were also portrayed as "ugly", "weak" and "powerless" in the articles identified. We conclude the Hong Kong print media plays a significant role in contributing to the stigmatization of sex workers, heightening health risk and vulnerability. Such social construction of public stigma then in turn, can be argued to contribute to a lessened propensity for female sex workers both seek and engage with formal health services

A Proposed Framework for Changing the Safety Culture within the UK Construction Industry

In recent years, the importance of a positive safety culture has been emphasized as a key factor in improving safety performance. The term ‘safety culture’ first emerged in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and has since been regarded as having a significant impact on safety. This paper reviews the literature on safety culture within the UK construction industry in an attempt to develop a conceptual framework that can help change people’s attitude towards safety. It first identifies the existing research into the causation of accidents on construction sites and then discusses the three dimensions of the research framework, namely, the social, technical and the managerial safety culture

Factors Affecting Safety Performance on Construction Sites

The factors influencing safety on construction sites are discussed. The impacts of the historical, economical, psychological, technical, procedural, organizational and the environmental issues are considered in terms of how these factors are linked with the level of site safety. The historical factor is assessed by the background and characteristics of the individual, such as age and experience. The economic factor is determined by the monetary values which are associated with safety such as, hazard pay. The psychological factor is assessed by the safety behavior of fellow workers on site including supervisors. The technical and procedural factors are assessed by the provision of training and handling of safety equipment on site. The organizational and environmental factors are assessed by the type of policy that the management adopts to site safety. Information regarding these factors were correlated with accidents' records in a sample of 120 operatives. Results of the factor analysis suggest that variables related to the `organization policy' are the most dominant group of factors influencing safety performance in the United Kingdom Construction Industry. The top five important issues found to be associated with site safety were: (1) management talk on safety; (2) provision of safety booklets; (3) provision of safety equipment; (4) providing safety environment and (5) appointing a trained safety representative on site