Quantifying Avoidable Food Waste and Identifying Its Underlying Causes: A Case Study of a University Dormitory in Thailand

To develop well-planned and effective policies and programs for reducing avoidable food waste, it is important to quantify the actual food waste level in particular settings and assess relationships among consumers’ awareness, attitudes, and behaviors. Recognizing these considerations, this paper measured avoidable food waste generated by university students living in dormitory buildings and identified its underlying causes in the case of Kanchanaburi campus, Mahidol University, Thailand. The study applied a food waste composition survey 18 times between January and May 2019 while administering questionnaires in October 2019 to the dormitory students. Based on these measures, the study identified 1,417 instances of avoidable food waste. Approximately half of the avoidable food waste had not even been eaten. Most of this waste was generated by female students. Some factors in terms of motivation, opportunity, and ability using a Motivation, Opportunity, Ability framework were found to have induced more food waste among female students. Due attention to the effect of avoidable food waste reduction includes educating dormitory students about food waste as well as more space and increased visibility of stored food in shared refrigerators. Targeting university students for reducing avoidable food waste in the setting of everyday life in dormitories is needed rather than simply focusing on the food service sector on campus

Impact of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake on the Use of Tidal Flats: A Case Study in Inner Tokyo Bay

Coastal areas have recently been revaluated to understand the relationship between ecosystem services and humans. However, devastation from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan might have limited the use of ecosystem services. Thus, we investigate the effects of the earthquake and tsunami on the use of tidal flats. We used questionnaires to evaluate changes in the number and anxiety of users for each type of use of the Sanbanze tidal flat in the innermost part of Tokyo Bay. We also conducted a field survey to verify the trends. We found that clamming and walking or jogging were the most common uses in the surveyed area. However, clamming activity decreased after the earthquake as indicated by field observation (73% decrease in spring long holiday season) and questionnaires (64%). Other clamming ground in Tokyo Bay also showed a similar decrease (62%). Many visitors were anxious about the damaged infrastructure. Compared to other types of use such as swimming or total tourism in the tourism statistics, the recovery phase was slower for clamming using the data of other locations. Considering these evidence, the innermost part of Tokyo Bay can be classified as an earthquake-devastated area, from the view point of ecosystem services. Key Words： behavioral change, tourism industry, Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, marine leisure use, shellfish gathering, marine ecosystem servicesOpenAcces

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements