Source control options for reducing emission of priority pollutants from urban areas.

The overall aim of the ScorePP project is to develop comprehensive and appropriate source control strategies that authorities, cities, water utilities and the chemical industry can employ to reduce emissions of priority pollutants (PPs) from urban areas into the receiving water environment. Focus is on the 33 priority and priority hazardous substances and substance groups identified in the European Water Framework Directive. However, this list may be expanded to include emerging pollutants or reduced if appropriate model compounds can be identified. The initial work focuses on 67 substances, including substances identified in the proposed European environmental quality standard (EQS) directive as well as the defined example compounds and several organometallic derivatives. Information on inherent properties, environmental presence and fate, and legislative issues is made available in open database format, and a data management system combining chemical identification (CAS#), NACE economic activity classifications and NOSE-P emission source classifications has been developed as a basis for spatial characterisation of PP sources using GIS. Further work will focus on dynamic urban scale source-flux models, identifying emission patterns and optimising monitoring programmes in case studies and multi-criteria comparison of source control versus end-of-pipe mitigation options in relation to their economic, social and environmental impacts

Connoting a neoliberal and entrepreneurial discourse of science through infographics and integrated design: the case of ‘functional’ healthy drinks

Riding on the rising concern of public health and the growing neoliberal self-care agenda, the food market has witnessed a surge in ‘healthy’ food despite the criticism of this food does not help consumers eat more healthily. A growing interest in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) is how food marketers colonise not only the food discourse but also the broader ideas and values such as health, politics, and environment. Contributing to this growing body of research, we look at one of the fastest-growing food trends, ‘functional drinks’, which claim to target physiological and psychological processes in the body, so that consumers can manage their health and performance. Company websites rely on forms of infographics to communicate how the products work. Adopting the notion of ‘integrated design’ from multimodal CDS, we show how these infographics, drawing on their affordances, are particularly useful in symbolising classifications and causalities which could not be accounted for in running texts. The paper argues that this is a way health and science converge with a neoliberal discourse of self-management and enterprise culture. Given the increased use of forms of integrated design in communication, more critical discursive work is needed in this area

Bio-energy retains its mitigation potential under elevated CO2

Background If biofuels are to be a viable substitute for fossil fuels, it is essential that they retain their potential to mitigate climate change under future atmospheric conditions. Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration [CO2] stimulates plant biomass production; however, the beneficial effects of increased production may be offset by higher energy costs in crop management. Methodology/Main findings We maintained full size poplar short rotation coppice (SRC) systems under both current ambient and future elevated [CO2] (550 ppm) and estimated their net energy and greenhouse gas balance. We show that a poplar SRC system is energy efficient and produces more energy than required for coppice management. Even more, elevated [CO2] will increase the net energy production and greenhouse gas balance of a SRC system with 18%. Managing the trees in shorter rotation cycles (i.e. 2 year cycles instead of 3 year cycles) will further enhance the benefits from elevated [CO2] on both the net energy and greenhouse gas balance. Conclusions/significance Adapting coppice management to the future atmospheric [CO2] is necessary to fully benefit from the climate mitigation potential of bio-energy systems. Further, a future increase in potential biomass production due to elevated [CO2] outweighs the increased production costs resulting in a northward extension of the area where SRC is greenhouse gas neutral. Currently, the main part of the European terrestrial carbon sink is found in forest biomass and attributed to harvesting less than the annual growth in wood. Because SRC is intensively managed, with a higher turnover in wood production than conventional forest, northward expansion of SRC is likely to erode the European terrestrial carbon sink

Does the Committee Peer Review Select the Best Applicants for Funding? An Investigation of the Selection Process for Two European Molecular Biology Organization Programmes

Does peer review fulfill its declared objective of identifying the best science and the best scientists? In order to answer this question we analyzed the Long-Term Fellowship and the Young Investigator programmes of the European Molecular Biology Organization. Both programmes aim to identify and support the best post doctoral fellows and young group leaders in the life sciences. We checked the association between the selection decisions and the scientific performance of the applicants. Our study involved publication and citation data for 668 applicants to the Long-Term Fellowship programme from the year 1998 (130 approved, 538 rejected) and 297 applicants to the Young Investigator programme (39 approved and 258 rejected applicants) from the years 2001 and 2002. If quantity and impact of research publications are used as a criterion for scientific achievement, the results of (zero-truncated) negative binomial models show that the peer review process indeed selects scientists who perform on a higher level than the rejected ones subsequent to application. We determined the extent of errors due to over-estimation (type I errors) and under-estimation (type 2 errors) of future scientific performance. Our statistical analyses point out that between 26% and 48% of the decisions made to award or reject an application show one of both error types. Even though for a part of the applicants, the selection committee did not correctly estimate the applicant's future performance, the results show a statistically significant association between selection decisions and the applicants' scientific achievements, if quantity and impact of research publications are used as a criterion for scientific achievement

Effect of Long-Term Zinc Pollution on Soil Microbial Community Resistance to Repeated Contamination

The aim of the study was to compare the effects of stress (contamination trials) on the microorganisms in zinc-polluted soil (5,018 mg Zn kg−1 soil dry weight) and unpolluted soil (141 mg Zn kg−1 soil dw), measured as soil respiration rate. In the laboratory, soils were subjected to copper contamination (0, 500, 1,500 and 4,500 mg kg−1 soil dw), and then a bactericide (oxytetracycline) combined with a fungicide (captan) along with glucose (10 mg g−1 soil dw each) were added. There was a highly significant effect of soil type, copper treatment and oxytetracycline/captan treatment. The initial respiration rate of chronically zinc-polluted soil was higher than that of unpolluted soil, but in the copper treatment it showed a greater decline. Microorganisms in copper-treated soil were more susceptible to oxytetracycline/captan contamination. After the successive soil contamination trials the decline of soil respiration was greater in zinc-polluted soil than in unpolluted soil