Comparing Carbon Footprints of Two Retail Business Models: Traditional Retail vs. Subscription Ecommerce

Growth in online purchases for apparel is changing the way that customers engage with retail companies, reducing the number of trips they take to the physical store, and increasing the number of packages delivered through curriers. Among the many implications of these changes, these new business models dramatically impact that carbon footprint of the retail industry, including the carbon footprint of transportation, utility use, and the integration of technology into a shopping experience. We examine the carbon footprint of our client, a subscription retailer that ships curated boxes of apparel to customers across the United States and outlying territories. This analysis incorporates methodology from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which focuses on carbon emissions in three scopes of a business or organization. We also look at the implications of apparel retail as it moves online over the coming years and explores answers to questions like “how will the carbon footprint of the retail industry shift in the future?” and, “what are the best ways for us to measure carbon footprints of ecommerce retailers?” We present recommendations for how the client can reduce its carbon footprint, starting with the changes that will make the greatest contribution to this reduction. Finally, we suggest ways that carbon footprinting models may be best adapted given rapid and increasing changes to modern retail business models so that footprinting across brick-and-mortar and ecommerce businesses becomes more consistent and comparable in the future.Master of ScienceSchool for Environment and SustainabilityUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146726/1/Harris_Amelia_Luu_Paula_Practicum_DO NOT UPLOAD FOR ONE YEAR_OpusForm_LicenseVerification.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146726/4/Harris_Amelia_Luu_Paula_Practicum.pd

The Association between Peptic Ulcer Disease and Gastric Cancer: Results from the Stomach Cancer Pooling (StoP) Project Consortium

Simple Summary Gastric cancer (GC) is the fifth most common type of cancer and the fourth most common cause of cancer-related mortality. In this meta-analysis, we utilized SToP consortium data to investigate the association between gastric ulcer (GU) and duodenal ulcer (DU) and development of GC. Among 4106 GC cases and 6922 controls, we detected a positive association between GU and GC (OR = 3.04, 95% CI: 2.07-4.49). On the other hand, no significant association between DU and GC was detected (OR = 1.03, 95% CI: 0.77-1.39). In the pooled analysis, incorporating 11 case-control studies revealed positive association between the gastric ulcer and risk of gastric cancer. Background. Gastric cancer (GC) is the fifth most common type of cancer and the fourth most common cause of cancer-related mortality. Although the risk of GC and peptic ulcer disease (PUD) is known to be increased by H. pylori infection, evidence regarding the direct relationship between PUD and GC across ethnicities is inconclusive. Therefore, we investigated the association between PUD and GC in the Stomach cancer Pooling (StoP) consortium. Methods. History of peptic ulcer disease was collected using a structured questionnaire in 11 studies in the StoP consortium, including 4106 GC cases and 6922 controls. The two-stage individual-participant data meta-analysis approach was adopted to generate a priori. Unconditional logistic regression and Firth's penalized maximum likelihood estimator were used to calculate study-specific odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between gastric ulcer (GU)/duodenal ulcer (DU) and risk of GC. Results. History of GU and DU was thoroughly reported and used in association analysis, respectively, by 487 cases (12.5%) and 276 controls (4.1%), and 253 cases (7.8%) and 318 controls (6.0%). We found that GU was associated with an increased risk of GC (OR = 3.04, 95% CI: 2.07-4.49). No association between DU and GC risk was observed (OR = 1.03, 95% CI: 0.77-1.39). Conclusions. In the pooled analysis of 11 case-control studies in a large consortium (i.e., the Stomach cancer Pooling (StoP) consortium), we found a positive association between GU and risk of GC and no association between DU and GC risk

Resolution and characterization of the structural polymorphism of a single quadruplex-forming sequence

The remarkable structural polymorphism of quadruplex-forming sequences has been a considerable impediment in the elucidation of quadruplex folds. Sequence modifications have commonly been used to perturb and purportedly select a particular form out of the ensemble of folds for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) or X-ray crystallographic analysis. Here we report a simple chromatographic technique that separates the individual folds without need for sequence modification. The sequence d(GGTGGTGGTGGTTGTGGTGGTGGTGG) forms a compact quadruplex according to a variety of common biophysical techniques. However, NMR and chromatography showed that this oligonucleotide produces at least eight monomeric quadruplex species that interconvert very slowly at room temperature. We have used a combination of spectroscopic, hydrodynamic and thermodynamic techniques to evaluate the physicochemical properties of the mixture and the individual species. These species have almost identical thermodynamic, hydrodynamic and electrophoretic properties, but significantly different NMR and circular dichroism (CD) spectra, as well as kinetic stability. These results demonstrate that simple standard low-resolution techniques cannot always be used for quadruplex fold determination or quality control purposes, and that simple thermodynamic analysis does not directly provide interpretable thermodynamic parameters

The association between diabetes and gastric cancer

Background: Prior epidemiologic studies on the association between diabetes and gastric cancer risk provided inconclusive findings, while traditional, aggregate data meta-analyses were characterized by high between-study heterogeneity. Objective: To investigate the association between type 2 diabetes and gastric cancer using data from the 'Stomach Cancer Pooling (StoP) Project', an international consortium of more than 30 case-control and nested case-control studies, which is large and provides harmonized definition of participants' characteristics across individual studies. The data have the potential to minimize between-study heterogeneity and provide greater statistical power for subgroup analysis. Methods: We included 5592 gastric cancer cases and 12 477 controls from 14 studies from Europe, Asia, North America, and South America in a two-stage individual-participant data meta-analysis. Random-effect models were used to estimate summary odds ratios (ORs) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) by pooling study-specific ORs. Results: We did not find an overall association between diabetes and gastric cancer (pooled OR = 1.01, 95% CI, 0.94-1.07). However, the risk of cardia gastric cancer was significantly higher among individuals with type 2 diabetes (OR = 1.16, 95% CI, 1.02-1.33). There was no association between diabetes and gastric cancer risk in strata of Helicobacter pylori infection serostatus, age, sex, BMI, smoking status, alcohol consumption, fruit/vegetable intake, gastric cancer histologic type, and source of controls. Conclusion: This study provides additional evidence that diabetes is unrelated to gastric cancer overall but may be associated with excess cardia gastric cancer risk

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

An investigation of the Mechanisms Behind the Pharmaceutical Removal in Ekeby Wetland WWTP

Pharmaceutical residues are being released into the aquatic environment through domestic wastewater effluents all around the world. Ekeby wetland located in Eskilstuna has been shown to degrade pharmaceutical residues in wastewater but the mechanism of how and where in the wetland these substances are removed were not known. The aim of this Master’s thesis was to study the mechanism behind the pharmaceutical removal in Ekeby wetland. The presence of 22 selected pharmaceuticals were examined in water-, sediment- and plant samples collected from the wetland. Additionally, the concentration of nutrients’, pH and temperature of the water were examined. With this data, the correlations between the concentration of pharmaceuticals in the water and the concentration of selected nutrients could be determined. Nine out of 22 substances were detected in the sediment samples and 10 out of 22 was detected in the plant sample. The five pharmaceutical substances that required additional removal were citalopram, diclofenac, erythromycin, oxazepam and sertraline. Citalopram, diclofenac and sertraline were found in the sediment and plant samples. A significant negative correlation was found between the concentration of pharmaceuticals in water samples and total suspended solids (TSS) indicating that an increase of TSS, decreases the pharmaceutical concentration in the water. The main mechanism behind the pharmaceutical removal in Ekeby wetland was determined to be by sedimentation and plant uptake, mainly by Phragmites australis. The wetland system could also remove metoprolol, propranolol, tramadol, trimethoprim, naproxen, venlafaxine and carbamazepine. Hence, to increase the pharmaceutical removal in the wetland it’s recommended to increase the amount of plants, mainly P. australis. Thus, wetland systems could be of great advantage in the development of sustainable wastewater management.Via avloppsvattnet släpps mängder av läkemedelsrester ut i vårt vatten. Ekeby våtmark i Eskilstuna har visat sig bryta ner läkemedelsrester från avloppsvatten, men mekanismen för hur och vart dessa ämnen tas bort är sedan tidigare okänt. Målet med detta examensarbete var att studera mekanismerna bakom läkemedelsnedbrytningen i Ekebys våtmark. Halterna av 22 läkemedelssubstanser i vatten-, sediment-och växtprover tagna från våtmarken undersöktes. Även koncentrationen av näringsämnen, pH och temperatur bestämdes i vattenprover tagna från våtmarken. Utifrån detta kunde sambanden mellan läkemedelskoncentrationerna och halterna av tidigare nämnda ämnen i vattnet studeras. Nio av 22 substanser uppmättes i sedimentproverna och 10 av 22 uppmättes i växtprovet. De fem läkemedel som krävde ytterligare rening var citalopram, diclofenac, erythromycin, oxazepam, och sertraline. Citalopram, diclofenac och sertraline uppmättes i sediment och växtproverna. I vattnet erhölls ett signifikant negativ samband mellan koncentration av läkemedel och suspenderade ämnen. Detta indikerar på att en ökning av suspenderade ämnen minskar läkemedelskoncentrationen i vattnet. Mekanismen bakom läkemedelsnedbrytningen i Ekebys våtmark fastställdes till sedimentation och växtupptag, främst av växten Phragmites australis. Våtmarken kunde även avlägsna metoprolol, propranolol, tramadol, trimetroprim, naproxen venlafaxin och carbamazapine. För att öka nedbrytningen av läkemedel i våtmarken är det därför rekommenderat att öka mängden växter. Våtmarkssystem kan därmed vara till stor fördel när man utvecklar reningsprocesser för läkemedel av avloppsvatten som är miljömässigt hållbara

An investigation of the Mechanisms Behind the Pharmaceutical Removal in Ekeby Wetland WWTP

Pharmaceutical residues are being released into the aquatic environment through domestic wastewater effluents all around the world. Ekeby wetland located in Eskilstuna has been shown to degrade pharmaceutical residues in wastewater but the mechanism of how and where in the wetland these substances are removed were not known. The aim of this Master’s thesis was to study the mechanism behind the pharmaceutical removal in Ekeby wetland. The presence of 22 selected pharmaceuticals were examined in water-, sediment- and plant samples collected from the wetland. Additionally, the concentration of nutrients’, pH and temperature of the water were examined. With this data, the correlations between the concentration of pharmaceuticals in the water and the concentration of selected nutrients could be determined. Nine out of 22 substances were detected in the sediment samples and 10 out of 22 was detected in the plant sample. The five pharmaceutical substances that required additional removal were citalopram, diclofenac, erythromycin, oxazepam and sertraline. Citalopram, diclofenac and sertraline were found in the sediment and plant samples. A significant negative correlation was found between the concentration of pharmaceuticals in water samples and total suspended solids (TSS) indicating that an increase of TSS, decreases the pharmaceutical concentration in the water. The main mechanism behind the pharmaceutical removal in Ekeby wetland was determined to be by sedimentation and plant uptake, mainly by Phragmites australis. The wetland system could also remove metoprolol, propranolol, tramadol, trimethoprim, naproxen, venlafaxine and carbamazepine. Hence, to increase the pharmaceutical removal in the wetland it’s recommended to increase the amount of plants, mainly P. australis. Thus, wetland systems could be of great advantage in the development of sustainable wastewater management.Via avloppsvattnet släpps mängder av läkemedelsrester ut i vårt vatten. Ekeby våtmark i Eskilstuna har visat sig bryta ner läkemedelsrester från avloppsvatten, men mekanismen för hur och vart dessa ämnen tas bort är sedan tidigare okänt. Målet med detta examensarbete var att studera mekanismerna bakom läkemedelsnedbrytningen i Ekebys våtmark. Halterna av 22 läkemedelssubstanser i vatten-, sediment-och växtprover tagna från våtmarken undersöktes. Även koncentrationen av näringsämnen, pH och temperatur bestämdes i vattenprover tagna från våtmarken. Utifrån detta kunde sambanden mellan läkemedelskoncentrationerna och halterna av tidigare nämnda ämnen i vattnet studeras. Nio av 22 substanser uppmättes i sedimentproverna och 10 av 22 uppmättes i växtprovet. De fem läkemedel som krävde ytterligare rening var citalopram, diclofenac, erythromycin, oxazepam, och sertraline. Citalopram, diclofenac och sertraline uppmättes i sediment och växtproverna. I vattnet erhölls ett signifikant negativ samband mellan koncentration av läkemedel och suspenderade ämnen. Detta indikerar på att en ökning av suspenderade ämnen minskar läkemedelskoncentrationen i vattnet. Mekanismen bakom läkemedelsnedbrytningen i Ekebys våtmark fastställdes till sedimentation och växtupptag, främst av växten Phragmites australis. Våtmarken kunde även avlägsna metoprolol, propranolol, tramadol, trimetroprim, naproxen venlafaxin och carbamazapine. För att öka nedbrytningen av läkemedel i våtmarken är det därför rekommenderat att öka mängden växter. Våtmarkssystem kan därmed vara till stor fördel när man utvecklar reningsprocesser för läkemedel av avloppsvatten som är miljömässigt hållbara

An investigation of the Mechanisms Behind the Pharmaceutical Removal in Ekeby Wetland WWTP

Pharmaceutical residues are being released into the aquatic environment through domestic wastewater effluents all around the world. Ekeby wetland located in Eskilstuna has been shown to degrade pharmaceutical residues in wastewater but the mechanism of how and where in the wetland these substances are removed were not known. The aim of this Master’s thesis was to study the mechanism behind the pharmaceutical removal in Ekeby wetland. The presence of 22 selected pharmaceuticals were examined in water-, sediment- and plant samples collected from the wetland. Additionally, the concentration of nutrients’, pH and temperature of the water were examined. With this data, the correlations between the concentration of pharmaceuticals in the water and the concentration of selected nutrients could be determined. Nine out of 22 substances were detected in the sediment samples and 10 out of 22 was detected in the plant sample. The five pharmaceutical substances that required additional removal were citalopram, diclofenac, erythromycin, oxazepam and sertraline. Citalopram, diclofenac and sertraline were found in the sediment and plant samples. A significant negative correlation was found between the concentration of pharmaceuticals in water samples and total suspended solids (TSS) indicating that an increase of TSS, decreases the pharmaceutical concentration in the water. The main mechanism behind the pharmaceutical removal in Ekeby wetland was determined to be by sedimentation and plant uptake, mainly by Phragmites australis. The wetland system could also remove metoprolol, propranolol, tramadol, trimethoprim, naproxen, venlafaxine and carbamazepine. Hence, to increase the pharmaceutical removal in the wetland it’s recommended to increase the amount of plants, mainly P. australis. Thus, wetland systems could be of great advantage in the development of sustainable wastewater management.Via avloppsvattnet släpps mängder av läkemedelsrester ut i vårt vatten. Ekeby våtmark i Eskilstuna har visat sig bryta ner läkemedelsrester från avloppsvatten, men mekanismen för hur och vart dessa ämnen tas bort är sedan tidigare okänt. Målet med detta examensarbete var att studera mekanismerna bakom läkemedelsnedbrytningen i Ekebys våtmark. Halterna av 22 läkemedelssubstanser i vatten-, sediment-och växtprover tagna från våtmarken undersöktes. Även koncentrationen av näringsämnen, pH och temperatur bestämdes i vattenprover tagna från våtmarken. Utifrån detta kunde sambanden mellan läkemedelskoncentrationerna och halterna av tidigare nämnda ämnen i vattnet studeras. Nio av 22 substanser uppmättes i sedimentproverna och 10 av 22 uppmättes i växtprovet. De fem läkemedel som krävde ytterligare rening var citalopram, diclofenac, erythromycin, oxazepam, och sertraline. Citalopram, diclofenac och sertraline uppmättes i sediment och växtproverna. I vattnet erhölls ett signifikant negativ samband mellan koncentration av läkemedel och suspenderade ämnen. Detta indikerar på att en ökning av suspenderade ämnen minskar läkemedelskoncentrationen i vattnet. Mekanismen bakom läkemedelsnedbrytningen i Ekebys våtmark fastställdes till sedimentation och växtupptag, främst av växten Phragmites australis. Våtmarken kunde även avlägsna metoprolol, propranolol, tramadol, trimetroprim, naproxen venlafaxin och carbamazapine. För att öka nedbrytningen av läkemedel i våtmarken är det därför rekommenderat att öka mängden växter. Våtmarkssystem kan därmed vara till stor fördel när man utvecklar reningsprocesser för läkemedel av avloppsvatten som är miljömässigt hållbara

Dreams, omens, and prognosis in the Indriyasthāna of the Carakasaṃhitā

textThis study focuses on medical prognostication in the earliest Indian medical treatise known, the Caraka Saṃhitā. The first chapter gives an overview of the Caraka Saṃhitā, including its main doctrines and philosophy. The second chapter introduces the Indriyasthāna, the section in the Caraka Saṃhitā in which most of the omen literature is collected. The third chapter gives a survey and preliminary analysis of all twelve chapters in the Indriyasthāna. In the final chapter and conclusion, the topic of omen literature in the ancient world in general will be discussed, with a focus on the issue that invariably presents itself in omen literature, “rationality.”Asian Studie