The Allure of Technology: How France and California Promoted Electric Vehicles to Reduce Urban Air Pollution

All advanced industrialized societies face the problem of air pollution produced by motor vehicles. In spite of striking improvements in internal combustion engine technology, air pollution in most urban areas is still measured at levels determined to be harmful to human health. Throughout the 1990s and beyond, California and France both chose to improve air quality by means of technological innovation, adopting legislation that promoted clean vehicles, prominently among them, electric vehicles (EVs). In California, policymakers chose a technology-forcing approach, setting ambitious goals (e.g., zero emission vehicles), establishing strict deadlines and issuing penalties for non-compliance. The policy process in California called for substantial participation from the public, the media, the academic community and the interest groups affected by the regulation. The automobile and oil industries bitterly contested the regulation, in public and in the courts. In contrast, in France the policy process was non-adversarial, with minimal public participation and negligible debate in academic circles. We argue that California's stringent regulation spurred the development of innovative hybrid and fuel cell vehicles more effectively than the French approach. However, in spite of the differences, both California and France have been unable to put a substantial number of EVs on the road. Our comparison offers some broad lessons about how policy developments within a culture influence both the development of technology and the impact of humans on the environment.Environmental policy, Electric vehicles, Air pollution, Technology policy, Sustainable transport

The Role of Scientists in Risk Assessment

The authors argue that Risk assessors belong to a profession and offer an alternative to the 1983 National Research Council model defining Risk assessment. They support and illustrate their model by reexamining three familiar Risk assessments: ethylene dibromide, WASH 1400, and Ice Minus Bacteria

L. Frank Baum and the Technology of Love

L. Frank Baum, throughout his books of fantasy, especially the Oz series, gradually resolves the conflict of pastoralism and technology by developing a technology managed by love. Baum uses magic as a representation of both pastoralism and technology. Fairy magic, the capacity for love, represents pastoralism, and ritual magic, the capacity for good or evil depending upon who wields it, represents technology. Baum deals with the ways in which ritual magic or technology can be misused through selfishness and ignorance and points out how destruction can be avoided if technology were managed by not greed for power and money but by love. Because of this idea, many critics of Baum have said that he is a utopian, but it seems to me that they have failed to take into account Baum\u27s realistic depiction of the problems to be expected in the development of a technology of love. These problems center around the conflict between reason and faith. Letting love control technology demands that we accept things which cannot be proved. Our scientific reason finds it difficult to relinquish control, and thus the main problem which Baum describes is the lack of faith. Baum suggests that we must learn to develop faith through the renunciation or the self and the realization that happiness lies in duty. His point is that if we do not use technology wisely with love, we will destroy ourselves. In other words, if we do not renounce the needs of the self and use technology wisely, technology will destroy us. But if, on the other hand, we do renounce our own needs for the needs of others and use technology wisely, technology will take care of all our needs. Baum wished to write an American fairy tale, and he does succeed in capturing many American ideals, the most prominent being the behavioristic idea that all men are created equal and that environment determines behavior. Baum seems to be saying that a love-controlled technology would produce loving people, that if we learned to use technology with love, our needs would be assured by technology, and we would not have to struggle to survive. Without this struggle, man would be able to develop his capacity for love, and thus, in such an environment, grow up to be happier and more loving. Baum brought to American literature for children a deep moral sense and a hopeful outlook. Children of today find themselves in a world growing ever more bleak. They look for love, but are unable to find it in their movies or television where although there maybe a depiction of companionship, there is often no commitment and, finally, no love. In Baum they find people who do love, and they find that they too must love. Baum leaves his readers with the hope that they can have the benefits of technology without the dangers if they can learn to love one another

The Allure of Technology: How France and California Promoted Electric and Hybrid Vehicles to Reduce Urban Air Pollution

All advanced industrialized societies face the problem of air pollution produced by motor vehicles. In spite of striking improvements in internal combustion engine technology, air pollution in most urban areas is still measured at levels determined to be harmful to human health. Throughout the 1990s and beyond, California and France both chose to improve air quality by means of technological innovation, adopting legislation that promoted clean vehicles, prominently among them, electric vehicles (EVs). In California, policymakers chose a technology-forcing approach, setting ambitious goals (e.g., zero emission vehicles), establishing strict deadlines and issuing penalties for non-compliance. The policy process in California called for substantial participation from the public, the media, the academic community and the interest groups affected by the regulation. The automobile and oil industries bitterly contested the regulation, in public and in the courts. In contrast, in France the policy process was non-adversarial, with minimal public participation and negligible debate in academic circles. We argue that California\u27s stringent regulation spurred the development of innovative hybrid and fuel cell vehicles more effectively than the French approach. However, in spite of the differences, both California and France have been unable to put a substantial number of EVs on the road. Our comparison offers some broad lessons about how policy developments within a culture influence both the development of technology and the impact of humans on the environment. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLP 2007

Social Perception of Systemic Risks

The article distinguishes between two types of risks: conventional and systemic risks. Conventional risks can be contained in space and time, follow linear cause–effect relationships and can be addressed with effective and pointed interventions into the cause–effect chain. Systemic risks, however, are characterized by high complexity, transboundary effects, stochastic relationships, nonlinear cause–effect patterns with tipping points, and are often associated with less public attention than they require. The article addresses the reasons why systemic risks seem to be attenuated in public perception. The article goes on to consider how the social amplification of risk framework is useful in the context of systemic risks and describes needed extensions of that framework. It identifies practical tools for assessing the significance of perceptions for systemic risk situations. Finally, it argues that a graphic representation and simulation of evolving systemic risks and potential countermeasures as well as a participatory deliberative approach of inclusive risk governance are suitable governance strategies for preventing, mitigating, or managing systemic risks

Managing Uncertainties in Radioactive Site Clean-ups

Our goals in this discussion derive from our belief that effective cleanups that meet broad public health and social welfare objectives are most likely to occur when there is real cooperation between the parties responsible for cleanup and the affected communities. Such cooperation at most radioactive sites of concern is extremely difficult to achieve. The technical nature and complexity of the issues is a serious barrier to communication: faced with lengthy and incomprehensible technical documents that set forth apparently arbitrary goals for cleanup, community people may well feel that the responsible parties are not addressing their principal concerns, and often enough this perception is correct (Goble 1993; Goble and Thompson 1994; Goble 1998). Furthermore, at many sites there has been a long history of mishandling of radioactive materials, of secrecy and concealment, and of exclusion of the public from decision-making processes. The legacy of fear and distrust extends in both directions: the public does not trust the technical community to protect it or even to give adequate warning of problems; the technical community expects irrational fear and unreasonable demands from the public. In such unpromising settings, the inevitable presence of large uncertainties can very well exacerbate failures in communication and understanding. However, this challenge to cooperation is also an opportunity for the different parties with their different perspectives to make the effort to develop shared understandings and to cooperate on appropriate plans for addressing uncertainty. Our intent is to offer pointers toward cooperation that will be useful both to members of the technical communities involved in cleanup planning and implementation and to concerned members of the public. This research was completed money allocated during Round 5 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at [email protected]://commons.clarku.edu/clark_mtafund/1000/thumbnail.jp

Participatory Testing and Reporting in an Environmental-Justice community of Worcester, Massachusetts: A pilot project

Background: Despite indoor home environments being where people spend most time, involving residents in testing those environments has been very limited, especially in marginalized communities. We piloted participatory testing and reporting that combined relatively simple tests with actionable reporting to empower residents in Main South/Piedmont neighborhoods of Worcester, Massachusetts. We answered: 1) How do we design and implement the approach for neighborhood and household environments using participatory methods? 2) What do pilot tests reveal? 3) How does our experience inform testing practice?. Methods: The approach was designed and implemented with community partners using community-based participatory research. Residents and researchers tested fourteen homes for: lead in dust indoors, soil outdoors, paint indoors and drinking water; radon in basement air; PM2.5 in indoor air; mold spores in indoor/outdoor air; and drinking water quality. Monitoring of neighborhood particulates by residents and researchers used real-time data to stimulate dialogue. Results: Given the newness of our partnership and unforeseen conflicts, we achieved moderate-high success overall based on process and outcome criteria: methods, test results, reporting, lessons learned. The conflict burden we experienced may be attributable less to generic university-community differences in interests/culture, and more to territoriality and interpersonal issues. Lead-in-paint touch-swab results were poor proxies for lead-in-dust. Of eight units tested in summer, three had very high lead-in-dust (\u3e1000 μg/ft2), six exceeded at least one USEPA standard for lead-in-dust and/or soil. Tap water tests showed no significant exposures. Monitoring of neighborhood particulates raised awareness of environmental health risks, especially asthma. Conclusions: Timely reporting back home-toxics\u27 results to residents is ethical but it must be empowering. Future work should fund the active participation of a few motivated residents as representatives of the target population. Although difficult and demanding in time and effort, the approach can educate residents and inform exposure assessment. It should be considered as a core ingredient of comprehensive household toxics\u27 testing, and has potential to improve participant retention and the overall positive impact of long-term environmental health research efforts. © 2010 Downs et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Native American Exposure to Iodine-131 from Nuclear Weapons Testing in Nevada

A great deal of work has been done reconstructing doses from Nevada Test Site fallout, yet the unique exposures of Native American communities continue to be neglected. It is possible to estimate the exposures of these communities through a process of collaborative information gathering and analysis. This paper builds on a previous exercise that demonstrated the substantial doses received through the consumption of contaminated game. The updated model includes new information on the deposition of iodine-131, an assessment of the neonatal thyroid doses received through breast milk, an exploration of the effect of population mobility on dose estimates, and estimates of thyroid cancer risk. All thyroid dose estimates from the rabbit exposure pathway are comparable in magnitude to National Cancer Institute comprehensive dose estimates that assume exposure to contaminated milk from backyard cows and goats. Dose estimates from the rabbit exposure pathway are larger than estimated doses from store-bought milk by an average factor of 6. Taking historical population mobility patterns into account may result in slightly lower estimates of dose. The quantification of this exposure pathway is considered be an advance toward a more appropriate dose reconstruction for communities with diets high in wild game. This research was completed money allocated during Round 5 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at [email protected]://commons.clarku.edu/clark_mtafund/1003/thumbnail.jp

Building Ontologies in DAML + OIL

In this article we describe an approach to representing and building ontologies advocated by the Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics groups at the University of Manchester. The hand-crafting of ontologies offers an easy and rapid avenue to delivering ontologies. Experience has shown that such approaches are unsustainable. Description logic approaches have been shown to offer computational support for building sound, complete and logically consistent ontologies. A new knowledge representation language, DAML + OIL, offers a new standard that is able to support many styles of ontology, from hand-crafted to full logic-based descriptions with reasoning support. We describe this language, the OilEd editing tool, reasoning support and a strategy for the language’s use. We finish with a current example, in the Gene Ontology Next Generation (GONG) project, that uses DAML + OIL as the basis for moving the Gene Ontology from its current hand-crafted, form to one that uses logical descriptions of a concept’s properties to deliver a more complete version of the ontology

Age-Related Differences in Susceptibility to Carcinogenesis. II. Approaches for Application and Uncertainty Analyses for Individual Genetically Acting Carcinogens

In an earlier report we developed a quantitative likelihood-based analysis of the differences in sensitivity of rodents to mutagenic carcinogens across three life stages (fetal, birth to weaning, and weaning to 60 days) relative to exposures in adult life. Here we draw implications for assessing human risks for full lifetime exposures, taking into account three types of uncertainties in making projections from the rodent data: uncertainty in the central estimates of the life-stage–specific sensitivity factors estimated earlier, uncertainty from chemical-to-chemical differences in life-stage–specific sensitivities for carcinogenesis, and uncertainty in the mapping of rodent life stages to human ages/exposure periods. Among the uncertainties analyzed, the mapping of rodent life stages to human ages/exposure periods is most important quantitatively (a range of several-fold in estimates of the duration of the human equivalent of the highest sensitivity “birth to weaning” period in rodents). The combined effects of these uncertainties are estimated with Monte Carlo analyses. Overall, the estimated population arithmetic mean risk from lifetime exposures at a constant milligrams per kilogram body weight level to a generic mutagenic carcinogen is about 2.8-fold larger than expected from adult-only exposure with 5–95% confidence limits of 1.5-to 6-fold. The mean estimates for the 0- to 2-year and 2- to 15-year periods are about 35–55% larger than the 10- and 3-fold sensitivity factor adjustments recently proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The present results are based on data for only nine chemicals, including five mutagens. Risk inferences will be altered as data become available for other chemicals