Exploring Lay Uncertainty about an Environmental Health Risk

How do laypeople perceive uncertainties about environmental health risks? How do risk-related cognitions and emotions influence these uncertainties, and what roles do sociodemographic and contextual factors, risk judgments, and information exposures play? This study explores these questions using secondary analyses of survey data. Results suggest that uncertainty reflects individual-level emotions and cognitions, but may also be shaped by a variety of social and contextual factors. Emotions (worry and anger) are strongly associated with perceived uncertainty, and perceived lack of knowledge and perceived likelihood of becoming ill are weakly associated with it. Several demographic variables, information exposures, and risk judgment variables affect perceived uncertainty indirectly, primarily through perceived knowledge and emotions. These findings raise a variety of questions about the complex and dynamic interactions among risk contexts, socioeconomic factors, communication processes, perceived knowledge, emotions, and perceived uncertainties about risks

Scientific Nonknowledge and Its Political Dynamics: The Cases of Agri-Biotechnology and Mobile Phoning

While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of "risk", over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in debates on what is not known and how to appraise it different and partly conflicting epistemic cultures of nonknowledge can be discerned and, second, that drawing attention to nonknowledge in technology conflicts results in significant institutional effects and new constellations of actors in public debates. To illustrate and substantiate this political dynamics of nonknowledge we draw upon examples from the areas of agri-biotechnology and mobile phoning. In a first step, we develop in greater detail the concept of scientific cultures of nonknowledge and identify three such cultures involved in the social conflicts within the two areas. Subsequently, we analyze the specific dynamics of the politicisation of nonknowledge looking at the variety of actors involved and the pluralisation of perceptions and evaluations of what is not known. Then, we point out some of the institutional reactions to the political and cultural dynamics of scientific nonknowledge. We argue that the equal recognition of the diverse cultures of nonknowledge is a key prerequisite for socially legitimate and "robust" decision-making under conditions of politicised scientific nonknowledge. © The Author(s) 2010

A New Concurrent Calibration Method for Nonequivalent Group Design under Nonrandom Assignment

common-item design, concurrent calibration, IRT linking, item response theory, Monte Carlo expectation maximization (MCEM) algorithm, multinomial logistic regression model, nonignorable missingness,

Aspectos alimentares e de criação de Bradysia hygida Sauaia & Alves (Diptera, Sciaridae) em laboratório Aspects on alimentation and rearing of Bradysia hygida Sauaia & Alves (Diptera, Sciaridae) in laboratory

<abstract language="eng">In nature, the Sciaridae live in moist and shady places, where exists vegetable material in decomposition. It is very dificult to determine the proper Sciaridae's alimentary habit and then, it is dificult, also, to rear Sciaridae species in laboratory. To improvement the Bradysia hygida rearing, the objectives of this research were to analyse the nutritive value of mucuna bean foliage for the larves, to verify the role of the ground (as larvae substrate and in diet composition) and also to verify the possibility of ground substituition by another kind of substrate. Two kinds of sand were employed in the place of the ground and three diets, free of ground, were prepared. The parameters analysed were: duration of the life cicle, porcentage of emergence, egg production by female and adult size. The results showed that the mucuna bean foliage have a good nutritive value for B. hygida rearing; the ground, as substrate, can be substituted by any of the sands and the ground, in the diet, is also dispensable. The alimentary habits of Sciaridae is discussed