One place doesn't fit all: improving the effectiveness of sustainability standards by accounting for place

Includes bibliographical references (pages 8-10).The growing interest in incentivizing sustainable agricultural practices is supported by a large network of voluntary production standards, which aim to offer farmers and ranchers increased value for their product in support of reduced environmental impact. To be effective with producers and consumers alike, these standards must be both credible and broadly recognizable, and thus are typically highly generalizable. However, the environmental impact of agriculture is strongly place-based and varies considerably due to complex biophysical, socio-cultural, and management-based factors, even within a given sector in a particular region. We suggest that this contradiction between the placeless generality of standards and the placed-ness of agriculture renders many sustainability standards ineffective. In this policy and practice review, we examine this contradiction through the lens of beef production, with a focus on an ongoing regional food purchasing effort in Denver, Colorado, USA. We review the idea of place in the context of agricultural sustainability, drawing on life cycle analysis and diverse literature to find that recognition of place-specific circumstances is essential to understanding environmental impact and improving outcomes. We then examine the case of the Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP), a broad set of food-purchasing standards currently being implemented for institutional purchasing in Denver. The GFPP was created through a lengthy stakeholder-inclusive process for use in Los Angeles, California, USA, and has since been applied to many cities across the country. The difference between Los Angeles' process and that of applying the result of Los Angeles' process to Denver is instructive, and emblematic of the flaws of generalizable sustainability standards themselves. We then describe the essential elements of a place-based approach to agricultural sustainability standards, pointing toward a democratic, process-based, and outcome-oriented strategy that results in standards that enable rather than hinder the creativity of both producers and consumers. Though prescription is anathema to our approach, we close by offering a starting point for the development of standards for beef production in Colorado that respect the work of people in place

Role of soluble gp130 in the tumour necrosis factor-alpha expression and its production by peripheral blood mononuclear cells.

Background: In our previous study we found that rhsIL-6R, along with recombinant human interleukin-6, plays a regulatory role in the immune response by modulating the tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) expression and its production by peripheral blood mononuclearcells (PBMC). We also suggested that sIL-6R with IL-6 secreted by human PMN (neutrophils) influenced the TNF-α expression and its production by autologous PBMC

A Technique for Narrowband Time Series Photometry: the X-ray Star V2116 Oph

We have used innovative features of the Taurus Tunable Filter instrument on the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope to obtain nearly-continuous, high-throughput, linear photometry of V2116 Oph in a 7 Angstrom bandpass at the center of the O I 8446 emission line. This instrumental technique shows promise for applications requiring precise, rapid, narrowband photometry of faint objects. The spectrum of V2116 Oph, the counterpart of GX 1+4 (=X1728-247), is exotic, even among the unusual spectra of other optical counterparts of compact Galactic X-ray sources. The second strongest emission line is an unusual one, namely extremely prominent O I 8446, which is likely to result from pumping by an intense Ly beta radiation field. As the X-radiation from GX 1+4 is steadily pulsed, with typical pulsed fractions of 0.4, the O I 8446 emission in V2116 Oph may also be strongly modulated with the current 127 s period of the X-ray source. If so, this may well allow us to obtain high signal-to-noise radial velocity measurements and thus to determine the system parameters. However, no such pulsations are detected, and we set an upper limit of ~1% (full-amplitude) on periodic 8446 oscillations at the X-ray frequency. This value is comparable to the amplitude of continuum oscillations observed on some nights by other workers. Thus we rule out an enhancement of the pulsation amplitude in O I emission, at least at the time of our observations.Comment: 9 pages including 4 figures and no tables. Accepted for publication in PASP; to appear in Volume 110, August 199

The Effect of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) on Bax and Mcl-1 Expression in Human Neutrophils

In the present study we examined a role of pro-apoptotic Bax and anti-apoptotic Mcl-1 proteins, participating in the regulation of intrinsic apoptosis pathway in human neutrophils (PMNs) exposed to N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), the environmental xenobiotic. For the purpose comparison, the same studies were conducted in autologous peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). The production of cytochrome c by PMNs was also determined. A deficit of anti-apoptotic Mcl-1 and overexpression of the pro-apoptotic protein Bax suggest that the apoptosis process in human neutrophils exposed to NDMA is dependent on changes in the expression of these proteins. PMNs were more sensitive to NDMA than PBMCs

Randomized trial of polychromatic blue-enriched light for circadian phase shifting, melatonin suppression, and alerting responses.

Wavelength comparisons have indicated that circadian phase-shifting and enhancement of subjective and EEG-correlates of alertness have a higher sensitivity to short wavelength visible light. The aim of the current study was to test whether polychromatic light enriched in the blue portion of the spectrum (17,000 K) has increased efficacy for melatonin suppression, circadian phase-shifting, and alertness as compared to an equal photon density exposure to a standard white polychromatic light (4000 K). Twenty healthy participants were studied in a time-free environment for 7 days. The protocol included two baseline days followed by a 26-h constant routine (CR1) to assess initial circadian phase. Following CR1, participants were exposed to a full-field fluorescent light (1 × 10 14 photons/cm 2 /s, 4000 K or 17,000 K, n = 10/condition) for 6.5 h during the biological night. Following an 8 h recovery sleep, a second 30-h CR was performed. Melatonin suppression was assessed from the difference during the light exposure and the corresponding clock time 24 h earlier during CR1. Phase-shifts were calculated from the clock time difference in dim light melatonin onset time (DLMO) between CR1 and CR2. Blue-enriched light caused significantly greater suppression of melatonin than standard light ((mean ± SD) 70.9 ± 19.6% and 42.8 ± 29.1%, respectively, p \u3c 0.05). There was no significant difference in the magnitude of phase delay shifts. Blue-enriched light significantly improved subjective alertness (p \u3c 0.05) but no differences were found for objective alertness. These data contribute to the optimization of the short wavelength-enriched spectra and intensities needed for circadian, neuroendocrine and neurobehavioral regulation

Effects of exercise and environmental complexity on deficits in trace and contextual fear conditioning produced by neonatal alcohol exposure in rats

In rodents, voluntary exercise and environmental complexity increases hippocampal neurogenesis and reverses spatial learning and long-term potentiation deficits in animals prenatally exposed to alcohol. The present experiment extended these findings to neonatal alcohol exposure and to delay, trace, and contextual fear conditioning. Rats were administered either 5.25g/kg/day alcohol via gastric intubation or received sham-intubations (SI) between Postnatal Day (PD) 4 and 9 followed by either free access to a running wheel on PD 30-41 and housing in a complex environment on PD 42-72 (wheel-running plus environmental complexity; WREC) or conventional social housing (SHSH) from PD 30 to 72. Adult rats (PD 80 +/- 5) received 5 trials/day of a 10-s flashing-light conditioned stimulus (CS) paired with .8mA footshock either immediately (delay conditioning) or after a 10-s trace interval (trace conditioning) for 2 days. Neonatal alcohol exposure impaired context and trace conditioning, but not short-delay conditioning. The WREC intervention did not reverse these deficits, despite increasing context-related freezing in ethanol-exposed and SI animals. (c) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 55: 483-495, 201

Spin Motion in Electron Transmission through Ultrathin Ferromagnetic Films Accessed by Photoelectron Spectroscopy

Ab initio and model calculations demonstrate that the spin motion of electrons transmitted through ferromagnetic films can be analyzed in detail by means of angle- and spin-resolved core-level photoelectron spectroscopy. The spin motion appears as precession of the photoelectron spin polarization around and as relaxation towards the magnetization direction. In a systematic study for ultrathin Fe films on Pd(001) we elucidate its dependence on the Fe film thickness and on the Fe electronic structure. In addition to elastic and inelastic scattering, the effect of band gaps on the spin motion is addressed in particular.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Mirax: A Brazilian X-Ray Astronomy Satellite Mission

We describe the ``Monitor e Imageador de Raios-X'' (MIRAX), an X-ray astronomy satellite mission proposed by the high energy astrophysics group at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Brazil to the Brazilian Space Agency. MIRAX is an international collaboration that includes, besides INPE, the University of California San Diego, the University of Tuebingen in Germany, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Space Research Organization Netherlands. The payload of MIRAX will consist in two identical hard X-ray cameras (10 -200 keV) and one soft X-ray camera (2-28 keV), both with angular resolution of ~ 5-6 arcmin. The basic objective of MIRAX is to carry out continuous broadband imaging spectroscopy observations of a large source sample (~ 9 months/yr) in the central Galactic plane region. This will allow the detection, localization, possible identification, and spectral/temporal study of the entire history of transient phenomena to be carried out in one single mission. MIRAX will have sensitivities of ~ 5 mCrab/day in the 2-10 keV band (~2 times better than the All Sky Monitor on Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer) and 2.6 mCrab/day in the 10-100 keV band (~40 times better than the Earth Occultation technique of the Burst and Transient Source Experiment on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory). The MIRAX spacecraft will weigh about 200 kg and is expected to be launched in a low-altitude (~ 600 km) circular equatorial orbit around 2007/2008.Comment: 6 pages, 1 table, 3 figures, presented at 2002 COSPAR meeting in Houston. Submitted to Adv. Space Re