Do Botanical Pesticides Alter the Structure of the Soil Microbial Community?

The effects of synthetic pesticides on the soil microbial community have been thoroughly investigated in the past mostly by culture-dependent methods and only few recent studies have used culture-independent approaches for this purpose. However, it should be noted that most of these studies have been conducted in microcosms where the soil microbial community is exposed to unrealistic concentrations of the pesticides, providing an unrealistic exposure scheme for soil microorganism. On the other hand, little is known regarding the potential impact of botanical pesticides on the soil microbial community. Therefore, a laboratory study and a field study were conducted to investigate the effects of synthetic (metham sodium [MS], sodium tetrathiocarbonate [SoTe], and fosthiazate) and botanical pesticides (azadirachtin, quillaja, and pulverized Melia azedarach fruits [PMF]) on the soil microbial community using phospholipid fatty acids (PLFA) analysis. Principal component analysis (PCA) on the results of the laboratory study indicated that the application of PMF resulted in significant changes in the soil microbial community. This was obvious by the proportional increase in the abundance of fatty acids 18:1ω9cis, 18:1ω9trans, which are common in gram-negative bacteria and saprotrophic fungi, and 18:2ω6,9, which is a fungal indicator. This response was attributed to the release of copious amounts of organic carbon and nutrients in the soil by the PMF. On the other hand, MS inhibited fungi and gram-negative bacteria, while fosthiazate and the botanical pesticides quillaja and azadirachtin did not impose significant changes in the soil microbial community. Similar results were obtained by the field study where application of the fumigants MS and SoTe significantly altered the structure of the soil microbial community with the former having a more prominent effect. Fosthiazate imposed mild changes in the soil microbial community, whereas quillaja and azadirachtin again did not show a significant effect. Overall, botanical pesticides, at their recommended dose, did not alter the structure of the soil microbial community compared to synthetic nonfumigant and fumigant pesticides which induced significant changes.     

Differentiation of Nitrogen and Microbial Community in the Sediments from Lake Erhai,Yunnan–Kweichow Plateau,China

Abstract

As a famous plateau lake and a place rich in biodiversity located at the Hengduan Mountains, there is little research on microbial diversity and community composition in Erhai. In this study, 770,425 16S rRNA sequences had obtained at different depth samples. The abundance‐based coverage estimates (ACE), Chao1, and Shannon indices indicated the high abundance and diversity of Erhai sediment microorganisms. And they were obviously affected by human disturbance. Gammaproteobacteria, Deltaproteobacteria, Bacteroidia, Anaerolineae, Phycisphaerae, and Methanomicrobia were dominant bacteria and existed in almost all samples. The content of total nitrogen (TN) in sediments had a significant positive correlation between Syntrophus, Deltaproteobacteria, Desulfatiglans, Oxyphotobacteria, Clostridiales, Burkholderiaceae, Geobacter, Crenothrix species richness. Desulfobacca, Syntrophus, Deltaproteobacteria, Desulfatiglans, Gammaproteobacteria, Oxyphotobacteria, and Clostridiales were positively correlated with the nitrates in sediments. And the species richness of Desulfatiglans was correlated with NO₂ ^-. The RDA analysis was shown that dbRDA1 was affected mainly by the depth of lake, while the content of TN, NO₃ ^?, NO₂ ^?, and NH₄ ⁺ had the largest effect on dbRDA2. The results indicated the great relations between the diversity and composition of microbial communities and different forms of sediment nitrogen in Erhai lake sediments.     

Learning the Moral Economy of Commodified Health Care: “Community Education,” Failed Consumers,and the Shaping of Ethical Clinician-Citizens

Leaders of health professional schools often support community-based education as a means of promoting emerging practitioners’ awareness of health disparities and commitment to serving the poor. Yet, most programs do not teach about the causes of health disparities, raising questions regarding what social and political lessons students learn from these experiences. This article examines the ways in which community-based clinical education programs help shape the subjectivities of new dentists as ethical clinician-citizens within the US commodified health care system. Drawing on ethnographic research during volunteer and required community-based programs and interviews with participants, I demonstrate three implicit logics that students learned: (1) dialectical ideologies of volunteer entitlement and recipient debt; (2) forms of justification for the often inferior care provided to “failed” consumers (patients with Medicaid or uninsured); and (3) specific forms of obligations characterizing the ethical clinician-citizen. I explore the ways these messages reflected the structured relations of both student encounters and the overarching health care system, and examine the strategies faculty supervisors undertook to challenge these messages and relations. Finally, I argue that promoting commitments to social justice in health care should not rely on cultivating altruism, but should instead be pursued through educating new practitioners about the lives of poor people, the causal relationships between poverty and poor health, and attention to the structure of health care and provider–patient interactions. This approach involves shining a critical light on America’s commodified health care system as an arena based in relations of power and inequality.     

Chronic Pain in the Japanese Community—Prevalence,Characteristics and Impact on Quality of Life

Background

Chronic pain is recognized as a public health problem that affects the general population physically, psychologically, and socially. However, there is little knowledge about the associated factors of chronic pain, such as the influence of weather, family structure, daily exercise, and work status.

Objectives

This survey had three aims: 1) to estimate the prevalence of chronic pain in Japan, 2) to analyze these associated factors, and 3) to evaluate the social burden due to chronic pain.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional postal survey in a sample of 6000 adults aged ≥20 years. The response rate was 43.8%.

Results

The mean age of the respondents was 57.7 years (range 20–99 years); 39.3% met the criteria for chronic pain (lasting ≥3 months). Approximately a quarter of the respondents reported that their chronic pain was adversely influenced by bad weather and also oncoming bad weather. Risk factors for chronic pain, as determined by a logistic regression model, included being an older female, being unemployed, living alone, and no daily exercise. Individuals with chronic pain showed significantly lower quality of life and significantly higher psychological distress scores than those without chronic pain. The mean annual duration of absence from work of working-age respondents was 9.6 days (range 1–365 days).

Conclusions

Our findings revealed that high prevalence and severity of chronic pain, associated factors, and significant impact on quality of life in the adult Japanese population. A detailed understanding of factors associated with chronic pain is essential for establishing a management strategy for primary care.     

Procrastination,Distress and Life Satisfaction across the Age Range – A German Representative Community Study

Addressing the lack of population-based data the purpose of this representative study was to assess procrastination and its associations with distress and life satisfaction across the life span. A representative German community sample (1,350 women; 1,177 men) between the ages of 14 and 95 years was examined by the short form of the General Procrastination Scale (GPS-K; 1) and standardized scales of perceived stress, depression, anxiety, fatigue and life satisfaction. As hypothesized, procrastination was highest in the youngest cohort (14–29 years). Only in the youngest and most procrastinating cohort (aged 14 to 29 years), men procrastinated more than women. As we had further hypothesized, procrastination was consistently associated with higher stress, more depression, anxiety, fatigue and reduced satisfaction across life domains, especially regarding work and income. Associations were also found with lack of a partnership and unemployment. Findings are discussed with regard to potential developmental and cohort effects. While procrastination appears to be a pervasive indicator for maladjustment, longitudinal analyses in high-risk samples (e.g. late adolescence, unemployment) are needed to identify means and mechanisms of procrastinating.     

Community ecology: how green is the arctic tundra?

The exploitation ecosystems hypothesis suggests that food chain length increases along gradients of increasing primary productivity. Recent results provide compelling new evidence for this from an arctic-alpine ecosystem.     

Community size structure of zooplanktonic assemblages in three lakes on the upper River Paraná floodplain, PR-MS, Brazil

Abundance and body size of zooplanktonic organisms, testate amoebae, rotifers, cladocerans and copepods from the littoral and pelagic regions of three lakes were analyzed in February and August 2000. The lakes belong to three different river systems (Baía, Ivinhema and Paraná rivers) of the upper River Paraná floodplain. It was expected that average body size was different in space (regions of the lake and limnological characteristics) and time (summer and winter) because the variation of depth, pH, oxygen dissolved, chlorophyll-a and water temperature of each lake. Zooplankton community was represented by 119 species. Sorensen's coefficient showed that the three communities were similar. Larger organisms were found in the lakes' pelagic region, and seasonally larger individuals were registered in the winter and smaller individuals in the summer. The relationship between body size and density was slight, positively significant. The body size frequency distribution was bi-modal. ANOVA results showed a significant influence of the interaction of the littoral and pelagic regions, lakes, and seasons in the body size of zooplankton organisms. Spatial and temporal changes of the community size structure of zooplanktonic assemblages were related to the food resource (microbial-loop or herbivore chain), species habitat preference and life strategies (growth and reproduction).     

Community Based Fisheries Management and Fisher Livelihoods: Bangladesh Case Studies

Poor fishers in Bangladesh have been disadvantaged by policies that favored powerful people leasing fishing rights. Community-based management was expected to improve fisher access, livelihoods, and the sustainability of fisheries. The impacts of community management in three floodplain waterbodies differed according to the environment and property rights. Where a set of fishers jointly held exclusive rights to a small enclosed lake they increased production by stocking fish and shared the returns. This strategy is productive but attracts competition for profits and fish consumption was unchanged. Access to capture fisheries in floodplain waterbodies enables the poor to catch diverse small fish for their consumption. Yet sustainability requires limits on fishing. Fish sanctuaries were respected, yet catches per day fell when more people from several villages increased fishing effort in a large wetland, while a tightly knit community restored the fishery in a smaller floodplain. Community organizations will need recognition of their long-term use rights to overcome future threats.

Community Attachment: The Complexity and Consequence of the Natural Environment Facet

The primary objective of this paper is to examine more closely the complex nature of the natural environment dimension of community attachment using the narratives of local community members. This work seeks to build and elaborate on previous quantitative analyses that demonstrated two distinct dimensions of community attachment––social and natural environment. The findings reveal several distinct facets of the natural environment dimension of community attachment and demonstrate both a discreet perception of the natural environment in terms of community attachment as well as one that is more embedded within the social context of a particular lifestyle. The findings further demonstrate the need to include consideration of the natural environment in the broader assessment of community attachment and bolster previous quantitative research findings.

Ethics in Indigenous Research – Connecting with Community

The challenge for those responsible for funding, brokering and assessing the merit of proposed Indigenous research is to identify and then work co-operatively with appropriate representatives of Indigenous interests in order to increase the flow of benefits from research to Indigenous peoples. Experience in Australia has shown that this is not a straightforward process. In this paper we indicate some reasons why it is important for the research community to broker research with representative Indigenous organisations and to involve Indigenous peoples in the ethical assessment and conduct of research. We then identify some barriers to the achievement of these objectives and outline recently developed interventions from the field of health research that aim to promote a more effective working relationship between Indigenous peoples and members of the research community.

Rethinking of risk communication: lessons from the decision sciences

Risk communication involves three primary elements: process, content and intent. Much has been written about the first two. Much is known, for example, about the guiding principles that should be considered during the design of a risk communication. Likewise, many studies have been conducted about how best to establish the technical and informational content of a risk communication. Very little attention, by contrast, has been devoted to the intent of risk communication, which is to inform decision making for risk management. While appropriate information upon which to base risk management decisions is important, so to is an understanding of how people instinctively approach decision making under conditions of risk. Work in the decision sciences provides this often-missing perspective for many risk communication efforts and is, therefore, the focus of this paper.

Assessing Marine Resource Exploitation in Lofanga,Tonga: One Case Study—Two Approaches

This paper is an attempt to combine the results and conclusions of two independently designed research projects, in order to achieve a more complete understanding of the degree of exploitation of living marine resources by a small Tongan coastal fishing community. Results of a socioeconomic resource-driven survey and an anthropological study adopting a commons dilemma approach, agree substantially on the impact of tradition and changes, but disagree with regard to the driving forces. The socioeconomic study argues that dynamics between traditional and modern economic values best explain the state of the community’s coastal fisheries; while the anthropological study argues that social values and obligations still determine to a great extent the goals people pursue with their economic activities. Current fishing pressure, the marine tenure system, and present and future marketing potentials are all factors which may result in conflict between the traditional Tongan system and the modern cash-based, remittance sustained system. These will ultimately affect the current and future status of coastal resources and the social cohesion of the community.

Responses of marine organisms to physical and chemical impacts

Studies on the effects of a variety of exogenous and anthropogenic environmental factors, including endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, UV light, high temperature, and others, on marine organisms have been presented at the 2nd Bilateral Seminar Italy–Japan held in November 2006. Reports were discussed in order to reveal the current situation of marine ecosystems, aiming at evaluation and prediction of environmental risks.

Measurement error in racial and ethnic statistics

In the United States, the racial and ethnic statistics published by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) assume that each member of the U.S. population has a race and ethnicity and that if a member is black or white with respect to his risk of one disease, he is the same race with respect to his risk of another. Such an assumption is mistaken. Race and ethnicity are taken by the NCHS to be an intrinsic property of members of a population, when they should be taken to depend on interest. The actual or underlying race or ethnicity of members of a population depends on the risk whose variation within the population we wish to describe or explain.

Leitlinien zur molekulargenetischen Diagnostik: Fragiles-X und Fragiles-X assoziiertes Tremor/Ataxie Syndrom

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Does Investment in the Sexes Differ When Fathers Are Absent?

This study examines child survival and growth in a patrilineal Ethiopian community as a function of father absence and sex. In line with evolutionary predictions for sex-biased parental investment, the absence of a father and associated constraints on household resources is more detrimental for sons’ than daughters’ survival in infancy. Father absence doubles a son’s risk of dying in infancy but has a positive influence on the well-being of female members of the household, improving daughter survival, growth, and maternal nutritional status. Lack of paternal investment may be compensated for by other matrilateral kin through increased reciprocity between mother, daughter, and sister.