Ecology,Environmental Impact Statements,and Ecological Risk Assessment: A Brief Historical Perspective

Ecological risk assessment will continue to increase in importance as a conceptual and methodological basis for evaluating environmental impacts as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Understanding the historical strengths and limitations of more traditional environmental assessments performed in support of the NEPA can facilitate the effective incorporation of ecological risk assessment into the NEPA process. Such integration will also benefit from a knowledge of the historical and continuing development of the ecological risk assessment process, as well as from a recognition of the contri butions from modern quantitative ecology and ecosystem science. Adopting a risk-based approach can improve the NEPA process by providing a framework for consistent and comprehensive ecological assessment and by providing a conceptual and methodological basis for addressing the varied uncertainties attendant to environmental assessments. The primary concern in integrating ecological risk assessment into the NEPA process is that ecological risk assessment not merely become a new name for traditional environmental impact assessments. While the integration of ecological risk assessment into the NEPA process occurs, it is important to begin to outline the next transition in environmental assessment capabilities. Operationally linking ecological risk assessment methods with formal decision models appears as a worthwhile objective in beginning this transition.     

Application dependency of lca methodology: Key variables and their mode of influencing the method

The reason to perform an LCA is essentially to use it in support of a decision. A decision gives rise to a change somewhere in society compared to a scenario in which this decision was not taken. The key requirement for the LCA in any application is therefore, that it shall reflect the environmental change caused by the decision. It is found, that the need to differentiate LCA methodology for the use in different applications is born by a few key characteristics of the decision to be supported. The first key characteristic is the environmental consequence of the decision, i.e. the nature and extent of the environmental change caused by the decision. When modelling the environmental change, its extent in time and space will differ between decision types, thus giving rise to different requirements, primarily for the scoping and inventory phases of the LCA. Furthermore, some decisions will imply trade-offs between different impact categories, while others will not, thus causing different requirements for the impact assessment. The second key characteristic is the social and economic consequence of the decision, the magnitude of which will influence the need for certainty, transparency and documentation. The third characteristic is the context in which the decision is taken, including the decision maker and interested parties, implicitly influencing the impact assessment and weighting.     

Management procedures in a fishery based on highly variable stocks and with conflicting objectives: experiences in the South African pelagic fishery

The pelagic fishery in South Africa targets mainly anchovy, Engraulis capensis, and sardine, Sardinops sagax, both of which have varied substantially in abundance during the history of the fishery. Since 1988, there has been progress in this fishery towards the use of management procedures as the basis for determination of management regulations, where a management procedure is defined as a set of rules, derived by simulation and normally implemented for three to five years, specifying how the regulatory mechanism is set, the data collected for this purpose and how these data are to be analysed and used. Advantages of management procedures include formal consideration of uncertainty, the ability to choose decision rules based on their predicted medium-term consequences and a saving in workload compared with annual assessments.This paper discusses the lessons learned in application of management procedures and their precursors in this fishery. The high variability in abundance of the two stocks, the trend in their relative abundance, the substantial uncertainties in information, strong pressure to meet socio-economic goals and the conflicting objectives which arose between the directed anchovy and directed sardine fishery are identified as major problems in implementation of procedures and management of the resources. However, the use of management procedures is considered to have led to greatly improved communication with the industry and to substantial input by them into the management process. The procedures and the simulations upon which they were based also enabled consideration of the major sources of uncertainty in understanding of the resource dynamics and facilitated the development of procedures that were robust to them.It is argued that biological uncertainty greatly exacerbated the problems in application of the procedures but probably cannot be markedly reduced in the near future. Management procedures must be robust to likely variability and uncertainty. Of equal importance are identification and selection of achievable objectives, and allocation to the political decision makers and not to the scientists, of responsibility for determining acceptable trade-offs between conservation and socio-economic goals. Other issues, including the importance of long-term rights and allowance for flexibility in fishing practice, are also highlighted     

应用医疗CT扫描法观察恐龙蛋化石的内部结构

应用医疗ＣＴ扫描法观察恐龙蛋化石，可清晰地分辨出蛋形、蛋壳、卵蛋白、蛋黄及胚盘等结构，并可测出各部分具体数据，为恐龙蛋化石和其它生物化石的研究开辟了一个新的途径。     

Cascading tripartite binomial classification plans to monitor European red mite (Acari,Tetranychidae) through a season; development and evaluation of a new methodology for pest monitoring

A monitoring protocol that schedules future sample bouts based on the outcome of density classification and expected population growth has been developed and applied to monitoring European red mite (Panonychus ulmi Koch) through a growing season. The monitoring protocol is based on concatenating through time tripartite sequential classification sampling plans that use binomial counts in lieu of complete enumeration. Binomial counts are scored positive when the number of organisms (mites) on a sample unit (leaves) exceeds a tally number. At each sample occasion the monitoring procedure leads to one of three possible decisions; intervene when the density is high, sample at the next sample occasion (after one week) when the density is intermediate, and sample at the second next sample occasion (after two weeks) when the density is low. Evaluation of the monitoring protocol under field conditions showed that the protocol with constituent tally 0 binomial count sampling plans was quite successful in timing intervention at the moment when population densities were about to exceed an established threshold that dictated intervention. The performance of this monitoring protocol and another protocol in which constituent sampling plans used binomial counts with a tally number of 4 were compared using simulation. Sampling plans that used a tally number of 4 were more precise than plans that used a tally number of 0. However, the overall performance of the monitoring protocol based on tally 0 sampling plans did not greatly differ from the monitoring protocol based on tally 4 sampling plans. Simulated performance of the tally 0 protocol was corroborated by field evaluation. The monitoring protocol based on tripartite classification required 30 to 45 percent fewer sample bouts than a protocol based on conventional sequential classification at weekly intervals. The monitoring protocol based on tripartite classification was also better able to schedule intervention when needed compared to a protocol based on conventional classification at two week intervals. Using the tally 0 protocol and current thresholds forP. ulmi, cumulative mite density was kept below 300 mite-days per leaf, which is well below levels regarded damaging. A tally 0 protocol with raised thresholds, developed on the basis of this finding, gave the best simulated performance of all protocols evaluated.     

青海省重要医学昆虫区系分布

目的-调查了解青海省重要医学昆虫的种群组成与分布特征.方法-采用人帐诱、灯诱、挥网和动物体表检虫法采集医学昆虫;收集前人研究文献资料.结果-获得青海省医学昆虫237种,隶属14科62属,其中蚊科2属9种,蠓科2属19种,虻科5属23种,蚋科1属6种,白蛉科2属3种,蚤类6科37属143种,硬蜱科4属7种,恙螨科6属23种和列恙螨科2属4种.从已知医学昆虫237种看,属于青海省北部山地146种,柴达木盆地94种,青南高原96种和分布不详21种.结论-为青海省医学昆虫的区系分布研究提供了依据.     

Strategies for cellular decision‐making

Stochasticity pervades life at the cellular level. Cells receive stochastic signals, perform detection and transduction with stochastic biochemistry, and grow and die in stochastic environments. Here we review progress in going from the molecular details to the information‐processing strategies cells use in their decision‐making. Such strategies are fundamentally influenced by stochasticity. We argue that the cellular decision‐making can only be probabilistic and occurs at three levels. First, cells must infer from noisy signals the probable current and anticipated future state of their environment. Second, they must weigh the costs and benefits of each potential response, given that future. Third, cells must decide in the presence of other, potentially competitive, decision‐makers. In this context, we discuss cooperative responses where some individuals can appear to sacrifice for the common good. We believe that decision‐making strategies will be conserved, with comparatively few strategies being implemented by different biochemical mechanisms in many organisms. Determining the strategy of a decision‐making network provides a potentially powerful coarse‐graining that links systems and evolutionary biology to understand biological design.     

A Rule-Based Decision Support System for Critical Infrastructure Management

This article presents a new rule-based decision support system for critical infrastructure management based on the interdependencies among critical infrastructures. Unlike the conventional flood front prediction model, the new failure front prediction model consists of both physical parameters and interdependencies among infrastructures, which is represented by a multi-level complex network. This study employs advanced computation methods to build tools for better understanding emergent behavior of water security infrastructure systems for use in developing superior preparedness and response strategies. This study highlights the important role played by the interdependencies among the infrastructures in failure front prediction.     

In the Cradle of Heredity; French Physicians and L'Hérédité Naturelle in the Early 19th Century

This paper argues that our modern concept of biological heredity was first clearly introduced in a theoretical and practical setting by the generation of French physicians that were active between 1810 and 1830. It describes how from a traditional focus on hereditary transmission of disease, influential French medical men like Esquirol, Fodéré, Piorry, Lévy, moved towards considering heredity a central concept for the conception of the human bodily frame, and its set of physical and moral dispositions. The notion of heredity as a natural force, with a wide ranging capabilities of transmitting differentially both fundamental and accidental characters was generalized by that generation of physicians with the help of contemporary naturalists and physiologists. By 1830 the term hérédité was widespread, and it shared the explanatory and semantic qualities of traditional medical concepts like constitution and temperament. An analysis is given of the main developments that led to the conception of biological (including human) bodies as consisting of a layered, hierarchical organization of characters, differentially affected by the law of conservation (Heredity) and change (Inneity, Variation). The mid-century work of the French physician Prosper Lucas, Traité Philosophique et Physiologique de L' Hérédité Naturelle, is shown to be the culmination of the efforts of several generations of French physicians towards having a feasible, complexly structured notion of how heredity works.