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The research reported in this paper was designed to investigate the interconnection between students' environmental education (EE) and their waste-separation behaviour, with students' attitude, knowledge and sense of responsibility being the mediate factors, and explores how EE in schools could be improved. A questionnaire-based survey was employed and the views of 600 primary- and middle-school (PMS) students and 175 teachers in Yingtan City, Jiangxi Province, China were obtained. The results indicate that EE in Chinese schools positively affects students' waste separation behaviour by affecting their attitude to waste separation. But the current EE in Chinese schools has not been able to improve students' sense of responsibility for environmental protection. The incentives for teachers to include EE in their teaching includes the belief that EE in school would pass environmental knowledge to the students and cultivate their pro-environmental attitude which would eventually benefit the environment and society in the long run and the school's requirement of using EE in the classroom. The main barriers are the schools' neglect of EE and the teachers' lack of EE knowledge. Suggestions for teachers and policy-makers at school level and local government level are put forward to improve EE in school and thereby improve students' waste separation behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Human Development Index (HDI) produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been in existence since 1990. In its annual Human Development Reports (HDRs) the UNDP provides rankings of countries based on the HDI, and the idea is that these will help bring about positive change as countries compare their performance in the rankings with what they see as their peers. The HDRs are widely reported in the media, and previous research has suggested that the extent of newspaper reporting of the HDI (i.e. number of articles) is greater for those countries at the bottom and top end of the rankings. However, there are gaps in knowledge about how the HDI is reported in these media outlets. For example, to what extent does newspaper reporting of the HDI equate it to terms such as 'quality of life' and 'well-being', and how does this relate to the ranking of countries based on the HDI? This is the question addressed by the research reported in this paper. Results suggest that newspaper do often associate the terms 'quality of life and 'well-being' with the HDI, and that the association appears to be stronger for countries towards the top-end of the rankings (i.e. those that have more 'human development') compared to those at the bottom-end of the rankings. This suggests that the association between reporting of the HDI and 'quality of life' and 'well-being' is a narrative that is perceived by the media to suit the developed rather than developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops a novel mathematical modelling framework for biomass combined heat and power systems (CHP) that links biomass and process characteristics to sustainability assessment of the life cycle. A total of twenty-nine indicators for the process (four-indicators), economic (five-indicators), environmental (eight-indicators) and social global (five-indicators) and local (seven-indicators) aspects have been analysed for sustainability. These are technological: biomass throughput, electricity and steam generations and CHP efficiency; economic: internal rate of return, capital, operating and feedstock costs and cost of production; environmental: global warming, fossil, land and water use, acidification, urban smog, eutrophication and ecotoxicity potentials; social (global): labour rights and decent work, health & safety, human rights, governance and community infrastructure; social (local): total forest land, direct/indirect jobs, gender equality and energy-water-sanitation access for communities, from biomass characteristics (carbon and hydrogen contents), energy demands and economic parameters. This paper applies the developed methodology to a case study in Mexico. From 12.47 kt/year forestry residue, 1 MWe is generated with an associated low-pressure steam generation of 50 kt/year, at the cost of production of $0.023/kWh. This makes the energy provision "affordable and clean" for marginalised/poor communities (the UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDG7). Bioenergy can curb > 90% of the greenhouse gas emissions and primary energy use, 6 kt CO2 eq and 74 TJ annually. Bioenergy reduces other environmental impacts considerably, water consumption, acidification and eutrophication by 87–53%, and urban smog and ecotoxicity by 29–18%. Bioenergy can improve all five social themes in the Central American cluster countries. In addition to the SDG7, the forestry-based bioenergy system can also achieve the SDG6: "clean water and sanitation for all". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay responds to Hirstein, Sifferd and Fagan's book, Responsible Brains (MIT Press, 2018), which claims that executive function is the guiding mechanism that supports both responsible agency and the necessity for some excuses. In contrast, I suggest that executive function is not the universal acid and the neuroscience at present contributes almost nothing to the necessary psychological level of explanation and analysis. To the extent neuroscience can be useful, it is virtually entirely dependent on well-validated psychology to correlate with the neuroscientific variables under investigation. The essay considers what executive function is and what the neuroscience adds to our understanding of it. Then it addresses moral and legal responsibility generally, and specific doctrines. Executive function is seldom found to be the most perspicuous approach to any of the general or specific moral and legal questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new coronavirus (COVID-19) has generated an unprecedented degree of social and economic impact on the planet, but few researchers have explored the repercussion of COVID-19 for sustainable development (SD) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), especially from the perspective of Chinese businesses. This paper is the first to outline the priority changes of both SD and CSR over the period of COVID-19 incidence in China. An online questionnaire survey of 1161 owners and managers of Chinese companies was conducted, and respondents were asked to score the priorities of their company over the pre, during and post COVID-19 periods. The research was carried out at the end of the first COVID-19 wave in China but during the period of lockdown in some parts of the country. It was found that there was a priority change regarding three dimensions of sustainable development and 13 aspects of CSR. While the social dimension of SD was prioritized during and post COVID-19, the environmental dimension was the only one deemed to be less important and less prioritized over the longer term after the pandemic. The top three short-term CSR priorities were having in place a workplace health and safety plan, engaging in philanthropic activities and protecting biodiversity, and the top three longer-term CSR priorities were job creation, protecting biodiversity and having in place a workplace health and safety plan. Environmental protection and using clean energy were not reported as a CSR priority. The paper concludes that China's recovery mode cannot be called 'green' and suggests ways this could be changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Gideon Yaffe's recent, intricately argued book, The Age of Culpability: Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility, argues against the nearly uniform position in both law and scholarship that the criminal justice system should give juveniles a break because on average they have different capacities relevant to responsibility than adults. Professor Yaffe instead argues that kid should be given a break because juveniles have little say about the criminal law, primarily because they do not have a vote. For Professor Yaffe, age has political rather than behavioral significance. The book has many excellent general analyses about responsibility, but all are in aid of the central thesis about juveniles, which is the central focus of this essay review. After addressing a few preliminary issues, the essay discusses Professor Yaffe's negative argument against the validity of the behavioral difference rationale for giving juveniles a break. If the negative case fails, which the essay argues it does, then the only issue is whether the book's alternative is desirable. Again, the essay argues that it is not, and concludes by offering three positive arguments for the traditional rationale: (1) coherence and simplicity; (2) a benignly definitional argument that survives the negative argument and supports giving juveniles a break in the exceedingly unlikely event that the empirical assumptions of the traditional rationale are proven incorrect; and (3) a proposal for individualization of the culpability assessments of juveniles so that the criminal justice system blames and punishes them proportionately to their culpability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides the first published evidence for a ‘U’ shaped relationship between country ‘league-table’ ranking based on the Human Development Index and Corruption Perception Index and media reporting. The results suggest that the Extremity Hypothesis proposed by Heath (Glob Environ Change 21(1): 198-208, 1996) applies to such data rather than the alternative of the Centrality Hypothesis. In the Extremity Hypothesis people are more likely to transmit information regarding extremes, perhaps because people value ‘surprisingness’ or think that others do so, and the inevitable polarity of league-tables would appear to invite greater attention on those countries that rank high and low. This is an important finding as it suggests that countries at these extremes could act as exemplars. However, this is not to say that at more regional scales the media may pick-up on differences between ‘peer group’ countries ranked towards the middle of the league-table. Much more attention needs to be given by researchers to the use of indicators and indices and what helps to influence this, especially as it would help inform further development of existing indicators/indices and the creation of new ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to assess the role and effectiveness of a proposed novel strategy for Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data collection in the food sector and associated supply chains. The study represents one of the first of its type and provides answers to some of the key questions regarding the data collection process developed, managed and implemented by a multinational food company across the supply chain.Methods: An integrated LCI data collection process for confectionery products was developed and implemented by Nestlé, a multinational food company. Some of the key features includes (1) management and implementation by a multinational food company; (2) types of roles to manage, provide and facilitate data exchange; (3) procedures to identify key products, suppliers and customers; (4) LCI questionnaire and cover letter and (5) data quality management based on the pedigree matrix. Overall, the combined features in an integrated framework provide a new way of thinking about the collection of LCI data from the perspective of a multinational food company.Results and discussion: The integrated LCI collection framework spanned across 5 months and resulted in 87 new LCI datasets for confectionery products from raw material, primary resource use, emission and waste release data collected from suppliers across 19 countries. The data collected was found to be of medium to high quality compared with secondary data. However, for retailers and waste service companies, only partially completed questionnaires were returned. Some of the key challenges encountered during the collection and creation of data included lack of experience, identifying key actors, communication and technical language, commercial compromise, confidentiality protection and complexity of multi-tiered supplier systems. A range of recommendations are proposed to reconcile these challenges which include standardisation of environmental data from suppliers, concise and targeted LCI questionnaires and visualising complexity through drawings.Conclusions: The integrated LCI data collection process and strategy has demonstrated the potential role of a multinational company to quickly engage and act as a strong enabler to unlock latent data for various aspects of the confectionery supply chain. Overall, it is recommended that the research findings serve as the foundations to transition towards a standardised procedure which can practically guide other multinational companies to considerably increase the availability of LCI data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zoonoses originating from wildlife represent a significant threat to global health, security and economic growth, and combatting their emergence is a public health priority. However, our understanding of the mechanisms underlying their emergence remains rudimentary. Here we update a global database of emerging infectious disease (EID) events, create a novel measure of reporting effort, and fit boosted regression tree models to analyze the demographic, environmental and biological correlates of their occurrence. After accounting for reporting effort, we show that zoonotic EID risk is elevated in forested tropical regions experiencing land-use changes and where wildlife biodiversity (mammal species richness) is high. We present a new global hotspot map of spatial variation in our zoonotic EID risk index, and partial dependence plots illustrating relationships between events and predictors. Our results may help to improve surveillance and long-term EID monitoring programs, and design field experiments to test underlying mechanisms of zoonotic disease emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of indices have been applied to the performance of nation states, both for research and as aids to help guide policy and intervention. While the literature on indices is extensive, the focus to date has been almost entirely on technical issues of index creation. However the success of an index is arguably related at least in part to the use of that index by policy makers and managers. While cause-effect can be difficult to determine, one approach is to measure 'success' in terms of the reporting of indices by an intermediary group such as the media, and this paper assesses the reporting of 24 indices by newspapers worldwide until 2012. The results suggest that index success is influenced by a number of factors, including the time it has existed, its focus, extent and quality of publicity, adaptability in terms of the scope for others to change the content and methodology of the index and resonance in terms of the match with ideas/culture/behaviour of people. The paper makes a case for a new research field that seeks to investigate the meaning and factors involved in 'success' of indices and how these should help with index development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a neglected epidemic of both obesity and metabolic syndrome in industrialized and unindustrialized countries all over the globe. Both conditions are associated with a high incidence of other serious pathologies, such as cardiovascular and renal diseases. In this article, we review the potential underlying mechanisms by which obesity and metabolic syndrome promote hypertension, including changes in cardiovascular-renal physiology induced by leptin, the sympathetic nervous system, the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, insulin resistance, free fatty acids, natriuretic peptides, and proinflammatory cytokines. We also discuss the potential underlying mechanisms by which obesity promotes other cardiovascular and renal conditions, as well as available nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic approaches for treating obesity-induced hypertension. The findings presented herein suggest that adipocytes may be a key regulator of cardiovascular and renal function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groups of all kinds are complex organisations. To understand them and to facilitate them in process terms is a matter of rich and diverse discourse in varied fields from sustainable development to coastal ecology; from bandwidth in rural communities to health service provision. How to allow groups to discourse, problem solve and review their own issues and concerns? Diagrams in general and rich pictures in particular can be great means to allow groups to explore their subconscious, their occult sentiments and conflicted understandings. This paper explores and explains diverse use of pictures and shows how they can be applied and understood in group processes of all kinds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indicators and indices (a collection of indicators into a single value) have been promoted for some time as convenient devices for the presentation of complex datasets to a more general audience. Examples of indices are the corruption perception index (CPI), human development index (HDI) and ecological footprint (EF). The research reported in this paper was designed to explore the extent to which the CPI, HDI and EF have been reported in UK national newspapers between January 1990 and December 2009, and whether there are differences between the indices in the pattern of reporting. Results suggest that reporting of the CPI was linked to the timing of reports issued by Transparency International. The same was partly true of reporting of the HDI and timing of release of Human Development Reports s by the UNDP. The EF has more reports than the CPI and HDI, and this is related in part to its greater flexibility and adaptability at more local (intra-UK) scales. The paper recommends that those creating such indices look beyond the methodological dimension and consider how best to make the index resonate with the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text mining was used to extract technical intelligence from the open source global SARS research literature. A SARS-focused query was applied to the Science Citation Index (SCI) (SCI 2008) database for the period 1998-early 2008. The SARS research literature infrastructure (prolific authors, key journals/institutions/countries, most cited authors/journals/documents) was obtained using bibliometrics, and the SARS research literature technical structure (hierarchical taxonomy) was obtained using computational linguistics/document clustering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief article introduces a new methodology for systemic action research-Triple Task (TT)-and sets out its rationale and initial progress in becoming an embedded method for group working. Arising from the authors previous work with soft systems approaches, the Imagine method for sustainable development assessment and action research in a variety of global locations, TT provides a means for groups to engage together in purposive work and, at the same time, for facilitators to understand how the dynamic of the group influences the groups output. TT is based on an ambitious concept and at the time of writing the results of TT applied in the context of an EU Framework 7 funded project are in their early stages but importantly, significant insights are already arising including the answers to some puzzling questions: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity is increasingly recognized as a global pandemic that threatens the health of millions of people. Obesity is considered to be an important cardiovascular risk factor, but there is increasing evidence that patients with elevated body mass index may be better off than others if they develop cardiovascular or renal disease. This phenomenon has been described as the "obesity paradox" or "reverse epidemiology." This article reviews some recent publications that have studied this phenomenon as it relates to heart failure, coronary artery disease, peripheral arterial disease, kidney disease, and a cohort of patients undergoing nonbariatric surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background To characterize knowledge and misconceptions regarding viral upper respiratory infections (URI) among urban Hispanics and identify correlates of greater knowledge. Methods In-home interviews conducted by trained research coordinators in 453 primarily Hispanic households (2,386 members) in northern Manhattan. Results The majority of respondents attributed URI to weather-related conditions. While most agreed that colds and flu were caused by viruses, 88.1% also agreed that they were caused by bacteria, and a small proportion reported that URI may be caused by evil eye (‘mal de ojo’, 7.1%) or sudden fright (‘susto’, 3.3%). Only 29.8% agreed that colds and flu would improve without medication; 89.9% stated that antibiotics are needed to treat viral throat infections. Most were well versed about influenza vaccination and reported that a recommendation from a healthcare provider would definitely influence them to get vaccinated. Discussion Misconceptions about the role of antibiotics in the treatment of viral infections pose considerable risk in this population. Explicit, targeted recommendations from healthcare providers regarding vaccination and judicious antibiotic use as well as media campaigns targeted to Hispanics should be effective strategies for reducing misconceptions and improving health behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers whether psychopaths should be held criminally responsible. After describing the positive law of criminal responsibility in general and as it applies to psychopaths, it suggests that psychopaths lack moral rationality and that severe psychopaths should be excused from crimes that violate the moral rights of others. Alternative forms of social control for dangerous psychopaths, such as involuntary civil commitment, are considered, and the potential legal implications of future scientific understanding of psychopathy are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of a National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza by the U.S. government. The reason for the development of such strategy is a response to the growing concern about the increasing pandemic influenza in the country. Moreover, it is intended to improve preparedness and response for the next influenza pandemic. Furthermore, it will help close the gaps that include the coordination, encouragement and funding of international surveillance and cooperation.

Molecular diagnostic tests are more sensitive and, in many cases, more specific than conventional laboratory methods for the detection of sexually transmitted infections. Here, we review recently developed molecular methods for the diagnosis and subtyping of the most common sexually transmitted infections: infections caused by Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, human papillomavirus, Trichomonas vaginalis, and the agents of genital ulcer disease ( Haemophilus ducreyi, herpes simplex virus, Treponema pallidum, and Calymmatobacterium granulomatis). We also provide an overview of the laboratory diagnostic tests and clinical specimens to use when infection with these agents is suspected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the author's opinions on criminal behavior and addictions. Views on the contrast between the legal and scientific images of behavior, using the disease concept of addiction as the prime example of the contrast; Discussion on mental disorders; Views on impulse-control disorders; Discussion on addiction to drugs.

The proposal to justify homicide by psychological self-defense rests on an insecure scientific foundation and would be legally mischievous. The core concepts are unacceptably vague and lack rigorous empirical support. The proposed defense is better characterized as an excuse than as a justification because rational victims of purely psychological abuse do have socially preferrable alternatives to homicide, and the proposal is inconsistent with modern criminal law that limits justifications for homicide. The defense would create substantial administrative problems and would facilitate adoption or expansion of related undesirable doctrines. The best response to abhorrent physical and psychological abuse is not unnecessary further violence, but the creation of adequate deterrents and alternative solutions for victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the benefits of Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) cotton for small-scale producers in South Africa. Debate on the potential benefits and costs of genetically modified (GM) crop technology for developing countries; Benefits in terms of gross margin by increasing yields and savings in pesticides; Differences between the Bt cotton adopters and nonadopters; Benefits for adopting Bt cotton for resource-poor small holders in the Makhathini area of South Africa.

We report on the previously unobserved clinical presentation of terminal ileitis secondary to Blastocystis hominis in a 37-yr-old white male. When the patient was treated with metronidazole, the symptoms improved and the radiographic abnormalities resolved. We believe that this is the first well-documented instance of terminal ileitis secondary to B. hominis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]