A comparison of biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) management strategies in Ireland and the Czech Republic and the lessons learned

In order to meet the recycling and recovery targets set forth by the European Union's (EU) Waste and Landfill Directives, both the Irish and Czech governments’ policy on waste management is changing to meet these pressures, with major emphasis being placed upon the management of biodegradable municipal waste (BMW). In particular, the EU Landfill Directive requires reductions in the rate of BMW going to landfill to 35% of 1995 values by 2016 and 2020 for Ireland and the Czech Republic, respectively. In this paper, the strategies of how Ireland and the Czech Republic plan to meet this challenge are compared. Ireland either landfills or exports its waste for recovery, while the Czech Republic has a relatively new waste management infrastructure. While Ireland met the first target of 75% diversion of BMW from landfill by 2010 and preliminary 2012 data indicate that Ireland is on track to meet the 2013 target, the achievement of the 2016 target remains at risk. Indicators that were developed to monitor the Czech Republic's path to meeting the targets demonstrate that it did not meet the first target that was set for 2010 and will probably not meet its 2013 target either. The evaluation reports on the implementation of Waste Management Plan of Czech Republic suggest that the currently applied strategy to divert biodegradable waste from landfill is not effective enough. For both countries, the EU Waste Framework and Landfill Directives will be a significant influence and driver of change in waste management practices and governance over the coming decade. This means that both countries will not only have to invest in infrastructure to achieve the targets, but will also have to increase awareness among the public in diverting this waste at the household level. Improving environmental education is part of increased awareness as it is imperative for citizens to understand the consequences of their actions as affluence continues to grow producing increased levels of waste.

Graphical abstract
Despite the differences in the levels of waste generation in both the Czech Republic and Ireland, each country can learn from each other in order to meet the recycling and recovery targets set by the European Union's (EU) Waste and Landfill Directives. Both countries will not only have to invest in infrastructure to achieve the targets, but will also have to increase awareness among the public in diverting this waste at the household level. In addition, there needs to be minimum safe standards when land-spreading organic agricultural and organic municipal and industrial materials on agricultural land used for food production, as well as incentives to increase BMW diversion from landfill such as the increased landfill levy implemented in Ireland and the acceptance of MBT and/or incineration as a means of treating residual waste.

Controlling the materials properties and nanostructure of a single-component dendritic gel by adding a second component

This paper reports a dendritic system which is capable of forming both one-component and two-component gels interestingly the addition of the second component can either increase or decrease the degree of gelation, depending on dendritic generation.

The development of the PROMPT (PRescribing Optimally in Middle-aged People’s Treatments) criteria

BACKGROUND: Whilst multimorbidity is more prevalent with increasing age, approximately 30% of middle-aged adults (45-64 years) are also affected. Several prescribing criteria have been developed to optimise medication use in older people (≥65 years) with little focus on potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) in middle-aged adults. We have developed a set of explicit prescribing criteria called PROMPT (PRescribing Optimally in Middle-aged People's Treatments) which may be applied to prescribing datasets to determine the prevalence of PIP in this age-group.

METHODS: A literature search was conducted to identify published prescribing criteria for all age groups, with the Project Steering Group (convened for this study) adding further criteria for consideration, all of which were reviewed for relevance to middle-aged adults. These criteria underwent a two-round Delphi process, using an expert panel consisting of general practitioners, pharmacists and clinical pharmacologists from the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. Using web-based questionnaires, 17 panellists were asked to indicate their level of agreement with each criterion via a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 5 = Strongly Agree) to assess the applicability to middle-aged adults in the absence of clinical information. Criteria were accepted/rejected/revised dependent on the panel's level of agreement using the median response/interquartile range and additional comments.

RESULTS: Thirty-four criteria were rated in the first round of this exercise and consensus was achieved on 17 criteria which were accepted into the PROMPT criteria. Consensus was not reached on the remaining 17, and six criteria were removed following a review of the additional comments. The second round of this exercise focused on the remaining 11 criteria, some of which were revised following the first exercise. Five criteria were accepted from the second round, providing a final list of 22 criteria [gastro-intestinal system (n = 3), cardiovascular system (n = 4), respiratory system (n = 4), central nervous system (n = 6), infections (n = 1), endocrine system (n = 1), musculoskeletal system (n = 2), duplicates (n = 1)].

CONCLUSIONS: PROMPT is the first set of prescribing criteria developed for use in middle-aged adults. The utility of these criteria will be tested in future studies using prescribing datasets.

Second Equal Treatment Act for the commercial sector

This book analyses one of the first pieces of legislation promoted by Angela Merkel, who started her political career as a minister for women's equality under Helmut Kohl. The name of the Act, Second Equal Treatment Act, allured to the Equal Treatment Act of the 1950s which implemented the barest minimum requirements to make the German constitution's demand to guarantee equal rights for women more than a hollow formula. However, this Act, while abolishing blatant discrimination of women through statute in fields such as family law, did nothing to further substantive equality. In 1990, when Germany was reunited, women from Eastern Germany had a first hand experience what the absence of such furtherance meant under capitalism. Used to being at nor risk to fall into poverty just because they divorced, or decided to become a mother without male protection, to being in full employment and not at the mercy of payments by their husbands, women from Eastern Germany were dismissed in large numbers, and found themselves sent back to the kitchen. The first minister for women affairs from their ranks made the "2nd Equality Act", but this act did little more than the minimum required by the EEC legislation. Again, substantive equality was not addressed through German Federal legislation. This was left to some of the German states - whose competences were limited to the public services. Most of those states which did create positive action measures for women employed in the public services were governed not by Christian Democrats - but this was the theme of another book.

A New Analysis of Mars "Special Regions": Findings of the Second MEPAG Special Regions Science Analysis Group (SR-SAG2)

A committee of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) has reviewed and updated the description of Special Regions on Mars as places where terrestrial organisms might replicate (per the COSPAR Planetary Protection Policy). This review and update was conducted by an international team (SR-SAG2) drawn from both the biological science and Mars exploration communities, focused on understanding when and where Special Regions could occur. The study applied recently available data about martian environments and about terrestrial organisms, building on a previous analysis of Mars Special Regions (2006) undertaken by a similar team. Since then, a new body of highly relevant information has been generated from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (launched in 2005) and Phoenix (2007) and data from Mars Express and the twin Mars Exploration Rovers (all 2003). Results have also been gleaned from the Mars Science Laboratory (launched in 2011). In addition to Mars data, there is a considerable body of new data regarding the known environmental limits to life on Earth—including the potential for terrestrial microbial life to survive and replicate under martian environmental conditions. The SR-SAG2 analysis has included an examination of new Mars models relevant to natural environmental variation in water activity and temperature; a review and reconsideration of the current parameters used to define Special Regions; and updated maps and descriptions of the martian environments recommended for treatment as “Uncertain” or “Special” as natural features or those potentially formed by the influence of future landed spacecraft. Significant changes in our knowledge of the capabilities of terrestrial organisms and the existence of possibly habitable martian environments have led to a new appreciation of where Mars Special Regions may be identified and protected. The SR-SAG also considered the impact of Special Regions on potential future human missions to Mars, both as locations of potential resources and as places that should not be inadvertently contaminated by human activity. Key Words: Martian environments—Mars astrobiology—Extreme environment microbiology—Planetary protection—Exploration resources. Astrobiology 14, 887–968.

Promoting normality in the management of the perineum during the second stage of labour

The management of the perineum during birth has multiple long-term effects on women and their families. The midwife has a key role to play and often the techniques they employ vary significantly, as does their justification of these practices. This article seeks to examine current evidence to explore what is known to contribute to lower perineal trauma rates and what practices should be avoided to protect childbearing women. The conclusions drawn show that the updating of
practice and antenatal education may be required so that woman are given the information they need to make an informed choice as to what they want for their own body, child and experience.

SORBS1 gene, a new candidate for diabetic nephropathy: results from a multi-stage genome-wide association study in patients with type 1 diabetes

Aims/hypothesis

AGWAN: A Generative Model for Labelled, Weighted Graphs

Real-world graphs or networks tend to exhibit a well-known set of properties, such as heavy-tailed degree distributions, clustering and community formation. Much effort has been directed into creating realistic and tractable models for unlabelled graphs, which has yielded insights into graph structure and evolution. Recently, attention has moved to creating models for labelled graphs: many real-world graphs are labelled with both discrete and numeric attributes. In this paper, we presentAgwan (Attribute Graphs: Weighted and Numeric), a generative model for random graphs with discrete labels and weighted edges. The model is easily generalised to edges labelled with an arbitrary number of numeric attributes. We include algorithms for fitting the parameters of the Agwanmodel to real-world graphs and for generating random graphs from the model. Using real-world directed and undirected graphs as input, we compare our approach to state-of-the-art random labelled graph generators and draw conclusions about the contribution of discrete vertex labels and edge weights to graph structure.

Understanding coronary heart disease-related disability in older adults in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in 2010/2011

Background

Although life expectancy continues to increase in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) and Northern Ireland (NI), coronary heart disease (CHD) remains a leading cause of death and disability in older adults. Some, but not all, of the socioeconomic inequality in cardiovascular disability can be explained by a social gradient in conventional risk factors. The aims of the research were to assess CHD-related disability, and to establish the prevalence and population attributable fractions (PAFs) of risk factors for CHD-related disability across gender and socioeconomic groups in older adults in NI and ROI.

A Lagrangian approach for modeling road collisions using second-order models of traffic flow

In [M. Herty, A. Klein, S. Moutari, V. Schleper, and G. Steinaur, IMA J. Appl. Math., 78(5), 1087–1108, 2013] and [M. Herty and V. Schleper, ZAMM J. Appl. Math. Mech., 91, 763–776, 2011], a macroscopic approach, derived from fluid-dynamics models, has been introduced to infer traffic conditions prone to road traffic collisions along highways’ sections. In these studies, the governing equations are coupled within an Eulerian framework, which assumes fixed interfaces between the models. A coupling in Lagrangian coordinates would enable us to get rid of this (not very realistic) assumption. In this paper, we investigate the well-posedness and the suitability of the coupling of the governing equations within the Lagrangian framework. Further, we illustrate some features of the proposed approach through some numerical simulations.