Suchergebnisse

<i>Aims:</i> To assess among injecting drug users (IDUs) in St. Petersburg, Russia, the urban environment, social norms and individual correlates of unsafe injecting. <i>Methods:</i> Between December 2004 and January 2007, 446 IDUs were interviewed in St. Petersburg, Russia. <i>Results:</i> Prevalence of HCV was 96% and HIV 44%. 17% reported receptive syringe sharing after an HIV-infected IDU, 49% distributive syringe sharing, 76% sharing cookers, 73% sharing filters and 71% syringe-mediated drug sharing when not all syringes were new. Urban environmental characteristics correlated with sharing cookers and syringe-mediated sharing, and social norms correlated with receptive and distributive syringe sharing and sharing cookers. Individual correlates included cleaning used syringes (all 5 dependent variables) and self-report of HIV infection (receptive and distributive syringe sharing). <i>Conclusion:</i> HIV status disclosure is an unreliable but frequently used HIV prevention method among IDUs in St. Petersburg, who reported alarmingly high levels of injecting equipment sharing. Voluntary counseling and testing should be widely available for this population. Ethnography is needed to assess the effectiveness of the syringe cleaning process. Prevention interventions need to be ongoing among IDUs in St. Petersburg, and should incorporate urban environmental factors and social norms, which may involve peer education and social network interventions.

Background: The FP6 EU HENVINET project aimed at synthesizing the scientific information available on a number of topics of high relevance to policy makers in environment and health. The goal of the current paper is to reflect on the methodology that was used in the project, in view of exploring the usefulness of this and similar methodologies to the policy process. The topics investigated included health impacts of the brominated flame retardants decabrominated diphenylether (decaBDE) and hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), phthalates highlighting di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP), the pesticide chlorpyrifos (CPF), nanoparticles, the impacts of climate change on asthma and other respiratory disorders, and the influence of environment health stressors on cancer induction. Methods: Initially the focus was on identifying knowledge gaps in the state of the art in scientific knowledge. Literature reviews covered all elements that compose the causal chain of the different environmental health issues from emissions to exposures, to effects and to health impacts. Through expert elicitation, knowledge gaps were highlighted by assessing expert confidence using calibrated confidence scales. During this work a complementary focus to that on knowledge gaps was developed through interdisciplinary reflections. By extending the scope of the endeavour from only a scientific perspective, to also include the more problem solving oriented policy perspective, the question of which kind of policy action experts consider justifiable was addressed. This was addressed by means of a questionnaire. In an expert workshop the results of both questionnaires were discussed as a basis for policy briefs. Results: The expert elicitation, the application of the calibrated confidence levels and the problem solving approach were all experienced as being quite challenging for the experts involved, as these approaches did not easily relate to mainstream environment and health scientific practices. Even so, most experts were quite positive about it. In particular, the opportunity to widen one's own horizon and to interactively exchange knowledge and debate with a diversity of experts seemed to be well appreciated in this approach. Different parts of the approach also helped in focussing on specific relevant aspects of scientific knowledge, and as such can be considered of reflective value. Conclusions: The approach developed by HENVINET was part of a practice of learning by doing and of interdisciplinary cooperation and negotiation. Ambitions were challenged by unforeseen complexities and difference of opinion and as no Holy Grail approach was at hand to copy or follow, it was quite an interesting but also complicated endeavour. Perfection, if this could be defined, seemed out of reach all the time. Nevertheless, many involved were quite positive about it. It seems that many felt that it fitted some important needs in current science when addressing the needs of policy making on such important issues, without anyone really having a clue on how to actually do this. Challenging questions remain on the quality of such approach and its product. Practice tells us that there probably is no best method and that the best we can do is dependent on contextual negotiation and learning from experiences that we think are relevant.

"What can we learn about the development of public interaction in e-democracy from a drama delivered by mobile headphones to an audience standing around a shopping center in a Stockholm suburb? In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens' input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools.
This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University.
Editors Love Ekenberg (senior research scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA], Laxenburg, professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Karin Hansson (artist and research fellow, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Mats Danielson (vice president and professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, affiliate researcher, IIASA) and Göran Cars (professor of Societal Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) draw innovative collaborations between mathematics, social science, and the arts.
They develop new problem formulations and solutions, with the aim of carrying decisions from agenda setting and problem awareness through to feasible courses of action by setting objectives, alternative generation, consequence assessments, and trade-off clarifications.
As a result, this book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences. "

In this paper, we outline the need for a coordinated international effort toward the building of an open-access Global Ocean Oxygen Database and ATlas (GO(2)DAT) complying with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). GO(2)DAT will combine data from the coastal and open ocean, as measured by the chemical Winkler titration method or by sensors (e.g., optodes, electrodes) from Eulerian and Lagrangian platforms (e.g., ships, moorings, profiling floats, gliders, ships of opportunities, marine mammals, cabled observatories). GO(2)DAT will further adopt a community-agreed, fully documented metadata format and a consistent quality control (QC) procedure and quality flagging (QF) system. GO(2)DAT will serve to support the development of advanced data analysis and biogeochemical models for improving our mapping, understanding and forecasting capabilities for ocean O-2 changes and deoxygenation trends. It will offer the opportunity to develop quality-controlled data synthesis products with unprecedented spatial (vertical and horizontal) and temporal (sub-seasonal to multi-decadal) resolution. These products will support model assessment, improvement and evaluation as well as the development of climate and ocean health indicators. They will further support the decision-making processes associated with the emerging blue economy, the conservation of marine resources and their associated ecosystem services and the development of management tools required by a diverse community of users (e.g., environmental agencies, aquaculture, and fishing sectors). A better knowledge base of the spatial and temporal variations of marine O-2 will improve our understanding of the ocean O-2 budget, and allow better quantification of the Earth's carbon and heat budgets. With the ever-increasing need to protect and sustainably manage ocean services, GO(2)DAT will allow scientists to fully harness the increasing volumes of O-2 data already delivered by the expanding global ocean observing system and enable smooth incorporation of much higher quantities of data from autonomous platforms in the open ocean and coastal areas into comprehensive data products in the years to come. This paper aims at engaging the community (e.g., scientists, data managers, policy makers, service users) toward the development of GO(2)DAT within the framework of the UN Global Ocean Oxygen Decade (GOOD) program recently endorsed by IOC-UNESCO. A roadmap toward GO(2)DAT is proposed highlighting the efforts needed (e.g., in terms of human resources). ; All authors would like to thank IOC-UNESCO, International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP), NOAA, and the German SFB754. MG is funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS) and received fundings from the FNRS BENTHOX program grant T.1009.15, the Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS), and the European Union's Horizon 2020 BRIDGE-BS project under grant agreement No. 101000240. MG, VG, KI, and BDew are supported by the Project CE2COAST funded by ANR (FR), BELSPO (BE), FCT (PT), IZM (LV), MI (IE), MIUR (IT), Rannis (IS), and RCN (NO) through the 2019 "Joint Transnational Call on Next Generation Climate Science in Europe for Oceans" initiated by JPI Climate and JPI Oceans. MT, KC, and VG acknowledge support from the United States National Science Foundation grant OCE-1840868 to the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR, United States). BoD also acknowledges support from ANID grants R20F0008-CEAZA and 1190276. This research (through VG, AP and BoD) received fundings from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 869300 (FutureMARES). CB, AP, VG, LC, BrD, VR, VT, and CS acknowledge support of the French CES ODATIS Oxygen through INSU funding. SKL acknowledges support from the Research Council of Norway (Grant No. 269753). This manuscript is a contribution to the UN Decade Global Ocean Oxygen (GOOD) Program.