S after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, about 10% of Lucille Underwood’s workday as a mental health specialist with the Allegheny County Department of Human Services was spent on issues related to disaster preparation and response. That soon changed. “I can tell you that in the past five years, my job has become 90% disaster preparation and response,” said Underwood, who is assigne...

In contrast to many recent large-scale catastrophic events such as the Turkish earthquake in 1999, 9/11 attack in New York in 2001, the Bali Bombing in 2002, the Asian Tsunami in 2004, the initial rescue effort towards Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. in 2005 had been sluggish. Even as the Congress has promised to convene a formal inquiry into the response to Katrina, this paper offers another per...

hydroponics technique accompanied by adjustment of nutrient solution seems to optimize crop production and help in establishing sustainable agriculture. in recent years, the greenhouse production of cucumber has been increased in iran, however there are just a few proper nutrient solutions employed in growing the crop. in line with this, an experiment was conducted to find the effect of various...

BACKGROUND Psychosocial stress maintains cigarette use and precipitates relapse, but little is known about how natural disasters in particular affect smoking. PURPOSE To determine the feasibility of recruiting victims soon after a natural disaster for a survey study, and to assess the types and determinants of changes in smoking behavior resulting from exposure to the disaster. METHODS A co...

Despite growing interest in urban resilience, remarkably little is known about vegetation dynamics in the aftermath of disasters. In this study, we examined the composition and structure of plant communities across New Orleans (Louisiana, USA) following catastrophic flooding triggered by levee failures during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Focusing on eight neighborhoods that span a range of demogr...

A natural disaster leading to accumulation of environmental contaminants may have substantial effects on the male reproductive system. Our aim was to compare and assess semen parameters in a normospermic population residing in the Southern Louisiana, USA area pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina. We retrospectively evaluated semen analyses data (n = 3452) of 1855 patients who attended the Tulane Uni...

On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy struck the U.S. northeast and mid-Atlantic seaboard; the effects of the storm extended to southeastern and midwestern states and to eastern Canada. At the time, 1,899 residents in the most affected areas were undergoing treatment for tuberculosis (TB) disease or infection. To ascertain the operational abilities of state and local TB programs during and after...