During the previous survey year (Year 2), a methodological issue arose which meant that our measures were no longer providing a reliable indication of how levels of contamination in chickens at retail were changing over time, or providing like for like comparisons between retailers. This methodological issue is explained in the January-March 16 report: www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/campy-...

The swimming behavior of the calanoid copepod Centropages hamatus is used as a very sensitive real-time screening tool to assess hydrocarbon contamination in marine waters. A behavioral stress index based on the complexity of swimming sequences is suggested as a potential tool to critically assess behavioral responses to natural and anthropogenic forcing in the marine environment.

We introduce the ε-Gini-contamination multiple priors model in which the set of priors are those probability measures that are ‘close’ to a central P with respect to the relative Gini concentration index. We show that such preferences can be represented by a linear-mean-standard-deviation utility function on a restricted domain. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Toxicity-based sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) are often used to assess the potential of sediment contamination to adversely affect benthic macrofauna, yet the correspondence of these guidelines to benthic community condition is poorly documented. This study compares the performance of 5 toxicity-based SQG approaches to a new benthos-based SQG approach relative to changes in benthic communit...

Water (brine) co-produced with oil in the Williston Basin is some of the most saline in the nation. The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), characterized by glacial sediments and numerous wetlands, covers the northern and eastern portion of the Williston Basin. Sheridan County, Montana, lies within the PPR and has a documented history of brine contamination. Surface water and shallow groundwater in t...

As a result of the continuous urbanization and industrialization in China over the last few decades, heavy metals have been continuously emitted into urban environments and now pose serious threats to human health. In the present study, an extensive urban near-surface dust survey was conducted in Changchun, China, to evaluate the current status of heavy metal contamination in urban dust and to ...

Trimming procedures are an important part of the sequence analysis pipeline in an EST Sequencing Project. In general, trimming is done in several phases, each one detecting and removing some kind of undesirable artifact, such as low quality sequence, vectors or adapters sequence, and contamination. However, this strategy often results in a phase being unable to recognize its target because part...

this study was carried out for the purpose of investigating the issue of tailings dams as a potential source of contamination by trace elements in soils at the sidi bou othmane mine in the marrakech region, morocco. soil samples taken from depths of up to 15 cm and within a radius of 50 m from the tailings dams, were analyzed for cd, cu, pb and zn using atomic absorption spectrometry. average c...

an increase in heavy metal pollution in the soils of arak due to industrialization and urbanization has become an environmental problem. the region hosts several industrial facilities which are the main source for hazardous wastes which include electric, metal, automotive supply industry, food, machinery, and chemicals. soil samples were collected from these industrial areas in the central and ...

background: heavy metal pollution in the sediment of the yellow river draws wide attention in the recent years. the yellow river wetland nature reserve of zhengzhou is one of the major wetlands of the river and located at the beginning of the lower reach. in this article, we aimed to investigate the degree and the sources of the metal pollution in the reserve. methods: metals as cu, pb, cr, cd ...