The technical expertise that politicians relied on in the past to produce cost-effective and environmentally sound solutions no longer provides sufficient justification to approve waste facilities. Local authorities need to find more effective ways to involve stakeholders and communities in decision-making since public acceptance of municipal waste facilities is integral to delivering effective...

Aberrant activation of the Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway contributes to many forms of cancer. Primary cilia are Hh signal transduction centers. Two papers in a recent issue of Nature Medicine (Han et al., 2009; Wong et al., 2009) show that mutating cilia can increase or reduce the rates of tumorigenesis depending on how the Hh pathway is disrupted.

Commentary If there is any " sure thing " in epilepsy, the syndrome of childhood absence epilepsy (CAE) may come close to fitting the bill. The characteristic seizure semiology (staring spells), response to specific medications (ethosuximide or valproate), and prognosis (often outgrown by late adolescence) are about as close as we get to a well-defined syndrome with reproducible clinical featur...

A one-year survey was conducted in the greater region of Crete (located at the lower region of the Aegean Sea) for the purpose of identifying waste composition (including chemical and physical characterization), as well as any seasonal variation. The investigation was carried out repeatedly at seven landfills and one transfer station in Crete, in four phases. Each sampling phase corresponded to...

One of the original goals of intelligent educational systems was to guide each student to the most appropriate educational content. In previous studies, we explored both knowledge-based and social guidance approaches and learned that each has a weak side. In the present work, we have explored the idea of combining social guidance with more traditional knowledge-based guidance systems in hopes o...

Recycling information can be complex and often confusing which may subsequently reduce the participations in any waste recycling schemes. As a result, this research explored the roles as well as the importance of a holistic approach in designing recycling information using 15 expert-based (in-depth) interviews. The rationale was to offer a better understanding of what constitutes waste, recycli...

In this paper, a new guidance method for surface to surface ballistic missiles without mandatory engine cut-off will be presented. The complexity of solid fuel engine cut-off demands a comprehensive method for guiding these missiles. In the method presented in this paper, a certain guidance law is applied such that by transmitting appropriate commands to the control system, by changing the miss...

BACKGROUND The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) was established in 1999 and provides national guidance and advice to improve health and social care. Several steps in the research cycle have been identified that can support the reduction of waste that occurs in biomedical research. The first step in the process is ensuring appropriate research priority setting occurs so o...