Beetles in Flour and Meal

A 2 page overview of grain beetles and mealworms with management information for New York State residents

Millipedes, Sowbugs, Pillbugs, and Centipedes

A 3 page overview with household management information for New York State residents

European Earwig

A 2 page overview of earwig life history and management information for New York State residents

Carpenter Bees

A 2 page overview of carpenter bee life history and management information for New York State residents

How to solve our water crisis: a demo spot market for ground water

We show how to set up a physically and economically correct market for ground and surface water, using a modified version of MODMAN. MODMAN uses MODFLOW to produce a response matrix, which in turn becomes part of a linear program (LP). Greenwald showed how to use this mechanism to optimize various groundwater problems. We show how to use MODMAN to create an LP suitable for sustainable water trading. The LP includes required environmental conditions (e.g., head levels, flow to streams) as constraints, guaranteeing sustainability. The objective is to maximize consumer surplus. The objective coefficients are taken from users' bids to buy/sell from their water allocation, ensuring that no water users lose from the auction. Our approach implies an institutional arrangement for a water market in which a regional agency acts as a broker for a given catchment. Users bid for water through a web page, thus virtually eliminating transaction costs. The agency then solves the LP, which gives the optimal prices and allocations. We will demonstrate our software, and provide preliminary results using data from New Zealand's Marlborough district. We believe that this approach can help solve the world water crisis

Tools for Addressing Cumulative Impacts on Human Health and the Environment

This is a postprint (author's final draft) version of an article published in the journal Environmental Justice in 2014. The final version of this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/env-2014.0016 (login may be required). The version made available in OpenBU was supplied by the author."Cumulative impacts" refers to the total harm to human health and the environment resulting from combinations of stressors over time. Cumulative impacts are creating three kinds of effects: degraded ecosystems (such as oceans and boreal forests), human diseases, and disproportionately burdened communities, which are the hallmark of environmental injustice. At the heart of the problem lie the modern risk-based regulatory systems of the U.S. and Europe, which are not designed to understand or manage cumulative impacts, and which have permitted an accumulation of harmful activities and effects. Alternative, precautionary regulatory approaches have been recommended but not yet widely implemented. Now some communities, planners and regulators are finding ways to supplement traditional risk-based approaches, using innovative new tools for assessment and decision-making in the face of cumulative impacts, including indexes, mapping, and screening. These efforts both inform policy and serve as exemplary models. Together they point the way toward new, precautionary decision structures aimed at reducing cumulative impacts.Science & Environmental Health Network; National Center for Environmental Research (NCER) STAR Program, EPA grant number RD83458201

Risk, precaution and science: towards a more constructive policy debate. Talking point on the precautionary principle

Few issues in contemporary risk policy are as momentous or contentious as the precautionary principle. Since it first emerged in German environmental policy, it has been championed by environmentalists and consumer protection groups, and resisted by the industries they oppose (Raffensperger & Tickner, 1999). Various versions of the principle now proliferate across different national and international jurisdictions and policy areas (Fisher, 2002). From a guiding theme in European Commission (EC) environmental policy, it has become a general principle of EC law (CEC, 2000; Vos & Wendler, 2006). Its influence has extended from the regulation of environmental, technological and health risks to the wider governance of science, innovation and trade (O'Riordan & Cameron, 1994)

Identity in Flux: Finding Boris Kolomanovich in the Interstices of Medieval European History

The politics of kinship and of monarchy in medieval eastern Europe are typically constructed within the framework of the modern nation-state, read back into the past. The example of Boris Kolomanovich, instead, highlights the horizontal interconnectivity of medieval Europe and its neighbors and demonstrates the malleability of individual identity within kinship webs, as well as the creation of situational kinship networks to advance individuals’ goals