Familiarity breeds acceptance: Predictors of residents' support for curbside food waste collection in a city with green bin and a city without.

Food waste remains a high priority greenhouse gas (GHG) emission problem and household curbside collection - green bin - with mass treatment is often adopted as a viable solution for GHG reduction. The aim of this study is to explore attitudinal and situational predictors of support for residential curbside green bin programs. Using responses to 517 household surveys from the mid-sized Canadian cities of London, Ontario (proposed green bin program) and Kitchener-Waterloo (KW), Ontario (operating green bin program for 10+ years) comparison of means t-tests, correlations and linear regression are used to test five hypotheses derived from the food waste and waste diversion literatures that predict green bin support: situational factors, current food wasting, theory of planned behaviour attitudes, concern that green bin encourages food wasting, and concern that food waste ends up in the garbage regardless of green bin.

Nonspecific DNA binding by P1 ParA determines the distribution of plasmid partition and repressor activities.

The faithful segregation, or "partition," of many low-copy number bacterial plasmids is driven by plasmid-encoded ATPases that are represented by the P1 plasmid ParA protein. ParA binds to the bacterial nucleoid via an ATP-dependent nonspecific DNA (nsDNA)-binding activity, which is essential for partition. ParA also has a site-specific DNA-binding activity to the operator (), which requires either ATP or ADP, and which is essential for it to act as a transcriptional repressor but is dispensable for partition.

Insufficient levels of the nrdAB-encoded ribonucleotide reductase underlie the severe growth defect of the Δhda E. coli strain.

The ATP-bound form of the Escherichia coli DnaA replication initiator protein remodels the chromosomal origin of replication, oriC, to load the replicative helicase. The primary mechanism for regulating the activity of DnaA involves the Hda and β clamp proteins, which act together to dramatically stimulate the intrinsic DNA-dependent ATPase activity of DnaA via a process termed Regulatory Inactivation of DnaA. In addition to hyperinitiation, strains lacking hda function also exhibit cold sensitive growth at 30°C.

Attitudes toward waste to energy facilities and impacts on diversion in Ontario, Canada.

Despite progress in residential waste diversion, residual waste - that fraction which cannot be recycled or composted - must continue to be managed by municipalities. Zero waste and environmental groups worry that waste-to-energy (WtE) incinerators discourage diversion, while both incineration and landfill have been stigmatized in the popular consciousness such that WtE incinerators in particular are being cancelled more often than they are approved. We conducted a mail-back survey of 217 residents in Toronto, Durham and Peel, Ontario, to understand attitudes toward diversion, levels of support for WtE incineration and WtE landfill (landfill gas recovery) facilities, and predictors of facility support.

Cumulative effects of noise and odour annoyances on environmental and health related quality of life.

Noise and odour annoyances are important considerations in research on health effects of air pollution and traffic noise. Cumulative exposures can occur via several chemical hazards or a combination of chemical and stressor-based hazards, and related health outcomes can be generalized as manifestations of physiological and/or psychological stress responses. A major research challenge in this field is to understand the combined health effects of physiological and psychological responses to exposure.

Plasmid Partition Mechanisms.

The stable maintenance of low-copy-number plasmids in bacteria is actively driven by partition mechanisms that are responsible for the positioning of plasmids inside the cell. Partition systems are ubiquitous in the microbial world and are encoded by many bacterial chromosomes as well as plasmids. These systems, although different in sequence and mechanism, typically consist of two proteins and a DNA partition site, or prokaryotic centromere, on the plasmid or chromosome.

Adding insult to injury: The development of psychosocial stress in Ontario wind turbine communities.

Though historically dismissed as not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitudes, reports of psychosocial stress linked to wind energy developments have emerged in Ontario, Canada. While the debate and rhetoric intensify concerning whether wind turbines 'actually' cause 'health' effects, less sincere attention has been given to the lived experience and mental well-being of those near turbines. Drawing on theories of environmental stress, this grounded theory, mixed-method (n = 26 interviews; n = 152 questionnaires) study of two communities in 2011 and 2012 traces how and why some wind turbine community residents suffer substantial changes to quality of life, develop negative perceptions of 'the other' and in some cases, experience intra-community conflict.

'A drop of water in the pool': information and engagement of linguistic communities around a municipal pesticide bylaw to protect the public's health.

The Multicultural Yard Health and Environment Project (MYHEP) used Toronto's Pesticide Bylaw roll-out process to examine how culturally specific perceptions and practices might influence the relevance of municipal public health information and community engagement strategies and the effectiveness of health protection initiatives. In Canada, and particularly in Toronto, such information is needed for governments to effectively engage with increasingly diverse populations. Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with Spanish- and Cantonese-speaking participants to document opinions about pesticide use and regulation and views on municipal information and engagement strategies.

Evidence for roles of the Escherichia coli Hda protein beyond regulatory inactivation of DnaA.

The ATP-bound form of the Escherichia coli DnaA protein binds 'DnaA boxes' present in the origin of replication (oriC) and operator sites of several genes, including dnaA, to co-ordinate their transcription with initiation of replication. The Hda protein, together with the β sliding clamp, stimulates the ATPase activity of DnaA via a process termed regulatory inactivation of DnaA (RIDA), to regulate the activity of DnaA in DNA replication. Here, we used the mutant dnaN159 strain, which expresses the β159 clamp protein, to gain insight into how the actions of Hda are co-ordinated with replication.

Context, cultural bias, and health risk perception: the "everyday" nature of pesticide policy preferences in London, Calgary, and Halifax.

Risk perception and the cultural theory of risk have often been contrasted in relation to risk-related policy making; however, the local context in which risks are experienced, an important component of everyday decision making, remains understudied. What is unclear is the extent to which localized community beliefs and behaviors depend on larger belief systems about risk (i.e.

Reaching for environmental health justice: Canadian experiences for a comprehensive research, policy and advocacy agenda in health promotion.

Spatial disparities in environmental quality and practices are contributing to rising health inequalities worldwide. To date, the field of health promotion has not contributed as significantly as it might to a systematic analysis of the physical environment as a determinant of health nor to a critique of inequitable environmental governance practices responsible for social injustice-particularly in the Canadian context. In this paper, we explore ways in which health promotion and environmental justice perspectives can be combined into an integrated movement for environmental health justice in health promotion.

The social and psychological impact of the chemical contamination incident in Weston Village, UK: a qualitative analysis.

This paper contributes to the literature on community response to the announcement of well-established chemical contamination close to their homes. It describes a study of residents' views of chemical contamination on a close and long-standing community in the context of impacts on everyday life. This followed the discovery early in 2000 that houses in Weston Village, in the County of Cheshire, England, were contaminated by the chemical hexachlorobutadiene which was seeping from a sealed chemical waste quarry owned by Imperial Chemical Industries, one of the world's largest chemical companies.