Hearing Impairment in Municipal Refuse and Glass Recycling Collection Operatives.

Several international regulatory bodies and researchers have identified employees in the municipal refuse and recycling industry as potentially at risk of noise induced hearing loss. Whilst materials recycling facilities have been subject to research regarding the health effects of hazardous exposures, the roadside recycling collection aspects of the industry has been identified as requiring further investigation. The requirement for characterization of such risk has been increased in the European Union by legislation that has led to increased rates of municipal recycling in the waste disposal industry.

A Web-based database for pathology faculty effort reporting.

To ensure appropriate mission-based budgeting and equitable distribution of funds for faculty salaries, our compensation committee developed a pathology-specific effort reporting database. Principles included the following: (1) measurement should be done by web-based databases; (2) most entry should be done by departmental administration or be relational to other databases; (3) data entry categories should be aligned with funding streams; and (4) units of effort should be equal across categories of effort (service, teaching, research). MySQL was used for all data transactions (http://dev.