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1. Nested risks and responsibilities: Perspectives on fertilizer from human urine in two U.S. regions

   https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2021.103.016  

   Schreiber, Tatiana; Opperman, Shaina; Hardin, Rebecca; Cavicchi, Julia; Pallmeyer, Audrey; Nace, Kim; Love, Nancy (January 2021, Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development)

   null (Ed.)

   This paper reports on social research investigating perceptions concerning the diversion of urine from the waste stream and its use as fertilizer in two study regions, New England and the Upper Mid­west. We hypothesized that discomfort or disgust might affect acceptance of such a shift in human “waste” management. However, our findings suggest that a more significant concern of those potentially involved in this process may be distrust of how economic interests influence scientific and technical information. Both physical risks (to the environment and public health) and socio-political risks (to fragile farm economies and consumer communities) play out at individual, household, regional, and global scales. We describe the intersection of these complex understandings as nested risks and responsibilities that must inform the future of urine reclamation. Our respondents' shared concern about environmental risks has already galvanized communities to take responsibility for implementing closed-loop alternatives to current agricul­tural inputs and waste management practices in their communities. Attention to these nested understandings of both risk and responsibility should shape research priorities and foster participatory approaches to urine nutrient reclamation, including strategies for education, planning, regulation, technology design, and agricultural application. 

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2. Why Do We Need Food Systems Informatics? Introduction to This Special Collection on Smart and Connected Regional Food Systems

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su15086556  

   Tomich, Thomas P.; Hoy, Casey; Dimock, Michael R.; Hollander, Allan D.; Huber, Patrick R.; Hyder, Ayaz; Lange, Matthew C.; Riggle, Courtney M.; Roberts, Michael T.; Quinn, James F. (April 2023, Sustainability)

   Public interest in where food comes from and how it is produced, processed, and distributed has increased over the last few decades, with even greater focus emerging during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mounting evidence and experience point to disturbing weaknesses in our food systems’ abilities to support human livelihoods and wellbeing, and alarming long-term trends regarding both the environmental footprint of food systems and mounting vulnerabilities to shocks and stressors. How can we tackle the “wicked problems” embedded in a food system? More specifically, how can convergent research programs be designed and resulting knowledge implemented to increase inclusion, sustainability, and resilience within these complex systems, support widespread contributions to and acceptance of solutions to these challenges, and provide concrete benchmarks to measure progress and understand tradeoffs among strategies along multiple dimensions? This article introduces and defines food systems informatics (FSI) as a tool to enhance equity, sustainability, and resilience of food systems through collaborative, user-driven interaction, negotiation, experimentation, and innovation within food systems. Specific benefits we foresee in further development of FSI platforms include the creation of capacity-enabling verifiable claims of sustainability, food safety, and human health benefits relevant to particular locations and products; the creation of better incentives for the adoption of more sustainable land use practices and for the creation of more diverse agro-ecosystems; the wide-spread use of improved and verifiable metrics of sustainability, resilience, and health benefits; and improved human health through better diets. 

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3. Observations and conversations: how communities learn about infection risk can impact the success of non-pharmaceutical interventions against epidemics

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12353-9  

   Silk, Matthew J.; Carrignon, Simon; Bentley, R. Alexander; Fefferman, Nina H. (December 2022, BMC Public Health)

   Abstract Background Individual behavioural decisions are responses to a person’s perceived social norms that could be shaped by both their physical and social environment. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, these environments correspond to epidemiological risk from contacts and the social construction of risk by communication within networks of friends. Understanding the circumstances under which the influence of these different social networks can promote the acceptance of non-pharmaceutical interventions and consequently the adoption of protective behaviours is critical for guiding useful, practical public health messaging. Methods We explore how information from both physical contact and social communication layers of a multiplex network can contribute to flattening the epidemic curve in a community. Connections in the physical contact layer represent opportunities for transmission, while connections in the communication layer represent social interactions through which individuals may gain information, e.g. messaging friends. Results We show that maintaining focus on awareness of risk among each individual’s physical contacts promotes the greatest reduction in disease spread, but only when an individual is aware of the symptoms of a non-trivial proportion of their physical contacts (~ ≥ 20%). Information from the social communication layer without was less useful when these connections matched less well with physical contacts and contributed little in combination with accurate information from physical contacts. Conclusions We conclude that maintaining social focus on local outbreak status will allow individuals to structure their perceived social norms appropriately and respond more rapidly when risk increases. Finding ways to relay accurate local information from trusted community leaders could improve mitigation even where more intrusive/costly strategies, such as contact-tracing, are not possible. 

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4. Drivers of social acceptance of natural-resource management: A comparison of the public and professionals in California

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118605  

   Eriksson, Max; Safeeq, Mohammad; Padilla, Lace; Pathak, Tapan; O'Geen, Toby; Egoh, Benis; Lugg, Jaquelyn; Bales, Roger (November 2023, Journal of Environmental Management)

   The social impacts of natural resource management are challenging to evaluate because their perceived benefits and costs vary across stakeholder groups. Nevertheless, ensuring social acceptance is essential to building public support for adaptive measures required for the sustainable management of ecosystems in a warming climate. Based on surveys with both members of the public and natural-resource professionals in California, we applied structural-equation modeling to examine how psychological factors impact individuals' attitudes toward management's capacity to reduce the impacts of disturbance events, including wildfires, smoke from wildfires, drought, water shortages, tree mortality, and utility failure. We found the members of the public more optimistic than natural-resource professionals, perceiving management capacity to be on average 3.04 points higher (of 10) and displaying higher levels of trust of the government on both the state (Δ = 11%) and federal levels (Δ = 19%). Personal experience with natural-resource events had a positive effect on perceived management in both the public (1.26) and the professional samples (5.05), whereas perceived future risk had a negative effect within both samples (professional = −0.91, public = −0.45). In addition, higher trust and perceived management effectiveness were also linked with higher perceptions of management capacity in the public sample (1.81 versus 1.24), which could affect the acceptance of management actions. Continued social acceptance in a period of increasing risk may depend on managers sharing personal experiences and risk perception when communicating with the public. The contemporary shift toward multibenefit aims is an important part of that message. 

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5. Fate of the Urinary Tract Virus BK Human Polyomavirus in Source-Separated Urine

   https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.02374-17  

   Goetsch, Heather E.; Zhao, Linbo; Gnegy, Mariah; Imperiale, Michael J.; Love, Nancy G.; Wigginton, Krista R.; Elkins, Christopher A. (April 2018, Applied and Environmental Microbiology)

   ABSTRACT Human polyomaviruses are emerging pathogens that infect a large percentage of the human population and are excreted in urine. Consequently, urine that is collected for fertilizer production often has high concentrations of polyomavirus genes. We studied the fate of infectious double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) BK human polyomavirus (BKPyV) in hydrolyzed source-separated urine with infectivity assays and quantitative PCR (qPCR). Although BKPyV genomes persisted in the hydrolyzed urine for long periods of time ( T 90 [time required for 90% reduction in infectivity or gene copies] of >3 weeks), the viruses were rapidly inactivated ( T 90 of 1.1 to 11 h) in most of the tested urine samples. Interestingly, the infectivity of dsDNA bacteriophage surrogate T3 ( T 90 of 24 to 46 days) was much more persistent than that of BKPyV, highlighting a major shortcoming of using bacteriophages as human virus surrogates. Pasteurization and filtration experiments suggest that BKPyV virus inactivation was due to microorganism activity in the source-separated urine, and SDS-PAGE Western blots showed that BKPyV protein capsid disassembly is concurrent with inactivation. Our results imply that stored urine does not pose a substantial risk of BKPyV transmission, that qPCR and infectivity of the dsDNA surrogate do not accurately depict BKPyV fate, and that microbial inactivation is driven by structural elements of the BKPyV capsid. IMPORTANCE We demonstrate that a common urinary tract virus has a high susceptibility to the conditions in hydrolyzed urine and consequently would not be a substantial exposure route to humans using urine-derived fertilizers. The results have significant implications for understanding virus fate. First, by demonstrating that the dsDNA (double-stranded DNA) genome of the polyomavirus lasts for weeks despite infectivity lasting for hours to days, our work highlights the shortcomings of using qPCR to estimate risks from unculturable viruses. Second, commonly used dsDNA surrogate viruses survived for weeks under the same conditions that BK polyomavirus survived for only hours, highlighting issues with using virus surrogates to predict how human viruses will behave in the environment. Finally, our mechanistic inactivation analysis provides strong evidence that microbial activity drives rapid virus inactivation, likely through capsid disassembly. Overall, our work underlines how subtle structural differences between viruses can greatly impact their environmental fate. 

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