Biofuels Production Has Unintended Consequences on Water Quality and Quantity in Mississippi

Global stressors on water quality and quantity.

This inequality is especially critical for Asia, which has 60% of the world’s population but only 36% of the world’s water. Water quality in terms of pollutant loading also is not distributed equally and is related to the type of use and a country’s level of development (Figure 2). Developing countries often have less capacity to improve water quality and depend on lower-quality water for a var...

Unintended Consequences.

A Meta-model for Water Quantity and Water Quality

The management of water resources requires simulation models for different time horizons and spatial scales as well as different types of information systems as GIS or Water Information Systems. Mathematical models integrate former experiences and theoretical knowledge about a system with actual information gained by natural processes and man-induced activities. Because of the great variety and...

Exploring the risk of unintended consequences of quality improvement efforts.

An increasing focus on the quality of care has led to a proliferation of process and outcome measures to allow for the measurement of quality. For the year 2012, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has proposed a total of 367 quality measures (2). At face value, all of these quality measures appear reasonable and assess endpoints of definite clinical importance. However, many of these...

The unintended consequences of publicly reporting quality information.

Health care report cards publicly report information about physician, hospital, and health plan quality in an attempt to improve that quality. Reporting quality information publicly is presumed to motivate quality improvement through 2 main mechanisms. First, public quality information allows patients, referring physicians, and health care purchasers to preferentially select high-quality physic...