Risk Analysis and Occurrence of Hepatitis E Virus (HEV) in Domestic Swine in Northeast Brazil

Anti-HEV antibodies were detected in animals from abattoir and in farms from northeast Brazil. Our results suggest that HEV is highly disseminated in the swine population and might present a great risk to animal handlers and for consumption of raw or undercooked meat and meat products in northeast Brazil.     

Barley, a potential species for initial reclamation of saline composite tailings of oil sands

The oil sands industry in Alberta (Canada) has developed the composite tailings (CT) process to reduce the fluid fine tails resulting from the processing of oil sands. This process uses a chemical coagulant (gypsum or alum) to produce aggregated fines (clay), so they are retained with the coarse sand fraction of the extraction tailings to form CT, from which fines-free water is released relatively quickly compared with untreated tailings. The resulting CT and CT waters are saline-sodic, with Na+, SO4(2-), and Cl- being the dominant ions. When freshly deposited, the CT deposits are too soft for access by reclamation equipment, and the time required for these deposits to remove the water sufficiently to support traffic is uncertain. A greenhouse study was designed to determine the suitability of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) for reclamation of fresh CT deposits and to evaluate benefits of peat amendments. This study assessed germination, early plant growth, chlorophyll content, and survival of barley growing in alum- and gypsum-treated CT, with and without peat amendment. Ion and trace metal accumulation in the root and shoot tissues of barley was determined. Amendment of CT with peat improved germination, survival, and growth of barley, but did not prevent leaf injury (probably due to Na and Cl- and possibly multiple nutrient deficiency). Field studies will be undertaken to validate our greenhouse results suggesting that barley could be used to improve dewatering of the freshly deposited substrates, reduce soil erosion, and facilitate leaching of ions by root penetration into the substrate.     

Glacial-interglacial changes in the occurrence of Pb, Cd, Cu and Zn in Vostok Antarctic ice from 240 000 to 410 000 years BP

Lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) have been measured by electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry in various sections of the 3623 m deep ice core drilled at Vostok, in central East Antarctica. The sections were dated from 240 to 410 kyear BP (Marine Isotopic Stages (MIS) 7.5 to 11.3), which corresponds to the 3rd and 4th glacial-interglacial cycles before present. Concentrations are found to have varied greatly during this 170 kyear time period, with high concentration values during the coldest climatic stages such as MIS 8.4 and 10.2 and much lower concentration values during warmer periods, such as the interglacials MIS 7.5, 9.3 and 11.3. Rock and soil dust were the dominant sources for Pb, whatever the period, and for Zn and Cu and possibly Cd during cold climatic stages. The contribution from volcanic emissions was important for Cd during all periods and might have been significant for Cu and Zn during warm periods.     

Shoreline rotation and response to nourishment of a gravel embayed beach using a low-cost video monitoring technique: San Michele-Sassi Neri,Central Italy

On beaches where natural shoreline variability is significant, beach nourishment is a useful engineering method to augment the dry beach and protect infrastructure and/or unstable cliffs. In this study, a low-cost video monitoring system is used to monitor the shoreline response to a nourishment operation on a dynamic gravel embayed beach in Central Italy. Video-derived shorelines were collected over a 15-month period to measure the evolution of the beach with regards to three specific parameters: the dry beach width, the dry beach area and the beach orientation. Moderate increases in the dry beach width of 3.6 m and 6.7 m across the embayment were observed in response to two different gravel nourishments of approximately 40,000 m³ and 46,000 m³ respectively. The orientation of the beach meanwhile was found to rotate rapidly in the clockwise direction and more gradually in the counter-clockwise direction. Analyses of individual storm events suggest these rapid clockwise rotations are caused by ESE storms, which result in beach retreat particularly at the southern end. The combination of an overall narrow beach width and a clockwise beach orientation is observed to cause a cliff erosion event at a vulnerable point along the embayment.     

Integration of ozonation and an anaerobic expanded granular sludge bed reactor for micropollutant removal from sewage

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Conventional sewage treatment systems are generally not designed to remove micropollutants, requiring the development of new technologies, such as the...     

LED irradiated photo-Fenton for the removal of estrogenic activity and endocrine disruptors from wastewater treatment plant effluent

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The goal of this work was to evaluate the performance of the LED irradiated photo-Fenton process on the removal of (i) estrogenic activity and (ii)...     

Distinct symbiont lineages in three thyasirid species (Bivalvia: Thyasiridae) from the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea

Thyasiridae are one of the less studied groups of chemosymbiotic bivalves. Here, we investigated symbioses in three different thyasirid species collected at three cold seeps from the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Phylogenetic analysis of bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences demonstrated that each thyasirid species harbours a single phylotype of symbiont that belongs to a distinct lineage of putative sulphur-oxidizing Gammaproteobacteria. This result is confirmed by other marker genes (encoding 23S rRNA and APS reductase) and fluorescence in situ hybridization. This work highlights the diversity of bacteria involved in symbiosis with thyasirids and underlines the relevance of this group as a target for future symbiosis studies.     

A hidden species-area curve

The species-area curve, which describes the relationship between the number of observed species in a geographical region and the area of the region, plays a central role in biogeography. Beyond its scientific importance, the species-area curve is commonly used to assess the loss of species due to habitat loss. When the species-area curve is estimated from spatial samples, the existence of species with low or highly spatially variable abundance exaggerates the true rate at which species accumulate with area. Here, a hidden species-area curve is defined that accounts for this sampling effect and its estimation by maximum likelihood is outlined. Both the species-area curve and the hidden species-area curve are conditioned on the observed species list; thus the analysis does not depend on the total number of observed and unobserved species, that is, species richness. The method is tested by sub-sampling some tropical forest data and found to work well. It is also applied to a classic data set from the deep sea. For these data, accounting for this sampling effect has a large impact.     

Greening the structural change process: ranking sustainability of countries in climate change

This paper proposes an analytical toolkit to measure the sustainability of industrialization across countries. Drawing from a methodology developed to analyze economic development as a process of modernization, it ranks countries on the basis of the emissions they produce and their stage of development. The proposed index penalizes environmental pressures taking into account the modernization level of a country. The paper also proposes an assessment of the environmental performance of countries at the same level of modernization. It introduces the notion of policy space as the difference between the best and worst environmental performer at a given level of modernization. An important finding of the paper is that the magnitude of the policy space is not homogenous across different levels of income and environmental targets.