Plants grown on sewage sludge in South China and its relevance to sludge stabilization and metal removal

The production of sewage sludge in China has been increasing sharply in order to treat 40% of the municipal sewage in 2005 as planned by central government. The main sludge disposal method is landfill owing to heavy metal contamination, but it presents an attractive potential for agricultural land application. Experiments were carried out to study the simultaneous metal removal and sludge stabilization byplants. The sludge samples were collected from Datansha Wastewater Treatment Plant of Guangzhou, it contained excessive Cu and Zn comparedwith the Chinese National Standard for Agricultural Use of Sewage Sludge. Plants growing on sludge beds were investigated to follow their growthand metal uptake. 30 sludge plants were identified during 1 year‘s observation. A Zn high-accumulating and high growth rate plant( A/ocas/amacrorrhiza) was selected and grown on sludge beds in plots. The water, organic matter, heavy metals and nutrients contents, the E. colinumber and the cress seed germination index were monitored for the slu,ge samples collected monthly. The plant growth pparameters and its heavy metals contents were also determined. The sewage sludge treated by plants could be stabilized at about 5 months, the E. coli numberwas significantly decreased and the cress seed germination index attained 100%. Crop on sludge could ameliorate the sludge drying. Theexperiments are continuing to find out the appropriate plant combination for simultaneous sludge stabilization and metal removal for an acceptableperiod. Comparisons between the proposed processes and other methods for treating produced sludge such as composting, chemical and bacterial.     

Vectorization of agrochemicals: amino acid carriers are more efficient than sugar carriers to translocate phenylpyrrole conjugates in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ricinus</Emphasis> system

Producing quality food in sufficient quantity while using less agrochemical inputs will be one of the great challenges of the twenty-first century. One way of achieving this goal is to greatly reduce the doses of plant protection compounds by improving the targeting of pests to eradicate. Therefore, we developed a vectorization strategy to confer phloem mobility to fenpiclonil, a contact fungicide from the phenylpyrrole family used as a model molecule. It consists in coupling the antifungal compound to an amino acid or a sugar, so that the resulting conjugates are handled by active nutrient transport systems. The method of click chemistry was used to synthesize three conjugates combining fenpiclonil to glucose or glutamic acid with a spacer containing a triazole ring. Systemicity tests with the Ricinus model have shown that the amino acid promoiety was clearly more favorable to phloem mobility than that of glucose. In addition, the transport of the amino acid conjugate is carrier mediated since the derivative of the L series was about five times more concentrated in the phloem sap than its counterpart of the D series. The systemicity of the L-derivative is pH dependent and almost completely inhibited by the protonophore carbonyl cyanide 3-chlorophenylhydrazone (CCCP). These data suggest that the phloem transport of the L-derivative is governed by a stereospecific amino acid carrier system energized by the proton motive force.     

Soil organic matter and biological activity under long-term contamination with copper

Environmental Geochemistry and Health - Organic matter (OM) and enzymes activity can act as indicators of the time and level of soil contamination with heavy metal. The goal of this study is...     

Temporal variations in the level of chlordecone in seawater and marine organisms in Martinique Island (Lesser Antilles)

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The present study, conducted in the Galion Bay in Martinique, aims to highlight the temporal and seasonal variations of chlordecone contamination (an...     

Morphological differences between females of different <Emphasis Type="Italic">Jaera</Emphasis> species (Crustacea: Asellota: Isopoda) in the White Sea: a possible solution to an old problem

It is well known that females of “Jaera albifrons” species complex cannot be determined on the basis of morphological analysis. In this work, an attempt to separate females of three Jaera species on the basis of morphometric characters, the length of so-called “coupling zones” (CZ), was made. Coupling zones are those parts of the partners’ bodies that contact during copulation. Female CZ is a region between the posterior edge of the pleotelson and the border between the fourth and the fifth thoracic segments, where openings of dorsal vaginas are situated. Male CZ extends from the anterior edge of the cephalon to the first abdominal segment carrying the copulative organ. Absolute and relative lengths of CZ were used. The latter was calculated as ratio of absolute length of CZ to body length. Two settlements of Jaera in the White Sea were studied for 3 years. Species composition of these populations was quite different (the first one was dominated by J. ischiosetosa and the second by J. albifrons and, 1 year by J. praehirsuta). Males of different species were shown to be distinct in terms of absolute and relative length of CZ. Frequency distributions of absolute and relative CZ length of females differed significantly in the two settlements. The experiments based on male choice in mixed samples were organized. They revealed that females chosen by males of different species differ significantly by CZ parameters.     

Comparative bioaccumulation kinetics of trace elements in Mediterranean marine sponges

While marine organisms such as bivalves, seagrasses and macroalgae are commonly used as biomonitors for the environment pollution assessment, widely distributed sponges received little attention as potential helpful species for monitoring programmes. In this study, the trace element and radionuclide bioaccumulation and retention capacities of some marine sponges were estimated in a species-comparative study using radiotracers technique. Six Mediterranean species were exposed to background dissolved concentrations of ^110mAg, ²⁴¹Am, ¹⁰⁹Cd, ⁶⁰Co, ¹³⁴Cs, ⁵⁴Mn, ⁷⁵Se and ⁶⁵Zn allowing the assessment of the uptake and depuration kinetics for selected elements. Globally, massive demosponges Agelas oroides, Chondrosia reniformis and Ircinia variabilis displayed higher concentration factor (CF) than the erectile ones (Acanthella acuta, Cymbaxinella damicornis, Cymbaxinella verrucosa) at the end of exposure, suggesting that the morphology is a key factor in the metal bioaccumulation efficiency. Considering this observation, two exceptions were noted: (1) A. acuta reached the highest CF for ^110mAg and strongly retained the accumulated metal without significant Ag loss when placed in depuration conditions and (2) C. reniformis did not accumulate Se as much as A. oroides and I. variabilis. These results suggest that peculiar metal uptake properties in sponges could be driven by specific metabolites or contrasting biosilification processes between species, respectively. This study demonstrated that sponges could be considered as valuable candidate for biomonitoring metal contamination but also that there is a need to experimentally highlight metal-dependant characteristic among species.     

The influence of application of biochar and metal-tolerant bacteria in polluted soil on morpho-physiological and anatomical parameters of spring barley

Environmental Geochemistry and Health - The paper presents the results of the model experiment on spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) grown in polluted soil. The influence of separate and combined...     

基于QSAR模型的蒙特卡洛方法分析有机化学物质对大型蚤(Daphnia magna)的毒性

本文建立一系列758种有机化合物对大型蚤(Daphnia magna)毒性的定量结构-活性关系(QSARs)。用简化的分子线性输入系统(SMILES)代表分子结构。用CORAL(关联和逻辑)软件作为工具来开发QSAR模型。这些模型使用蒙特卡罗方法建立,依据的原理是QSAR是一个“随机事件”,假设检验一组随机数据分布在可见的训练集和不可见的验证集。检验了三组分布于可见的训练、校准、测试集中的数据以及不可见的验证集。最佳模型的预测潜能,也就是其不可见的验证集的统计特征如下:n = 87,r² = 0.8377,RMSE = 0.564。建议和讨论了所构建模型的机械解释和适用领域。
精选自Alla P. Toropova, Andrey A. Toropov, Aleksandar M. Veselinovi?, Jovana B. Veselinovi?, Danuta Leszczynska, Jerzy Leszczynski. Monte Carlo based QSAR models for toxicity of organic chemicals to Daphnia magna. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry: Volume 35, Issue 11, pages 2691–2697, November 2016. DOI: 10.1002/etc.3466
详情请见http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.3466/full