Synthetic organic chemicals (flame retardants and pesticides) with neurotoxic potential induced behavioral impairment on zebrafish (Danio rerio): a non-invasive approach for neurotoxicology

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Behavior responses of organisms can be used as a non-invasive method for neurotoxicology studies since it directly links the nervous system’s...     

Variation in perception of environmental change in nine Solomon Islands communities: implications for securing fairness in community-based adaptation

Community-based approaches are pursued in recognition of the need for place-based responses to environmental change that integrate local understandings of risk and vulnerability. Yet the potential for fair adaptation is intimately linked to how variations in perceptions of environmental change and risk are treated. There is, however, little empirical evidence of the extent and nature of variations in risk perception in and between multiple community settings. Here, we rely on data from 231 semi-structured interviews conducted in nine communities in Western Province, Solomon Islands, to statistically model different perceptions of risk and change within and between communities. Overall, people were found to be less likely to perceive environmental changes in the marine environment than they were for terrestrial systems. The distance to the nearest market town (which may be a proxy for exposure to commercial logging and degree of involvement with the market economy), and gender had the greatest overall statistical effects on perceptions of risk. Yet, we also find that significant environmental change is underreported in communities, while variations in perception are not always easily related to commonly assumed fault lines of vulnerability. The findings suggest that there is an urgent need for methods that engage with the drivers of perceptions as part of community-based approaches. In particular, it is important to explicitly account for place, complexity and diversity of environmental risk perceptions, and we reinforce calls to engage seriously with underlying questions of power, culture, identity and practice that influence adaptive capacity and risk perception.

     

16S rDNA克隆文库解析AO-MBR系统中细菌种群多样性

采用分子生物学手段16S rDNA克隆文库方法对缺氧/好氧膜生物反应器(AO-MBR)的好氧池与缺氧池中细菌进行了多样性研究.实验结果表明,好氧池污泥样品的克隆文库包括9个类群,其中变形菌(Proteobacteria)和拟杆菌(Bacteroidetes)在文库中所占比例最大,分别为37.04％和14.81％;其次是酸杆菌(Acidobacteria)、未培养菌(uncultured bacterium)、绿菌(Chlorobi)和未培养的绿弯菌(uncultured Chloroflexi bacterium)、浮霉状菌(Planctomycetes),分别为11.11％、11.11％、7.41％、7.41％和5.56％;硝化螺旋菌(Nitrospirae)和裸藻门(Euglenozoa)所占比例相对较小,均为1.85％.缺氧池样品克隆文库包括10个类群,其中变形菌(Proteobacteria)、拟杆菌(Bacteroidetes)和未培养菌(uncultured bacterium)在文库中所占比例最大,分别为27.91％、13.95％和12.79％;其次是浮霉状菌(Planctomycetes)、酸杆菌(Acidobacteria)和绿弯菌(Chloroflexi),在文库中所占比例分别为9.3％、9.3％和9.3％;硝化螺旋菌(Nitrospirae)、裸藻门(Euglenozoa)、芽单胞菌(Gemmatimonadetes)和放线菌(Actinobacteria)所占比例相对较少,分别为6.98％、8.14％、1.16％和1.16％.两池细菌的主要类群相似,但菌属及比例有所差异,变形菌是系统中的主要脱氮菌属.     

Fe0/厌氧微生物联合体系处理2,4,6-三氯酚影响因素的研究

利用Fe⁰/厌氧微生物联合体系对2,4,6-三氯酚(2,4,6-TCP)进行降解研究。结果表明，Fe0/厌氧微生物联合体系可以有效降解2,4,6-TCP，Fe⁰与厌氧微生物之间存在明显的协同效应。Fe⁰/厌氧微生物联合体系处理2,4,6-TCP的最优条件为：微生物接种量0.434 g VSS/L，Fe⁰投加量15 g/L，体系初始pH值7.0～8.0。     

Small queens in the ant Ectatomma tuberculatum: a new case of social parasitism

Social parasites exploit the worker force of colonies of other social insects to rear their own young. Social parasitism occurs in several Hymenoptera and is particularly common in several tribes of the ant subfamilies Myrmicinae and Formicinae. Here, we document the occurrence of miniaturized queens (microgynes) in colonies of Ectatomma tuberculatum, an ant belonging to the subfamily Ectatomminae. Behavioral observations and genetic analyses show that microgynes concentrate their reproductive efforts almost exclusively on the production of sexual offspring (microgynes and males), whereas the regular, large queens (macrogynes) produce workers in addition to sexuals. According to mitochondrial and nuclear markers, gene flow between microgynes and macrogynes is extremely limited. Whereas the co-occurrence of microgynes and macrogynes in the related species Ectatomma ruidum constitutes an intraspecific polymorphism associated with alternative dispersal tactics, microgynes found in colonies of E. tuberculatum appear to be a distinct species and to represent the first case of social parasitism in the poneromorph subfamilies of ants.     

长江三峡区间数字流域水系的构建

基于全球陆地一公里基础高程GLOBE数据 ,采用Martz和Garbrecht研制的数字高程流域水系模型自动提取长江三峡万县～宜昌区间的河网水系、各子流域分水线、河网与子流域编码及河网结构拓扑关系 ,从而构成该区域的数字流域和数字水系。结果表明该模型生成的水系是可以接受的 ,与 1:10万地形图上长江三峡万县～宜昌区间的水系一致 ,这为空间分布式模型的建立提供了必备的空间信息数据。最后 ,探讨了数字流域水系在流域生态学中的应用前景 ,构建的数字水系可为中尺度以上流域水体和水生生物的资源保护与合理利用提供决策平台 ,服务于社会经济的可持续发展。     

Diffusion pollution from livestock and poultry rearing in the Yangtze Delta,China

BACKGROUND: The Yangtze Delta is one of the most developed regions in China and includes Shanghai, eight cities in Jiangsu province and eight cities in Zhejiang province. Meat consumption in this region has increased with economic growth, and most of the consumed meat is produced locally. The water quality of surface waters has deteriorated in recent years. An example was the huge blue-green algae bloom in Tai Lake in late May 2007, which affected millions of people's daily drinking water. However, animal husbandry is considered to be one of the main pollution sources. METHODS: Pollutants (NH3-N, total phosphorus (TP), and total nitrogen (TN)) excreted by livestock and poultry, and the resultant COD (chemical oxygen demand) and BOD (biochemical oxygen demand), were estimated using two different methods based on different data sets. RESULTS: The number of livestock and poultry has remained stable in the Yangtze Delta over the four years from 1999 to 2002, with the average number of pigs, cattle, sheep and poultry being 21.1 M, 0.4 M, 7.7 M and 597.6 M, respectively. Pollutants in livestock and poultry excreta estimated by Method I were: 0.12 Mt NH3-N, 0.11 Mt TP and 0.29 Mt TN, resulting in COD and BOD of 1.34 Mt and 1.30 Mt, respectively, while the estimations based on Method II were: 0.18 Mt NH3-N, 0.15 Mt TP and 0.40 Mt TN, resulting in COD and BOD of 1.95 Mt and 1.80 Mt, respectively. DISCUSSION: Pollutants excreted annually by livestock and poultry in the Yangtze Delta are estimated to be: 0.17 Mt NH3-N, 0.16 Mt TP and 0.42 Mt TN, giving rise to a COD of 1.86 Mt and a BOD of 1.72 Mt. Approximately 25% of this pollution was estimated to enter water bodies, which means that the annual pollutant load is 43,700 t NH3-N, 39,400 tTP, 104,600t TN with a COD of 465,000 tand a BOD of 430,100 t. Pollutants from animal husbandry were similar in magnitude to those from industrial wastewater. Pigs produced the most pollution, followed by poultry, cattle and sheep. The pollution load from animal husbandry in the Yangtze Delta is about twice the average level of the whole of China. CONCLUSIONS: Domestic wastewater was the main pollution source in the Yangtze Delta, followed by pollution from raising livestock and poultry and from industrial wastewater. The pollution load in Shanghai and Jiaxing were the greatest, followed by 7 cities of Jiangsu province (except Suzhou) and other cities of Zhejiang province and Suzhou. Pigs and poultry produced about 90% of the total pollutants from animal husbandry. RECOMMENDATIONS AND PERSPECTIVES: The local governments, especially in Shanghai and Jiaxing, should focus their attention on the pollution produced by livestock and poulrry. Controlling pollution from pigs and poultry will have the greatest impact in this region. Control of pollution will be facilitated by the development of large-scale livestock and poultry farming units and a shift away from small scale husbandry.     

加拉帕戈斯群岛移民和海参危机实例研究

加拉帕戈斯海参捕捞危机是由于大量的移民涌入、激烈的经济竞争以及软弱无力的管理机构所造成的一个典型例子.短时期内,海参捕捞已经成为加拉帕戈斯地区最有煽动性的争议问题.就对新的海洋资源进行高效捕捞来说关键因素并不是渔民本身,而是新的捕捞技术、银行贷款和水产市场.这说明造成每年海参捕捞危机的原因非常复杂而不仅仅因为不断增多的渔民加大了海参的捕捞量.本文通过人口普查数据和渔民注册登记数据分析了该群岛人口的增长情况.还通过一项民意调查来确定人们对海参捕捞和有关规定的态度.定性的采访揭示了海参繁荣的历史,同时海参监测信息也提供了年海参捕捞量的估计值.     

Material suppliers and industrial metabolism

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is not sufficiently tailored to the analysis of strategic environmental problems of material suppliers. Sustainable development calls for a reduction by a factor of 10 to 20 in the material intensity of the economy, a situation which leads to dramatic shifts in markets for raw materials. Furthermore, a material supplier might have major improvement options in the material’s numerous downstream uses. LCAs, however, can’t cover these two aspects. An adapted form of Substance Flow Analysis (SFA) may be an answer. This approach defines a system in relation to the flow of a specific material through society. All environmental interventions related to the material are inventoried. An emission evaluation indicates the dominant environmental bottlenecks, given the current market volume of each application of the material. This helps to identify improvement options and strategic choices in market portfolios. Scenario analysis on potential measures can further indicate changes of material flows — and thus markets — in the system. The approach is illustrated with a case study on chlorine.     

Phosphate recovery with granular acid-activated neutralized red mud: Fixed-bed column performance and breakthrough curve modelling

Granular acid-activated neutralized red mud (AaN-RM) has been successfully prepared with good chemical stability and physical strength. However, its potential for industrial application remains unknown. Therefore, the performance of granular AaN-RM for phosphate recovery in a fixed-bed column was investigated. The results demonstrated that the phosphate adsorption performance of granular AaN-RM in a fixed-bed column was affected by various operational parameters, such as the bed depth, flow rate, initial solution pH and initial phosphate concentration. With the optimal empty-bed contact time (EBCT) of 24.27 min, the number of processed bed volumes and the phosphate adsorption capacity reached 496.95 and 84.80 mg/g, respectively. Then, the saturated fixed-bed column could be effectively regenerated with a 0.5 mol/L HCl solution. The desorption efficiency remained as high as 83.45% with a low weight loss of 3.57% in the fifth regeneration cycle. In addition, breakthrough curve modelling showed that a 5-9-1 feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) could be effectively applied for the optimization of the fixed-bed adsorption system; the coefficient of determination (R²) and the root mean square error (RMSE) evaluated on the validation-testing data were 0.9987 and 0.0183, respectively. Therefore, granular AaN-RM fixed-bed adsorption exhibits promising potential for phosphate removal and recovery from polluted water.