Monitoring of body burden of toxic elements is usually based on analysis of concentration of particular elements in blood, urine and/or hair. Analysis of these matrices, however, predominantly reflects short- or medium-term exposure to trace elements or pollutants. In this work, urinary stones were investigated as a matrix for monitoring long-term exposure to toxic and essential elements. A total of 431 samples of urinary calculi were subjected to mineralogical and elemental analysis by infrared spectroscopy and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The effect of mineralogical composition of the stones and other parameters such as sex, age and geographical location on contents of trace and minor elements is presented. Our results demonstrate the applicability of such approach and confirm that the analysis of urinary calculi can be helpful in providing complementary information on human exposure to trace metals and their excretion. Analysis of whewellite stones (calcium oxalate monohydrate) with content of phosphorus <0.6 % has been proved to be a promising tool for biomonitoring of trace and minor elements.
The classical use of synthetic dyes is causing issues of environmental pollution and heath risk. As a consequence natural dyes are gaining interest, but the use of natural dyes still includes toxic reagents such as metals as mordants and acids to enhance color and yield. Therefore, we designed a new chitosan-polypropylene imine dendrimer hybrid at 0–2000 mg/L to treat wool before dyeing with cochineal. We compared dye exhaustion, color depth, color characteristics, and color fastness of the new process with dyed pristine and metal mordanted wool. Results show that wool pretreatment improved dye exhaustion from 48 to 88 %, shifted saturation point toward lower dye concentration from 3000 to 1000 mg/L, and improved color depth from 13.68 for pristine wool and 15.17 for metal mordanted wool to 23.89 for the new process. 相似文献
Green specifications constitute one of the important elements in green construction. New sustainability requirements and changing priorities in construction management have spurred the emerging green specifications to a faster pace of development. A cross-sectional survey has been conducted in Hong Kong in 2007 to identify principal factors leading to the success of preparing green specifications. Based on extensive construction management literature, 20 variables concerning sustainable construction were summarized. Using the Mann–Whitney U-test, the subtle differences between stakeholders in specifying construction work have been detected even with the high consistency of the responses among the groups. Moreover, five independent factors for successful specification of green construction have been categorized by factor analysis. They are related to (1) green technology and techniques, (2) reliability and quality of specification, (3) leadership and responsibility, (4) stakeholder involvement, and (5) guide and benchmarking systems. Whilst the first and fourth factors are generally more important, different stakeholder groups have different emphases. The results of the survey have been validated against established principles. 相似文献
International environmental agreements (IEAs) can coordinate abatement of transboundary pollutants. This paper investigates
how heterogeneous countries facing a stock pollutant might structure such an agreement. In particular, we examine how an IEA
might be implemented with a set of monetary transfers. The focus is on transfers that are time invariant, linear in emissions,
and consistent with budget balance. There is a range of such schemes that would induce efficient emissions. We provide a simple
and intuitive characterization of these penalties and describe how specific proposals might be chosen in order to facilitate
compliance and implementation. Our proposals are illustrated with a simple example. We show that heterogeneity reduces the
scope for penalty schemes to jointly satisfy desirable properties. 相似文献
The objective of this study was to survey the cation and anion contents of geothermal waters to gather fundamental information
on geographical variations. Sixteen sites in hot spring areas on the island of Kyushu in Japan were studied. The study focused
on the arsenic content of the samples. Very high arsenic concentrations (more than 0.1 mg/l) were detected in most of the
geothermal waters sampled. High contents of boron and fluoride (more than 1.0 mg/l) were also detected in some samples. Arsenic
removal was performed on a laboratory scale using columns packed with a magnetite-type adsorbent. The reduction of arsenic
contamination to a concentration of less than 0.01 mg/l could be achieved in the early stages of adsorption (bed volume = 200). 相似文献
A variety of factors can influence an individual’s choice of within-group spatial position. For terrestrial social animals,
predation, feeding success, and social competition are thought to be three of the most important variables. The relative importance
of these three factors was investigated in groups of ring-tailed coatis (Nasua nasua) in Iguazú, Argentina. Different age/sex classes responded differently to these three variables. Coatis were found in close
proximity to their own age/sex class more often than random, and three out of four age/sex classes were found to exhibit within-group
spatial position preferences which differed from random. Juveniles were located more often at the front edge and were rarely
found at the back of the group. Juveniles appeared to choose spatial locations based on feeding success and not predation
avoidance. Since juveniles are the most susceptible to predation and presumably have less prior knowledge of food source location,
these results have important implications in relation to predator-sensitive foraging and models of democratic group leadership.
Subadults were subordinate to adult females, and their relationships were characterized by high levels of aggression. This
aggression was especially common during the first half of the coati year (Nov–April), and subadults were more peripheralized
during this time period. Subadults likely chose spatial positions to avoid aggression and were actively excluded from the
center of the group by adult females. In the Iguazú coati groups, it appeared that food acquisition and social agonism were
the major determinants driving spatial choice, while predation played little or no role. This paper demonstrates that within-group
spatial structure can be a complex process shaped by differences in body size and nutritional requirements, food patch size
and depletion rate, and social dominance status. How and why these factors interact is important to understanding the costs
and benefits of sociality and emergent properties of animal group formation. 相似文献
Rice straw can be used as a renewable fuel for heat and power generation. It is a viable mean of replacing fossil fuels and preventing pollution caused by open burning, especially in the areas where this residual biomass is generated. Nevertheless, the thermal conversion of rice straw can cause some operating problems such as slag formation, which negatively affects thermal conversion systems. So, the main objective of this research is studying the combustion behavior of rice straw samples collected from various regions by applying thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). In addition, the thermal behavior of ashes from rice straw was also analyzed in order to detect their melting points, and ash sintering was detected at different temperatures within the range between 550 and 1000 °C. Since washing rice straw with water could reduce the content of undesirable inorganic compounds related to the ash fusibility, samples of washed rice straw were analyzed under combustion conditions to investigate its differences regarding the thermal behavior of rice straw. The results showed that rice straw washing led to a significant improvement in its thermal behavior, since it reduced the ash contents and sintering formation. 相似文献
In loss estimation there is a spatial mismatch of hazard data that are commonly modeled on an explicit raster level and exposure
data that are often available only for aggregated administrative units. Usually disaggregation methods that use ancillary
information to distribute lumped exposure data in a finer spatial resolution help to bridge this gap. However, the actual
influence of different mapping techniques and ancillary data on the final loss estimation has not been analyzed yet. In this
paper three methods are applied to disaggregate residential building assets using two kinds of land use/land cover (LULC)
data. The resulting disaggregated assets are validated and compared using census data of the residential building number on
the community and constituency level. In addition, the disaggregated assets are taken to estimate residential building losses
due to the flood in August 2002 in 21 municipalities on the River Mulde in Saxony, Germany. Losses are calculated with the
help of four loss models. In general, disaggregation helps to decrease the error variance within the loss estimation. It must,
however, be stated that the application of sophisticated disaggregation methods does not lead to significant improvements
compared to the straightforward binary method. Therefore more effort should instead be put into the provision of high-resolution
LULC data. Finally, the remaining uncertainties in loss estimation are high and demand further improvements in all modeling
aspects. 相似文献