Prevalence of Human Parainfluenza Viruses and Noroviruses Genomes on Office Fomites

The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential role of office fomites in respiratory (human parainfluenza virus 1—HPIV1, human parainfluenza virus 3—HPIV3) and enteric (norovirus GI—NoV GI, norovirus GII—NoV GII) viruses transmission by assessing the occurrence of these viruses on surfaces in office buildings. Between 2016 and 2017, a total of 130 surfaces from open-space and non-open-space rooms in office buildings located in one city were evaluated for HPIV1, HPIV3, NoV GI, and NoV GII viral RNA presence. Detection of viruses was performed by RT-qPCR method. Study revealed 27 positive samples, among them 59.3% were HPIV3-positive, 25.9% HPIV1-positive, and 14.8% NoV GII-positive. All tested surfaces were NoV GI-negative. Statistical analysis of obtained data showed that the surfaces of office equipment including computer keyboards and mice, telephones, and desktops were significantly more contaminated with respiratory viruses than the surfaces of building equipment elements such as door handles, light switches, or ventilation tracts (χ ² p = 0.006; Fisher’s Exact p = 0.004). All examined surfaces were significantly more contaminated with HPIVs than NoVs (χ ² p = 0.002; Fisher’s Exact p = 0.003). Office fomites in open-space rooms were more often contaminated with HPIVs than with NoVs (χ ² p = 0.016; Fisher’s Exact p = 0.013). The highest average concentration of HPIVs RNA copies was observed on telephones (1.66 × 10² copies/100 cm²), while NoVs on the light switches (1.40 × 10² copies/100 cm²). However, the Kruskal–Wallis test did not show statistically significant differences in concentration levels of viral RNA copies on surfaces between the all tested samples. This study unequivocally showed that individuals in office environment may have contact with both respiratory and enteric viral particles present on frequently touched surfaces.     

The oldest African fox (Vulpes riffautae n. sp., Canidae, Carnivora) recovered in late Miocene deposits of the Djurab desert, Chad

We report on the oldest fox (Canidae) ever found in Africa. It is dated to 7 Ma based on the degree of evolution of the whole fauna. It belongs to a new species. Its overall size and some morphological characteristics distinguish the Chadian specimen from all the other foxes. The presence of Vulpes and of the genus Eucyon in slightly younger African locality, as well as in southwestern Europe in the late Miocene, may indicate that canids migrated in Europe from Africa through a trans-Mediterranean route.     

The mammal assemblage of the hominid site TM266 (Late Miocene, Chad Basin): ecological structure and paleoenvironmental implications

Characterizing the paleoenvironmental context of the first hominids is a key issue for understanding their behavioral and morphological evolution. The present study aims at reconstructing the paleoenvironment of the TM266 vertebrate assemblage (Toros-Menalla, Northern Chad) that yielded the earliest known hominid Sahelanthropus tchadensis (7 Ma). For the first time, a quantitative analysis is carried out on the fossil mammal assemblage associated with that hominid. Two complementary approaches were applied: (1) the analysis of the relative abundances of taxa and their habitat preferences; and (2) the study of the distribution of taxa within three meaningful ecovariables: locomotion, feeding preferences, and body mass. The resulting taxonomic and paleoecological structures are used to reconstruct the diversity and the relative extent of the habitats in that part of northern Chad seven million years ago. The paleoenvironment was composed of open areas with dry and humid grasslands, prevailing over wooded habitats. Water was also widely available as freshwater bodies and certainly swamps. It appears that the high habitat diversity of the landscape is a common feature among paleoenvironments associated with early hominids.     

First steps in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) adoption for coastal planning in Sicily (South Italy)

The Industrial District (I.D.) of Messina was the first public authority to consider useful the application of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) procedure for the development of an Industrial Plan regarding a coastal area. At the moment the I.D. includes six areas, but the application of the SEA concerns only the area of Pace del Mela (along the north-eastern coast of Sicily), where a “District of the two Seas” will be created, based on the synergetic development between an industrialized niche (shipbuilding) and touristic development (port and hotels). The area in which this type of intervention will occur is not in use at the moment and it was not possible to collect environmental data. For this reason, in order to describe the environmental features of this territory, we took into consideration a few indicators which could be easily identified, necessary for a post evaluation which considers the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the industrial and suburban structures to be built.     

Design of a Domain Specific Language for modelling processes in landscapes

The modelling of processes that occur in landscapes is often confronted to issues related to the representation of space and the difficulty of properly handling time and multiple scales. In order to investigate these issues, a flexible modelling environment is required. We propose to develop such a tool based on a Domain Specific Language (DSL) that capitalises on the service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm. The modelling framework around the DSL is composed of a model building environment, a code generator and compiler, and a program execution platform. The DSL introduces five language elements (entity, service, relation, scenario and datafacer) that can be combined to offer a wide range of possibilities for modelling in space and time at different scales. When developing a model, model parts are either built using the DSL or taken from libraries of previously built ones, and adapted to the specific model. The practical usage of the DSL is illustrated first with the Lotka–Volterra model, and then with a landscape modelling experiment on the spread of a mosquito-borne disease in the Sahelian region of West Africa. An interesting characteristic of this approach is the possibility of adding new elements into an existing model, and replacing others with more appropriate ones, thus allowing potentially complex models to be built from simpler parts.     

Lifetime reproductive success and composition of the home range in a large herbivore

The relationship between individual performance and nonrandom use of habitat is fundamental to ecology; however, empirical tests of this relationship remain limited, especially for higher orders of selection like that of the home range. We quantified the association between lifetime reproductive success (LRS) and variables describing lifetime home ranges during the period of maternal care (spring to autumn) for 77 female roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) at Trois-Fontaines, Champagne-Ardenne, France (1976-2000). We maintained population growth rate (adjusted to account for removals of non-focal animals) near rmax, which enabled us to define the fitness-habitat relationship in the absence of density effects. Using a negative binomial model, we showed that a roe deer's incorporation into its home range of habitat components important to food, cover, and edge (meadows, thickets, and increased density of road allowances) was significantly related to LRS. Further, LRS decreased with increasing age of naturally reclaimed meadows at the time of a deer's birth, which may have reflected a cohort effect related to, but not entirely explained by, a decline in quality of meadows through time. Predictive capacity of the selected model, estimated as the median correlation (rs) between predicted and observed LRS among deer of cross-validation samples, was 0.55. The strength of this relationship suggests that processes like selection of the site of a home range during dispersal may play a more important role in determining fitness of individuals than previously thought. Individual fitness of highly sedentary income breeders with high reproductive output such as roe deer should be more dependent on home range quality during the period of maternal care compared to capital breeders with low reproductive output. Identification of the most important habitat attributes to survival and reproduction at low density (low levels of intraspecific competition) may prove useful for defining habitat value ("intrinsic habitat value").     

Climate change and population genetic structure of marine species

Climate change influences populations by reducing or extirpating local populations, by disrupting patterns of migration and by shifting geographical distributions. These events can affect genetic population structure in several ways. Molecular markers have been used in numerous population genetic and phylogeographical studies of marine species and have detected population responses to climate change in the last few decades, such as range expansions, adaptative shifts and declines or increases in abundance. Little is known, however, about the molecular and physiological basis of adaptive responses to climate change in marine Mediterranean species. The Mediterranean Sea ecosystem is a ‘living laboratory’ with native species that are challenged by environmental change and by invasive species and a ‘gene-climate’ approach should be adopted as a way of focusing on the relationship between climate warming and genetic diversity.     

Selective detection of metal ions,sulfites and glutathione with fluorescent pyrazolines: a review

Environmental Chemistry Letters - Pollution by toxic metals is a worldwide health issue, yet analytical methods to monitor selectively metal ions in complex media are limited. Fluorescence sensing...     

Agricultural Land Use and Best Management Practices to Control Nonpoint Water Pollution

In recent years, improvements in point-source depuration technologies have highlighted the problems regarding agricultural nonpoint (diffuse) sources, and this issue has become highly relevant from the environmental point of view. The considerable extension of the areas responsible for this kind of pollution, together with the scarcity of funds available to local managers, make minimizing the impacts of nonpoint sources on a whole basin a virtually impossible task. This article presents the results of a study intended to pinpoint those agricultural areas, within a basin, that contribute most to water pollution, so that operations aimed at preventing and/or reducing this kind of pollution can be focused on them. With this aim, an innovative approach is presented that integrates a field-scale management model, a simple regression model, and a geographic information system (GIS). The Lake Vico basin, where recent studies highlighted a considerable increase in the trophic state, mainly caused by phosphorus (P) compounds deriving principally from the intensive cultivation of hazelnut trees in the lake basin, was chosen as the study site. Using the management model Groundwater Loading Effects of Agricultural Management Systems (GLEAMS), the consequences, in terms of sediment yield and phosphorus export, of hazelnut tree cultivation were estimated on different areas of the basin with and without the application of a best management practice (BMP) that consists of growing meadow under the trees. The GLEAMS results were successively extended to basin scale thanks to the application of a purposely designed regression model and of a GIS. The main conclusions can be summarized as follows: The effectiveness of the above-mentioned BMP is always greater for erosion reduction than for particulate P reduction, whatever the slope value considered; moreover, the effectiveness with reference to both particulate P and sediment yield production decreases as the slope increases. The proposed approach, being completely distributed, represents a considerable step ahead compared to the semidistributed or lumped approaches, which are traditionally employed in research into tools to support the decision-making process for land-use planning aimed at water pollution control.     

Effective Regulations with Little Effect? The Antecedents of the Perceptions of Environmental Officials on Enforcement Effectiveness in China

Enforcement gaps are an especially vexing problem in China due to pervasive "pro-growth" local government priorities, the weak administrative capacity of environmental agencies themselves, and relatively weak levels of societal support for a cleaner environment. This study seeks to examine this problem from the perspective of the local enforcement officials by empirically examining the relationships between these and other influences on their perceptions of enforcement effectiveness. Using samples of enforcement officials from the fast-growing cities of Chengdu, Dalian, and Guangzhou, this study finds that many of the more commonly cited problems related to regulatory enforcement were not as influential in accounting for variations in perceptions of enforcement effectiveness than the current literature might suggest. Moreover, this study also finds that the pattern of influences varies greatly across jurisdictions, with only the officials' belief in the legitimacy of the governments' policies being significant in all three samples. Strong influences on perceptions of enforcement effectiveness in two of the three samples include the environmental values of enforcement officials, their perceptions of organizational capacity for enforcement, and their assessment of government support for environmental protection. Although government support was found to be a strong predictor of enforcement effectiveness in two of the three samples, the influence of societal support had a somewhat mixed and more complicated effect. In addition, this study suggests that further improvements in enforcement effectiveness may be possible by cultivating or selecting enforcement officials with strong environmental values and beliefs in the legitimacy of the government's environmental policy to take charge of enforcement. Because it is generally accepted that local environmental protection bureaus are generally upgrading their organizational capacity for improvement as the result of increasing central government support for environmental protection and institutional restructuring, and because environmental awareness in China is growing, this study suggests that some incremental progress is likely in China's efforts to close the enforcement gap. Unfortunately, such improvements are likely to be masked by the steep trajectory of economic growth, the narrow scope of regulatory control (i.e., with scant attention paid to nonindustrial sources), and the migration of industrial pollution to rural areas.