Lateral flow assay applied to pesticides detection: recent trends and progress

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Devices based on lateral flow assay (LFA) have been gaining more and more space in the detection market mainly due to their simplicity, speed, and low...     

Socioeconomic Risks of Extreme El Niño Event-Related Road Damages in Peru

This study evaluates the socioeconomic risk that extreme El Niño event-related road damages present to Peru by combining an environmental modelling of events’ occurrences in the country with a quantitative modelling of their effects on its economy. The dynamic of occurrence of events is modelled as a stochastic process with a vector autoregressive representation based on historical climatic data, and simulated over a 10-year period with a non-parametric bootstrap procedure. The indirect consequences of events’ related road damages are addressed with a multiregional dynamic computable general equilibrium model through an increase in interregional transportation costs and, more originally, a negative externality effect on activities’ output, which is estimated beforehand using a firm database. We find that extreme El Niño events constitute a significant one-off disaster risk for the country, threatening shifts of???2.8% in GDP and?+?1.9% in poverty rates with an annual probability p?=?1.4%. We further show that they also present a longer-term risk, leading to average annual deviations from normal trend by???0.8% in GDP and?+?0.4% in poverty rate with a probability p?=?12.6% over a 10-year period. However, we finally show that Peru might reduce these socioeconomic risks associated with these non-frequent but recurrent climatic shocks in constructing more disaster-resilient road infrastructure.

     

Fish community diversity in a coastal zone at southeastern Gulf of California,Mexico

Although the southeast region of the Gulf of California has a high fish diversity, due to the high biological productivity, the coastal area of Nayarit has few studies in this regard. The main objective of this work is to describe the variability of the structure of the ichthyofauna in the coastal zone of Nayarit during an annual cycle. Biological samples were collected at 10 stations during February, May, July, and December 2014. The temperature, depth, salinity, and organic material and carbonates in sediments were also recorded. The analysis of diversity includes three facets: ecological, taxonomic, and functional. A total of 82 species belonging to 56 genera, 31 families, 11 orders, and two classes were identified. The most abundant species included Selene peruviana, Stellifer wintersteenorum, Cathorops sp., and Larimus argenteus. Of the total of identified species, 62% were considered as rare according to their abundance and frequency. Although the environmental variables analyzed were variable, all diversity indices did not reveal an evident spatio-seasonal pattern. Likewise, most values of average taxonomic distinctness presented the expected values. However, some values showed a low taxonomic diversity. The indices of functional diversity showed a stable functional richness and redundancy in the attributes of the species.

     

Distribution-free changepoint detection tests based on the breaking of records

Environmental and Ecological Statistics - The analysis of record-breaking events is of interest in fields such as climatology, hydrology or anthropology. In connection with the record occurrence,...     

The effect of pore geometry in constitutive hysteretic models for unsaturated water flow

Environmental Fluid Mechanics - Water flow in porous media is strongly controlled by the microscale structure of the pore space. Therefore, understanding the dynamics at pore scale is fundamental...     

Assessing the effects of multivariate functional outlier identification and sample robustification on identifying critical PM2.5 air pollution episodes in Medellín,Colombia

Environmental and Ecological Statistics - Identification of critical episodes of environmental pollution, both as a outlier identification problem and as a classification problem, is a usual...     

Modeling the sulfamethoxazole degradation by active chlorine in a flow electrochemical reactor

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The aim of this study is to propose a continuous physicochemical model accounting for the active chlorine production used to degrade recalcitrant...     

SARS-CoV-2 pharmaceutical drugs: a critical review on the environmental impacts,chemical characteristics,and behavior of advanced oxidation processes in water

This review summarizes research data on the pharmaceutical drugs used to treat the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus, their characteristics, environmental impacts, and the advanced oxidation processes (AOP) applied to remove them. A literature survey was conducted using the electronic databases Science Direct, Scopus, Taylor & Francis, Google Scholar, PubMed, and Springer. This complete research includes and discusses relevant studies that involve the introduction, pharmaceutical drugs used in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: chemical characteristics and environmental impact, advanced oxidation process (AOP), future trends and discussion, and conclusions. The results show a full approach in the versatility of AOPs as a promising solution to minimize the environmental impact associated with these compounds by the fact that they offer different ways for hydroxyl radical production. Moreover, this article focuses on introducing the fundamentals of each AOP, the main parameters involved, and the concomitance with other sources and modifications over the years. Photocatalysis, sonochemical technologies, electro-oxidation, photolysis, Fenton reaction, ozone, and sulfate radical AOP have been used to mineralize SARS-CoV-2 pharmaceutical compounds, and the efficiencies are greater than 65%. According to the results, photocatalysis is the main technology currently applied to remove these pharmaceuticals. This process has garnered attention because solar energy can be directly utilized; however, low photocatalytic efficiencies and high costs in large-scale practical applications limit its use. Furthermore, pharmaceuticals in the environment are diverse and complex. Finally, the review also provides ideas for further research needs and major concerns.

Graphical abstract