Regional differential decomposition and convergence of rural green development efficiency: evidence from China

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - An objective understanding of the current situation and influencing factors of rural green development in China is an important prerequisite for...     

Air pollution and its economic impacts at household level: willingness to pay for environmental services in Pakistan

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Air pollution has become a major global problem. Thus, the goal of this study was to find out the economic impacts (treatment cost) of air pollution...     

Testing the heterogeneous effect of air transport intensity on CO2 emissions in G20 countries: An advanced empirical analysis

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This study investigates the heterogeneous impact of air transport intensity, air passenger transport, and air freight transport on air...     

Types,sources, socioeconomic impacts,and control strategies of environmental noise: a review

Noise exposure has reached an alarming degree over the years because of rapid growth in the industry, transportation, and urbanization. Therefore, it is a dire need to provide awareness of the sources and mitigation strategies of noise, and to highlight the health, and socio-economic impacts of noise. A few research studies have documented this emerging issue; however, there is no comprehensive document describing all types of noise, their impacts on living organisms, and control strategies. This review article summarizes the sources of noise; their effects on industrial workers, citizens, and animals; and the value of property in noisy areas. The plethora of literature is showing an increased level of noise in various cities of the world, which have various health consequences such as high blood pressure, insomnia, nausea, heart attack, exhaustion, dizziness, headache, and triggered hearing loss. Apart from humans, noise also affects animal habitat, preying, and reproduction ability; increases heart rate and hearing loss to even death and loss in property value; and impairs the hospital environment. Finally, we have discussed the possible strategies to mitigate the noise problem, policy statements, and regulations to be followed, with future research directions based on the identified research gaps.

     

Transfer of (40)K, (238)U, (210)Pb, and (210)Po from soil to plant in various locations in south of Syria

Transfer factors of (40)K, (238)U, (210)Pb, and (210)Po from soil to some agriculture crops in various locations in south of Syria (Dara'a and Assuwaydaa districts) have been determined. Soil and vegetable crops (green pepper, cucumber, tomato, and eggplant), legumes crops (lentil, chickpea, and broad bean), fruit trees (apple, grape, and olives) and cereals (barley and wheat) were collected and analyzed for (238)U, (210)Pb, and (210)Po. The results have shown that higher transfer factors (calculated as Bqkg(-1) dry wt. plant material per Bqkg(-1) dry wt. soil) for (210)Po, (210)Pb and (238)U were observed in vegetable leaves than fruits and cereals leaves; the highest values of transfer factor (TF) for (238)U were found to be 0.1 for straw of chickpea. Transfer factors for (210)Po varied between 2.8x10(-2) and 2 in fruits of eggplant and grain of barley, respectively. In addition, several parameters affecting transfer factors of the radionuclides were evaluated. The results can be considered as base values for TF of natural radionuclides in the region.     

Pakistan management of green transportation and environmental pollution: a nonlinear ARDL analysis

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Modern advances in nonlinear modeling have exposed that nonlinear models yield more robust results compared with linear models. Research on the effect...     

Research and development intensity and its influence on renewable energy consumption: evidence from selected Asian economies

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The main objective of this study is to investigate the impact of research and development (R&D) intensity on renewable energy consumption in...     

Modified dehydrogenase enzyme assay for evaluation of the influence of Hg,Cd, and Zn on the bacterial community structure of a wastewater treatment plant

In this study, a traditional assay was modified to evaluate the effect of Hg, Cd, and Zn on the bacterial community of a sequencing batch reactor and activated sludge plants and heavy metal-resistant bacterial species were determined. After the isolation of metal-resistant bacteria, their 16S rRNA gene fragments were sequenced. The BLAST program was used to compare the resulting 16S rRNA sequences with those in GenBank database to identify the isolated bacterial species. Hg was found to be the most toxic metal for both bacterial communities investigated. Sequence batch reactor bacteria were comparatively more resistant to Hg, Cd, and Zn than those from activated sludge. The resistant strains were close to the members of genus Pseudomonas, Kocuria, Stenotrophomonas, Enterococcus, and Staphylococcus. The modified dehydrogenase enzyme assay seems to be simple, robust, and competent for evaluation of the impact of metals on bacterial activity. Sequencing batch reactor systems should be preferred over activated sludge when wastewaters containing hazardous metals are to be treated.     

Extrication of biodiesel feedstock from early stage of food waste liquefaction

Biodiesel is commonly produced from vegetable oils, mostly edible and more expensive than petroleum diesel. By considering the cost of the conversion processes, cheap feedstock such as triglycerides and fatty acids (FA) extracted from early stage of food waste liquefaction has become a better choice than vegetable oils, as it could provide high yield of biodiesel without any compromise to food supply and other resources. In this study, FA from early stage of food waste liquefaction was extracted and tested for use as feedstock for biodiesel synthesis. The raw material was not pretreated but extraction was done by dry and wet methods. It was found that wet method could minimized the lost of short and medium-chained FA as well as reducing the number of steps required, thus, yielding higher amount of FA as feedstock. The effects of mixing, methanol ratio, reaction time and catalyst content were investigated for the acid-catalyzed esterification. The maximum biodiesel conversion obtained was 97.4 %.     

Evaluating the last remnants of Butea monosperma (Lam.) Kuntze Forest for their in situ conservation: a case study

This paper summarizes the findings obtained in a monitoring study to understand the sources and processes affecting the quality of shallow and deep groundwater near central air conditioning plant site in Trombay region by making use of physicochemical and biological analyses. All the measured parameters of the groundwaters indicate that the groundwater quality is good and within permissible limits set by (Indian Bureau of Standards 1990). Shallow groundwater is dominantly of Na–HCO₃ type whereas deep groundwater is of Ca–Mg–HCO₃ type. The groundwater chemistry is mainly influenced by dissolution of minerals and base exchange processes. High total dissolved solids in shallow groundwater compared to deeper ones indicate faster circulation of groundwater in deep zone preferably through fissures and fractures whereas groundwater flow is sluggish in shallow zone. The characteristic ionic ratio values and absence of bromide point to the fact that seawater has no influence on groundwater system.