The responses and prospects of sustainable development for Guangzhou and Hong Kong

The ability to achieve urban sustainability has become an indication of the competence of a municipal government aiming to gain world class status for the city. While both Guangzhou and Hong Kong are Chinese cities having their own formulation of urban sustainability, the implementation details and the actual sustainability blueprints are very different. As a result, the outcomes and prospects for urban sustainability are also different.

Hong Kong has adopted a less integrative and more institutionally-oriented approach for urban sustainability. Guangzhou has used the conventional approach to formulate an integrated sustainability programme for its local Agenda 21. Hong Kong's action plan emphasizes improving coordination, making objective assessments and achieving consistency in policy-making. Guangzhou, on the other hand, emphasizes the meeting of concrete environmental targets. Unfortunately, the new institutional arrangement and monitoring tools adopted by Hong Kong have not been able to achieve the original intent and neither is there the intention to go too far beyond the weak sustainability approach. On the contrary, Guangzhou has planned and attempted to incorporate industrial ecology in its development regime while heavily investing into pollution control programmes and pushing forward a green community programme at the grass-roots level.     

Electrostatic hazards of charging of bedclothes and ignition in medical facilities

We investigated the charge generated on bedclothes (cotton and polyester) during bedding exchange with different humidities and the ignitability of an alcohol-based hand sanitizer (72.3 mass% ethanol) due to static spark with different temperatures to identify the hazards of electrostatic shocks and ignitions occurring previously in medical facilities. The results indicated that charging of the polyester bedclothes may induce a human body potential of over about 10?kV, resulting in shocks even at a relative humidity of 50%, and a human body potential of higher than about 8?kV can cause a risk for the ignition of the hand sanitizer. The grounding of human bodies via footwear and flooring, therefore, is essential to avoid such hazards (or to reduce such risks).     

碳纤维布加固火灾后足尺钢筋混凝土梁的试验研究

目前，对碳纤维布加固火灾后足尺钢筋混凝土结构的试验研究还不多。本文简要介绍了足尺钢筋混凝土粱火灾试验情况、火灾后梁的加固方案，然后对加固后的梁进行静载试验。试验结果表明，采用碳纤维布(CFRP)加固能显著提高梁的刚度和承载力，就刚度提高程度而言，CFRP在后期阶段贡献较大，就承载力提高程度而言，粘贴两层所提高的程度不是粘贴一层的两倍；CFRP加固后的受火梁在荷载作用下沿高度方向上混凝土的应变近似直线分布。实验结果为火灾后混凝土结构的修复加固提供了可靠的试验依据。     

服装商店火灾的实体灭火试验研究

为研究服装商店火灾蔓延和燃烧的特性及其对消防部队灭火作战的影响,按照真实的场景布置并进行了两次通风条件不同的服装商店火灾的实体灭火试验.试验结果显示由于服装商店内可燃物较多,燃烧耗氧量大,火灾的蔓延和强度受通风状况的影响较大.在供氧充足的情况下,服装商店火灾的蔓延发展可以分为引燃阶段、缓慢发展阶段和快速发展阶段三个阶段.当火灾发展到快速发展阶段的时候,火场的温度和烟气浓度很高,能见度低,灭火困难,导致灭火时间长,消防用水量大.     

不同植茶年龄茶园蒸散速率的日变化——以宜兴市为例

以宜兴市盛道茶场3、9和20 a 3个不同植茶年龄的茶园为研究对象,基于静态箱/红外气体分析仪法,辅以植被生态监测和土壤湿度监测,研究茶园清明采茶前蒸散速率日变化特征。结果发现：（1）3个不同植茶年龄的茶园日蒸散速率变化趋势一致,呈以12〖DK〗∶00~15〖DK〗∶00蒸散速率为峰值的单峰曲线;（2）虽然3 a茶园叶面积指数（LAI）最低,但最大平均日蒸散速率、一日内蒸散速率的极值、6〖DK〗∶00~18〖DK〗∶00最大总蒸散量、一日内不同时段的蒸散速率最大变化幅度均出现在3 a茶园;（3）茶园日蒸散速率与气温的日变化趋势相似,且两者存在极显著相关性（R2=081*〖KG-*2〗*）,在湿润条件下与土壤含水率日变化相关性不明显,但两者呈相反的变化趋势     

Distribution of plants differing in attitude toward thermal conditions in communities of the timberline ecotone on Mount Iremel’, the Southern Urals

Specific features in the distribution of plant species differing in their attitude toward thermal conditions have been studied in communities of the present-day timberline ecotone on Mount Iremel’ in the Southern Urals. It has been shown that the distribution of such species is characterized by significant spatial nonuniformity. Elevation above sea level, local conditions in habitats located at the same altitudinal level, and specific features of mountain slopes account for 13–84, 5–30, and 0.4–14% of the total variance of test parameters, respectively. The abundance of plants changes nonlinearly along the altitudinal gradient, whereas changes in the species diversity of different plant groups have an almost linear pattern. Marked differences between plant communities with respect to the proportions of species differently responding to changes in thermal conditions have been revealed on all slopes in the upper part of the timberline ecotone, upon transition from the slopes proper to the plateau-like areas of intermontane depressions.     

Using diatoms to assess the impacts of prehistoric, pre-industrial and modern land-use on Danish lakes

The impact of contemporary agriculture on Danish lakes is acknowledged to be extreme. In particular, high loading of nutrients from agricultural soils contributes to the eutrophic conditions found in many of Denmark’s lakes. Palaeolimnological studies have shown that human disturbance of the Danish landscape since the introduction of agriculture around 6,000 years ago has had a major impact on lake ecosystems. The European Union’s Water Framework Directive requires an evaluation of reference conditions for lakes, the conditions expected with only minimal human impact. Monitoring data and palaeolimnological studies of Danish lakes demonstrate that many of the most detrimental effects of eutrophication have been experienced in recent decades. A new study has suggested that the reference status for Danish lakes may be set to the status in ad 1850–1900, probably providing attainable, realistic restoration targets for many sites. The aims of this study were to explore the impacts of past and contemporary land-use on Danish lakes, and to consider how appropriate the use of 1850 as a date to define reference status is for these sites. Catchment land-cover data for ad 1800, taken from historical maps, and sedimentary diatom assemblages of the same age, from dated sediment cores, were used to assess the impact of pre-industrial land-use on 20 Danish lakes. Analysis of contemporary land-cover data and surface-sediment diatom assemblages for the 20 sites was also made. In-lake total phosphorus (TP) concentrations were estimated using the sedimentary diatom assemblages and an existing calibration dataset for Danish lakes. The percentage of the lake catchment that was agricultural land in ad 1800 explained 8.8% of the total variation in the diatom data. The land-cover variables ‘built-up areas’ and ‘plantations’, together explained 16.9% of the variation in the diatom data for the modern samples. Diatom-inferred TP concentrations were high for both ad 1800 (mean 112 μg TP L⁻¹) and the present (mean 122 μg TP L⁻¹), the latter estimates reflecting efforts in recent decades to reduce nutrient loading to Danish lakes following very high levels of nutrient enrichment post-1950. The data presented highlight the impact that human activities 200 years ago, particularly agriculture, had on Danish lake systems. The long cultural history and major anthropogenic disturbance of the Danish landscape mean that true reference conditions for lakes (or ‘baseline’ conditions, those found prior to human impacts) can be found only by considering century to millennial timescales.     

Biodiversity conservation: From ecosystem to the ecosystem approach

The possibility of implementing 12 principles of the ecosystem approach is considered with regard to the results of meetings of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and recent international forums. The importance of these principles for achieving the main goals of the CBD is shown, and the role of biosphere reserves in solving urgent problems of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in adjoining territories of subjects of the Russian Federation is discussed.     

Resilience-based approach to safety barrier performance assessment in process facilities

The performance assessment of safety barriers is essential to find vulnerable elements in a safety barrier system. Traditional performance assessment approaches mainly focus on using several static indicators for quantifying the performance of safety barriers. However, with the increasing complexity of the system, emerging hazards are highly uncertain, making it challenging for the static indicators to assess the performance of safety barriers. This paper proposes a resilience−based performance assessment method for safety barriers to overcome this problem. Safety barriers are classified according to their functions first. The dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) is then introduced to calculate the availability function under normal and disruption conditions. The ratio of the system's availability, when affected by the disruption, to the initial availability, is used to determine the absorption capacity of the system. The ratio of the quantity of availability recovery to the total quantity of system represents the adaptation and restoration capacity of the system. The system's resilience is represented by the sum of absorption, adaptation, and restoration capacities. The wax oil hydrogenation process is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology.     

Exploring relationships between microscopic kinetic parameters of tires under normal driving conditions,road characteristics and accident types

IntroductionFreeway accidents are a leading cause of death in China, which also triggers substantial economic loss and an emotional burden to society. However, the internal mechanism of how microscopic kinetic parameters of vehicles influenced by road characteristics determine the occurrence of different types of accidents has not been explicitly studied. This research aimed to explore the “link role” of tire microscopic kinetic parameters in road characteristic variables and traffic accidents to aid in facilitating the traffic design and management, and thus to prevent traffic accident. Method: A mountain freeway in Zhejiang Province, China was used as the research object and the data used in this paper were obtained through a real-time vehicle experiment. Multiple estimation models, including the standard ordered logit (SOL) model, fixed parameters logit (FPL) model, and random parameters logit (RPL) model were established. Results: The findings show that road characteristics will affect the longitudinal kinetic characteristics of the vehicle and, consequently, map the level of risk of rear-end accidents. Driving compensation effects were also identified in this paper (i.e., the drivers tend to be more cautious in complicated driving circumstances). Another finding relating to the mountain freeway is that different tunnel characteristics (e.g., tunnel entrance and tunnel exit) have different effects on different types of traffic accidents. Practical Applications: The framework proposed in this article can provide new insight for researchers to enlarge the research subjects of both explanatory and outcome variables in accident analysis. Future research could be implemented to consider more driving conditions.