美国污水处理厂深度除磷技术分析

污水处理厂控磷是防治湖泊等封闭性水域富营养化最有效的对策之一。但国内污水处理厂传统的除磷技术不足以改善水质,控制水体富营养化。综述了美国环境保护署推荐的深度除磷技术,介绍了美国污水处理厂深度除磷技术的工程案例。结果表明,美国深度除磷技术主要分为3大类:生物除磷+化学除磷+沉淀过滤、生物除磷+化学除磷+两级过滤、生物除磷+化学除磷+膜分离。通过对美国深度除磷技术的综述和分析,为中国污水处理厂除磷技术改进及已建设施的提升改造提供了重要参考依据和借鉴意义。     

Genetic diversity and IUCN Red List status

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List is an important and widely used tool for conservation assessment. The IUCN uses information about a species’ range, population size, habitat quality and fragmentation levels, and trends in abundance to assess extinction risk. Genetic diversity is not considered, although it affects extinction risk. Declining populations are more strongly affected by genetic drift and higher rates of inbreeding, which can reduce the efficiency of selection, lead to fitness declines, and hinder species’ capacities to adapt to environmental change. Given the importance of conserving genetic diversity, attempts have been made to find relationships between red-list status and genetic diversity. Yet, there is still no consensus on whether genetic diversity is captured by the current IUCN Red List categories in a way that is informative for conservation. To assess the predictive power of correlations between genetic diversity and IUCN Red List status in vertebrates, we synthesized previous work and reanalyzed data sets based on 3 types of genetic data: mitochondrial DNA, microsatellites, and whole genomes. Consistent with previous work, species with higher extinction risk status tended to have lower genetic diversity for all marker types, but these relationships were weak and varied across taxa. Regardless of marker type, genetic diversity did not accurately identify threatened species for any taxonomic group. Our results indicate that red-list status is not a useful metric for informing species-specific decisions about the protection of genetic diversity and that genetic data cannot be used to identify threat status in the absence of demographic data. Thus, there is a need to develop and assess metrics specifically designed to assess genetic diversity and inform conservation policy, including policies recently adopted by the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.     

Assessing community vulnerability to floods and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast of the United States

Hurricanes and flooding have affected millions of people and generated massive economic losses over the past several decades. Geographic information system (GIS) methods are employed in this paper to analyse coastal communities' vulnerability to these two hazards along the Gulf Coast of the United States. Specifically, two types of quantitative indicators are developed: (i) exposure to hurricanes and flooding, based on information from multiple sources; and a social vulnerability index, constructed using census data. These indices are combined to depict the spatial patterns of overall community vulnerability to hurricanes and flooding along the US Gulf Coast. The results of this study can potentially inform disaster management agencies, county governments, and municipalities in areas at heightened risk. Furthermore, the demonstration of the geographic distribution of community vulnerability can assist decision-makers in prioritising to-do items and designing policies and plans for the more effective allocation of resources. The paper ends by discussing the study's limitations and its practical implications.     

尿液、头发、指(趾)甲高铊汞砷是铊矿区污染标志

铊矿区村民尿液、头发和指（趾）甲中铊汞砷的含量高是矿区和村民受铊汞砷污染的标志,也是判别汞铊病的标志根据村民尿液中铊含量高低初步得出区别不同程度汞铊病患者的标准TL＞1000×10^-9、100×10^-9－1000×10^-9和＜100×10^-9分别为重汞铊病患者、轻汞铊病患者和非汞铊病者。人体和生物体中TL、Hg、As含量高低与矿区岩矿石、土壤和水体中TI、Hg、As的背景含量密切相关     

地震灾害现场救援行动标识系统设计

地震灾害现场救援行动信息的表达对规范和协调救援力量的行动具有重要意义;地震灾害现场救援行动标识系统是地震紧急救援工作体系中不可或缺的一部分。阐述了地震灾害现场救援行动标识的定义及内涵;探讨了地震灾害现场救援行动标识的分类、设计以及使用要求。     

The Reshaping of Conventional Farming: A North American Perspective

Debates over the future of agriculture in North Americaestablish a dialectical opposition between conventional,industrial agriculture and alternative, sustainable agriculture.This opposition has roots that extend back to the 18th century inthe United States, but the debate has taken a number ofsurprising turns in the 20th century. Originally articulated as aphilosophy of the left, industrial agriculture has utilitarianmoral foundations. In the US and Canada, the articulation of analternative to industrial agriculture has drawn upon threecentral themes: the belief that agriculture is, in some way, tiedto democracy; the belief that complex bureaucratic organizationsare inherently opposed to human interests; and the belief thatthe family farms characteristic of 19th century North Americatend to produce people of superior moral character. It has proveddifficult to weave these themes into a coherent vision ofagriculture for the 21st century. Often, risk and health-basedconcerns are the basis for public criticism of conventionalagriculture, but these do not conflict with the utilitarianorientation of the industrial model, and are easily incorporatedinto it. If there is to be a philosophical debate over the futureof agriculture, we must find some way to rehabilitate thequasi-Aristotelean view of agriculture that emerges from thethree critical themes noted above.     

Prenatal diagnosis of friedreich ataxia: Improved accuracy by using new genetic flanking markers

Friedreich ataxia is a neurodegerative disorder with autosomal recessive inheritance. Since the gene causing mutation has not yet been identified, prenatal, predictive, and carrier diagnoses are based on indirect haplotype analysis with closely linked markers. Until recently, only distal markers were available and their physical distance to the Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) gene remained elusive. The identification of close flanking markers that mark out the boundaries of the FRDA locus and reduce the critical genomic region which contains the gene allows for the first time misdiagnosis due to undetectable recombination to be avoided and diagnosis accuracy to be greatly improved. In this sense, we have verified a prenatal diagnosis in which the fetus was diagnosed as an unaffected carrier last year with a confidence of 95 per cent. By using the new flanking markers, the diagnosis improved and confidence reached almost 100 per cent.