Source characterization of nervous system active pharmaceutical ingredients in healthcare facility wastewaters

Nervous system active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), including anti-depressants and opioids, are important clinically administered pharmaceuticals within healthcare facilities. This study provides source characterization data describing the composition and magnitude of nervous system APIs present in healthcare facility wastewaters. Concentrations and mass loadings of ten nervous system APIs and three nervous system API metabolites are reported for wastewaters from a hospital, nursing, assisted living, and independent living facility within a single municipality. Concentrations of nervous system APIs ranged from non-detectable levels for alprazolam in all four facility wastewaters to a high of 290 ng/L amitriptyline in nursing facility wastewater. The summed mean concentration of all thirteen analytes ranged from 402 ng/L in independent living facility wastewater to 624 ng/L in assisted living facility wastewater. Wastewater flow rates from each facility were combined with concentration data to estimate the daily mass loading of nervous system APIs leaving each facility through wastewater discharge to the municipal sewer system. The total mass loading of all thirteen analytes for the hospital, nursing, assisted living, and independent living facility was 228, 44, 29.5, and 28.1 mg/day, respectively. The total mass loading of nervous system APIs contributed to the municipality's wastewater from all four facilities was 330 mg/day.     

Core activated sludge communities are influenced little by immigration: Case study of a membrane bioreactor plant

Microbial immigrants arriving with influent wastewater may influence activated sludge (AS) ecosystems. However, the extent to which immigration impacts AS communities is still debated. To explore the intensity of immigration impact, we used sequencing technology to track the raw wastewater and AS communities from a membrane bioreactor plant over a 12-month period. We first distinguished core populations from peripheral ones in both raw wastewater and AS based on their occurrence frequency and abundance. The results showed that core OTUs (≥ 80% occurrence frequency) made up a large fraction (> 90%) of total sequences, while peripheral OTUs composed the majority of all detected OTUs but merely occupied a few sequences. A significant difference in core communities between the influent and AS was found, as well as between the compositions of core and peripheral populations. Additionally, the persistent functional bacteria of AS, although not numerically dominant, accounted for 96.24% of the total sequences related to nutrient turnover, suggesting the presence of a small number of longstanding and core functional bacteria in the AS ecosystem. Importantly, 64% of the 5188 OTUs in AS, which accounted for 91.51% of the sequences, exhibited positive growth rates, which suggested that their apparent abundances were due to growth within the plant, not from immigration. Taken together, these results demonstrated that the impact of influent populations on core AS communities was limited. Overall, this work provides quantitative insights into the impact of immigration, which is expected to advance our understanding of the AS community assembly.     

Adaptive Management of Flows in the Lower Roanoke River, North Carolina, USA

The lower Roanoke River in North Carolina, USA, has been regulated by a series of dams since the 1950s. This river and its floodplain have been identified by The Nature Conservancy, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the State of North Carolina as critical resources for the conservation of bottomland hardwoods and other riparian and in-stream biota and communities. Upstream dams are causing extended floods in the growing season for bottomland hardwood forests, threatening their survival. A coalition of stakeholders including public agencies and private organizations is cooperating with the dam managers to establish an active adaptive management program to reduce the negative impacts of flow regulation, especially extended growing season inundation, on these conservation targets. We introduce the lower Roanoke River, describe the regulatory context for negotiating towards an active adaptive management program, present our conservation objective for bottomland hardwoods, and describe investigations in which we successfully employed a series of models to develop testable management hypotheses. We propose adaptive management strategies that we believe will enable the bottomland hardwoods to regenerate and support their associated biota and that are reasonable, flexible, and economically sustainable.     

地震预报与活断层分段

文章回顾分析了地震预报的经验与问题,对地震短期预报需进行新的探索与研讨,才能更快地前进。文章重点论述了地震预报和地震危险性评估方面有关的断层分段性问题。如何在众多的活断层上确定近期可能发生强震的地段,是地震预报中突出的重要问题之一。有关活断层分段性问题是近年来十分引人注目的课题。段是断层的破裂单元,断层的分段就是对断层进行独立的破裂单元的划分。断层分段有4种,当前讨论的主要是活断层破裂分段。     

山东省旱,涝,地震灾害的时序特征及其相互关系

分析了山东地区历史干旱、洪涝和地震灾害时间分布特征及其相互关系，发现旱涝与地震灾害一样具有不同时间尺度的准周期活动特征，且地震与旱涝具有一定相关关系．如内陆大地震多与干旱活动相继发生，海域地震多发生在洪涝活动时期；破坏性地震前多发生干旱，震后又常有洪涝相随等。进而对山东旱涝活动进行了初步分期。文中还对上述现象的成因作了简单分析。     

Optimal learning on climate change: Why climate skeptics should reduce emissions

Climate skeptics typically argue that the possibility that global warming is exogenous, implies that we should not take additional action towards reducing emissions until we know what drives warming. This paper however shows that even climate skeptics have an incentive to reduce emissions: such a directional change generates information on the causes of global warming. Since the optimal policy depends upon these causes, they are valuable to know. Although increasing emissions would also generate information, that option is inferior due its irreversibility. We show that optimality can even imply that climate skeptics should actually argue for lower emissions than believers.     

稀土改进型Fenton氧化法处理高浓度活性染料废水

研究了稀土双氧水处理高浓度活性染料废水的最佳反应条件。探讨了双氧水加入量、稀土量、温度及反应时间对COD去除率的影响。     

Implementation of airborne trace element monitoring with devitalised transplants of Hypnum cupressiforme Hedw.: assessment of temporal trends and element contribution by vehicular traffic in Naples city

A biomonitoring of airborne trace elements was performed in 2006 in Naples urban area through the exposure of devitalised Hypnum cupressiforme for 10 weeks at 4 m height. In one street, the moss was exposed at different heights to assess vertical gradients of element concentrations. Results were compared with those of a 1999 biosurvey. Correlations among Al, Fe and Ti suggested a soil particles contribution to element uptake. Cu, Mo and Fe were related with traffic flows. Long-range transport contributed to Cd, Cu and Mo accumulation in moss at higher heights. As in 1999, the airborne element load was higher in coastal sites, more affected by marine aerosols and traffic. In all sites, contents of Cd, Fe, Pb, Ni and V in moss were remarkably lower than in 1999, indicating a positive effect of actions set up in recent years to reduce the traffic and to improve the city air quality.     

Influence of environmental street characteristics on walking route choice of elderly people

Walking is an important source of outdoor physical activity among elderly people. In order to devise measures aimed at encouraging walking among the elderly it is important to understand how the local environment influences the walking behaviour of elderly people. Here, a model describing the influence of environmental street characteristics on the walking route choice of elderly people is presented. Techniques adapted from the field of transportation research were employed within the model. Data concerning the walking route choice to specific destinations reported by 364 independently living elderly residents (55–80 years) from three Dutch urban districts were collected. Route choice was modelled within a ‘Geographic Information System’ (GIS) database by using ‘resistance factors’ to describe the resistance to walking of street sections (i.e. links) within the street network. These factors were optimized by minimizing the difference between the estimated and the reported number of trips along each link. This is, to the authors' knowledge the first time that this technique has been applied within this context. The influence of link characteristics on link resistance was investigated by multivariate linear regression. The first results of the route choice model and the influence of street characteristics on route choice are reported and discussed.     

Simultaneous gas chromatographic determination of chlorpyrifos and its impurity sulfotep in liquid pesticide formulations

An analytical method for simultaneous determination of the active substance (chlorpyrifos) and its relevant impurity (sulfotep) in commercial pesticide formulations has been developed and validated. The proposed method entails extraction of the analytes from samples by sonication with acetone and analysis by gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID). The proposed method was characterized by satisfactory accuracy and precision. The repeatability expressed as relative standard deviation (RSD) was lower than the acceptable values calculated from the modified Horwitz equation whereas individual recoveries were in the range of 98–102% and 80–120% for chlorpyrifos and sulfotep, respectively. The limit of quantification (LOQ) for the impurity (sulfotep) was 0.003 mg mL^?1 corresponding to the maximum permitted level according to Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) specifications for the active substance (chlorpyrifos) being 3 g kg^?1 of the chlorpyrifos content found. The main advantage of the proposed method was a considerable reduction in the analysis time since both analytes were determined based on a single injection into the GC-FID. Analysis of real samples of commercial pesticide formulations confirmed fitness-for-purpose of the proposed method.