Female sex pheromone in immature insect males—a case of pre-emergence chemical mimicry?

Sexual selection by competition for mates is a formidable force that has led to extraordinary adaptations in males. Here we present results suggesting a novel case of pheromone mimicry in males of Lariophagus distinguendus, a parasitic wasp of beetle larvae that develop in stored grain. Females of L. distinguendus produce a pheromone even before they emerge from a grain. Males are attracted to the parasitised grain and wait for females to emerge. Males emerging later than others are under enormous selection pressure since females mate only once. We show evidence that developing males fool their earlier emerging competitors by mimicking the female pheromone. Males exposed to pupae of either sex exhibit typical courtship behaviour. Searching males are not only arrested by grains containing developing females but spend as much time on grains containing developing males. Hence, by distracting their competitors away from receptive females late males may increase their own chance to mate with these females. After emergence, males decompose the active compounds within 32 h probably to decrease molestation during their own search for mates. Chemical analyses of active pheromone extracts and bioassays using fractions demonstrate that the active compounds are among the cuticular hydrocarbons.     

Modeling thermal analysis for predicting thermal hazards relevant to transportation safety and runaway reaction for 2,2′-azobis(isobutyronitrile)

The pure decomposition behavior of 2,2′-azobis (isobutyronitrile) (AIBN) and its physical phase transformation were examined and discussed. The thermal decomposition of this self-reactive azo compound was explored using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to elucidate the stages in the progress of this chemical reaction. DSC was used to predict the kinetic and process safety parameters, such as self-accelerating decomposition temperature (SADT), time to maximum reaction rate under adiabatic conditions (TMR_ad), and apparent activation energy (E_a), under isothermal and adiabatic conditions with thermal analysis models. Moreover, vent sizing package 2 (VSP2) was applied to examine the runaway reaction combined with simulation and experiments for thermal hazard assessment of AIBN. A thorough understanding of this reaction process can identify AIBN as a hazardous and vulnerable chemical during upset situations. The sublimation and melting of AIBN near its apparent onset decomposition temperature contributed to the initial steps of the reaction and explained the exothermic attributes of the peaks observed in the calorimetric investigation.     

基于重要性分析的甲烷/乙烯混合燃烧框架机理构筑

建立了基于重要性分析的详细化学机理分析平台,利用耦合组分化学存活时间和敏感性系数的重要性参数,确定详细机理中的准稳态组分,通过移除这些组分及其相关反应,得到了计算精度较高的框架机理。针对目前燃烧学界较为关注的混合燃烧问题,以甲烷、乙烯这两种典型低碳碳氢燃料为研究对象,对其详细化学反应机理进行了分析,利用重要性分析法构筑框架机理,并对甲烷/空气和甲烷/乙烯/空气预混火焰进行了数值计算。与详细机理相比,框架机理所涉及的组分数与基元反应数都得到了大幅度的降低,计算时间明显减少,但对火焰温度及反应物、生成物、中间组分浓度的预测与采用详细机理得到的结果吻合良好,证明了重要性分析法的有效性与可靠性。     

System dynamics research of non-adaptive evacuation psychology in toxic gas leakage emergencies of chemical park

Chemical industry park plays an important role in optimizing the allocation of resources, but an emergency may make a great deal of personnel casualty and property loss. Many casualties are not the result of accidents but are caused by extreme behavior because of the non-adaptive psychology of the evacuees. Panic is one of the non-adaptive psychological behaviors during an evacuation, which is influenced by a variety of factors. Based on the consideration of the disaster environment and the evolution of crowd emotion, a system dynamics model of panic spread is established by using Anylogic software, and simulation experiments are carried out for different disaster severity, visibility, and groups. The results show that the number of people with severe panic increase when visibility decreases or disaster diffuses. Besides, the appropriate proportion of groups can effectively reduce the cooling time of crowd and ease the fears. However, continue to increase the number of groups has no significant effect on the panic control. This work can provide some reasonable guidance for regional emergency evacuation in chemical park.     

Justice for Bhopal! And No More Bhopals! Three decades of national and international campaigning

Dissatisfaction with the responses of the responsible corporation, Union Carbide, and the Indian government to Bhopal resulted in a campaign by national and international NGOs (non-governmental organisations) over the past three decades. While initially the Indian and international campaigns were separate, over time greater international cooperation took place. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster local NGOs prioritised health, justice and rehabilitation issues, while international NGOs used Bhopal to question chemical industry process and environmental safety in their own countries, as well as internationally. Indian NGOs called on international NGO resources to gain legitimacy for their campaign, to use NGOs as proxies and to extend the geographical scope of the campaign, while international NGOs used Bhopal as an example to advance NGOs analyses and policies. Over the period of the campaign, Indian NGOs became more sophisticated in their campaigning. The international campaign has increasingly become an online campaign, involved in an image or reputational war with Dow Chemical, which took over Union Carbide, while the original campaign issues of justice and reparations over the process safety disaster were joined by similar issues related to environmental safety of abandoned toxic waste.     

Uncertainties in QRA: Analysis of losses of containment from piping and implications on risk prevention and mitigation

Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) is commonly used in the chemical industry to support decision-making. Common practices are based on standard methods, such as fault tree, event tree, etc.; in this frame, risk is a function of frequency of events (probability) and associated consequences (negative outcomes), but relevant uncertainties often are not properly taken into account in the derived results. This paper presents the application of an extended risk analysis of loss of containments for a case-study with the following aims: firstly, the uncertainties related to the results of the analysis, which derive from assumption in the application of the standard models, are qualitatively assessed; secondly the application allows evaluating the impact of the uncertainties on the trustworthiness of the results and, finally, commenting about their use in the risk prevention and mitigation.     

Survey-based analysis of evacuation preparation behaviors in a chemical leakage accident: A case study

Public evacuation preparation exerts an important impact on overall evacuation efficiency during regional evacuations. Early warnings often delay the occurrence of chemical accidents. Studying the characteristics of public evacuation preparation in such accidents will help develop better evacuation strategies considering the actual public response. In this work, the characteristics and factors influencing public evacuation preparation behaviors were analyzed by examining an evacuation case in China. The results indicated that the probability distribution of public's evacuation preparation time during a regional evacuation conforms to a Weibull distribution regardless of whether or not evacuation warnings were received. An estimation model of the traffic flow loading rate in a regional evacuation was then proposed on the basis of this finding. The results of this research can provide a reliable reference for evacuation modeling or logistics optimization for future incidents.     

Heavy-metal fractionation and distribution in soil profiles short-term-irrigated with sewage wastewater

Six soil profiles irrigated and non-irrigated with sewage wastewater were investigated for soil pH, electrical conductivity (EC), organic matter (OM), and CaCO₃. The distributions and chemical fractions of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb, and their lability were also studied. The results indicated that pH, EC, OM, and CaCO₃, as well as metal fractionation in soil profiles were affected by wastewater irrigation, especially in the surface layer. The surface layer (0-15 cm) irrigated with wastewater exhibited a 0.6 unit decrease in soil pH, a 40.6% decrease in CaCO₃, and a 200% increase in EC as compared with that of the non-irrigated soil. The soil OM increased from 0.04% to 0.35% in the surface layer. The irrigation of soil with wastewater resulted in transformation of metals from the carbonate fraction (CARB) towards the exchangeable (EXCH), Fe-Mn oxide (ERO), and organic (OM) fraction for Zn, towards the EXCH, the OM, and residual fraction for Cu, and towards the exchangeable (EXCH) fraction for Cd. It was concluded that the use of sewage wastewater led to salt accumulation and an increase in the readily labile fraction of Zn, Cu, and Cd in the surface layer. Therefore, this reason may limit the use of wastewater under arid and semi-arid conditions.     

Integrating phenological, chemical and biotic defences in ant-plant protection mutualisms: a case study of two myrmecophyte lineages

Summary. We examined the role of plant phenology in the evolution of anti-herbivore defence in symbiotic ant-plant protection mutualisms. Phenology of the host-plant affects traits of its herbivores, including size, growth rate, development time, and gregariousness. Traits of herbivores in turn determine what traits ants must have to protect their host. Diversity in plant phenological traits could thus help explain the great ecological diversity of coevolved ant-plant mutualisms. We explored the postulated causal chain linking phenology of the plant, herbivore adaptations to phenology, and ant adaptations for protection, by comparing two myrmecophytes presenting strong contrasts in phenology. In Leonardoxa africana, a slow-growing understory tree, growth at each twig terminal is intermittent, the rapid flushing of a single leaf-bearing internode being followed by a pause of several months. In contrast, axes of Barteria nigritana, a tree of open areas, grow continuously. Analysis of the phenology (kinetics of expansion) and chemistry of leaf development (contents of chlorophylls, lignin, and nitrogen during leaf growth) showed that these two species exhibit strongly contrasting strategies. Leonardoxa exhibited a delayed greening strategy, with rapid expansion of leaves during a short period, followed by synthesis of chlorophylls and lignins only after final leaf size has been reached. In contrast, leaves of Barteria expanded more slowly, with chlorophylls and lignin gradually synthesised throughout development. Differences in the phenology of leaf development are reflected in differences in the duration of larval development, and thereby in size, of the principal lepidopteran herbivores observed on these two plants. This difference may in turn have led to different requirements for effective defence by ants. The strategy of phenological defence may thus affect the evolution of biotic defence.     

Chemical ornaments of male lizards <Emphasis Type="Italic">Psammodromus algirus</Emphasis> may reveal their parasite load and health state to females

Evidence for parasite-mediated sexual selection has been found in many species that use visual ornaments to attract females. However, in many animals, variation in female responses to scents of parasitized males suggests that parasitic infections might also affect information conveyed by pheromones (i.e., chemical ornaments). Thus, pheromones might also function in parasite-mediated sexual selection. We show here that female lizards Psammodromus algirus responded differently to femoral gland secretions of males according to the parasite load and health of these males. Scents of healthier males elicited more tongue flicks (a chemosensory behavior) by females, suggesting that these scents were more attractive. Chemical analyses showed that parasite load and the T-cell-mediated immune response were related to the variability in the proportions of some lipids in secretions of males. Further trials testing the chemosensory responses of females to chemical standards indicated that females actually discriminated the chemicals related to males’ health from other chemicals found in secretions. We suggest that these chemical ornaments may provide reliable information on the health and degree of parasitic infection of a male.