Management of an Agroecosystem

Agroecosystems (AESs) are autotrophic ecosystems managed by man. The goal of the management is to obtain the maximum possible amount of high-quality agricultural products while preserving agricultural resources, primarily the soils and biodiversity. The main components of the management of AES structures and functions, including primary and secondary biological production, the ratio between the energy flows in the plant–man and plant–livestock–man food chains, the efficiency of energy transfer in the plant–livestock link, and conservation of agricultural resources, are considered.     

长江中游水生生物多样性保护面临的威胁和压力

长江中游地区作为世界上最大的淡水生态区之一,生物多样性保护具有非常特殊的地位和作用。分析了长江中游地区生物多样性保护面临的主要威胁与压力,认为生境破碎萎缩、资源不合理开发利用、水环境污染、外来物种入侵等是生物多样性面临的主要威胁,而传统方式下的经济增长、土地利用粗放、人口增长与贫困、政策与管理等方面存在的问题将是生物多样性保护面临的主要压力。     

亚硝酸盐型同步脱氮除硫工艺单质硫产率及特性

采用SBR同步脱氮除硫反应器,设置了化学对照组(灭菌,不添加污泥)和生物试验组(添加污泥),以期研究亚硝酸盐型同步脱氮除硫工艺中S0的产率以及特性.发现化学对照组中NO2--N和S2--S的去除率最高可分别达到25.07％和62.26％,其主要产物为NH4+-N和S2SO32--S,并无S0生成.而在生物试验组中,NO...     

国内外含油污泥的处理现状分析

在石油开采及生产加工过程中要产生大量的废弃含油污泥,这些污泥不经处理直接排入环境将严重危害环境的安全以及人类的健康.因此,国内外正积极采取各种应对措施,希望能缓解含油污泥带来的危害.综述了国内外含油污泥的处理技术现状,并展望了含油污泥处理技术的发展方向.     

Influences and mechanisms of nanofullerene on the horizontal transfer of plasmid-encoded antibiotic resistance genes between E. coli strains

• Sub-inhibitory levels of nC₆₀ promote conjugative transfer of ARGs. • nC₆₀ can induce ROS generation, oxidative stress and SOS response. • nC₆₀ can increase cell membrane permeability and alter gene expression. • Results provide evidence of nC₆₀ promoting antibiotic resistance dissemination. The spread and development of antibiotic resistance globally have led to severe public health problems. It has been shown that some non-antibiotic substances can also promote the diffusion and spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Nanofullerene (nC₆₀) is a type of nanomaterial widely used around the world, and some studies have discovered both the biological toxicity and environmental toxicity of nC₆₀. In this study, cellular and molecular biology techniques were employed to investigate the influences of nC₆₀ at sub-minimum inhibitory concentrations (sub-MICs) on the conjugation of ARGs between the E. coli strains. Compared with the control group, nC₆₀ significantly increased the conjugation rates of ARGs by 1.32‒10.82 folds within the concentration range of 7.03‒1800 mg/L. This study further explored the mechanism of this phenomenon, finding that sub-MICs of nC₆₀ could induce the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), trigger SOS-response and oxidative stress, affect the expression of outer membrane proteins (OMPs) genes, increase membrane permeability, and thus promote the occurrence of conjugation. This research enriches our understanding of the environmental toxicity of nC₆₀, raises our risk awareness toward nC₆₀, and may promote the more rational employment of nC₆₀ materials.     

Analysis of motorcycle accidents using association rule mining-based framework with parameter optimization and GIS technology

IntroductionAnalyzing key factors of motorcycle accidents is an effective method to reduce fatalities and improve road safety. Association Rule Mining (ARM) is an efficient data mining method to identify critical factors associated with injury severity. However, the existing studies have some limitations in applying ARM: (a) Most studies determined parameter thresholds of ARM subjectively, which lacks objectiveness and efficiency; (b) Most studies only listed rules with high parameter thresholds, while lacking in-depth analysis of multiple-item rules. Besides, the existing studies seldom conducted a spatial analysis of motorcycle accidents, which can provide intuitive suggestions for policymakers. Method: To address these limitations, this study proposes an ARM-based framework to identify critical factors related to motorcycle injury severity. A method for parameter optimization is proposed to objectively determine parameter thresholds in ARM. A method of factor extraction is proposed to identify individual key factors from 2-item rules and boosting factors from multiple-item rules. Geographic information system (GIS) is adopted to explore the spatial relationship between key factors and motorcycle injury severity. Results and conclusions: The framework is applied to a case study of motorcycle accidents in Victoria, Australia. Fifteen attributes are selected after data preprocessing. 0.03 and 0.7 are determined as the best thresholds of support and confidence in ARM. Five individual key factors and four boosting factors are identified to be related to fatal injury. Spatial analysis is conducted by GIS to present hot spots of motorcycle accidents. The proposed framework has been validated to have better performance on parameter optimization and rule analysis in ARM. Practical applications: The hot spots of motorcycle accidents related to fatal factors are presented in GIS maps. Policymakers can refer to those maps straightforwardly when decision making. This framework can be applied to various kinds of traffic accidents to improve the performance of severity analysis.     

Worldwide effects of non-native species on species–area relationships

Non-native species have invaded most parts of the world, and the invasion process is expected to continue and accelerate. Because many invading non-native species are likely to become permanent inhabitants, future consideration of species-area relationships (SARs) should account for non-native species, either separately or jointly with native species. If non-native species occupy unused niches and space in invaded areas and extinction rate of native species remains low (especially for plants), the resultant SARs (with both native and non-native species) will likely be stronger. We used published and newly compiled data (35 data sets worldwide) to examine how species invasions affect SARs across selected taxonomic groups and diverse ecosystems around the world. We first examined the SARs for native, non-native, and all species. We then investigated with linear regression analyses and paired or unpaired t tests how degree of invasion (proportion of non-native species) affected postinvasion SARs. Postinvasion SARs for all species (native plus non-native) became significantly stronger as degree of invasion increased (r² = 0.31, p = 0.0006), thus, reshaping SARs worldwide. Overall, native species still showed stronger and less variable SARs. Also, slopes for native species were steeper than for non-native species (0.298 vs. 0.153). There were some differences among non-native taxonomic groups in filling new niches (especially for birds) and between islands and mainland ecosystems. We also found evidence that invasions may increase equilibrial diversity. Study of such changing species–area curves may help determine the probability of future invasions and have practical implications for conservation.     

Development of inherent safety and health index for formulated product design

The numerous formulated products which are introduced to the market consist of chemical ingredients that may cause various safety and health hazards to the consumers. Therefore, it is extremely important to practice a systematic methodology to formulate products with acceptable safety and health performances. This work presents an index-based methodology to assess the safety and health hazards of the ingredients during the early formulation stage of product design. Hence, new inherent safety and health sub-indexes are introduced to improve the current safety and health hazards that are needed in formulated product design. The inherent safety and health sub-indexes are assigned with scores based on the degree of potential hazards. A higher score indicates a higher safety risk or severe health effect, and vice versa. The proposed methodology will greatly assist the users to identify the adverse safety and health effects caused by the ingredients. Hence, it is pivotal to eliminate or reduce the safety and health impacts from product usage. A case study on common ingredients used in the formulation of paint is presented on this study to describe the proposed method.     

污染物的原位生物处理—生物清消技术

生物清消技术是一种迅速发展的污染物处理的生物技术,用于处理分散在土壤、地下水、海洋和湖泊中的污染物。生物清消技术通过向环境供给营养物、共作基质和供氧,并依靠有机污染物自身的碳源促进天然微生物群体的生长繁殖,也可进一步向污染环境中补充在实验中筛选和增殖的微生物(强化技术)稳定和加速生物降解过程。本文介绍了生物清消的几种方法:生物促进法、生物耕作法、固相清消法、土壤堆制法、生物泥浆法,还介绍了强化技术应用的几个方面。