Preparation and Characterization of Polyamide Thin Film Composite Nanofiltration Membrane Based on Polyurethane Nanofibrous Support

Journal of Polymers and the Environment - Polyurethane nanofibers recognized to perform as a sub-layer were employed herein as a medial-layer of high porosity in the fabrication of a novel class of...     

Physical development trend and green space destruction in developing cities: a GIS approach

Green spaces considered natural remnants in urban environments play a key role in promoting environmental quality and forming a sustainable city. Nowadays, development of urban spaces has taken a hasty growth. In the meanwhile, the natural green spaces are severely damaged. The current study aims at investigating the trend of changes in green space of Tabriz City, the second large industrial city in Iran, on the basis of landscape ecology principles. In order to prepare the land-cover maps, Landsat TM and IRS LISS-III of the years 1989 and 2006 were applied. Alongside, landscape percentage metrics, the largest patch index, number of patches, patch density, edge density, total edge, class area and landscape shape index were also used to analyse the changes. Metric analysis of the landscape within the studied years revealed that a large part of the region has enjoyed a rapid growth (equivalent to 64.5 %) in constructions. As the obtained results showed, the smallest landscape percentage (3.9 %) in the study area is belonged to the municipal green space, while the largest landscape percentage (66 %) is allocated to the barren land. This shows that the constructions have not balanced with creation of new green spaces, and the lack of green space per capita continues to be felt.     

Multilingual education of students on a global scale and perspective—international networking on the example of bioindication and biomonitoring (B&B technologies)

Living or formerly living organisms are being used to obtain information on the quality of the general health status of our environment by bioindication and biomonitoring methods for many decades. Thus, different roads toward this common scientific goal were developed by a lot of different international research groups. Global cooperation in between various scientific teams throughout the world has produced common ideas, scientific definitions, and highly innovative results of this extremely attractive working field. The transdisciplinary approach of different and multifaceted scientific areas—starting from biology, analytical chemistry, via health physics, up to social and economic issues—have surpassed mental barriers of individual scientists, so that “production” of straightforward common results related to the influence of material and immaterial environmental factors to the well-being of organisms and human life has now reached the forefront of international thinking. For the further sustainable development of our common scientific “hobby” of bioindication and biomonitoring, highest personal energy has to be given by us, being teachers to our students and to convince strategically decision makers as politicians to invest (financially) into the development of education and research of this innovative technique. Young people have to be intensively convinced on the “meaning” of our scientific doing, e.g., by extended forms of education. One example of multilingual education of students on a global scale and perspective is given here, which we started about 3 years ago.     

Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in the indoor air of intensive care unit (ICU) for severe COVID-19 patients and its surroundings: considering the role of environmental conditions

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - There is ambiguity about the airborne transmission of the SARS-CoV-2. While a distance of 6 feet is considered a safe physical distance, new findings...     

Passenger muscle responses in lane change and lane change with braking maneuvers using two belt configurations: Standard and reversible pre-pretensioner

Abstract

Objective: The introduction of integrated safety technologies in new car models calls for an improved understanding of the human occupant response in precrash situations. The aim of this article is to extensively study occupant muscle activation in vehicle maneuvers potentially occurring in precrash situations with different seat belt configurations.

Methods: Front seat male passengers wearing a 3-point seat belt with either standard or pre-pretensioning functionality were exposed to multiple autonomously carried out lane change and lane change with braking maneuvers while traveling at 73?km/h. This article focuses on muscle activation data (surface electromyography [EMG] normalized using maximum voluntary contraction [MVC] data) obtained from 38 muscles in the neck, upper extremities, the torso, and lower extremities. The raw EMG data were filtered, rectified, and smoothed. All muscle activations were presented in corridors of mean?±?one standard deviation. Separate Wilcoxon signed ranks tests were performed on volunteers’ muscle activation onset and amplitude considering 2 paired samples with the belt configuration as an independent factor.

Results: In normal driving conditions prior to any of the evasive maneuvers, activity levels were low (<2% MVC) in all muscles except for the lumbar extensors (3–5.5% MVC). During the lane change maneuver, selective muscles were activated and these activations restricted the sideway motions due to inertial loading. Averaged muscle activity, predominantly in the neck, lumbar extensor, and abdominal muscles, increased up to 24% MVC soon after the vehicle accelerated in lateral direction for all volunteers. Differences in activation time and amplitude between muscles in the right and left sides of the body were observed relative to the vehicle’s lateral motion. For specific muscles, lane changes with the pre-pretensioner belt were associated with earlier muscle activation onsets and significantly smaller activation amplitudes than for the standard belt (P?<?.05).

Conclusions: Applying a pre-pretensioner belt affected muscle activations; that is, amplitude and onset time. The present muscle activation data complement the results in a preceding publication, the volunteers’ kinematics and the boundary conditions from the same data set. An effect of belt configuration was also seen on previously published volunteers’ kinematics with lower lateral and forward displacements for head and upper torso using the pre-pretensioner belt versus the standard belt. The data provided in this article can be used for validation and further improvement of active human body models with active musculature in both sagittal and lateral loading scenarios intended for simulation of some evasive maneuvers that potentially occur prior to a crash.     

The influence of human activity and morphological characteristics of beaches on plastic debris distribution along the Caspian Sea as a closed water body

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The Caspian Sea is the largest land-locked lake in the world that includes numerous endemic species. Because of its enclosed nature, the pollutants...     

Global trends and status in waste foundry sand management research during the years 1971-2020: a systematic analysis

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Waste foundry sand (WFS) is the by-product of the foundry industry, which is produced about 0.6 tons per 1 ton of foundry industry production. While...     

A time series analysis of environmental and metrological factors impact on cutaneous leishmaniasis incidence in an endemic area of Dehloran,Iran

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the environmental and metrological variables and cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) transmission and its prediction in a region susceptible to this disease prevalence using a time series model. The accurate locations of 4437 CL diagnosed from 2011 to 2015 were obtained to be used in the time series model. Temperature, number of days with temperature over 30 °C, and number of earthquake were related to CL incidence using the Seasonal Auto-correlated Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model according to the Box-Jenkins method. In addition, the relationship between land use and surface soil type in 500- and 1000-m radius around the CL patients were investigated. The SARIMA models showed significant associations between environmental and meteorological variables and CL incidence adjusted for seasonality and auto-correlation. The result indicated that there are need more robust preventive programs in earthquake-prone areas with high temperature and inceptisol soil type than other areas. In addition, the region with these characteristics should be considered as high-risk areas for CL prevalence.