A new leak location method based on leakage acoustic waves for oil and gas pipelines

In order to study a new leak detection and location method for oil and natural gas pipelines based on acoustic waves, the propagation model is established and modified. Firstly, the propagation law in theory is obtained by analyzing the damping impact factors which cause the attenuation. Then, the dominant-energy frequency bands of leakage acoustic waves are obtained through experiments by wavelet transform analysis. Thirdly, the actual propagation model is modified by the correction factor based on the dominant-energy frequency bands. Then a new leak detection and location method is proposed based on the propagation law which is validated by the experiments for oil pipelines. Finally, the conclusions and the method are applied to the gas pipelines in experiments. The results indicate: the modified propagation model can be established by the experimental method; the new leak location method is effective and can be applied to both oil and gas pipelines and it has advantages over the traditional location method based on the velocity and the time difference. Conclusions can be drawn that the new leak detection and location method can effectively and accurately detect and locate the leakages in oil and natural gas pipelines.     

Efficacy-based and normative interventions for facilitating the diffusion of conservation behavior through social networks

Research suggests that encouraging motivated residents to reach out to others in their social network is an effective strategy for increasing the scale and speed of conservation action adoption. However, little is known about how to effectively encourage large numbers of residents to reach out to others about conservation causes. We examined the influence of normative and efficacy-based messaging at motivating residents to engage in and to encourage others to participate in native plant gardening in their community. To do so, we conducted a field experiment with messages on mailings and tracked native plant vouchers used. Efficacy messages tended to be more effective than normative messages at increasing residents’ willingness to reach out to others to encourage conservation action, as indicated by a several percentage point increase in native plant voucher use by residents’ friends and neighbors. Messages sometimes had different impacts on residents based on past behaviors and perceptions related to native plant gardening. Among these subgroups, efficacy and combined efficacy and norm messages most effectively encouraged individual and collective actions, as indicated by increased voucher usage. Our findings suggest that interventions that build residents’ efficacy for engaging in a conservation behavior and for reaching out to others may be a promising path forward for outreach. However, given our results were significant at a false discovery rate cutoff of 0.25 but not 0.05, more experimental trials are needed to determine the robustness of these trends.     

Understanding implications of consumer behavior for wildlife farming and sustainable wildlife trade

Unsustainable wildlife trade affects biodiversity and the livelihoods of communities dependent upon those resources. Wildlife farming has been proposed to promote sustainable trade, but characterizing markets and understanding consumer behavior remain neglected but essential steps in the design and evaluation of such operations. We used sea turtle trade in the Cayman Islands, where turtles have been farm raised for human consumption for almost 50 years, as a case study to explore consumer preferences toward wild‐sourced (illegal) and farmed (legal) products and potential conservation implications. Combining methods innovatively (including indirect questioning and choice experiments), we conducted a nationwide trade assessment through in‐person interviews from September to December 2014. Households were randomly selected using disproportionate stratified sampling, and responses were weighted based on district population size. We approached 597 individuals, of which 37 (6.2%) refused to participate. Although 30% of households had consumed turtle in the previous 12 months, the purchase and consumption of wild products was rare (e.g., 64–742 resident households consumed wild turtle meat [i.e., 0.3–3.5% of households] but represented a large threat to wild turtles in the area due to their reduced populations). Differences among groups of consumers were marked, as identified through choice experiments, and price and source of product played important roles in their decisions. Despite the long‐term practice of farming turtles, 13.5% of consumers showed a strong preference for wild products, which demonstrates the limitations of wildlife farming as a single tool for sustainable wildlife trade. By using a combination of indirect questioning, choice experiments, and sales data to investigate demand for wildlife products, we obtained insights about consumer behavior that can be used to develop conservation‐demand‐focused initiatives. Lack of data from long‐term social–ecological assessments hinders the evaluation of and learning from wildlife farming. This information is key to understanding under which conditions different interventions (e.g., bans, wildlife farming, social marketing) are likely to succeed.     

Fishing‐gear restrictions and biomass gains for coral reef fishes in marine protected areas

Considerable empirical evidence supports recovery of reef fish populations with fishery closures. In countries where full exclusion of people from fishing may be perceived as inequitable, fishing‐gear restrictions on nonselective and destructive gears may offer socially relevant management alternatives to build recovery of fish biomass. Even so, few researchers have statistically compared the responses of tropical reef fisheries to alternative management strategies. We tested for the effects of fishery closures and fishing gear restrictions on tropical reef fish biomass at the community and family level. We conducted 1,396 underwater surveys at 617 unique sites across a spatial hierarchy within 22 global marine ecoregions that represented 5 realms. We compared total biomass across local fish assemblages and among 20 families of reef fishes inside marine protected areas (MPAs) with different fishing restrictions: no‐take, hook‐and‐line fishing only, several fishing gears allowed, and sites open to all fishing gears. We included a further category representing remote sites, where fishing pressure is low. As expected, full fishery closures, (i.e., no‐take zones) most benefited community‐ and family‐level fish biomass in comparison with restrictions on fishing gears and openly fished sites. Although biomass responses to fishery closures were highly variable across families, some fishery targets (e.g., Carcharhinidae and Lutjanidae) responded positively to multiple restrictions on fishing gears (i.e., where gears other than hook and line were not permitted). Remoteness also positively affected the response of community‐level fish biomass and many fish families. Our findings provide strong support for the role of fishing restrictions in building recovery of fish biomass and indicate important interactions among fishing‐gear types that affect biomass of a diverse set of reef fish families.     

A multi-path routing-inventory problem for a closed-loop supply chain considering the heterogeneous fleet of vehicles

In this paper, the inventory-routing problem is studied for a closed-loop supply chain. This closed-loop supply chain considers suppliers, manufacturers, whole-sellers, and disposal centers. To formulate this problem, a mixed integer linear programming model is proposed. This mathematical model minimizes the total costs of the supply chain, including the fixed and variable costs of vehicles, and holding inventory costs of final products and scraps. The proposed model considers the road roughness degree, multi-path setting and the heterogeneous fleet of vehicles, which increases its flexibility and the quality of solutions. Then, two symmetry-breaking constraints are proposed to reduce the complexity of the mathematical model. In order to evaluate the integrity of the proposed model, 20 instances of different sizes are randomly generated and solved. Finally, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis is conducted with respect to five key features of the problem, such as the impact of the symmetry-breaking constraints on the CPU time, multi-path setting, fixed cost of vehicles, heterogeneous fleet of vehicles, and lost sales. The results indicate that the consideration of multi-path setting and the heterogeneous fleet of vehicles improves the quality of solutions significantly.     

Experience in quantitative analysis of floristic structure and diversity in Samarskaya Luka

Quantitative methods have been applied to the study of floristic structure and diversity in Samarskaya Luka. The results show that Samarskaya Luka is a floristically heterogeneous area in which six elementary floras can be distinguished. This area has been assessed as a floristically autonomous formation, and its floristic representativeness was estimated.     

Dynamics of growth and seed production in the Siberian stone pine: The level and pattern of variation in characters

A statistical analysis of interannual variation in a set of vegetative and generative characters over 13 years has been performed to characterize the growth and seed production dynamics of the Siberian stone pine (Pinus sibirica Du Tour) in the southeast of the forest zone in western Siberia. The results have shown that the range of fluctuations in most of vegetative characters is ordinary and their distribution is close to normal. The range of fluctuations in many generative characters is enormous (from 0 to +∞), and the distribution of their values is usually skewed, with low values being recorded several times more frequently than high values. Most variable are the proportion of abortive cones and other characters that are determined mainly in the spring of the pollination year. These characters account for a very high level of variation in the total seed production.     

人口老龄化背景下的经济对策与产业选择

面对人口老龄化对经济发展的影响．应以养老和健康保障为先导．逐步加大对社会保障基金的投入．充实基本养老保险和医疗保险基金．建立和完善与生产力发展水平相适应的社会保障制度．继续推进社会保障社会化和产业结构调整的力度．建议政府应大力发展老龄产业。政府必须从实际出发．坚持科学发展观．逐步建立和完善老年社会养老制度和福利制度．根据老年消费市场状况．规范、引导投资．调整、优化产业结构用产业化、市场化、社会化的新运行机制．推进安老、养老产业的发展．根据老年人的不同需求，有计划的发展老龄产业、开发老年用品．增设老年服务项目．满足老年人在物质和文化方面的发展需要．以促使人口老龄化与经济的协调发展。     

Analysis of the Trend and Seasonal Cycle of Carbon Monoxide Concentrations in an Urban Area (4 pp)

Background, Aim and Scope Air quality is an field of major concern in large cities. This problem has led administrations to introduce plans and regulations to reduce pollutant emissions. The analysis of variations in the concentration of pollutants is useful when evaluating the effectiveness of these plans. However, such an analysis cannot be undertaken using standard statistical techniques, due to the fact that concentrations of atmospheric pollutants often exhibit a lack of normality and are autocorrelated. On the other hand, if long-term trends of any pollutant’s emissions are to be detected, meteorological effects must be removed from the time series analysed, due to their strong masking effects. Materials and Methods The application of statistical methods to analyse temporal variations is illustrated using monthly carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations observed at an urban site. The sampling site is located at a street intersection in central Valencia (Spain) with a high traffic density. Valencia is the third largest city in Spain. It is a typical Mediterranean city in terms of its urban structure and climatology. The sampling site started operation in January 1994 and monitored CO ground level concentrations until February 2002. Its geographic coordinates are W0°22′52″ N39°28′05″ and its altitude is 11 m. Two nonparametric trend tests are applied. One of these is robust against serial correlation with regards to the false rejection rate, when observations have a strong persistence or when the sample size per month is small. A nonparametric analysis of the homogeneity of trends between seasons is also discussed. A multiple linear regression model is used with the transformed data, including the effect of meteorological variables. The method of generalized least squares is applied to estimate the model parameters to take into account the serial dependence of the residuals of this model. This study also assesses temporal changes using the Kolmogorov-Zurbenko (KZ) filter. The KZ filter has been shown to be an effective way to remove the influence of meteorological conditions on O₃ and PM to examine underlying trends. Results The nonparametric tests indicate a decreasing, significant trend in the sampled site. The application of the linear model yields a significant decrease every twelve months of 15.8% for the average monthly CO concentration. The 95% confidence interval for the trend ranges from 13.9% to 17.7%. The seasonal cycle also provides significant results. There are no differences in trends throughout the months. The percentage of CO variance explained by the linear model is 90.3%. The KZ filter separates out long, short-term and seasonal variations in the CO series. The estimated, significant, long-term trend every year results in 10.3% with this method. The 95% confidence interval ranges from 8.8% to 11.9%. This approach explains 89.9% of the CO temporal variations. Discussion The differences between the linear model and KZ filter trend estimations are due to the fact that the KZ filter performs the analysis on the smoothed data rather than the original data. In the KZ filter trend estimation, the effect of meteorological conditions has been removed. The CO short-term componentis attributable to weather and short-term fluctuations in emissions. There is a significant seasonal cycle. This component is a result of changes in the traffic, the yearly meteorological cycle and the interactions between these two factors. There are peaks during the autumn and winter months, which have more traffic density in the sampled site. There is a minimum during the month of August, reflecting the very low level of vehicle emissions which is a direct consequence of the holiday period. Conclusions The significant, decreasing trend implies to a certain extent that the urban environment in the area is improving. This trend results from changes in overall emissions, pollutant transport, climate, policy and economics. It is also due to the effect of introducing reformulated gasoline. The additives enable vehicles to burn fuel with a higher air/fuel ratio, thereby lowering the emission of CO. The KZ filter has been the most effective method to separate the CO series components and to obtain an estimate of the long-term trend due to changes in emissions, removing the effect of meteorological conditions. Recommendations and Perspectives Air quality managers and policy-makers must understand the link between climate and pollutants to select optimal pollutant reduction strategies and avoid exceeding emission directives. This paper analyses eight years of ambient CO data at a site with a high traffic density, and provides results that are useful for decision-making. The assessment of long-term changes in air pollutants to evaluate reduction strategies has to be done while taking into account meteorological variability