Zobrazení zdroje stránky Stentoftholm9658

Air pollution levels rise as a result of industrial and vehicular emissions, epidemiological issues such as asthma become more prevalent in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan and cause adverse public health effects. Many studies explored the association between air pollutants and frequency of asthma hospital visits, although their effects are unclear. This study examined the link between air pollution, asthma, and socioeconomic and demographic factors. A questionnaire survey was administered among four age groups (15-25, 25-45, 45-60, and over 60 years old) in public and private hospitals of Lahore city. Daily average concentrations of five air pollutants including carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3), and particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) were recorded at ten fixed air monitoring sites in Lahore city. There were favorable connections between outpatient department (OPD) asthma visits (64%) and levels of outdoor air quality during winter season throughout the study period. The correlation between 1, 29, and 370 asthma patients and average daily air pollution levels found that the condition was more prevalent in females (53%) than males (47%). There was a significant correlation between PM10 exposure and asthma OPD visits in the city (p 0.001), as well as the elevated PM10 levels were substantially linked with OPD asthma visits over the winter season in the city. The hazard index (HI) for all adult population was estimated 0.001132. The study's findings indicate that exposure to ambient air pollution is a significant predictor of asthma hospital visits, particularly among the elderly. Strategies can be developed by policymakers in response to the worrying situation of allergic disease asthma in industrial cities due to air pollution.Based on our previous study in minimal medium, Kocuria rosea and Aspergillus sydowii were identified as the best microbes for degradation of mixture of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The present study reports PAH degradation potential of these microbes in free and immobilized form. [https://www.selleckchem.com/products/dihydroethidium.html click here] PAHs were extracted using QuEChERS-mediated process followed by quantification by high performance liquid chromatography. The microbial consortium of Kocuria rosea + Aspergillus sydowii was formulated in three bio-formulations, namely (i) bentonite-alginate composite beads; (ii) water dispersible granule composite using guar gum-nanobentonite; and (iii) composites of carboxymethyl cellulose-bentonite and were applied in PAH fortified (100 µg g-1) sandy loam soil. Results suggested that degradation data fitted well to first order kinetics as in most of the cases, the values of correlation coefficient (r) were &gt; 0.95. The half-life (t1/2) values for PAHs in the uninoculated control soil were naphthalene (10.43 d), fluorene (22.43 d), phenanthrene (24.64 d), anthracene (38.47 d), and pyrene (34.34 d). Inoculation of soil with free culture microbial consortium (without or with nutrient) and bio-formulation of degrading cultures enhanced degradation of all PAHs and half-life values were significantly reduced for each PAH naphthalene (1.76-2.00 d), fluorene (2.52-6.65 d), phenanthrene (4.61-6.37 d), anthracene (9.01-12.22 d), and pyrene (10.98-15.55 d). Among different bio-formulations, guar gum-nanobentonite-based composite exhibited better efficacy for degradation of naphthalene, fluorene, phenanthrene, anthracene, and pyrene. The addition of microbial consortium in PAH fortified soil increased 16S rRNA gene copies of Alphaproteobacteria and Bacteroidetes, compared to the uninoculated, PAH-fortified control. The microbial functional gene assays showed that the gene copies of amoA, nirK, nirS, and anammox increased, suggesting nitrogen regulation in the PAH-fortified soil.Phosphonium-based ionic liquid (PIL) has been used as a catalyst and extractant. Here, the PIL, trihexyl tetradecyl phosphonium bromide ([THTDP]Br) was utilized for the S-removal of model oil (MO) and acted as the reaction-induced self-separation catalyst. The influence of oxidant to sulfur molar ratio (n(O/S)), mass ratio of model oil to ionic liquid (m(MO/IL)), sonication time, and temperature was observed to investigate the optimal conditions for the ultrasound-assisted extractive/oxidative desulfurization (UEODS) catalyzed by [THTDP]Br. A kinetic study was performed, and the reaction rate constant and half-life were calculated as the oxidation reaction was following pseudo-first-order reaction kinetics. Moreover, the oxidation reactivity and selectivity of various sulfur substrates were in the following order DBT &gt; BT &gt; TH &gt; 3-MT. The DBT removal with various initial S-content was observed to be constant, which makes it feasible for practical application. The interaction energy between [THTDP]Br and S-compounds was examined using Density Functional Theory. The sulfur removal of base oil (BO) was also examined using various desulfurization systems at DBT optimized conditions. The highest desulfurization efficiency of BO was obtained during the UEODS process, which made it industrially feasible. [THTDP]Br was regenerated and recycled six times with a slight variation in efficiency.In this study, effects of carbon to nitrogen (COD/TN) ratios of biogas slurry on shortcut nitrification-denitrification in a pilot-scale integrated fixed film activated sludge (IFAS) system were investigated. Lowering the COD/TN ratio from 11.7 to 6.2 exerted a negative impact on shortcut nitrification-denitrification performance. Accordingly, the NH3-N and TN removal rates decreased from 94.4 to 91.2% and 92.3 to 85.9%, respectively. The dynamics of microbial assembly was analyzed by MiSeq sequencing, and the denitrifying functional genes were quantified by qPCR. The results showed that ammonia oxidizing bacteria and amoA gene were more abundant on the biofilm of oxic tank, indicating they play a key role in NH3-N removal. Autotrophic, endogenous, and fast heterotrophic kinetics denitrifiers were coexisted and enriched in the IFAS system with a decreasing of COD/TN ratio. TN removal was mainly affected by denitrifiers (including Arenimonas, Acidovorax, and Thaurea) harboring narG and nirS genes. Canonical correspondence analysis proved that COD/TN ratio was the most critical factor driving the succession of microbial community. Dissolved oxygen (DO) and pH were found positively correlated with denitrifiers at low COD/TN ratio conditions. As a result, NH3-N and TN removal were effectively enhanced when the DO level in the oxic tank of IFAS system was increased to 1.0-3.0 mg/L.In this study, discarded mushroom-stick, which is widely available, was selected as a precursor to prepare MnO2-modified biochar (MBC) for Sb(III) removal. Several characterisation methods (SEM, BET, XPS, FT-IR, and XRD) were used to explore the mechanisms of antimony adsorption onto MBC. The results showed that MBC is a mesoporous material with a fluffy structure and a higher specific surface area (23.56 and 32.09 m2·g-1) than PBC600 (13.62 m2·g-1), exhibiting superior and stable adsorption capacities for Sb(III) (50.30 mg·g-1 for 1/30MBC600 and 64·12 mg·g-1 for 1/20MBC600) across a wide pH range (pH 4-8). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy analyses indicated that the main oxides and functional groups involved in the adsorption were manganese oxides and hydroxyl groups. Forty-four per cent of the adsorbed Sb(III) was oxidised to Sb(V) by manganese oxides or hydroxyl groups both on the surface of biochar and in solution. According to adsorption kinetics and isotherms, the adsorption process of Sb(III) is chemisorption, which includes monolayer and multilayer heterogeneous chemisorption processes. To sum up, MBC is an excellent adsorbent for the capture of Sb(III) from contaminated water with strong potential for future application.Environmental regulation is an important tool for policymakers to achieve environmental goals. To better understand the role of environmental regulation in protecting the ecosystem, this paper offers a new perspective on exploring the heterogeneous impact of environmental policy stringency on the ecological footprint in 27 OECD countries during the period 1990-2015. An advanced economic method, panel quantile regression, is conducted to deal with the non-normality and unobserved individual heterogeneity across countries. The estimation outcomes indicate that the environmental effect of policy stringency is heterogeneous along the quantiles and different between the ecological footprint of consumption and production. The beneficial role of environmental regulation in reducing consumption ecological footprint is achieved at quantiles under 80th but the harmful effect starts occurring at extreme high quantiles. In contrast, environmental policy stringency plays a consistently useful role in mitigating production ecological footprint. In addition, the results disclose that the effects of other driving factors such as international trade, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and income are heterogeneous at different quantiles of ecological footprint. These findings help explain the inconsistencies in previous empirical studies on the nexus between environmental regulation and environmental quality in OECD countries. Finally, the current study gives policymakers useful recommendations on how to strengthen the beneficial impacts of environmental policies on the ecosystem.Accurate wind speed forecasting (WSF) not only ensures stable power system operation but also contributes to enhancing the competitiveness of wind power companies in the market. In this paper, a hybrid prediction model based on secondary decomposition algorithm (SDA) is proposed for WSF. First, wavelet transform (WT) is used to decompose the wind speed sequence into approximate and detailed components. Second, the obtained detailed components are further decomposed by symplectic geometry mode decomposition (SGMD). Then, the marine predators algorithm-optimized back-propagation neural network (BPNN) is used to predict the new subsequences. The case study was implemented on 4 datasets. The experimental results show that, first, the proposed hybrid model has the highest prediction accuracy and the best robustness among all the compared models in 1-4-step prediction. Second, the proposed hybrid decomposition strategy has significant utility in reducing the difficulty of WSF. After adding SDA, the average improvement levels of MAPE in 1-4-step prediction were 85.64%, 84.93%, 81.08% and 80.67%, respectively. Third, the re-decomposition of the details obtained by WT can improve the prediction accuracy. After the re-decomposition of the details obtained by WT, the proposed WT-SGMD-MPA-BP model leads to the average improvement percentages of 44.44%, 61.69%, 50.56% and 49.28% in RMSE compared with WT-MPA-BP model in various horizons. The proposed model provides valuable reference for WSF. In future work, the performance of the model for other nonlinear sequences is worth exploring.Machine learning approaches in diagnosis and prognosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) were analysed using retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness, measured by optical coherence tomography (OCT). A cross-sectional study (72 MS patients and 30 healthy controls) was used for diagnosis. These 72 MS patients were involved in a 10-year longitudinal follow-up study for prognostic purposes. Structural measurements of RNFL thickness were performed using different Spectralis OCT protocols fast macular thickness protocol to measure macular RNFL, and fast RNFL thickness protocol and fast RNFL-N thickness protocol to measure peripapillary RNFL. Binary classifiers such as multiple linear regression (MLR), support vector machines (SVM), decision tree (DT), k-nearest neighbours (k-NN), Naïve Bayes (NB), ensemble classifier (EC) and long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network were tested. For MS diagnosis, the best acquisition protocol was fast macular thickness protocol using k-NN (accuracy 95.8%; sensitivity 94.4%; specificity 97.