Kaufmangriffin7709

Allopurinol, a first-line gout treatment drug in Australia, was assessed as a wastewater-based epidemiology biomarker of gout via quantification of the urinary metabolite, oxypurinol in wastewater. The in-sewer stability of oxypurinol was examined using laboratory-scale sewer reactors. Wastewater from 75 wastewater treatment plants across Australia, covering approximately 52% (12.2 million) of the country's population, was collected on the 2016 census day. Oxypurinol was quantified in the wastewater samples and population-weighted mass loads calculated. Pearson and Spearman rank-order correlations were applied to investigate any link between allopurinol, other selected wastewater biomarkers, and socio-economic indicators. Oxypurinol was shown to be stable in sewer conditions and suitable as a WBE biomarker. Oxypurinol was detected in all wastewater samples. The estimated consumption of allopurinol ranged from 1.9 to 32 g/day/1000 people equating to 4.8 to 80 DDD/day/1000 people. The prevalence of gout across all tested sewer catchments was between 0.5% to 8%, with a median of 2.9% nationally. No significant positive correlation was observed between allopurinol consumption and alcohol consumption, mean age of catchment population, remoteness or higher socioeconomic status. There was a significant positive correlation with selective analgesic drug use. Wastewater analysis can be used to study gout prevalence and can provide additional insights on population level risk factors when triangulated with other biomarkers. Bioretention systems have gained considerable popularity as a more natural approach to stormwater management in urban environments. find more The choice of bioretention media is frequently cited as one of the critical design parameters with the ultimate impact on the performance of the system. The goal of this review is to highlight data that challenge the importance of media as being the dominant design parameter and argue that the long-term performance is shaped by the interactions between media and the living components of a bioretention system, especially vegetation. Some of the key interactions are related to the impact of plant roots on media pore structure, which has implications on infiltration, storage capacity, and treatment. Another relevant interaction pertains to evapotranspiration and the associated impacts on the water balance and the water quality performance of bioretention systems. The impacts of vegetation on the media are highlighted and actual, as well as potential, impacts of plant-media interactions on bioretention performance are presented. The evaluation of climate change impact on lakes typically relies on statistical methods like the reorganisation of organism communities (beta diversity) or transfer functions. A new method uses the silicification of diatoms that correlates with temperature and nutrients. The so-called silicification value (SiVa) overcomes problems of descriptive statistics or absent indicator species. Averaged over diatom communities, it related inversely to lake surface temperatures in mountain lakes. Hence, its change over time (δ SiVa) in a lake was hypothesised to reflect global change-driven lake warming quantitatively, which supposedly climaxes in shallow lakes. Sixteen different δ SiVa calculation approaches were tested. They (1) included or excluded planktic diatoms, (2) integrated fixed or variable time series referring to climate data or changes in diatom assemblages, (3) employed a top-bottom or regression approach and (4) expressed the δ SiVa as relative or absolute values. Subfossil diatom assemblages from 24 seogical studies of shallow lakes like hard-water mountain lakes. The sources of supra-permafrost water and its hydrological effects were studied, based on the presence of stable isotopes in 562 samples collected in different ablation periods from the source regions of the Yangtze River. The δ18O (δD and d-excess) values for the initial ablation, ablation, and end ablation periods were -10.18‰ (-71.39‰ and 10.08‰), -12.14‰ (-85.58‰ and 11.51‰) and -11.50‰ (-78.75‰ and 13.23‰), respectively. The order of the slopes for the supra-permafrost water evaporation lines from the different ablation periods was initial ablation (IA) > ablation (A) > end ablation (EA). An anti-altitude effect is documented here, for a specific altitude range, in what is believed to be the first record of such an occurrence. Outside of that range, clear altitude effects were apparent. We have been able to show that supra-permafrost water was mainly recharged by atmospheric precipitation, ground ice, and glacier and snow meltwater, in the initial ablation and end ablation periods, and contributions from glacier and snow meltwater were mainly concentrated in higher altitude regions. In contrast, in the ablation period, supra-permafrost water was mainly recharged by atmospheric precipitation and ground ice. The contributions of precipitation to supra-permafrost water were 78.79%, 85.47%, and 82.99% in the initial ablation, ablation, and end ablation periods, respectively. The contributions of ground ice to the supra-permafrost water were 14.05%, 14.53%, and 11.94%, respectively, while contributions of glacier and snow meltwater were 7.15% and 5.07% in the initial and end ablation period. For the initial ablation, ablation, and end ablation periods, contributions from atmospheric precipitation to the supra-permafrost water were 85.47%, 86.86%, and 86.84%, while contributions from ground ice were 14.53%, 13.14% and 13.16%, respectively. Heavy metal contamination in soils poses a serious threat to microorganisms, which play important roles in soil biogeochemical process. However, the key fractions of heavy metals affecting soil microorganisms are still unclear. In this study, DNA sequencing, redundancy and variance partition analysis were performed to investigate the combined effects of heavy metal fractions and soil chemical properties on microbial communities in Pb, Cd, and Zn co-contaminated soils. The results showed that long-term exposure of microorganisms to these metals changed the richness, diversity, and structure of their communities. The bacterial and fungal Chao richness indexes decreased, but only the bacterial Shannon index improved with increasing metal concentrations. Moreover, soil available potassium and acid-extractable Pb made the greatest contributions to variations in the bacterial community structure, while soil pH, water-extractable Pb and Zn were the dominant factors influencing the fungal community structure. In addition, Marmoricola, Nocardioides, and Gibberella were sensitive to these metals.