Laustsendamgaard6556

Hydrophobic and oleophilic biomass-based block materials are considered to be highly promising candidates used for oil/water separation. However, the crucial hydrophobic modification process often involves various toxic and hazardous organic substances or requires high energy inputs. Inspired by the flame retardant principle of phosphorus-containing flame retardants, herein, an Enteromorpha-derived carbon (ADP-EP) aerogel with a water contact angle of 144.2° was prepared by successive freeze-shaping, freeze-drying and low-temperature carbonization treatment (300 °C), using NH4H2PO4 (ADP) as a modifier. The results demonstrated that the introduction of NH4H2PO4 could largely facilitate the removal of oxygenated groups from the pristine EP aerogels and enhance their surface roughness, thereby achieving surface hydrophobic modification. Featuring intrinsic low density, rich porosity and strong lipophilicity, the as-fabricated ADP-EP aerogels exhibited exceptional performance in both oil spill adsorption (~140 g/g) and water-in-oil emulsion separation. Moreover, the good reusability for oil uptake was also realized thanks to its robust mechanical compressibility and thermal stability. check details This work provides a facile, economical and eco-friendly route to obtain a desirable hydrophobic/oleophilic surface.To balance China's socio-economic development and emission reduction goals, a fair and effective provincial carbon emission allowance (CEA) allocation is necessary. By considering the implied emissions of inter-provincial power transfer, this study designed a dynamic multi-criteria CEA allocation model based on four criteria-egalitarianism, historical responsibility, emission reduction capability, and emission efficiency-to calculate the provincial CEA year by year before 2030. The efficiency and fairness of the CEA scheme were evaluated through the Data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, the environmental Gini coefficient, and its grouped decomposition method. The national overall CEA, the results revealed, will peak during the 15th Five-Year Plan (FYP) period. Specifically, the CEA for eastern and central China is expected to peak first during the 14th FYP period, while the northeast region's CEA remains stable and that of the western region continues to grow. Provinces with high carbon emissions, high carbon emission intensity and high per capita carbon emissions and provinces with particularly high carbon emissions will face great pressure regarding emission reduction, and their CEA peaks are expected to arrive before 2025 and 2030 respectively. The CEA of the less-developed provinces will have a surplus. In terms of time, the high-emission provinces face greater emission reduction pressure during the 15th FYP period than during the 14th FYP period. In terms of scheme evaluation, the scheme achieved a double improvement in fairness and efficiency compared with the current actual emissions of various provinces. Reducing the differences in per capita CEA between the different regions and provinces in the western and eastern regions will help improve the scheme's fairness. This study overcomes the existing researches' shortcomings on the large differences in the distribution of emission reduction pressures in key provinces and is more feasible in practice.A particularly concerning outcome of environmental pollution is the disturbance of reproductive processes. However, studies on the impacts of pollution on the reproductive health of fish inhabiting South American environments are limited. We studied the impact of anthropogenic pollution on the reproductive health of two sympatric Patagonian marine fish species with different reproductive strategies the live-bearing rockfish Sebastes oculatus and the egg-laying Brazilian sandperch Pinguipes brasilianus. Our findings reveal that both species presented some degree of reproductive disturbance when inhabiting an affected site, but the specific alterations differed depending on the species, sex, and season. During the reproductive season, 17β-estradiol levels were elevated in females of both species living in polluted areas, while no differences in androgen levels were observed in either species or season. The gonadosomatic index (GSI) was affected in both sexes of S. oculatus during the non-reproductive season, while the gonadal stages were mainly affected in both sexes of P. brasilianus. No signs of intersex condition were observed. Our results highlight the importance of including diverse reproductive parameters to better understand anthropogenic effects on wild animals. Long-term studies including other fish species and including offspring (to evaluate possible transgenerational effects) will be necessary to determine the consequences of the documented reproductive alterations, particularly whether fish species inhabiting Patagonian marine reef areas will be able to reproductively adapt to increasing marine anthropogenic disturbances.Carbonaceous aerosols (CAs) are major components of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that dramatically influence the energy budget of Earth. However, accurate assessment of the climatic impacts of CAs is still challenging due to the large uncertainties remaining in the measurement of their optical properties. In this respect, a modified versatile aerosol concentration enrichment system integrated into optical instruments (VACES-OPTS) was set up to increase particle concentration and amplify signal-noise ratio during optical measurement. Based on the novel technique, this study was able to lower the detection limit of CAs by an order of magnitude under high temporal resolution (2 h) and small sampling flow (6 L min-1). Besides, stable and reliable optical data were obtained for absorption apportionment and source identification of black carbon (BC) and brown carbon (BrC). In the field application of the new system, high absorption coefficient of CAs in Shanghai, China was witnessed. Further analysis of the contribution of black carbon BC and BrC to light absorption revealed that BrC could account for over 15% of the total absorption at 370 nm. According to the potential source contribution function model (PSCF) classification, CAs with strong light absorption in urban Shanghai originated not only from highly polluted inland China but also from active marine ship emissions.Thermal digestion has emerged as a novel technique for the rapid treatment of solid organic waste (SOW). Dehydration mechanism and fate of nutrients during the thermal digestion of the SOW were explored. A series of experiments were carried out in a specially designed laboratory-scale dehydrator to determine its drying kinetics. The statistical analysis revealed that the diffusion model predicted the dehydration profile most accurately than other models. The effective moisture diffusivity coefficient depended on the temperature and varied from 2.81 × 10-08 m2/s to 8.68 × 10-08 m2/s at the tested temperature range. The activation energy required for complete dehydration was found to be 26.56 kJ/mol. The artificial neural network (ANN) model was found highly efficient (R2 - 0.983) in predicting the total drying time required for attaining equilibrium moisture content. The total N decreased from 2.2% to 1.81% due to evaporation of ammonical nitrogen, while the availability of P and K was increased from 0.38% to 0.43% and 1.47% to 1.75%, respectively when the temperature was increased from 110 °C to 170 °C. The thermal dehydration technique was found effective in digesting the organics and improving the bioavailability of the nutrients, which favours for its re-utilization in agriculture.Epidemiologic studies have suggested that elevated concentrations of zinc are associated with a decreased risk of lung cancer, but the underlying mechanisms remain to be investigated. The metabolites are highly sensitive to environmental stress, which will help to reveal the linkages between zinc exposure and lung cancer risk. We designed a nested case-control study including 101 incident lung cancer cases and 12 age- and sex-frequency-matched 202 healthy controls from the Dongfeng-Tongji (DFTJ) cohort. Their plasma level of zinc was determined by using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and plasma profiles of metabolites were detected by using an untargeted metabolomics approach. The generalized linear models (GLM) were applied to assess the associations of plasma zinc with metabolites, and the mediation effects of zinc-related metabolites on zinc-lung cancer association were further testified. The concentrations of 55 metabolites had linear dose-response relationships with plasma zinc at a false discovery rate (FDR) less then 0.05, among which L-proline, phosphatidylcholine (PC, 342), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE, O-365), L-altrose, and sphingomyelin (SM, 403) showed different levels between lung cancer cases and healthy controls (fold change = 0.92, 0.95, 1.07, 0.90, and 1.08, respectively, and all P less then 0.05). The plasma concentration of SM(403) was negatively associated with incident risk of lung cancer [OR(95%CI) = 0.71(0.55, 0.91), P = 0.007] and could mediate 41.7% of the association between zinc and lung cancer risk (P = 0.004). Moreover, compared to the traditional factors, addition of SM(403) exerted improved prediction performance for incident risk of lung cancer [AUC(95%CIs) = 0.714(0.654, 0.775) vs. 0.663(0.600, 0.727), P = 0.030]. Our findings revealed metabolic profiles with zinc exposure and provide new insight into the alternations of metabolites underpinning the links between zinc exposure and lung cancer development.To bring life back to anoxic coastal and sea basins, reoxygenation of anoxic/hypoxic zones has been proposed. This research focuses on the metals released during the oxidization of sediments from two locations in the anoxic Eastern Gotland Basin under a laboratory-scale study. Triplicate experimental cores and reference cores were collected from the North and South Eastern Gotland Basins. The oxygenation of the water column took place over a 96-hour experiment in a dark and 5 °C environment. In 12 and 24 hour intervals, the surface waters were exchanged and, over time, analyzed for pH, electroconductivity (EC), total organic carbon (TOC), soluble metal concentrations, and the top samples (0-10 cm) were analyzed with 3-step (E1 water-soluble, E2 exchangeable, and E3 organic-bound) sequential chemical extraction (SCE). Results show stable pH and decreasing EC in the column waters. The EC indicates that metals are released in the initial phases (12 h) of reoxygenation for both sites. Arsenic, Ba, Co, Mn, Rb, U, K, Sr, and Mo are released into the water column during the 96 hour experiment, and based on the calculations for the entire East Gotland Basin, would mean 8, 50, 0.55, 734, 53, 27, 347,178, 3468, and 156 μg L-1 are released, respectively. Elements Mn, Mo, U, and As are released in higher concentrations during the experiment than previously measured in the Eastern Gotland Basin, which provides vital information for future proposed remediation and natural geochemical processes with their known environmental impacts. The SCE results show that redox-sensitive metals (Mn, U, and Mo) are released in the highest concentrations into the solution. The relationship between the highest released metals (beside redox-sensitive) into solution over the oxygenation and their initial abundant phase is noticed, where the smallest released concentrations belong to K less then Rb less then Sr in E2, and As less then Ba in E3, respectively.