Advancements in Biomonitoring and Remediation Treatments of Pollutants in Aquatic Environments, 2nd Edition

Worldwide anthropogenic activities continuously produce and release hundreds of potentially toxic chemicals that contaminate ecosystems, leaving devastating effects on the environment and living beings, humans included. Water pollution has received more and more concern because of the increasing contemporary requests for clean and safe drinking water and the general awareness of the severe conditions of water sources. Freshwater contaminants include industrial effluents containing metals, dyes, pharmaceuticals, other organic compounds, wastewater treatment plant effluents, a complex mixture of municipal, hospital, runoff agrochemicals, and mining activity residues [1,2,3,4]. Additional environmental stressors are eutrophication, overfishing, excess exploitation, and land-use changes. The microbiological contamination is a different but equally serious threat to ecosystem stability and human health [5,6]. Seawater is particularly affected by antifouling agents, paints, petrol additives, ship maintenance activities, and existing river contaminants. Moreover, water bodies and their inhabitants are now facing the threats of this century via contamination with nanomaterials, notably plastic debris [7,8,9,10,11]. The requested global efforts to face these problems can probably find significant help in the new tools developed in the research of biomonitoring and remediation technologies. To design proper remediation strategies, both the origin and impacts of the threats must be accurately diagnosed using chemical, biological, spatial, and temporal integrated data [12,13,14]. Accordingly, biomonitoring is a transdisciplinary activity that evaluates the type, source, and extent of pollution and its consequences on a single species, the ecosystems’ structure, and the food chain

Interplay of disorder and geometrical frustration in doped Gadolinium Gallium Garnet

The geometrically-frustrated, triangular antiferromagnet GGG exhibits a rich mix of short-range order and isolated quantum states. We investigate the effects of up to 1% Neodymium substitution for Gallium on the ac magnetic response at temperatures below 1 K in both the linear and nonlinear regimes. Substitutional disorder actually drives the system towards a more perfectly frustrated state, apparently compensating for the effect of imperfect Gadolinium/Gallium stoichiometry, while at the same time more closely demarcating the boundaries of isolated, coherent clusters composed of hundreds of spins. Optical measurements of the local Nd environment substantiate the picture of an increased frustration index with doping.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Pengaruh Relationship Marketing Dan Layanan Purna Jual Terhadap Kepuasan Pelanggan PT. Astra Internasional Isuzu Semarang

Relationship marketing and after-sales service is believed to be the key in improving customer satisfaction. To compete with other automotive manufacturers a special strategy is needed in terms of keeping the relationship marketing and improving the quality of after-sales service. The objective of this research is to determine the effect of relationship marketing and after-sales service to customer satisfaction at PT AII Semarang. This population of this explanatory research is 14.487 customers. Sample of 99 people is taken using accidental sampling. Data Collection employs interviews, documentation and questionnaire. Data is analyzed using linear regression. The research concludes that relationship marketing and after-sales services have a positive and significant effect on customer satisfaction. The study suggests PT AII Semarang apply relationship marketing and after-sales service consistently because the company\u27s survival depends on the customer

Estimation of Organic Matter Digestibility and Intake from Faecal Organic Matter and Daily N Excretion and Concentration

This study was performed with grazing sheep, to establish: a) if the amount of total faecal N (C; in g 100g-1 of organic matter intake (OMI)) remains constant at three feeding levels, in four utilisation periods of deferred Panicum coloratum cv. Verde; b) the relationship between C and faecal N fractions, and c) the relationship between faecal daily excretion of OM and N, and OMI. Intake increased (P\u3c 0.01) with utilisation period, and was related (r = - 0.82; P\u3c 0.01) to the protein content of food, the insoluble N fraction (r = -0.49; P\u3c 0.01) and the soluble:insoluble N ratio (r = 0.41; P\u3c 0.01) in faeces. No relation with total N concentration (r = -0.22; P\u3e 0.05) or soluble N fraction (r = -0.02; P\u3e 0.05) in faeces could be found. Daily excretion of OM and N were positively related (R2 = 0.93 and 0.96, respectively; P\u3c 0.01) to OMI. The slopes of regression lines, but not the intercepts, were different (P\u3c 0.01) between evaluation periods. The digestibility can be estimated from OMI and faecal N whenever time of the year is taken into consideration