Inter-regional spillover of China's sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution across the supply chains

Inter-regional spillover of air pollution can be regarded as a mixture of economic externalities and long-distance transport. To comprehensively reveal this problem, a new consumption-based sulfur dioxide (SO 2) emission inventory in 2010 for 30 provincial regions of China was compiled by introducing source-receptor relationship (SRR) model to integrate the spillover impacts of physical transport from the emitter (producer) region to the receptor region and virtual transfer from the driver (consumer) region to the emitter region. Compared the emissions induced by final regional demand with the emissions received in seven regions of China, Southern (0.59 Mt), Northern (0.25 Mt), Northwestern (0.18 Mt), and Eastern (0.14 Mt) areas outsourced SO 2 pollution in the mass, whereas Central (−0.66 Mt), Northeastern (−0.42 Mt), and Southwestern (−0.08 Mt) areas took excessive environmental burdens in 2010. The four municipalities, Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin as well as the most affluent province Guangdong showed significant pollution transfer after an overall assessment of their roles in drivers, emitters and receptors. Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Henan, and Shandong showed the largest co-benefits of SO 2 emissions control for climate change mitigation. Japan was found to receive more portions of transboundary SO 2 deposition than its market shares in China's export instead of other major trade partners of China. As a mega-city, Beijing induced significant SO 2 emissions for power requirement, food consumption, miscellaneous services, and her vibrant research activities through the sectors of the power industry, coal mining, chemical manufacturing, food-related industries, petroleum processing and coking, but 86% of those emissions were outsourced by Beijing. In total, the spillover of SO 2 emissions induced by Beijing was estimated at 0.20 Mt, 76 times more than its own share as a receptor across the supply chains. This study is competent for an analytic framework of strategic planning for joint prevention and control of air pollution in China and other countries. The results can help reduce pollution transfer, properly tax on drivers, effectively control the emitters, and reasonably compensate the receptors

Echocardiographic Manifestations in Patients with Cardiac Sarcoidosis

BackgroundCardiac sarcoidosis is a life-threatening disease with protean clinical manifestations, including congestive heart failure (CHF), conduction disturbance, ventricular arrhythmia and sudden death. Nonetheless, it is difficult to diagnose cardiac sarcoidosis in the clinical setting. Some echocardiographic findings of cardiac sarcoidosis associated with other diagnostic tools (201thallium scintigraphy, 67gallium citrate scan, serum markers and others) may be helpful upon early suspicion and diagnosis of cardiac sarcoidosis.Materials and MethodsFifty-two patients (36 female) with cardiac sarcoidosis, with a mean age of 48 ± 14 years (range, 21–70 yr), underwent a series of echocardiographic follow-up (mean, 88 ± 48 mo) examinations, and important echocardiographic parameters and findings were recorded.ResultsThere were left ventricular (LV) regional wall motion abnormalities (RWMAs) noted in 40 (localized in 16, multiple in 24), dilatation of the LV with impaired LV contractility in 28, thinning of the basal interventricular septum (IVS) in 27, thinning of LV free wall in 18, apical aneurysm in 12, apical thrombus in two, mimicking hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in two, pericardial effusion (PE) in two (with cardiac tamponade in one), and LV wall thinning and aneurysm formation after steroid therapy for cardiac sarcoidosis in two of 43 patients.ConclusionThinning of the basal IVS or LV free wall is a specific echocardiographic finding of cardiac sarcoidosis. Other echocardiographic findings of cardiac sarcoidosis may mimic coronary artery disease (LV RWMA or apical aneurysm), CHF, or HCM. PE and thinning of the LV wall after steroid therapy were also noted in rare situations

Life-cycle assessment of domestic and transboundary recycling of post-consumer PET bottles

Abstract Background, aim, and scope In recent years, besides being recycled domestically, a part of Japanese post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles have been exported to and recycled in mainland China. In this study, life-cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to compare domestic and transboundary recycling scenarios between Japan and China and disposal scenarios from the viewpoints of greenhouse gases (GHG) emission and fossil resource consumption. Methods The following 10 scenarios based on our field surveys were evaluated: Japanese post-consumer PET bottles are (i) recycled into polyester staple in Japan, (ii) recycled into polyester filaments in Japan, (iii) recycled into polyester clothes in Japan, (iv) chemically decomposed and recycled into bottle-grade PET resin in Japan, (v) chemically decomposed and recycled into polyester filaments in Japan, (vi)-(vii) recycled into polyester staple via two different flows in China, (viii) recycled into polyester clothes in China, (ix) incinerated and partly recovered as electricity in Japan, and (x) directly landfilled in Japan. In all the evaluated scenarios, the functional unit is the recycling or disposal of 1 kg of Japanese post-consumer PET bottles. The system boundaries range from waste collection by municipalities to the manufacture of recycled products that can be regarded as substitutes for virgin products, and a credit for the avoided production of equivalent virgin products is given to each scenario. The inventories of both foreground and background processes in Japan were quoted from published reports and databases. The actual conditions of PET bottle recycling that were obtained through field surveys in China were reflected to some inventories of foreground processes in China. The inventories of public electricity supplies in China were based on the national statistics, and the inventories of petroleum products, industrial water supply, and waste treatment are based on our field surveys in China. Other unknown inventories in China were substituted by corresponding inventories in Japan. Results and discussion The results showed that all the domestic and transboundary recycling scenarios had smaller GHG emissions and fossil resource consumptions than the incineration scenario and that the chemical recycling scenarios had larger GHG emissions and fossil resource consumptions than the other recycling scenarios. The landfilling scenario had the largest fossil resource consumption, while it was better than the incineration scenario and slightly better than the chemical recycling scenarios from the viewpoint of GHG emission. The robustness of the results was examined, and it was found that the differences in GHG emission and fossil resource consumption between the domestic and transboundary recycling scenarios, other than the scenarios including cloth-manufacturing processes in system boundaries, were sufficiently large to be robust against the variability of background parameters for electricity supplies. As for the Responsible editor: Shabbir Gheewala Electronic supplementary material The online version of this articl

A crowdsourcing approach to collecting photo-based insect and plant observation records

Scientific field observation by members of the public is known as citizen science and has become popular all across the world. Citizen science is advantageous for collecting large amounts of scientific data and can be seen as a crowdsourcing approach to data collection. Information and communications technology is enhancing the availability of citizen science. Mobile devices, such as mobile phones, that have a digital camera with a global positioning system (GPS) are necessities for contemporary life and can be utilised as powerful observation tools in citizen science. A web-based system has been developed as a data collection tool for citizen science. Participants submit an e-mail with a photo taken by their mobile phones. The photos contain location information, which can be easily and automatically embedded if the mobile phone is equipped with GPS. Collaboration has been undertaken with regional event managers, such as museum curators and held citizen science events in each region and for various target taxonomic groups. All photos were stored in the data server and the organisms were taxonomically identified by citizen scientists, regional managers and the authors. In total, 154 species and 843 data records were collected in this project conducted from 2011 to 2016

Data mining tools for the Saccharomyces cerevisiae morphological database

For comprehensive understanding of precise morphological changes resulting from loss-of-function mutagenesis, a large collection of 1 899 247 cell images was assembled from 91 271 micrographs of 4782 budding yeast disruptants of non-lethal genes. All the cell images were processed computationally to measure ∼500 morphological parameters in individual mutants. We have recently made this morphological quantitative data available to the public through the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Morphological Database (SCMD). Inspecting the significance of morphological discrepancies between the wild type and the mutants is expected to provide clues to uncover genes that are relevant to the biological processes producing a particular morphology. To facilitate such intensive data mining, a suite of new software tools for visualizing parameter value distributions was developed to present mutants with significant changes in easily understandable forms. In addition, for a given group of mutants associated with a particular function, the system automatically identifies a combination of multiple morphological parameters that discriminates a mutant group from others significantly, thereby characterizing the function effectively. These data mining functions are available through the World Wide Web at

Histone-like TAFs within the PCAF Histone Acetylase Complex

AbstractPCAF histone acetylase plays a role in regulation of transcription, cell cycle progression, and differentiation. Here, we show that PCAF is found in a complex consisting of more than 20 distinct polypeptides. Strikingly, some polypeptides are identical to TBP-associated factors (TAFs), which are subunits of TFIID. Like TFIID, histone fold–containing factors are present within the PCAF complex. The histone H3– and H2B–like subunits within the PCAF complex are identical to those within TFIID, namely, hTAFII31 and hTAFII20/15, respectively. The PCAF complex has a novel histone H4–like subunit with similarity to hTAFII80 that interacts with the histone H3–like domain of hTAFII31. Moreover, the PCAF complex has a novel subunit with WD40 repeats having a similarity to hTAFII100

Scaffold and Edge Vascular Response Following Implantation of Everolimus-Eluting Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold A 3-Year Serial Optical Coherence Tomography Study

AbstractObjectivesThis study sought to investigate the in-scaffold vascular response (SVR) and edge vascular response (EVR) after implantation of an everolimus-eluting bioresorbable scaffold (BRS) using serial optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging.BackgroundAlthough studies using intravascular ultrasound have evaluated the EVR in metal stents and BRSs, there is a lack of OCT-based SVR and EVR assessment after BRS implantation.MethodsIn the ABSORB Cohort B (ABSORB Clinical Investigation, Cohort B) study, 23 patients (23 lesions) in Cohort B1 and 17 patients (18 lesions) in Cohort B2 underwent truly serial OCT examinations at 3 different time points (Cohort B1: post-procedure, 6 months, and 2 years; B2: post-procedure, 1 year, and 3 years) after implantation of an 18-mm scaffold. A frame-by-frame OCT analysis was performed at the 5-mm proximal, 5-mm distal edge, and 2-mm in-scaffold margins, whereas the middle 14-mm in-scaffold segment was analyzed at 1-mm intervals.ResultsThe in-scaffold mean luminal area significantly decreased from baseline to 6 months or 1 year (7.22 ± 1.24 mm2 vs. 6.05 ± 1.38 mm2 and 7.64 ± 1.19 mm2 vs. 5.72 ± 0.89 mm2, respectively; both p < 0.01), but remained unchanged from then onward. In Cohort B1, a significant increase in mean luminal area of the distal edge was observed (5.42 ± 1.81 mm2 vs. 5.58 ± 1.53 mm2; p < 0.01), whereas the mean luminal area of the proximal edge remained unchanged at 6 months. In Cohort B2, the mean luminal areas of the proximal and distal edges were significantly smaller than post-procedure measurements at 3 years. The mean luminal area loss at both edges was significantly less than the mean luminal area loss of the in-scaffold segment at both 6-month and 2-year follow-up in Cohort B1 or at 1 year and 3 years in Cohort B2.ConclusionsThis OCT-based serial EVR and SVR evaluation of the Absorb Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold (Abbott Vascular, Santa Clara, California) showed less luminal loss at the edges than luminal loss within the scaffold. The luminal reduction of both edges is not a nosologic entity, but an EVR in continuity with the SVR, extending from the in-scaffold margin to both edges. (ABSORB Clinical Investigation, Cohort B [ABSORB B]; NCT00856856

A study of single nucleotide polymorphisms of the SLC19A1/RFC1 gene in subjects with autism spectrum disorder

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a group of neurodevelopmental disorders with complex genetic etiology. Recent studies have indicated that children with ASD may have altered folate or methionine metabolism, suggesting that the folate-methionine cycle may play a key role in the etiology of ASD. SLC19A1, also referred to as reduced folate carrier 1 (RFC1), is a member of the solute carrier group of transporters and is one of the key enzymes in the folate metabolism pathway. Findings from multiple genomic screens suggest the presence of an autism susceptibility locus on chromosome 21q22.3, which includes SLC19A1. Therefore, we performed a case-control study in a Japanese population. In this study, DNA samples obtained from 147 ASD patients at the Kanazawa University Hospital in Japan and 150 unrelated healthy Japanese volunteers were examined by the sequence-specific primer-polymerase chain reaction method pooled with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. p < 0.05 was considered to represent a statistically significant outcome. Of 13 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) examined, a significant p-value was obtained for AA genotype of one SNP (rs1023159, OR = 0.39, 95% CI = 0.16-0.91, p = 0.0394; Fisher’s exact test). Despite some conflicting results, our findings supported a role for the polymorphism rs1023159 of the SLC19A1 gene, alone or in combination, as a risk factor for ASD. However, the findings were not consistent after multiple testing corrections. In conclusion, although our results supported a role of the SLC19A1 gene in the etiology of ASD, it was not a significant risk factor for the ASD samples analyzed in this study. © 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland