Lexical selection in action: Evidence from spontaneous punning

Analysis of a corpus of spontaneously produced Japanese puns from a single speaker over a two-year period provides a view of how a punster selects a source word for a pun and transforms it into another word for humorous effect. The pun-making process is driven by a principle of similarity: the source word should as far as possible be preserved (in terms of segmental sequence) in the pun. This renders homophones (English example: band–banned) the pun type of choice, with part–whole relationships of embedding (cap–capture), and mutations of the source word (peas–bees) rather less favored. Similarity also governs mutations in that single-phoneme substitutions outnumber larger changes, and in phoneme substitutions, subphonemic features tend to be preserved. The process of spontaneous punning thus applies, on line, the same similarity criteria as govern explicit similarity judgments and offline decisions about pun success (e.g., for inclusion in published collections). Finally, the process of spoken-word recognition is word-play-friendly in that it involves multiple word-form activation and competition, which, coupled with known techniques in use in difficult listening conditions, enables listeners to generate most pun types as offshoots of normal listening procedures

Comprehensive review of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in water sources, their effects and treatments

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are principally derived from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. This study investigated the occurrence of PAHs in aquatic environments around the world, their effects on the environment and humans, and methods for their removal. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons have a great negative impact on the humans and environment, and can even cause cancer in humans. Use of good methods and equipment are essential to monitoring PAHs, and GC/MS and HPLC are usually used for their analysis in aqueous solutions. In aquatic environments, the PAHs concentrations range widely from 0.03 ng/L (seawater; Southeastern Japan Sea, Japan) to 8,310,000 ng/L (Domestic Wastewater Treatment Plant, Siloam, South Africa). Moreover, bioaccumulation of ∑16PAHs in fish has been reported to range from 11.2 ng/L (Cynoscion guatucupa, South Africa) to 4207.5 ng/L (Saurida undosquamis, Egypt). Several biological, physical and chemical and biological techniques have been reported to treat water contaminated by PAHs, but adsorption and combined treatment methods have shown better removal performance, with some methods removing up to 99.99% of PAHs

Pesticides in aquatic environments and their removal by adsorption methods.

Although pesticides are widely used in agriculture, industry and households, they pose a risk to human health and ecosystems. Based on target organisms, the main types of pesticides are herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, of which herbicides accounted for 46% of the total pesticide usage worldwide. The movement of pesticides into water bodies occurs through run-off, spray drift, leaching, and sub-surface drainage, all of which have negative impacts on aquatic environments and humans. We sought to define the critical factors affecting the fluxes of contaminants into receiving waters. We also aimed to specify the feasibility of using sorbents to remove pesticides from waterways. In Karun River in Iran (1.21 × 105 ng/L), pesticide concentrations are above regulatory limits. The concentration of pesticides in fish can reach 26.1 × 103 μg/kg, specifically methoxychlor herbicide in Perca fluviatilis in Lithuania. During the last years, research has focused on elimination of organic pollutants, such as pesticides, from aqueous solution. Pesticide adsorption onto low-cost materials can effectively remediate contaminated waters. In particular, nanoparticle adsorbents and carbon-based adsorbents exhibit high performance (nearly 100%) in removing pesticides from water bodies

Performance optimization of a chitosan/anammox reactor in nitrogen removal from synthetic wastewater

Anaerobic ammonia oxidation (anammox) is an environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and biological method for nitrogen treatment from aqueous solutions. However, slow growth rate, negative effects of high concentration of nitrite, ammonia and other pollutants (such as metals) on anammox activity are the main drawbacks of using anammox. Thus, in this study, anammox was attached on chitosan to improve anammox performance. Two reactors comprising chitosan and anammox bacteria (first reactor, chitosan/anammox) and solely anammox (second reactor, control) were run for 73 d. The nitrogen loading rate (NLR) varied from 2 to 14 (gN/L/d), while the nitrogen concentration varied from 80 to 700 mg/L. The chitosan/anammox reactor showed a better performance than the sole anammox (control), with respective maximum abatement values of ammonia (NH4+), nitrite (NO2-), and total nitrogen (TN) of 90.8%, 83.5%, and 81.7% on days 20-25 under a NLR of 8-10 kgTN/(m3 d). Response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to optimize the performance of both reactors, and a reasonable R2 value showed that the RSM well optimized the performance of the reactors. After finding the optimum performance conditions for both reactors, Fe and Cu (0.5-7.0 mg/L) were added to the influent to monitor the effects of metals on the performance of both reactors. The performance of both reactors decreased to 0% following the addition of 7.0 (first reactor) and 6.5 (second reactor) mg/L Cu and Fe, respectively. This indicated that chitosan not only enhanced nitrogen removal by anammox but also improved the resistance of anammox to metals