Research and practice of higher vocational education of environmental engineering

In China, the environmental protection industry is developing quickly, the environmental engineering education programmes have been forced to try to keep pace, it’s necessary to develop the higher vocational education of environmental engineering to meet the demand for a great number correlative persons with comprehensive vocational capability. In this paper, the features of higher vocational education of environmental engineering are discussed. At the same time, the teaching programme establishment and practice of higher vocational education of environmental engineering are set forth also

Moral Hazard and Transparency in Peer-to-Peer Auto Insurance with Telematics

Peer-to-peer (P2P) insurance uses new technology to connect policyholders and brings about disruptive innovation. While P2P insurance serving people with relatively high degrees of social connection, like friends and relatives, has been theoretically and practically underpinned, there is a lack of understanding about its viability or efficiency in serving strangers with few to no social ties as moral hazard may be substantial. In this paper, we bridge the gap by empirically measuring moral hazard in a P2P auto insurance where the insured individuals are strangers. Our research findings remove an obstacle that may hinder a broad application of the P2P insurance model among large groups of individuals. Moreover, we investigate factors that mitigate moral hazard and study the impact of transparency in premium balance on driving safety. We show that the transparency allows people to learn vicariously from peers’ lessons and lets them drive more safely

The Application of Advanced Materials on the Water or Wastewater Treatment

Water scarcity is being recognized as a present and future threat to human activity, and, as a consequence, water purification technologies are gaining major worldwide attention. Advanced materials have many properties, such as strong adsorption, enhanced redox, and photocatalytic properties, providing unprecedented opportunities to treat surface water, groundwater, and industrial wastewater that are contaminated with toxic metals, organic and inorganic compounds, bacteria, and viruses. Currently, tremendous progress has been made in development of advanced materials for their environmental applications, and knowledge has been accumulated of the effects of these advanced materials on and their applications in the environment security, recycling, and reuse of raw materials and treatment agents, economic benefits, and potential problems to our society.This special issue aims to provide an up-to-date account of advancement in these areas as well as insights gained through field experience

Effect of hydrofracking fluid on colloid transport in the unsaturated zone

Hydraulic fracturing is expanding rapidly in the US to meet increasing energy demand and requires high volumes of hydrofracking fluid to displace natural gas from shale. Accidental spills and deliberate land application of hydrofracking fluids, which return to the surface during hydrofracking, are common causes of environmental contamination. Since the chemistry of hydrofracking fluids favors transport of colloids and mineral particles through rock cracks, it may also facilitate transport of in situ colloids and associated pollutants in unsaturated soils. We investigated this by subsequently injecting deionized water and flowback fluid at increasing flow rates into unsaturated sand columns containing colloids. Colloid retention and mobilization was measured in the column effluent and visualized in situ with bright field microscopy. While <5% of initial colloids were released by flushing with deionized water, 32–36% were released by flushing with flowback fluid in two distinct breakthrough peaks. These peaks resulted from 1) surface tension reduction and steric repulsion and 2) slow kinetic disaggregation of colloid flocs. Increasing the flow rate of the flowback fluid mobilized an additional 36% of colloids, due to the expansion of water filled pore space. This study suggests that hydrofracking fluid may also indirectly contaminate groundwater by remobilizing existing colloidal pollutants

Solvent Isotope Effect on Transfer Hydrogenation of H2O with Glycerine under Alkaline Hydrothermal Conditions

Solvent isotope effect was investigated with 1H-, 2H-NMR, LC-MS and Gas-MS analyses on transfer hydrogenation of H2O with glycerine under alkaline hydrothermal conditions. The results from solvent isotope studies showed that (1) the H on the β-C of lactate was almost exchanged by D2O, which suggests that the hydroxyl (-OH) group on the 2-C of glycerine was first transformed into a carbonyl (C=O) group and then was converted back into a -OH group to form lactate; (2) The presence of large amounts of D was found in the produced hydrogen gas, which shows that the water molecules acted as a reactant; and (3) D% in the produced hydrogen gas was far more than 50%, which straightforwardly shows that acetol was formed in the first place as the most probable intermediate by undergoing a dehydration reaction rather than a dehydrogenation reaction

Effect of Heat Shock Protein A6 on Changes in Meat Quality of Qinchuan Cattle during Postmortem Maturation

In order to investigate the effect of differential expression of heat shock protein family A (Hsp70) member 6 (HSPA6) on the meat quality of Qinchuan cattle during postmortem maturation, the Longissimus dorsi muscle of Qinchuan cattle was stored at 4 ℃ and evaluated for meat quality at 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 days postmortem. 4D-Label free quantification (4D-LFQ) was used to analyze the expression of HSPA6 and related differential proteins. The results showed that the expression of HSPA6 decreased with increasing storage time, the contents of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), adenosine diphosphate (ADP), adenosine monophosphate (AMP) and reduced form of nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide (NADH) decreased, the myofibril fragmentation index (MFI) increased, and the shear force and centrifugal loss increased and then decreased. Correlation analysis showed that HSPA6 expression was positively correlated with the contents of ATP and NADH and shear force (P < 0.05) and negatively correlated with MFI and centrifugal loss (P < 0.01), indicating that HSPA6 degradation was closely related to energy metabolism and water retention in beef during storage. Proteomics identified 24 significantly differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) associated with HSPA6 expression, which could cause proteasome-mediated ubiquitin-dependent proteolytic metabolism and cellular proteolysis through carbohydrate derivative binding and purine nucleoside triphosphate binding, in turn causing metabolic disorders or imbalances. These DEPs could also control protein degradation and cell apoptosis, in turn affecting structural changes in muscle and reducing tissue energy levels, and ultimately affecting the tenderness, MFI and water retention of Qinchuan beef through resistance to cellular structural protein degradation

Proteomic Profiles of Exosomes of Septic Patients Presenting to the Emergency Department Compared to Healthy Controls

BACKGROUND: Septic Emergency Department (ED) patients provide a unique opportunity to investigate early sepsis. Recent work focuses on exosomes, nanoparticle-sized lipid vesicles (30-130 nm) that are released into the bloodstream to transfer its contents (RNA, miRNA, DNA, protein) to other cells. Little is known about how early changes related to exosomes may contribute to the dysregulated inflammatory septic response that leads to multi-organ dysfunction. We aimed to evaluate proteomic profiles of plasma derived exosomes obtained from septic ED patients and healthy controls. METHODS: This is a prospective observational pilot study evaluating a plasma proteomic exosome profile at an urban tertiary care hospital ED using a single venipuncture blood draw, collecting 40 cc Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) blood. MEASUREMENTS: We recruited seven patients in the ED within 6 h of their presentation and five healthy controls. Plasma exosomes were isolated using the Invitrogen Total Exosome Isolation Kit. Exosome proteomic profiles were analyzed using fusion mass spectroscopy and Proteome Discoverer. Principal component analysis (PCA) and differential expression analysis (DEA) for sepsis versus control was performed. RESULTS: PCA of 261 proteins demonstrated septic patients and healthy controls were distributed in two groups. DEA revealed that 62 (23.8%) proteins differed between the exosomes of septic patients and healthy controls, CONCLUSION: Exosome proteomic profiles of septic ED patients differ from their healthy counterparts with regard to acute phase response and inflammation

Observation of Rydberg moir\'e excitons

Rydberg excitons, the solid-state counterparts of Rydberg atoms, have sparked considerable interest in harnessing their quantum application potentials, whereas a major challenge is realizing their spatial confinement and manipulation. Lately, the rise of two-dimensional moir\'e superlattices with highly tunable periodic potentials provides a possible pathway. Here, we experimentally demonstrate this capability through the observation of Rydberg moir\'e excitons (XRM), which are moir\'e trapped Rydberg excitons in monolayer semiconductor WSe2 adjacent to twisted bilayer graphene. In the strong coupling regime, the XRM manifest as multiple energy splittings, pronounced redshift, and narrowed linewidth in the reflectance spectra, highlighting their charge-transfer character where electron-hole separation is enforced by the strongly asymmetric interlayer Coulomb interactions. Our findings pave the way for pursuing novel physics and quantum technology exploitation based on the excitonic Rydberg states.Comment: 24 pages, including 4 figures and 6 supplementary figure