Search Results (16)

Overburden rock massifs resulting from open-pit coal mining are very common objects in the world’s mining regions. These locations pose a significant challenge as the global mining industry expands. These dumps are capable of self-burning for quite a long time. The displacement and sliding of these massifs can cause catastrophic consequences. In addition, these objects emit a significant amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Therefore, it is necessary to manage such objects and implement appropriate measures to limit their impact on the environment. In this work, we studied soil radon volume activity (VAR) and radon flux density (RFD) on the surface of the overburden rock massif of coal-bearing mining rocks and also made visual fixation of disturbances in the body of the massif, which appeared in the process of its movement. We found anomalies of VAR and RFD on the surface of the overburden extending from north to south. These anomalies were extended along the strike of the faults found in the body of the massif. Additionally, the radon anomalies coincided with the anomalies of methane gas emission previously measured for this object. Thus, we determined that the exit of gases from the body of the massif is carried out through fault (weakened) zones in the body of the massif. According to the results of the study, we propose to carry out radon monitoring in order to detect the spontaneous ignition process of the massif or the increase of its mobility. This will also allow us to take appropriate measures to stabilize the massif or to extinguish the dump before or simultaneously with the biological stage of reclamation. Full article

Background: The tobacco industry has actively advocated for electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) and heated tobacco products (HTPs) as harm-reduction alternatives to traditional cigarettes. Around 40% of smoking physicians have adopted HTPs. This study aimed to uncover the motivations behind Japanese physicians’ e-cigarette and HTP use while analyzing the associations between product use, physician demographics, lifestyles, and smoking preferences. Methods: A mail-based survey was conducted in 2020, targeting 6000 male and 1500 female physicians. From the 5492 survey participants, 346 physicians aged 28 to 98 who were current smokers were selected. The survey assessed their usage of e-cigarettes and HTPs and explored the reasons for initial adoption. A multivariate logistic regression analysis examined the relationships between product use, physician characteristics, and behaviors. Results: Approximately 33.8% of smoking physicians had experimented with e-cigarettes and HTPs. E-cigarette and HTP use correlated with youthfulness, nicotine addiction, and a history of medical treatment. The primary drivers for adopting e-cigarettes and HTPs were reduced odor (74.4%), perceived harm reduction (48.7%), and decreased exposure to secondhand smoke (29.1%). Conclusions: Physicians, when transitioning from conventional cigarettes to HTPs or e-cigarettes, are primarily motivated by a desire to reduce the odor of conventional cigarettes rather than health-related concerns. Full article

Large quantities of wine lees are produced annually by the wine industry. The high phenolic content makes them unsuitable for disposal in the environment or animal feed without a suitable treatment. In this study, wine lees were treated by Pleurotus ostreatus in submerged cultivation, producing a high-value biomass and elevated levels of laccase, an important industrial enzyme. Biomass and laccase production reached 21 g/L and 74,000 Units/L, respectively, at the optimal conditions of initial pH 6.0, 20% v/v wine lees, 30 g/L glucose, and 20 g/L yeast extract, while decolorization and dephenolization rates of the waste were over 90%. The mycelial biomass was rich in proteins and essential amino acids reaching up to 43% and 16% per dry weight, respectively. Carbohydrates and lipids were the second richest bioactive compound in biomass, with values of 29.4 ± 2.7% and 29.5 ± 2.7%, respectively. The crude laccase in the culture supernatant was purified via a simple two-step purification procedure by 4.4-fold with a recovery of 44%. The molecular weight of the enzyme was determined to be 62 kDa via SDS electrophoresis. Enzyme activity was optimal at pH 5.0 and 70 °C. The activation energy of the enzyme was calculated at a value of 20.0 ± 0.2 kJ/mol. The pH stability and thermostability of the purified laccase were studied. The enzyme was remarkably stable at pH 8.0 and at temperatures up to 40 °C. The thermal inactivation energy of the enzyme was determined to be 76.0 ± 1.2 kJ/mol. The thermodynamic parameters (ΔH*, ΔG*, and ΔS*) for the thermal deactivation of the purified laccase at a temperature range of 20–60 °C were: 73.8 ≤ ΔH* ≤ 74.3 kJ·mol⁻¹, 98.7 ≤ ΔG* ≤ 101.9 kJ·mol⁻¹, and −90.5 ≤ ΔS* ≤ −84.3 J·mol⁻¹·K⁻¹. Wine lees could be ideal substrates of fungal cultivation for laccase production and biomass with a high protein content in an eco-friendlier way. Full article

Pectin is a polysaccharide that has been recently gaining attention because it is renewable, inexpensive, biocompatible, degradable, non-toxic, non-polluting, and has mechanical integrity. The recent extraction techniques and modification to the structural property of pectin have led to the modified pectin whose chemical and surface functional groups yield galacturonic acid and galactose contents which are primarily responsible for its improved and better use in biomedical applications including drug delivery and thus producing high-value products. Major attention on modified pectin has been focused on the aspect of its bioactive functionalities that opposes cancer development. Nevertheless, modified pectin can be combined with a wide range of biopolymers with unique characteristics and activities which thus enhances its application in different areas. This has enabled the current applications of modified pectin through different approaches in addition to the prominent anti-cancer functional capabilities, which were reviewed. Furthermore, this paper highlights the potential of modified pectin as a delivery system of bioactive substances, its synergistic and prebiotic effects, gut microbiota effect and antiviral properties amongst other roles applicable in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. Full article

Electrooculography (EOG) is the measurement of eye movements using surface electrodes adhered around the eye. EOG systems can be designed to have an unobtrusive form-factor that is ideal for eye tracking in free-living over long durations, but the relationship between voltage and gaze direction requires frequent re-calibration as the skin-electrode impedance and retinal adaptation vary over time. Here we propose a method for automatically calibrating the EOG-gaze relationship by fusing EOG signals with gyroscopic measurements of head movement whenever the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) is active. The fusion is executed as recursive inference on a hidden Markov model that accounts for all rotational degrees-of-freedom and uncertainties simultaneously. This enables continual calibration using natural eye and head movements while minimizing the impact of sensor noise. No external devices like monitors or cameras are needed. On average, our method’s gaze estimates deviate by 3.54° from those of an industry-standard desktop video-based eye tracker. Such discrepancy is on par with the latest mobile video eye trackers. Future work is focused on automatically detecting moments of VOR in free-living. Full article

Although (micro)plastic contamination is a worldwide concern, most scientific literature only restates that issue rather than presenting strategies to cope with it. This critical review assembles the current knowledge on policies and responses to tackle plastic pollution, including peer-reviewed scientific literature, gray literature and relevant reports to provide: (1) a timeline of policies directly or indirectly addressing microplastics; (2) the most up-to-date upstream responses to prevent microplastics pollution, such as circular economy, behavioral change, development of bio-based polymers and market-based instruments as well as source-specific strategies, focusing on the clothing industry, tire and road wear particles, antifouling paints and recreational activities; (3) a set of downstream responses tackling microplastics, such as waste to energy, degradation, water treatment plants and litter clean-up strategies; and examples of (4) multifaceted responses focused on both mitigating and preventing microplastics pollution, e.g., approaches implemented in fisheries and aquaculture facilities. Preventive strategies and multifaceted responses are postulated as pivotal to handling the exacerbated release of microplastics in the environment, while downstream responses stand out as auxiliary strategies to the chief upstream responses. The information gathered here bridges the knowledge gaps on (micro)plastic pollution by providing a synthesized baseline material for further studies addressing this environmental issue. Full article

Urbanization is an unavoidable process of social and economic growth in modern times. However, the speed with which urbanization is taking place produces complex environmental changes. It has affected the surface albedo and roughness of the soil, thereby modulating hydrological and ecological systems, which in turn has affected regional and local climate systems. In developing countries of South Asia, rampant and unplanned urbanization has created a complex system of adverse environmental scenarios. Similar is the case in India. The state of the urban environment across India is degrading so quickly that the long-term sustainability of its cities is endangered. Many metropolitan cities in India are witnessing the harmful impacts of urbanization on their land ecology. In this context, remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) based assessments provide a comprehensive and effective analysis of the rate and the impact of urbanization. The present study focuses on understanding the spatiotemporal characteristics of urban growth and its implications on the geomorphology of the Panchkula District, Haryana, one of the fastest-growing urban centers in India. The study links the changes in land use/land cover (LULC) with the changing geomorphology of the study area using satellite remote sensing and GIS. The results showed that between 1980 and 2020, agricultural (+73.71%), built-up (+84.66%), and forest (+4.07%) classes of land increased in contrast to that of the fallow land (−76.80%) and riverbed (−50.86%) classes that have decreased in spatial extents. It has been observed that the hill geomorphological class had decreased in the area owing to conversion to industrial and built-up activities. Assessment of the environmental quality of cities involves multiple disciplines that call for a significant amount of scientific evaluation and strong decision making, and the present study shall lay down the baseline analysis of the impact of changing LULC on the geomorphological setup of the selected urban center. Full article

Galactomannans are versatile macromolecules with broad industrial potential. The influence of changes in the chemical structures and respective bioactivities of these polysaccharides have been extensively studied. The derivatives obtained by sulfation, complexation, and phosphorylation are the most studied biological properties in galactomannans. The derivatives obtained have shown several pharmacological activities such as antiviral, antimicrobial, anticoagulant, fibrinolytic, chemopreventive, anticancer, antioxidant, chondroprotective, analgesic, immunomodulatory, and antileishmanial. Considering the relevance of these studies, we aim to provide an overview of studies that apply galactomannan modification or derivatization strategies to improve their properties for applications in the biomedical area. We identified the success of most modified galactomannans for pharmacological purposes. However, some studies found loss of bioactivity of the original polysaccharide after chemical changes to its original structures. Full article

The Co4Cat^TM process is a simple, surfactant-free method to produce colloidal dispersions of precious metal nanoparticles in alkaline mono-alcohols. The synthesis is performed in low-boiling-point solvents and is relevant for industrial production. The robustness of the process is demonstrated by using three different commercial spirits as solvents to obtain Pt nanoparticles. The results demonstrate that careful control of the solvent purity is not needed to achieve the synthesis of stable 2 nm platinum nanoparticle colloids readily active electrocatalysts for energy conversion reactions like the methanol oxidation. Full article

Gaze tracking is a human-computer interaction technology, and it has been widely studied in the academic and industrial fields. However, constrained by the performance of the specific sensors and algorithms, it has not been popularized for everyone. This paper proposes a single-camera gaze tracking system under natural light to enable its versatility. The iris center and anchor point are the most crucial factors for the accuracy of the system. The accurate iris center is detected by the simple active contour snakuscule, which is initialized by the prior knowledge of eye anatomical dimensions. After that, a novel anchor point is computed by the stable facial landmarks. Next, second-order mapping functions use the eye vectors and the head pose to estimate the points of regard. Finally, the gaze errors are improved by implementing a weight coefficient on the points of regard of the left and right eyes. The feature position of the iris center achieves an accuracy of 98.87% on the GI4E database when the normalized error is lower than 0.05. The accuracy of the gaze tracking method is superior to the-state-of-the-art appearance-based and feature- based methods on the EYEDIAP database. Full article

The automotive industry could be facing a situation of profound change and opportunity in the coming decades. There are a number of influencing factors such as increasing urban and aging populations, self-driving cars, 3D parts printing, energy innovation, and new models of transportation service delivery (Zipcar, Uber). The connected car means that vehicles are now part of the connected world, continuously Internet-connected, generating and transmitting data, which on the one hand can be helpfully integrated into applications, like real-time traffic alerts broadcast to smartwatches, but also raises security and privacy concerns. This paper explores the automotive connected world, and describes five killer QS (Quantified Self)-auto sensor applications that link quantified-self sensors (sensors that measure the personal biometrics of individuals like heart rate) and automotive sensors (sensors that measure driver and passenger biometrics or quantitative automotive performance metrics like speed and braking activity). The applications are fatigue detection, real-time assistance for parking and accidents, anger management and stress reduction, keyless authentication and digital identity verification, and DIY diagnostics. These kinds of applications help to demonstrate the benefit of connected world data streams in the automotive industry and beyond where, more fundamentally for human progress, the automation of both physical and now cognitive tasks is underway. Full article

A popular approach in the investigation of the short-term behavior of a non-stationary time series is to assume that the time series decomposes additively into a long-term trend and short-term fluctuations. A first step towards investigating the short-term behavior requires estimation of the trend, typically via smoothing in the time domain. We propose a method for time-domain smoothing, called complexity-regularized regression (CRR). This method extends recent work, which infers a regression function that makes residuals from a model “look random”. Our approach operationalizes non-randomness in the residuals by applying ideas from computational mechanics, in particular the statistical complexity of the residual process. The method is compared to generalized cross-validation (GCV), a standard approach for inferring regression functions, and shown to outperform GCV when the error terms are serially correlated. Regression under serially-correlated residuals has applications to time series analysis, where the residuals may represent short timescale activity. We apply CRR to a time series drawn from the Dow Jones Industrial Average and examine how both the long-term and short-term behavior of the market have changed over time. Full article

Environments across the earth comprise human and natural systems which are influenced and changed by natural processes and anthropogenic activities of various scales, both globally and locally [1–4]. Natural systems such as aquatic, atmospheric, and terrestrial environments without human intervention encompass all living and non-living things with interactions of processes such as environmental physical, chemical, biological, and biogeochemical. Such processes need to be examined in environmental studies using advanced techniques and analysis methods. Moreover, through such processes, the living and non-living are intimately related to each other as natural systems from aquatic, atmospheric, and terrestrial environments also provide natural resources for human needs [1]. Conversely, human systems comprise areas and components that human activities such as agricultural activities, industrialization, or urbanization heavily influence, possibly causing environmental pollution. Correspondingly, environmental analytical methods and techniques for pollution control and prevention, as well as conservation of natural resources all provide further insight into environmental chemistry, environmental biology, ecology, geosciences, and environmental physics in natural systems from the viewpoint of environmental planning, environmental engineering and policy, environmental health and toxicology. Environmental pollution and soil, air, and water-related disasters involve complex interactions among natural and anthropogenic causes [1,4–9]. However, as is well recognized, in addition to their increasing emphasis on the investigation of environmental science and related techniques, environmental studies also focus on environmental planning, environmental assessments, environmental management, and environmental policy that cross multiple disciplinary boundaries in order to solve environmental problems, and thus improve our environment. [...] Full article

For more than 100 years, an electrochemical plant has been operating in Flix (Catalonia, Spain) by the Ebro River. Its activities have originated a severe accumulation of environmental contaminants (metals, organochlorinated pesticides and radionuclides) in sediments of the Flix reservoir, while mercury (Hg) has been also frequently released to the air. Environmental exposure to industrial pollutants has been associated with decreased intelligence and behavioral problems. In the present study, we assessed, in 53 children living in the village of Flix and the surroundings, the relationships between the concentrations of a number of trace elements (As, Be, Cd, Cs, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sn, Tl, U and V) in hair and the levels of testosterone in blood, with respect to potential neuropsychological alterations. Lead (Pb) and Hg showed the highest mean concentrations in hair samples. However, the current Hg levels were lower than those previously found in children living in the same zone, while the concentration of the remaining elements was similar to those reported in the scientific literature. The outcomes of certain neuropsychological indicators showed a significant correlation with metals, such as Pb and uranium (U). More specifically, these elements were negatively correlated with working memory and hit reaction time, suggesting impulsivity. In summary, although Pb and U concentrations in hair were within standard levels, both metals could be correlated with certain, but minor, neuropsychological alterations in the childhood population of Flix. These findings should be confirmed by future birth cohort studies, with bigger study populations and using more complex statistical analyses, focused on human exposure to these specific elements. Full article

The to-date studies on extreme halophiles were focused on shake flask cultivations. Bioreactor technology with quantitative approaches can offer a wide variety of biotechnological applications to exploit the special biochemical features of halophiles. Enabling industrial use of Haloferax mediterranei, finding the optima of cultivation parameters is of high interest. In general, process parameter optimizations were mainly carried out with laborious and time-consuming chemostat cultures. This work offers a faster alternative for process parameter optimization by applying temperature ramps and pH shifts on a halophilic continuous bioreactor culture. Although the hydraulic equilibrium in continuous culture is not reached along the ramps, the main effects on the activity from the dynamic studies can still be concluded. The results revealed that the optimal temperature range may be limited at the lower end by the activity of the primary metabolism pathways. At the higher end, the mass transfer of oxygen between the gaseous and the liquid phase can be limiting for microbial growth. pH was also shown to be a key parameter for avoiding overflow metabolism. The obtained experimental data were evaluated by clustering with multivariate data analyses. Showing the feasibility on a halophilic example, the presented dynamic methodology offers a tool for accelerating bioprocess development. Full article