The Most Significant Factors Affecting the Ozone Concentrations in an Urban Environment

More and more people are moving to the city, especially in developing countries. Cities require and use large quantities of energy and materials, metabolizing them and generating large quantities of waste products and pollutants, resulting in unsustainable environments that adversely affect ecological integrity and diversity and human health and well-being.What is the main factors the affects the urban environment?A research lead by Athanasios Sfetsos(Institute of Nuclear Technology-Radiation Protection) made an investigation about this problem.And finally concluded that the most significant influences were the transported O3 and NOx concentrations from the industrial area in the northern parts of the city and the road traffic from the city centre.

For more detail you can click < An Investigation of the Factors Affecting the Ozone Concentrations in an Urban  Environment >

Looking for job: maybe gender and race are not that important

At the job fairs, the recruitment often shows: Men only or women only.So we often complain about gender discrimination.A research<Workplace Identities of Women in the US Labor Market> from SCIRP claimes that:it is not so important!The following is the general ideas:

In this paper, I examine the effects of gender and race/ethnicity on American workers’ workplace identities. Literature on gender, work, and occupation suggests that gender and race are significant predictors of workers’ workplace identities. Literature also posits that self-perceived competency and reflected appraisals from others in workplaces also contribute considerably to workers’ workplace identities. However, there exists hardly any empirical study that explores the impacts of gender, race, workers’ self-perceived competency, and their reflected appraisals altogether on their workplace identities. That is what I accomplished in this study. Deriving the data from the National Study of Changing Workforce (NSCW: 2008) I ask: 1) Do women and men workers in America differ in their perceptions of workplace identities; 2) Do non-white and white workers in America differ in their perceptions of workplace identities; and 3) Do gender and race of the workers impact their workplace identities when self-perceived competency and reflected appraisals enter the equation? Analyses are based on quantitative methods. Results show that workers’ self-perceived competency and their reflected appraisals are more significant predictors of their workplace identities than gender or race.

You who are looking for job，don’t be upset by gender or race any more.There is something more important!

Whether Dietary Polyphenolic Compounds Can Be Used As Biological Markers?

Many research pointed out that: dietary polyphenols compounds can play a role in antioxidant, scavenging free radicals, and controling the incidence of chronic diseases, protecting human DNA and mutation, inhibition of cancer.That’s why high intake of fruit and vegetables(Fruit, vegetables and some beverages, such as tea and coffee, are particularly rich in dietary polyphenols) is believed to be beneficial to human health. A research led by Walter Pinna (University of Sassari) puts forward a new question:whether high contents of natural polyphenols from the diet can induce pigment accumulation in lymph nodes?if so, whether polyphenolic compounds and derivates can be used as biological markers?The following is the general ideas:

A paired match approach was used to switch 20 pigs (range of initial body weight, BW: 113 - 121 kg) to two experimental diets, for four weeks: ten pigs (pair housed) were fed with an experimental acorn based diet (acorns: 50% in the diet, as fed; total polyphenols, 78.1 g TP/Kg DM in the diet; tannic acid equivalent, 25.8 g TAE/kg DM); the remainder ten, received a pelleted complete diet for finishers (0% acorns in the diet). Daily feed intake in the last two weeks of the experimental feeding was recorded per pair of pigs in both groups of animals, showing an average intake of 610 mg TAE/kg BW/d. At an average final BW of between 127 to 137 kg, all pigs were slaughtered and LNs from different anatomical regions of the carcass were removed and analysed. At gross inspection, LNs from both groups displayed different grades of intensity and diffusion of pigmentation: a partial and incidental pigmentation was randomly detected in renal or sub-iliac LNs in the control group; a constant and uniform pigmentation of LNs was observed in acorns fed pigs: a dark brown staining diffused to the whole LN associated with a brownish colour of the muscles was found systematically. At light microscope intracytoplasmic granules were found in macrophages and dendritic cells from both groups, but, at confocal laser analysis, an intense auto-fluorescence was observed in medial-iliac LNs from the carcasses of acorn-fed pigs (green emission). However, intracellular sources of blue and green fluorescence at different wavelengths, likely due to tryptophan, indoleamine and derivates were also found in medial-iliac and inguinal LNs from the control group. A dietary origin was attributed to the different discoloration of LNs between the carcasses of the two groups: such acquired pigmentation is relevant in the left sub-iliac LN, but the confocal laser microscopic test to elicit auto-fluorescence of polyphenolic compounds (biological markers) displayed a 76.9% specificity, despite a 100% of sensitivity for the univocal identification of the carcass from acorn-fed pigs. Cranial sternal LNs resulted to suit the sentinel role in the distinction of carcass from acorns fed pigs at confocal laser microscopic analysis.

This research is based on pigmentation,whether it is the same with human, needs further discuss.

（source：SCIRP）

Molecular markers in fisheries and aquaculture

Molecular markers has a wide range of applications.For example,it can be used to study the relationship between an inherited disease and its genetic cause, measure the genomic response to selection in livestock, genealogical DNA testing for genetic genealogy to determine genetic distance between individuals or populations,and even fisheries and aquaculture.

A research from scientific research publishing mainly discusses 5 applications of Molecular markers in fisheries and aquaculture: 1) Species Identification 2) Genetic variation and population structure study in natural populations 3) Comparison between wild and hatchery populations 4) Assessment of demographic bottleneck in natural population 5) Propagation assisted rehabilitation programmes.The limitations are also discussed.

You can read more at< Molecular markersand their applications in fisheries and aquaculture>(The article can be download freely and safety).

A research from SCIRP find that wheat has allelopathic potential，and the application

Wheat is grown on more than 240,000,000 hectares (590,000,000 acres), larger than for any other crop. World trade in wheat is greater than for all other crops combined. With rice, wheat is the world's most favored staple food. Wheat provides more nourishment for humans than any other food source.The importance of wheat not only embodied in the nutritive value.According to a research from SCIRP,when it is a plant,its allelopathic potential decides its eco-friendly trait for it can effectively reduce herbicide uses.

According to the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme report, in the world, there are  over 100 people herbicide poisoning, of which 10 million people died each year. In the developing world, the situation is much worse. Based on animal experiments, IARC confirmed that the widely use herbicide can be carcinogenic. It is estimated that the number of cancer patients with chemical herbicides accounted for about 20% of the total number of cancer patients.

Maybe we can make use of its allelopathic potential to implement “green food”,reducing the harm made by herbicide.

Research turn out that third-order safety culture associated with second-order safety performance model are the desired model

Safety culture is mainly applied to the high-tech, high-risk operation-oriented enterprises, in energy, power, chemical and other industries it is especially important. Studies on safety culture and safety performance have been increasing recently.A research from ScientificResearch Publishing conclude that third-order safety culture associated with second-order safety performance model turns out to be the desired model, where both the measured variables and latent variables have good reliability. The proposed model meets many criteria of the goodness of fit as well.The following it the stages of research:

We first carry out a thorough literature review and propose an integrated model of safety culture and safety per-formance with eight dimensions and four dimensions, respectively. We then state a series of hypotheses and test the proposed model on a sample of 370 valid data from three manufacturing companies in Taiwan.

You can learn more at < Analysis of theMulti-Relationships and Their Structures for Safety Culture>.

Safety culture is a safe  engineering which benefit the the life and health of workers,and an important way to improve enterprise's safety management level and reach the company intrinsically safe.I hope this research can be help for futhur research.

Food and Nutrition Sciences-Is commercially bottled 100% fruit juice with the “no sugar added” label really no sugar?

The bottled fruit juice is often labeled “no sugar added”,but does it really not contain higher sugar content than extracted juice of fresh fruit？

A scientist published an article <Comparison of Sugar Content in Bottled 100% Fruit Juice versus Extracted Juiceof Fresh Fruit > in the Scientific Research Publishing.This artical made a study on this topic. The fruit juices that were tested included apple, grapefruit, orange, pineapple, pomegranate, red grape and white grape. All bottled juices and fresh fruits were purchased in Toledo, Ohio, USA during the winter of 2012. The fresh fruits were juiced and three samples were tested for sugar concentration using a Brix refractometer. The same testing protocol was also applied to the bottled 100% fruit juice. Application of the Mann-Whitney test on the experimental data demonstrated no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05).

Finally, the results suggested that the sugar content in the commercially bottled 100% fruit juice with the “no sugar added” label is an accurate representation of sugar content in the freshly-extracted juice of the corresponding fruit.