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Topic Review
Fermented Foods and Gut Microbiota
Fermented foods and beverages are generally defined as products made by microbial organisms and enzymatic conversions of major and minor food components. Further to the commonly-recognized effects of nutrition on the digestive health and well-being, there is now strong evidence for the impact of fermented foods and beverages, produced or preserved by the action of microorganisms, on general health, namely their significance on the gut microbiota balance and brain functionality. 
  • 867
  • 19 May 2021
Topic Review
Fungal Enzymes for Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) Degradation
The ubiquitous persistence of plastic waste in diverse forms and different environmental matrices is one of the main challenges that modern societies are facing at present. The exponential utilization and recalcitrance of synthetic plastics, including polyethylene terephthalate (PET), results in their extensive accumulation, which is a significant threat to the ecosystem. The growing amount of plastic waste ending up in landfills and oceans is alarming due to its possible adverse effects on biota. Thus, there is an urgent need to mitigate plastic waste to tackle the environmental crisis of plastic pollution. With regards to PET, there is a plethora of literature on the transportation route, ingestion, environmental fate, amount, and the adverse ecological and human health effects. Several studies have described the deployment of various microbial enzymes with much focus on bacterial-enzyme mediated removal and remediation of PET. However, there is a lack of consolidated studies on the exploitation of fungal enzymes for PET degradation. Herein, an effort has been made to cover this literature gap by spotlighting the fungi and their unique enzymes, e.g., esterases, lipases, and cutinases. These fungal enzymes have emerged as candidates for the development of biocatalytic PET degradation processes. The first half of this review is focused on fungal biocatalysts involved in the degradation of PET. The latter half explains three main aspects: (1) catalytic mechanism of PET hydrolysis in the presence of cutinases as a model fungal enzyme, (2) limitations hindering enzymatic PET biodegradation, and (3) strategies for enhancement of enzymatic PET biodegradation.
  • 864
  • 26 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Impact of Climate Change on Hydrometeorology and Droughts
Climate change is associated with shifts in average climatic conditions and extreme events likely to impact human and ecological systems. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC), the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events and daily temperature extremes are expected to increase in the mid-21st century. Based on past studies, the increase in long-term temperature and variability in precipitation in different parts of the world and their impacts on the environment are becoming evident.
  • 862
  • 04 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Green Infrastructure in Spatial Planning
Adaptation to climate change is becoming one of the main paradigms for how cities function and develop. The significant role of green infrastructure (GI) as a tool for cities to adapt to climate change is increasingly emphasized among practitioners of spatial planning and in the research literature. Green infrastructure should be understood as "a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas with other environmental features designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. It incorporates green spaces (or blue if aquatic ecosystems are concerned) and other physical features in terrestrial (including coastal) and marine areas".
  • 850
  • 12 Jun 2023
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
A Review of Event-Based Conceptual Rainfall-Runoff Models: A Case for Australia
Event-based models focus on modelling of peak runoff from rainfall data. Conceptual models indicate simplified models that provide reasonably accurate answers despite their crude nature. Rainfall-runoff models are used to transform a rainfall event into a runoff event. This paper focuses on reviewing computational simulation of rainfall-runoff processes over a catchment. Lumped conceptual, event-based rainfall-runoff models have remained the dominant practice for design flood estimation in Australia for many years due to their simplicity, flexibility, and accuracy under certain conditions. Attempts to establish regionalization methods for prediction of design flood hydrographs in ungauged catchments have seen little success. Therefore, as well as reviewing key rainfall-runoff model components for design flood estimation with a special focus on event-based conceptual models, this paper covers the aspects of regionalization to promote their applications to ungauged catchments.
  • 832
  • 13 Jun 2024
Topic Review
Storytelling as an Educational Tool in Sustainable Education
An increase in ecological illiteracy in society and lost contact with nature seem to occur within the now-growing generation. To transform both education and society, transformative learning must be adopted. The capacity of storytelling should be emphasized to make sustainability more easily accessible. Storytelling as a pedagogical tool for learning sustainability is still a bit overshadowed, but the idea of sustainability can be traced far back in aboriginal cultures, where storytelling has been used to transfer traditional knowledge from one generation to the next.
  • 818
  • 15 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Urban Green Space and Residents’ Mental Health
As an important part of urban built environment, urban green space has long been recognized in the fields of promoting residents’ mental health. The mediators can be divided into environmental factors, outdoor activity, and social cohesion. From the perspective of heterogeneity, both individual characteristics (e.g., age and gender) and group characteristics (e.g., level of urban development and urban density) of residents are considered to be the cause of various mediating effects. Types of urban green space tend to affect residents’ mental health through different paths.
  • 812
  • 25 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Energy Consumption of Vacuum Freeze Dryer
The vacuum freeze-drying process is characterized by sublimating the frozen object into a solid state in a vacuum environment, sublimating the water from the object, and finally drying it. At the same time, sublimating the water into the cold trap coil to re form ice. This characteristic determines that the freeze-drying machine needs to use the heat medium circulation system to heat the material to sublimate the water of the object, The ice condensed on the cold trap coil also needs a lot of heat to melt and discharge. During the freeze-drying process of the freeze dryer, the cold trap needs to continuously capture the water vapor generated by sublimation to freeze the cold trap coil. The ice captured by the cold trap coil needs to be melted after each batch of freeze-drying, which in turn requires a large amount of high-temperature defrosting water or thawing steam. For the freeze dryer with heat medium circulation system, sublimation drying also needs to continuously absorb heat, The heat required for the whole process is provided by the electric heater of the heat medium circulation system. The preparation of defrosting water or defrosting steam and the electric heater that provides necessary heat for sublimation require a lot of energy consumption. The freeze dryer consumes too much energy, the freeze-drying cost is high and the energy waste is serious.
  • 811
  • 13 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Vitamin D on Skin Aging
The normal vitamin D3 status is important for a general prevention of premature aging maintaining a healthful skin aging. Vitamin D3metabolites including its classical (1,25(OH)2D3) and novel (CYP11A1-intitated) D3hydroxyderivatives exert many beneficial protective effects on the skin, which could influence the process of premature aging via many different mechanisms, leading to a delay or attenuation of both chronological skin aging and photoaging. Skin-resident cells (keratinocytes, fibroblasts, and sebocytes) are capable of locally activating vitamin D3and exhibiting a diverse biological effect such as photoprotection and immunosuppression, similar to the UVR-induced one.
  • 810
  • 29 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Air Pollution Interconnections with Climate and Environmental Health
Air pollution is a major environmental problem. It is a problem that is interconnected with climate change and ecosystem health. The dynamics within the Niger Delta region of Nigeria are discovered. The high reliance of the people of the Niger Delta on their environment increases their vulnerability to environmental changes. This makes the problem an issue of environmental Justice when the drivers of air pollution in the region are factored in. Urgent and concerted action is required at the individual, local and national levels. The directions in this regard are highlighted. The emission and transmission of air pollutants cause air pollution. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation of over 200 million, is plagued with numerous environmental problems one of which is air pollution. The air quality in its major cities ranks among the worst in the world. 
  • 805
  • 02 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Precision Agroecology
Precision agroecology provides a unique opportunity to synthesize traditional knowledge and novel technology to transform food systems. Merging precision agriculture technology and agroecological principles offers a unique array of agricultural solutions driven by data collection, experimentation, and decision support tools. Precision agroecology can offer solutions to agriculture’s biggest challenges in achieving sustainability such as pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change, as well as broader societal issues of rural depopulation and corporate consolidation of the agricultural sector.
  • 804
  • 14 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Ecological Environment in Belt and Road Initiative Regions
With the widespread recognition and in-depth implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), especially in the context of global climate change, the ecological environment of Belt and Road Initiative regions might be confronted with pressures and challenges with rapid socioeconomic development. In response to those potential environmental challenges, China has put forward Green BRI and enriched the new Silk Road with more environmental connotations, aiming to reduce the conflict between economic development and eco-environmental protection.
  • 796
  • 03 Jan 2023
Topic Review
Biomass Valorization of Walnut Shell for Liquefaction Efficiency
Globally, lignocellulosic biomass has great potential for industrial production of materials and products, but this resource must be used in an environmentally friendly, socially acceptable and sustainable manner. Wood and agricultural residues such as walnut shells as lignocellulosic biomass are one of the most affordable and important renewable resources in the world, which can partially replace fossil resources. The entry revealed that walnut shell biomass can be effectively liquefied into glycerol using H2SO4 as the catalyst, with liquefaction efficiency ranging from 89.21 to 90.98%.
  • 782
  • 24 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Silvopastoral System in Morocco
The silvopastoral systems in Morocco, which combine trees, herbaceous resources, and livestock on the same unit of land, are a socio-economically and ecologically productive alternative to traditional management systems. Successful silvopastoral systems require effective limitation of agricultural expansion and deforestation phenomena, which could preserve the beauty and diversity of the landscape.
  • 774
  • 21 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Narrow- versus Wide-Ranged Ostrya Species
Four sympatric Ostrya species have different geographic range sizes. O. multinervis and O. rehderiana are narrow-ranged species with narrow potential geographical distributions. O. japonica and O. trichocarpa, both of which have wide potential geographical distributions, are wide-ranged species.
  • 764
  • 25 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Extremophilic Microorganisms in Central Europe
“Extremophiles”, first introduced in 1974, describes organisms that thrive in environments where one or more physical or chemical parameters are beyond most organisms’ normal optimal range. They can be broadly separated into two categories: extremophilic organisms that require one or more extreme conditions to grow and extremotolerant organisms that can tolerate harsh conditions but grow optimally in a milder environment
  • 741
  • 19 Nov 2021
Topic Review
The Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve for Mitigating Human Pressures
This entry developed a human footprint (HF) dataset for the Sanjiangyuan region in China, which was localized the global HF model, then used it to assess the effectiveness of Sanjiangyuan natural reserve.
  • 731
  • 30 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Waste Conversion for Fuel Gas Production
The problems of the annual formation of industrial waste are common to a wide group of industries, particularly chemical, petrochemical, coal, gas, and wood processing. The most typical wastes of these industries are coal tar, waste oils, oil sludge, filter cakes, coal slime, sawdust, wood shavings, etc. Most of these materials and components pose a significant environmental threat.  A successful solution to these problems is possible due to the use of auxiliary fuel; boiler modifications; oxy-fuel combustion; and the preparation of multi-component fuels, including the use of additives. 
  • 727
  • 15 Feb 2022
Topic Review
Air Pollutants on Airway Diseases
Air pollutants include toxic particles and gases emitted in large quantities from many different combustible materials. They also include particulate matter (PM) and ozone, and biological contaminants, such as viruses and bacteria, which can penetrate the human airway and reach the bloodstream, triggering airway inflammation, dysfunction, and fibrosis. 
  • 714
  • 26 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Trifolium L.
Trifolium L. is an economically important genus that is characterized by variable karyotypes relating to its ploidy level and basic chromosome numbers. The advent of genomic resources combined with molecular cytogenetics provides an opportunity to develop our understanding of plant genomes in general.
  • 714
  • 23 Nov 2021
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