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Topic Review
Indoor Clean Air: Plants help
Urban civilization has a high impact on the environment and human health. The pollution level of indoor air can be 2–5 times higher than the outdoor air pollution, and sometimes it reaches up to 100 times or more in natural/mechanical ventilated buildings. Even though people spend about 90% of their time indoors, the importance of indoor air quality is less noticed. Cleaning indoor air using plants is an affordable and more environmentally friendly means to purify polluted air. Furthermore, studies show that indoor plants can be used to regulate building temperature, decrease noise levels, and alleviate social stress. Sources of indoor air pollutants and their impact on human health are briefly discussed in our paper. The available literature on phytoremediation, including experimental works for removing volatile organic compound (VOC) and particulate matter from the indoor air and associated challenges and opportunities, are reviewed. The potential role of green walls and potted plants for improving indoor air quality is examined. A list of plant species suitable for indoor air phytoremediation is proposed. Our review paper will help in making informed decisions about integrating plants into the interior building design.
  • 1.2K
  • 11 May 2021
Topic Review
HANPP
Human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) is a substantial improvement upon 20th century attempts at developing an ecological footprint indicator because of its measurability in relation to net primary production, its close relationship to other key footprint measures, such as carbon and water, and its spatial specificity. HANPP informs different sustainability narratives at different scales. At the planetary scale, HANPP is a critical planetary limit that improves upon areal land use indicators. At the country macroscale, HANPP indicates the degree to which meeting the needs of the domestic population for provisioning ecosystem services (food, feed, biofiber, biofuel) presses against the domestic ecological endowment of net primary production. At the county mesoscale, HANPP reveals the dependency of metropolitan areas upon regional specialized rural forestry and agroecosystems to which they are teleconnected through trade and transport infrastructures. At the pixel microscale, HANPP provides the basis for deriving spatial patterns of remaining net primary production upon which biodiversity and regulatory and cultural ecosystem services are dependent. HANPP is thus a sustainability indicator that can fulfill similar needs as carbon, water and other footprints.
  • 1.2K
  • 23 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Heavy Metal Soil Contamination Detection Using Geochemistry and Field Spectroradiometry
Technological advances in hyperspectral remote sensing have been widely applied in heavy metal soil contamination studies, as they are able to provide assessments in a rapid and cost-effective way. The present work investigates the potential role of combining field and laboratory spectroradiometry with geochemical data of lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu) and cadmium (Cd) in quantifying and modelling heavy metal soil contamination (HMSC) for a floodplain site located in Wales, United Kingdom. The study objectives were to: (i) collect field- and lab-based spectra from contaminated soils by using ASD FieldSpec® 3, where the spectrum varies between 350 and 2500 nm; (ii) build field- and lab-based spectral libraries; (iii) conduct geochemical analyses of Pb, Zn, Cu and Cd using atomic absorption spectrometer; (iv) identify the specific spectral regions associated to the modelling of HMSC; and (v) develop and validate heavy metal prediction models (HMPM) for the aforementioned contaminants, by considering their spectral features and concentrations in the soil. Herein, the field- and lab-based spectral features derived from 85 soil samples were used successfully to develop two spectral libraries, which along with the concentrations of Pb, Zn, Cu and Cd were combined to build eight HMPMs using stepwise multiple linear regression. The results showed, for the first time, the feasibility to predict HMSC in a highly contaminated floodplain site by combining soil geochemistry analyses and field spectroradiometry. The generated models help for mapping heavy metal concentrations over a huge area by using space-borne hyperspectral sensors. The results further demonstrated the feasibility of combining geochemistry analyses with filed spectroradiometric data to generate models that can predict heavy metal concentrations.
  • 1.2K
  • 30 Oct 2020
Topic Review
IoT-Cloud-Based Earthquake Early Warning Systems
Earthquake early warning systems (EEWS) are crucial for saving lives in earthquake-prone areas. Earthquake early warning systems rely on a variety of advanced signal processing techniques and specific parameters to detect and analyze seismic waves in real time. 
  • 1.2K
  • 11 Aug 2023
Topic Review
Clathrate Gun Hypothesis
The clathrate gun hypothesis refers to a proposed explanation for the periods of rapid warming during the Quaternary. The idea is that changes in fluxes in upper intermediate waters in the ocean caused temperature fluctuations that alternately accumulated and occasionally released methane clathrate on upper continental slopes, these events would have caused the Bond Cycles and individual interstadial events, such as the Dansgaard–Oeschger interstadials. The hypothesis was supported for the Bølling-Allerød and Preboreal period, but not for Dansgaard–Oeschger interstadials, although there are still debates on the topic.
  • 1.2K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Water Treatment Plant Sludge Dewatering
Using geotextile tubes as dewatering technology may significantly contribute to sustainable treatment of sludge generated in different industries, such as the water industry. This is an economical alternative for dewatering sludge from a Water Treatment Plant (WTP), which prevents sludge from being directly deposited in water bodies and makes it possible to then transfer the sludge to landfills. 
  • 1.2K
  • 27 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Carbon Dioxide Fixation by Phytoplankton
Marine phytoplankton account for more than half of the carbon dioxide fixation of Earth. The export of carbon is highest at the photic zone of the ocean, which is dominated by phytoplankton. Plankton can also be zooplanktons that feed on phytoplankton and release fecal pellets that are made of dissolved carbon particles. The growth of the phytoplankton mainly depends upon three factors, i.e., nutrients, sunlight, and carbon dioxide. Phytoplankton-like plants have chlorophyll that fixes carbon dioxide to glucose using the Rubisco enzyme.
  • 1.1K
  • 06 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Municipal Solid Waste Management in Beijing
An intelligent garbage sorting system (IGSS) is an effective sorting approach for MSW management. To explore the predictors of local residents’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the IGSS, this entry applied an extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) model by adding an antecedent environmental concern (EC) prior to the main predictors of the TPB model (attitudes, subject norms, perceived behavioral control). 
  • 1.1K
  • 20 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Sustainable Business Model Innovation
Sustainable business model innovation is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon; thus, it is important to understand its various manifestations. Sustainable business models generally aim to integrate economic, social and environmental aspects in their value creation and/or value capture processes. However, these aspects can manifest as different combinations, and some may be more dominant than others.
  • 1.1K
  • 16 Jul 2021
Topic Review
Zeolite/Pharmaceuticals System
Zeolites belong to aluminosilicate microporous solids, with strong and diverse catalytic activity, which makes them applicable in almost every kind of industrial process, particularly thanks to their eco-friendly profile. Another crucial characteristic of zeolites is their tremendous adsorption capability. Therefore, it is self-evident that the widespread use of zeolites is in environmental protection, based primarily on the adsorption capacity of substances potentially harmful to the environment, such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, or other industry pollutants. On the other hand, zeolites are also recognized as drug delivery systems (DDS) carriers for numerous pharmacologically active agents. The enhanced bioactive ability of DDS zeolite as a drug carrying nanoplatform is confirmed, making this system more specific and efficient, compared to the drug itself. These two applications of zeolite, in fact, illustrate the importance of (ir)reversibility of the adsorption process. 
  • 1.1K
  • 11 Aug 2022
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