生态学与经济学的合流

生态学家和经济学家在环境问题上各持己见，误解很深。近年来，生态学家和经济学家逐渐认识到了合作的重要性。但是，他们的合作一直磕磕碰碰。其中，最大的分歧在于如何合作才是最有效的。促进双方的沟通和理解可使经济学家更多地将环境问题纳入经济范畴，使生态学家探索运用经济手段解决环境问题的新思路。     

The potentials of internalising social banking among the Malaysian Islamic banks

Islamic banking has established for the last 40 years, yet only recently researchers acknowledge social failures of Islamic banking and finance. This has led to a proposition of forming new forms of banking and non-banking institutions that include social banking. It is argued that in considering the developmentalist needs of the Muslim societies in Malaysia, there is a need to go back to fundamentals of Islamic finance in realising the aspirational Islamic moral economy that emphasises on the social good, capacity development at the individual and social levels. This paper aims to explore the concept of social banking and search for the possibilities for internalisation in Malaysian Islamic banking. To gain understanding on this pertinent issue, an empirical investigation was conducted at 17 Islamic banks in Malaysia. A mixed method was employed. For the primary data collection, 477 respondents of Islamic banks clients and employees participated in a self-administrated survey, and 11 respondents from the executive and managerial level of eight Islamic banks involved in a semi-structured interview survey. The integrated analysis implies that Islamic banking significantly contributes to socio-economic development. On the contrary, financial and economic practices in everyday life do not reflect the social economic justice. The result further illustrates that the Islamic banks lack social contributions as they prone to practice efficiency-oriented institutions. Hence, a social banking model is needed to solve the lack of socio-economic development issue in the current practice of Islamic bank.     

Comparative efficacy of mitigation techniques for the detoxification of Prunus persica (L.) from selected pesticide residues

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Fruits are the valuable and important components of human diet. Among them, Prunus persica is a rich source of different minerals and dietary fibers....     

Do renewable energy and globalization enhance ecological footprint: an analysis of top renewable energy countries?

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This paper aims at estimating the dynamic impact of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, globalization, urbanization, and economic growth...     

Developing a SINTACS-based method to map groundwater multi-pollutant vulnerability using evolutionary algorithms

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - In this study, the modified SINTACS method, a rating-based groundwater vulnerability approach, was applied to data from the Campanian Plain, southern...     

Mutagenicity of chloroaniline/lignin metabolites in the salmonella/microsome assay

Abstract

Chloroanilines are constituents of many agrochemicals and have been found to be metabolized to succinic acid conjugates, e.g., succinamides and succinimides. The mutagenic potential of five chloroanilines and their succinamides and succinimide derivatives have been tested with two strains of Salmonella typhimurium (TA98 and TA100) with and without rat hepatic micro‐somal fraction. None of the compounds produced a dose response effect with a two‐fold increase in revertants indicating that these compounds are not mutagens or promutagens in these assays.     

Spatial Validation of Land Use Change Models Using Multiple Assessment Techniques: A Case Study of Transition Potential Models

Using land use and cover change (LUCC) models for the urban growth planning, environmental assessment, and decision-making needs the establishment of an appropriate level of confidence in their performance. The objective of this research is to explore the importance of using multiple assessment techniques in order to fairly evaluate the performance of land use models. An application is conducted by using the Land Change Modeler for Ecological Sustainability (LCM) which is an empirical and transition potential model. LCM is applied to model the agricultural to developed areas transition in Rennes metropolitan area (France). The land demand is estimated using the Markov Chain model; whereas, the transition potential map is implemented using the Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP) method based on historical changes and driving variables. The model performance is assessed based on a variety of the most commonly used validation techniques. At the study area level, the correctness and disagreement analysis shows that LCM performs better at predicting the amount than the allocation of developed areas. Additionally, landscape metrics reveal that LCM tends to predict a fragmented urban form, which seems evident because of the large number of the individual urban patches. At the municipality level, the error budget analysis shows that the model performance, which varies highly between different subareas, needs to be improved. Moreover, the cross-tabulation between the transition potential map and both the observed and the predicted agricultural to developed areas transitions reveals that the order of the transition potential values does not perfectly fit the observed change; whereas, the predicted change is not solely limited to areas with high potential.     

Development of geomorphologic instantaneous unit hydrograph for a large watershed

Hill torrents cause a lot of environmental and property damage in Pakistan every year. Proper assessment of direct runoff in the form of hill torrents is essential for protection of environment, property, and human life. In this paper, direct surface runoff hydrograph (DSRH) was derived for a large catchment using the geomorphologic instantaneous unit hydrograph concept. The catchment with hill torrent flows in semi-arid region of Pakistan was selected for this study. It was divided into series of linear cascades and hydrologic parameters required for Nash's conceptual model, and were estimated using geomorphology of the basin. Geomorphologic parameters were derived from satellite images of the basin and ERDAS and ArcGIS were used for data processing. Computer program was developed to systematically estimate the dynamic velocity, its related parameters by optimization and thereby to simulate the DSRH. The data regarding rainfall-runoff and satellite images were collected from Punjab Irrigation and Power Department, Pakistan. Model calibration and validation was made for 15 rainfall-runoff events. Ten events were used for calibration and five for validation. Model efficiency was found to be more than 90% and root mean square error to be about 5%. Impact of variation in model parameters (shape parameter and storage coefficient) on DSRH was investigated. For shape parameter, the number of linear cascades varied from 1 to 3 and it was found that the shaper parameter value of 3 produced the best DSRH. Various values of storage coefficient were used and it was observed that the value determined from geomorphology and the dynamic velocity produced the best results.     

Cognitive failures, driving errors and driving accidents

INTRODUCTION: The impact of a driver's cognitive capability on traffic safety has not been adequately studied. This study examined the relationship between cognitive failures, driving errors and accident data. METHOD: Professional drivers from Iran (160 males, ages 18-65) participated in this study. The cognitive failures questionnaire (CFQ) and the driver error questionnaire were administered. The participants were also asked other questions about personal driving information. A principal component analysis with varimax rotation was performed to determine the factor structure of the CFQ. Poisson regression models were developed to predict driving errors and accidents from total CFQ scores and the extracted factors. RESULTS: Total CFQ scores were associated with driving error rates, but not with accidents. However, the 2 extracted factors suggested an increased effect on accidents and were strongly associated with driving errors. DISCUSSION: Although the CFQ was not able to predict driving accidents, it could be used to identify drivers susceptible to driving errors. Further development of a driving-oriented cognitive failure scale is recommended to help identify error prone drivers. Such a scale may be beneficial to licensing authorities or for developing driver selection and training procedures for organizations.     

Nanocarrier-mediated co-delivery systems for lung cancer therapy: recent developments and prospects

Environmental Chemistry Letters - Research has recently focused on combinational therapy using nanocarriers to overcome the obstacles associated with conventional therapy of lung cancer. The...