Housing quality as environmental inequality: the case of Wallonia,Belgium

First in the USA and then in many other countries, scholarship on environmental inequality has sought to shed light on the unequal environmental conditions borne by poor people and ethnic minorities, and to challenge public policies and their unjust impacts on those target groups. Housing quality, especially the indoor characteristics of homes, offers an innovative perspective in this field of research. In previous research on environmental inequality in the Walloon context, housing quality has been proven to be a major determinant of quality of life and environmental well-being. This paper analyses housing quality through a twofold approach: indoor characteristics on the one hand, and outdoor subjective and objective externalities on the other. It reveals the disparities between the most deprived and the wealthiest segments of the population. The evidence for this study is based on a housing quality survey carried out in 2012 and 2013 on 6018 households in Wallonia (Belgium). The key findings are that poor people are found to live in housing of lower quality, in densely populated neighbourhoods and those with mixed use, with compensating amenities provided at the local level. Moreover, consistent with environmental inequality scholarship, deprived households are found to bear the burden of environmental degradation outside the home. People live in areas with poorer air quality, but are found to benefit from greater access to green spaces. The results of the survey reveal an interesting point concerning the environmental inequality literature; the interior features of housing are found to differ more widely between deprived and wealthier people than the surrounding environment does.     

Demonstrating the ascendancy of COVID-19 research using acronyms

Scientometrics - “COVID” which stands for corona virus disease, has become the world’s most infamous acronym. Previous analysis of acronyms in health and medical journals found a...     

Influence of blanching and freezing broccoli (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Brassica oleracea</Emphasis> var. <Emphasis Type="Italic">italica</Emphasis>) prior to storage and cooking on glucosinolate concentrations and myrosinase activity

Glucosinolates contribute to the chemoprotective effects of Brassica vegetables. The influence of blanching and freezing broccoli, followed by storage or cooking, on its glucosinolate concentration and myrosinase activity was investigated. Myrosinase activity was reduced by 93%, while glucosinolate concentration was unaltered after blanch-freezing broccoli. Blanch-frozen Brassica retained the glucosinolate content of its fresh counterpart after storage at T = −20 °C for up to 90 days. Fresh or blanch-frozen broccoli was stir-fried, boiled, boiled and kept hot for 2 h, or left uncooked. Stir-frying retained the highest glucosinolate concentration and myrosinase activity, regardless of pre-cooking. Boiling and keeping blanch-frozen broccoli hot completely denatured myrosinase and decreased glucosinolate concentration by 42%. Aromatic and indole glucosinolates were reduced to a larger extent than aliphatic glucosinolates, especially when boiled broccoli was kept hot. The final concentration of glucosinolates in Brassica is influenced by cooking, while the myrosinase activity is modified by pre-treatment and subsequent cooking.     

Stable isotope pulse-chasing and compound specific stable carbon isotope analysis of phospholipid fatty acids to assess methane oxidizing bacterial populations in landfill cover soils

The oxidation of methane by bacteria residing in soils constitutes an important terrestrial methane sink. These bacteria are particularly abundant in the covering soils of landfill caps due to the supply of high concentrations of methane from the landfill below. Only about 0.1% of soil bacteria are amenable to available methods of culturing, resulting in the need for a method of in situ analysis. A combination of phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis and stable isotopic labeling has been employed in this investigation as a means of cultivation-independent bacterial analysis. Soil samples taken from the profiles of two landfill caps, one of clay and one of sand, were incubated with 13C-labeled methane. PLFAs were analyzed by gas chromatography/combustion/isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC/C/IRMS) in order to determine their 13C content, from which the PLFA distribution of the methane-oxidizing bacteria was calculated. Neither landfill cap supported communities of bacteria capable of oxidizing ambient levels of methane but only those elevated levels that are usually attributable to landfills. The clay-capped landfill profile exhibited a change in the methane-oxidizing bacterial community with depth, whereas the sand-capped landfill site displayed a mixture of both type I and II methanotrophs throughout the profile. Two additional samples, taken from sites where methane production was evident, were particularly dominated by type II methanotrophic bacteria.     

Incidence of Staphylococcus aureus and associated risk factors in Nham,a Thai fermented pork product

Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most prevalent bacterial pathogens causing food-borne disease worldwide. Staphylococcal food poisoning is caused by ingestion of staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs) pre-formed in the implicated food. In this study, the incidences of S. aureus and classical SEs (SEA-SEE) contamination in ‘Nham’, a traditional Thai fermented pork product, were determined. Among 155 Nham samples tested, as high as 39.35% of the samples were positive for S. aureus (2–3500 MPN/g), but none were positive for the SEs. The risk factors for S. aureus contamination were highly correlated with the manufacturer and the pH of the product. A predictive model determined the probability of the presence of S. aureus to be ≤0.24 at the pH ≤ 4.6. During the fermentation process, the number of S. aureus slightly increased in the first day and decreased afterward. S. aureus counts continued to decrease when Nham was stored refrigerated. The negative result for enterotoxins and low counts of S. aureus in Nham surveyed in this study, and reduction of the pathogen counts during fermentation and storage suggested that there is very low risk of staphylococcal food poisoning from consuming properly fermented Nham.     

一种新型表面改性技术—等离子体增强电化学表面陶瓷化（PECC）

概述了等离子体增强电化学表面陶瓷化技术的原理,工艺,特点,陶瓷层性能,并展望了应用前景。     

Simplified primer design for PCR-based gene targeting and microarray primer database: two web tools for fission yeast

PCR-based gene targeting is a popular method for manipulating yeast genes in their normal chromosomal locations. The manual design of primers, however, can be cumbersome and error-prone. We have developed a straightforward web-based tool that applies user-specified inputs to automate and simplify the task of primer selection for deletion, tagging and/or regulated expression of genes in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. This tool, named PPPP (for Pombe PCR Primer Programs), is available at http://www.sanger.ac.uk/PostGenomics/S_pombe/software/. We also present a searchable Microarray Primer Database to retrieve the sequences and accompanying information for primers and PCR products used to build our in-house Sz. pombe microarrays. This database contains information on both coding and intergenic regions to provide context for the microarray data, and it should be useful also for other applications, such as quantitative PCR. The database can be accessed at http://www.sanger.ac.uk/PostGenomics/S_pombe/microarray/.     

Enforcing Geometrical Priors in Deep Networks for Semantic Segmentation Applied to Radiotherapy Planning

Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision - Incorporating prior knowledge into a segmentation process, whether it is geometrical constraints such as volume penalisation, (partial) convexity...     

On non-determinism in machines and languages

Non-deterministic computation is not really computation, but the difference with real computation is blurred. We study in detail various levels of non-determinism in computations on non-deterministic Turing machines with polynomial bounds on the resources. Meanwhile, we consider numerous query languages, implicit logic, choice logic, order invariant logic, and restrictions of second-order logic, and establish correspondences between all these formalisms for both deterministic and non-deterministic queries. To the degrees of non-determinism in the computations, correspond levels of non-determinism in the logical definitions. Our main contribution is to characterize various complexity classes between PTIME and PSPACE, by several logical means, thus translating open questions in complexity theory to open questions in logic related to the use of the non-determinism.     

加热炉对流段炉管外表面化学清洗技术

加热炉在长期运行后其对流段炉管外表面积聚了大量的污垢，大大降低了对流段炉管的传热性能。本文详细地介绍了炉管外表面化学清洗技术及应用情况，采用自行研究的清洗工艺和药剂，可以有效地清除对流段炉管外表面污垢。现场应用效果非常理想：清洗过程中不腐蚀炉管、不损害炉衬，清洗液对环境无污染，清洗后炉管见金属本色、外表基本无污垢；开工后烟气出口温度比清洗前降低50℃～90℃，加热炉热效率提高5％左右。