[Pollution Characteristics and Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in the Bioretention Systems of Sponge Cities].

As an important water purification and seepage measure for sponge cities, biofiltration systems have been widely used in their construction in China. In order to identify the heavy metal accumulation, pollution, and its potential environmental risk in the biofiltration systems, this study examined the heavy metal contents and spatial distribution characteristics by taking the biofiltration systems of Yuelai new town, Chongqing, the first demonstration area of sponge city construction in China, as the research object, and conducted a risk evaluation of the pollution level and ecological environment in this new town using the contamination factor (CF), geo-accumulation Index (Igeo), and potential ecological risk coefficient (PERC). The results showed that, except for Mn, the average contents of Cu, Zn, Pb, Ni, and Cd in the biofiltration systems of Yuelai new town were 4.14, 1.77, 4.98, 1.23, and 6.51 times higher than the soil background values of Chongqing. In terms of spatial distribution, the contents of heavy metals in biofiltration systems along the roads in different functional areas showed great differences. The contents of Cu, Zn, Mn, Pb, Ni, and Cd in the industrial area were significantly higher than those of the same types of heavy metals in the biofiltration systems in other areas (P<0.05). The CF and Igeo showed that the pollution level of heavy metals was ranked as follows:Mn

Identifying chemicals with potential therapy of HIV based on protein-protein and protein-chemical interaction network.

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a severe infectious disease that causes a large number of deaths every year. Traditional anti-AIDS drugs directly targeting the HIV-1 encoded enzymes including reverse transcriptase (RT), protease (PR) and integrase (IN) usually suffer from drug resistance after a period of treatment and serious side effects. In recent years, the emergence of numerous useful information of protein-protein interactions (PPI) in the HIV life cycle and related inhibitors makes PPI a new way for antiviral drug intervention. In this study, we identified 26 core human proteins involved in PPI between HIV-1 and host, that have great potential for HIV therapy. In addition, 280 chemicals that interact with three HIV drugs targeting human proteins can also interact with these 26 core proteins. All these indicate that our method as presented in this paper is quite promising. The method may become a useful tool, or at least plays a complementary role to the existing method, for identifying novel anti-HIV drugs.

[Effect of the subsurface constructed wetland evolution into free surface flow constructed wetland on the removal of organic matter, nitrogen, and phosphor in wastewater].

Many previous studies demonstrated that the performance of the subsurface constructed wetlands (SSCW) for wastewater treatment was superior to that of the free flow surface constructed wetlands (FFSCW). However, our results indicated that the performance of FFSCW derived from the evolution of SSCW due to clogging for COD, TOC, total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphor (TP) removal was higher than those of SSCW with the same substrate and plant. The laboratory culture experiments were adopted to evaluate the effect of the constructed wetland evolution on the organic matter mineralization, nitrification/denitrification as well as removal of nitrogen and phosphor. It was shown that, after evolution of SSCW into FFSCW, the mineralization rate for organic matter (as TOC) was 1.82 mg x h(-1), and it was 1.49 mg x h(-1) for SSCW. The removal efficiency for NO3(-) was 96.8%, and it was 58.1% for SSCW. The abiotic denitrification removal efficiency was 40%, and it was 28.2% for SSCW. In addition, the maximum equilibrium adsorption capacity of the substrate after evolution for phosphor (as P) was 160 mg x kg(-1), and it was 140 mg x kg(-1) for SSCW substrate. The organic coverage of the substrate was found to be beneficial to phosphor removal. The nitrification ability decreased after evolution. These results suggest the important effect of constructed wetland evolution on its performance.