Spatially Varying Costs of GHG Abatement with Alternative Cellulosic Feedstocks for Sustainable Aviation Fuels.

Cellulosic biomass-based sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) can be produced from various feedstocks. The breakeven price and carbon intensity of these feedstock-to-SAF pathways are likely to differ across feedstocks and across spatial locations due to differences in feedstock attributes, productivity, opportunity costs of land for feedstock production, soil carbon effects, and feedstock composition. We integrate feedstock to fuel supply chain economics and life-cycle carbon accounting using the same system boundary to quantify and compare the spatially varying greenhouse gas (GHG) intensities and costs of GHG abatement with SAFs derived from four feedstocks (switchgrass, miscanthus, energy sorghum, and corn stover) at 4 km resolution across the U.S. rainfed region. We show that the optimal feedstock for each location differs depending on whether the incentive is to lower breakeven price, carbon intensity, or cost of carbon abatement with biomass or to have high biomass production per unit land. The cost of abating GHG emissions with SAF ranges from $181 Mg-1 CO2e to more than $444 Mg-1 CO2e and is lowest with miscanthus in the Midwest, switchgrass in the south, and energy sorghum in a relatively small region in the Great Plains. While corn stover-based SAF has the lowest breakeven price per gallon, it has the highest cost of abatement due to its relatively high GHG intensity. Our findings imply that different types of policies, such as volumetric targets, tax credits, and low carbon fuel standards, will differ in the mix of feedstocks they incentivize and locations where they are produced in the U.S. rainfed region.

[Chlorination of Naproxen: Removal, Transformation and Risk Assessment].

The by-products produced during chlorination of pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) have created widespread public concern. Chlorination of a typical PhAC, naproxen (NAP), was studied. NAP chlorination parameters, intermediates identification, chlorination mechanism, and risk assessment during chlorination process have also been discussed. The results showed that NAP chlorination could fit well with the fist-order kinetics. The rate of removal and rate constants of NAP chlorination decreased with increasing initial NAP concentration and ammonium dosage, while these values increased with increasing initial free chlorine concentration. Acidic condition of the solution could significantly promote NAP chlorination. Five intermediates were identified by HPLC-MS/MS, and the mechanism of NAP chlorination was also put forward. Vibrio fischeri toxicity analysis and ESCOAR prediction indicated that higher toxicity intermediates were produced during NAP chlorination, which pose a potential threat to drinking water safety.

[Preliminary study of Sub-Health Measurement Scale Version1.0 norms for Chinese civil servants].

OBJECTIVE: To establish the norms of Sub-Health Measurement Scale Version1.0 (SHMS V1.0) for Chinese civil servants. METHODS: We sampled a total of 15 000 civil servants form Tianjin (north China), Guangdong (south China), Anhui and Hunan (central China), Xinjiang (northwest China) and Shenyang (northeast China) to perform the spot trial, and established the mean, percentile and threshold norms based on the characteristics of SHMS V1.0 scores for Chinese civil servants. RESULTS: The established norms based on the average scores of SHMS V1.0 showed a mean score of 66.55∓12.36 for young male subjects (below 40 years), 67.42∓12.40 for older male subjects, 66.22∓11.81 for female subjects younger than 40 years, and 65.94∓11.91 for older female subjects. The threshold norms of SHMS V1.0 divided 5 health states, namely disease, severe sub-health, moderate sub-health, mild sub-health and healthy states according to the Mean∓SD and Mean∓0.5SD of the converted scores. The 4 cut-off points were close to the 15th, 30th, 70th and 85th percentile scores of SHMS V1.0. CONCLUSION: We have established SHMS V1.0 norms for Chinese civil servants, which facilitates further investigation of the incidence of sub-health state and its contributing factors in civil servants.