Hasil untuk "Environmental protection"

N. Panwar, S. C. Kaushik, S. Kothari

Qi Zhang, Zhihan Yu, Dongmin Kong

This paper evaluates the real effects of environmental justice reform on environmental governance at the firm level. Using the establishment of environmental courts in China as a quasi-natural experiment, our difference-in-differences estimation shows that: (1) environmental courts significantly enhance environmental investment by firms, and this relationship is robust to different specifications and alternative measures; (2) three possible channels are the improved levels of justice and enforcement of environmental protection, and the mitigation of local government intervention; (3) our findings are particularly pronounced in subsamples with severe local protectionism, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and non-SOEs with political connections; (4) at the city-level, environmental courts significantly increase air quality and promote cities to cross the inflection point of the environmental Kuznets curve earlier. Overall, this paper reveals the micro-mechanisms behind the real effects of environmental justice on firm environmental investment, thus providing timely implications for regulators concerned with environmental protection.

Zhenming Fang, Xiaoran Kong, A. Şensoy et al.

Abstract Based on the impact of the new environmental protection law promulgated by the Chinese government in 2015, we employ the difference-in-differences (DID) approach to investigate the impact of government environmental regulation on corporate green innovation. The evidence shows that government environmental regulation can significantly increase the number of green patents of heavily polluting industries. This result holds after a series of robustness tests. The analysis of the economic mechanism indicates that the new environmental protection law brings supervision pressure to heavily polluting firms, prompting them to improve the quality of information disclosure, thus improving green innovation. In addition, the regional economic development level, government subsidies, and public supervision can significantly affect the positive impact of the new environmental protection law. Meanwhile, the effect is more prominent in non-state-owned enterprises and in firms with small scale, low profitability, and weak internal governance.

Zhiji Gao, Jin’an Xu, Hanjie Qiu et al.

Granite sawdust is a by-product in the process of stone processing, which is usually piled up, thus easily causing environmental pollution. To achieve resource utilization, granite sawdust was used as a partial substitution of cement in this work. The effects of different sawdust contents (10–50%) were systematically studied on the pore structure and the mechanical properties of its dry powder mortar. Combined with the grey correlation theory, the correlation between pore size distribution and compressive strength was analyzed. The results showed that the consistency and mechanical properties of the mortar gradually decreased along with the increasing sawdust content, while its critical pore-diameter decreased. The mortar performance was the best when its sawdust content is 10%, which meets the M25 technical requirements. When content reaches up to 30%, the mortar still met the strength standard of M20. Compared to fly ash, the mortar with 30% sawdust as the substitution has a higher water retention rate but lower mechanical strength. The grey correlation analysis indicated that the pores with diameters less than 10 nm and greater than 1000 nm had the most significant impact on the compressive strength.

Jonathan Baumann, Yonghyun Kim, Yan Farba et al.

This paper introduces Triosecuris, a formally verified defense against Spectre BTB, RSB, and PHT that combines CET-style hardware-assisted control-flow integrity with compiler-inserted speculative load hardening (SLH). Triosecuris is based on the novel observation that in the presence of CET-style protection, we can precisely detect BTB misspeculation for indirect calls and RSB misspeculation for returns and set the SLH misspeculation flag. We formalize Triosecuris as a transformation in Rocq and provide a machine-checked proof that it achieves relative security: any transformed program running with speculation leaks no more than what the source program leaks without speculation. This strong security guarantee applies to arbitrary programs, even those not following the cryptographic constant-time programming discipline.

Jan A. Krzywda, Yuta Matsumoto, Maxim De Smet et al.

Mobile spin qubit architectures promise flexible connectivity for efficient quantum error correction and relaxed device layout constraints, but their viability rests on preserving spin coherence during transport. While shuttling transforms spatial disorder into time-dependent noise, its net impact on spin coherence remains an open question. Here we demonstrate systematic noise mitigation during spin shuttling in a linear $^{28}$Si/SiGe quantum dot device. First, by passively reducing magnetic field gradients, we minimize charge-noise coupling to the spin and double the spatially averaged dephasing time $T_2^*(x_n)$ from $4.4$ to $8.5\,μ\text{s}$. Next, we exploit motional narrowing by periodically shuttling the qubit, achieving a further enhancement in coherence time up to $T_{2}^{*,sh} = 11.5\,μ\text{s}$. Finally, we incorporate dynamical decoupling techniques while periodically shuttling over distances exceeding $200\,\text{nm}$, reaching $T_\text{2}^{H,sh}= 32\,μ\text{s}$. For the same setup, we demonstrate that dressed-state shuttling provides robust protection against low-frequency noise with a decay time $T_R^{\text{sh}} = 21\,μ\text{s}$, without the overhead of pulsed control and allowing protection during one-way spin transport. By preserving coherence over timescales exceeding typical gate and readout operations, the demonstrated strategies establish mobile spin qubits as a viable solution for scalable silicon quantum processors.

A. Ford, M. Ågerstrand, B. Brooks et al.

For decades, we have known that chemicals affect human and wildlife behavior. Moreover, due to recent technological and computational advances, scientists are now increasingly aware that a wide variety of contaminants and other environmental stressors adversely affect organismal behavior and subsequent ecological outcomes in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. There is also a groundswell of concern that regulatory ecotoxicology does not adequately consider behavior, primarily due to a lack of standardized toxicity methods. This has, in turn, led to the exclusion of many behavioral ecotoxicology studies from chemical risk assessments. To improve understanding of the challenges and opportunities for behavioral ecotoxicology within regulatory toxicology/risk assessment, a unique workshop with international representatives from the fields of behavioral ecology, ecotoxicology, regulatory (eco)toxicology, neurotoxicology, test standardization, and risk assessment resulted in the formation of consensus perspectives and recommendations, which promise to serve as a roadmap to advance interfaces among the basic and translational sciences, and regulatory practices.

M. M. Vale, E. Berenguer, Marcio Argollo de Menezes et al.

This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on environmental protection and legislation in Brazil. We evaluate major legislative actions, environmental fines and deforestation since January 2019. We show that 57 legislative acts aimed at weakening environmental protection in Brazil during the current administration, almost half of which in the seven-month period of the pandemic in Brazil, with September 2020 as the month with the most legislative acts (n = 16). These acts either deregulated or weakened current environmental legislation, with a number of them aimed at dismantling the main federal institutions in charge of environmental protection. We also found a 72% reduction in environmental fines during the pandemic, despite an increase in Amazonian deforestation during this period. We conclude that the current administration is taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to intensify a pattern of weakening environmental protection in Brazil. This has the potential to intensify ongoing loss of biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, and the likelihood of other zoonotic disease outbreaks, and inflict substantial harm to traditional and indigenous peoples. We highlight the key role of the scientific community, media and civil society, national and international levels, in order to reverse these harmful actions.

H. Yu, Luqi Liao, Shiyu Qu et al.

J. Szerement, A. Szatanik-Kloc, R. Jarosz et al.

Abstract Environmental protection, including rational waste management, is one of the main goals of sustainable development. Scientists are continuously searching for new approaches and solutions to counteract an increasing environmental pollution. Zeolites, due to their unique properties are a subject of an ongoing scientific research for applications as adsorbents and ion exchangers in numerous areas of agriculture and environmental protection. In agriculture, studies mainly concentrate around the application of natural zeolite which can be a useful soil conditioner and an additive to fertilizer. However, the main focus of attention in the environmental remediation is currently on synthesized zeolites. Because the main product of coal combustion, namely fly ash, exhibits similar chemical composition to a zeolite, it is a promising low-cost material for their synthesis. Although numerous papers have been published regarding zeolites’ application in agriculture and environmental protection, their great potential has not been fully explored yet. This review presents state-of-art achievements in synthesis and modifications of zeolites and also an overview of their application in agricultural production and protection of water, air, and soil. Issues relating to cost of regeneration of zeolite adsorbents, estimated costs of their mining and production from fly ash are also discussed.

Junchao Li, Lifang Wang, Zheng Liu et al.

Abstract In this study, the characteristics of rural domestic wastewater discharge in the Yangtze River Basin, China, are analysed via geographic information visualization, pollutant load assessment, and correlation analysis. Through the use of a geographic information visualization system, this study intuitively presents the characteristics of rural domestic wastewater discharge in the Yangtze River Basin. In pollutant load assessment, the pressure caused by rural domestic wastewater discharge on maintaining the target water quality standards in the tributaries and main stream of the Yangtze River is comprehensively analysed. Correlation analysis reveals the social and natural factors influencing the levels of rural domestic wastewater discharge. The findings indicate that the average discharge level of rural domestic wastewater in the Yangtze River Basin remains low, with an average water discharge level of 39.24 L/(capita·day), a chemical oxygen demand (COD) of 27.50 mg/(capita·day), an ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N) content of 1.53 mg/(capita·day), a total nitrogen (TN) amount of 2.74 mg/(capita·day), and a total phosphorus (TP) content of 0.22 mg/(capita·day). Based on the current levels of rural domestic wastewater discharge and the concentrations of the above substances in the natural environment, the impact of rural domestic wastewater discharge on maintaining water quality functions in the tributaries and main stream of the Yangtze River can be considered negligible, although regional differences exist. Discharge levels are significantly influenced by various social factors, including educational level, per capita disposable income, and consumption expenditures, as well as natural factors such as average annual temperature, average annual humidity, and average annual rainfall. Overall, this study provides reference data for the analysis and management of rural domestic wastewater discharge in both similar regions in China and globally.

Robert Mzungu Runya, Chris McGonigle, Rory Quinn et al.

ABSTRACT Understanding the spatial dynamics of harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) is crucial for effective conservation and management. The study presents a multidisciplinary approach to modelling and analysing the site occurrence and habitat use of Phocoena phocoena within the Skerries and Causeway Special Area of Conservation (SAC), identifying areas where they were seen surfacing and/or spending the most time. Using data derived from multibeam echosounders (MBES), particle size analysis of sediments, hydrodynamic modelling, and theodolite tracking observations, the study examines the influence of local hydrodynamics and environmental conditions on the spatial distribution of harbour porpoises. Kernel density analysis of 451 porpoise sightings over an 11‐day survey demonstrated that dense clusters and higher aggregations occurred within ~500 m of the shoreline. Generalised Additive Models (GAMs) identified slope, aspect, backscatter intensity and sediment grain size as the most significant environmental predictors, accounting for 47.6% of the deviance in harbour porpoise distribution. Porpoises' occurrence was particularly spatially coincident with coarser sediments (4.25–5 mm), and their distribution was highly concentrated around headlands, shoreline and within a 3‐h window before and after high water. Overall, these findings highlight the dynamic nature of harbour porpoises' use of habitat in space and time, with models predicting a high probability of porpoise encounters (> 0.6) nearshore, particularly in headland areas characterised by local flow acceleration and coarser seabeds. The study presents a robust workflow for developing a porpoise‐specific monitoring program. By leveraging multidisciplinary methodological approaches, the study provides a scientific basis for refining marine conservation measures, delivering long‐term protection for harbour porpoise habitats under existing legal and management frameworks both within and beyond the SAC boundaries.

Irzani Andi Abdulrahman, Satria Akbar Bachtiar

This study aims to evaluate the implementation of legal protection for coral reef ecosystems in Sawu Sea National Park, Kupang Regency, East Nusa Tenggara. The research employs an empirical legal approach using a descriptive qualitative method with a case study design, focusing on how conservation laws and policies are implemented and function in practice. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with area management authorities, law enforcement officials, local government representatives, civil society organizations, and coastal communities, complemented by field observations and analysis of relevant legal and policy documents. The findings indicate that although regulatory frameworks and conservation policies are formally in place, their implementation remains ineffective. Limited supervision capacity, reflected in the insufficient number of officers, inadequate patrol facilities, and suboptimal use of marine monitoring technology, constitutes a major obstacle. Complex geographical conditions and weak inter-agency coordination further undermine law enforcement, resulting in sanctions that fail to produce a deterrent effect. Community participation in conservation efforts is also relatively low due to high dependence on marine resources, limited awareness of the impacts of overexploitation, unequal distribution of tourism benefits, and inadequate environmental education and legal outreach. Additionally, external factors such as climate change, including coral bleaching and extreme weather events, exacerbate reef degradation. This study recommends strengthening surveillance infrastructure and monitoring technology, enhancing the capacity and coordination of law enforcement institutions, promoting participatory and community-based conservation approaches, and integrating climate change adaptation strategies into coral reef protection policies to ensure ecological sustainability and more equitable socio-economic benefits for coastal communities.

Kavya Gaddipati

This technical article explores comprehensive strategies for integrating Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) protection diodes and termination resistors in LowVoltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) designs. The article examines critical aspects of protection mechanisms, design considerations, impedance matching, and placement optimization techniques. Through detailed analysis of layout considerations and advanced design strategies, the article presents solutions for common integration challenges. It emphasizes the importance of signal integrity maintenance and protection effectiveness while providing practical guidelines for implementing robust LVDS systems. Various methodologies for performance optimization and validation are discussed, offering designers a thorough framework for creating reliable high-speed digital systems that balance protection requirements with signal integrity demands.

Julian Oelhaf, Mehran Pashaei, Georg Kordowich et al.

The growing penetration of renewable and distributed generation is transforming power systems and challenging conventional protection schemes that rely on fixed settings and local measurements. Machine learning (ML) offers a data-driven alternative for centralized fault classification (FC) and fault localization (FL), enabling faster and more adaptive decision-making. However, practical deployment critically depends on robustness. Protection algorithms must remain reliable even when confronted with missing, noisy, or degraded sensor data. This work introduces a unified framework for systematically evaluating the robustness of ML models in power system protection. High-fidelity EMT simulations are used to model realistic degradation scenarios, including sensor outages, reduced sampling rates, and transient communication losses. The framework provides a consistent methodology for benchmarking models, quantifying the impact of limited observability, and identifying critical measurement channels required for resilient operation. Results show that FC remains highly stable under most degradation types but drops by about 13% under single-phase loss, while FL is more sensitive overall, with voltage loss increasing localization error by over 150%. These findings offer actionable guidance for robustness-aware design of future ML-assisted protection systems.

Xiangyu Lyu, Hongyu Chen, En-Kun Li et al.

The space-borne gravitational wave detectors such as TianQin offers a new window to test General Relativity by observing the early inspiral phase of stellar-mass binary black holes. A key concern arises if these stellar-mass binary black holes reside in gaseous environments such as active galactic nucleus accretion disks, where environmental effects imprint detectable modulations on the gravitational waveform. Using Bayesian inference on simulated signals containing both environmental and dipole deviation, we have assessed the extent to which the presence of environmental effects affects the detectability of dipole radiation. Our results demonstrate that even in the presence of strong environmental coupling, the dipole parameter can be recovered with high precision, and the evidence for dipole radiation remains distinguishable. Crucially, we find that the existence of environmental effects does not fundamentally impede the identification of dipole radiation, provided both effects are simultaneously modelled in the inference process. This study establishes that future tests of modified gravity with space-borne observatories can remain robust even for sources in astrophysical environments.

Jennie Bai, Hong Ru

We study how the implementation of emissions trading systems (ETSs) impacts emissions reductions and the usage of renewable energy using a panel sample of the largest 100 countries worldwide. Exploiting cross-country variations in ETS implementations, we show that ETS adoption materially reduced greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) emissions by 12.1% (18.1%). Moreover, ETSs reduced overall emissions by cutting the usage of fossil fuels such as coal by 23.70% while boosting the usage of renewable energy by 61.59%, on average. In contrast, introducing carbon taxes has a less effective impact on emissions reduction. It fails to boost the usage of renewable energy, though elevating tax rates and expanding tax coverage may help enhance the efficacy of carbon taxes. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Funding: H. Ru thanks the financial support from the Nanyang Technological University, and Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Tier 1 RG134/20. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03143 .

Miao Wang, Chao Feng

Abstract Since reform and opening up, China's economic development mode has moved from “extensive” to “bottom line,” and will further turn to “green” in the future. Using non-parametric and spatial econometric models, this study investigates the win-win ability of environmental protection and economic development and the best time for China's transition. The results reveal that at present, China's green development transition on the whole could achieve a win-win of environmental protection and economic development, but this ability is on a waning trend. During the past decade, the best time for China's green development transition was 2011 and 2012, when its economy came into “New Normal.” For many of the country's internal provinces, such transition seems to have negative impacts on the economy in the short term. There is a “U” shaped relationship between the win-win ability and economic development stage, and China has not succeeded in passing the turning point of the curve. Under the high-, medium-, and low-growth scenarios, this decay cycle is expected to end in 2025, 2027 and 2032. Compared with the environmental Kuznets curve, the turning point of the win-win curve comes much later. It means that while the public’s willingness to protect the environment is sufficiently high and has crossed the inflection point of the environmental Kuznets curve, the win-win ability is going through decay cycles over longer periods (more than 10 years). Besides, to better adapt to the economic and social changes brought about by development mode transition, the central government should give local governments much more autonomy.

Limei Tian, Yue Yin, W. Bing et al.

Marine fouling is a worldwide problem, which is harmful to the global marine ecological environment and economic benefits. The traditional antifouling strategy usually uses toxic antifouling agents, which gradually exposes a serious environmental problem. Therefore, green, long-term, broad-spectrum and eco-friendly antifouling technologies have been the main target of engineers and researchers. In recent years, many eco-friendly antifouling technologies with broad application prospects have been developed based on the low toxicity and non-toxicity antifouling agents and materials. In this review, contemporary eco-friendly antifouling technologies and materials are summarized into bionic antifouling and non-bionic antifouling strategies (2000–2020). Non-bionic antifouling technologies mainly include protein resistant polymers, antifoulant releasing coatings, foul release coatings, conductive antifouling coatings and photodynamic antifouling technology. Bionic antifouling technologies mainly include the simulated shark skin, whale skin, dolphin skin, coral tentacles, lotus leaves and other biology structures. Brief future research directions and challenges are also discussed in the end, and we expect that this review would boost the development of marine antifouling technologies.

Jinkun Ye, Yuhui Ji, Jinfeng Wang et al.

Specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf dry matter content (LDMC) are key leaf functional traits often used to reflect plant resource utilization strategies and predict plant responses to environmental changes. In general, grassland plants at different elevations exhibit varying survival strategies. However, it remains unclear how grassland plants adapt to changes in elevation and their driving factors. To address this issue, we utilized SLA and LDMC data of grassland plants from 223 study sites at different elevations in China, along with climate and soil data, to investigate variations in resource utilization strategies of grassland plants along different elevational gradients and their dominant influencing factors employing linear mixed-effects models, variance partitioning method, piecewise Structural Equation Modeling, etc. The results show that with increasing elevation, SLA significantly decreases, and LDMC significantly increases (P < 0.001). This indicates different resource utilization strategies of grassland plants across elevation gradients, transitioning from a “faster investment-return” at lower elevations to a “slower investment-return” at higher elevations. Across different elevation gradients, climatic factors are the main factors affecting grassland plant resource utilization strategies, with soil nutrient factors also playing a non-negligible coordinating role. Among these, mean annual precipitation and hottest month mean temperature are key climatic factors influencing SLA of grassland plants, explaining 28.94% and 23.88% of SLA variation, respectively. The key factors affecting LDMC of grassland plants are mainly hottest month mean temperature and soil phosphorus content, with relative importance of 24.24% and 20.27%, respectively. Additionally, the direct effect of elevation on grassland plant resource utilization strategies is greater than its indirect effect (through influencing climatic and soil nutrient factors). These findings emphasize the substantive impact of elevation on grassland plant resource utilization strategies and have important ecological value for grassland management and protection under global change.