Hasil untuk "Environmental protection"

B. Finlayson‐Pitts, J. Pitts

Menkes Jerzy, Menkes Marcin

Cancan Huang, Chun Li, G. Shi

Kehua Su, J. Li, Hongbo Fu

Based on the “digital city”, “smart city” is widely used in daily livelihood, environmental protection, public security, city services and other fields. In this paper, we mainly focus on recent research and the concept of “smart city”, summarizing the relationship between "smart city" and "digital city", putting forward the main content of application systems as well as the importance and difficulty of the construction of “smart city”, and making a brief statement of the influence of developing smart city in China.

R. Rogers, K. R. Seddon

I. Bateman, R. Carson, B. Day et al.

G. Tchobanoglous, F. Kreith

David Karp

Y. Shao, Zhongfei Chen

Despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on social activities and the global economy, the investment enthusiasm for green transformation in various countries has still been active. In fact, most countries have launched “green recovery” plans after 2020. Green technology innovation has attracted much attention, and many countries have introduced a series of subsidy policies to support green technology innovation transformation (GTIT). This study first discusses the influence of government subsidies on the GTIT of Chinese enterprises by using the manual collection and sorting of data concerning environmental protection subsidies, R&D subsidies, and talent subsidies, and the effects of these subsidies on different enterprises are analyzed. Empirical results show that environmental protection subsidies, R&D subsidies, and talent subsidies can significantly promote GTIT, and the effects of these subsidies on the GTIT of different enterprise are heterogeneous. The environmental protection subsidies, R&D subsidies, and talent subsidies have significant positive impacts on the GTIT of non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) and high asset–liability-ratio enterprises. In contrast, only environmental protection and talent subsidies have significant positive effects on the GTIT of enterprises with low asset–liability-ratio. Environmental protection subsidies, R&D subsidies, and talent subsidies will promote the enterprises to increase their R&D investment, therefore enhancing their GTIT. Our research distinguishes the types of government subsidies for the first time and analyzes their impacts on different enterprises, which will be helpful for governments to improve relevant policies.

M. Sarofim

Guofa Wang, Y. Xu, Huaiwei Ren

Abstract Coal is an essential fossil fuel in China; however, coal mining and its utilization are being under the increasing pressure from ecological and environmental protection. Therefore, the consulting project “ Technical Revolution in Ecological and Efficient Coal Mining and Utilization & Intelligence and Diverse Coordination of Coal-based Energy System ,” initiated by Chinese Academy of Engineering, puts forward three stages (3.0, 4.0 and 5.0) of China’s coal industry development strategy. Aimed at “reduced staff, ultra-low ecological damage, and emission level near to natural gas,” breakthroughs should be achieved in the following three key technologies during the China Coal Industry 3.0 stage (2016–2025): including intelligent coal mining, ecological mining, ultra-low emission and environmental protection. This paper focuses on the development trends of the China Coal Industry 3.0 and its support for China Coal Industry 4.0 and 5.0 is analyzed and prospected as well, which may offer technical assistance and strategy orientation for realizing the transformation from traditional coal energy to clean energy.

Xinyu Yang, P. Jiang, Yao Pan

The implementation of China's carbon emission trading policy has targeted achieving emission reduction and environmental protection as well as promoting economic development and technological innovation. The analysis is made through applying the Difference-in-Differences model and using the Ordinary Least Squares method and the Least Square Dummy Variable method in the paper. Results show that the pilot carbon emission trading policy leads to the expansion of employment scales and the reduction of carbon emissions after controlling for the environmental regulation, population size, economic level, and other important variables. Thus, it implies that an employment double dividend exists. For the Porter effect, it is found in the pilot carbon emission trading policy only without adding any control variable. The effect is further verified based on a robustness checks and a placebo test. Furthermore, from the perspective of market-oriented environmental regulation policy, this study explains that the carbon emission trading system launched in 2017 needs to be improved to spread both the employment double dividend and the Porter effect to the whole nation. China also needs to form a complete set of strict ecological environment protection policies and administrative measures to achieve sustainable development of the economy.

H. Kopnina, H. Washington, Bron Taylor et al.

Anthropocentrism, in its original connotation in environmental ethics, is the belief that value is human-centred and that all other beings are means to human ends. Environmentally -concerned authors have argued that anthropocentrism is ethically wrong and at the root of ecological crises. Some environmental ethicists argue, however, that critics of anthropocentrism are misguided or even misanthropic. They contend: first that criticism of anthropocentrism can be counterproductive and misleading by failing to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate human interests. Second, that humans differ greatly in their environmental impacts, and consequently, addressing human inequalities should be a precondition for environmental protection. Third, since ecosystems constitute the “life-support system” for humans, anthropocentrism can and should be a powerful motivation for environmental protection. Fourth, human self-love is not only natural but helpful as a starting point for loving others, including nonhumans. Herein we analyze such arguments, agreeing with parts of them while advancing four counter-arguments. First, redefining the term anthropocentrism seems to be an attempt to ignore behavior in which humans focus on themselves at the risk of the planet. Second, if addressing human inequalities is a precondition for environmental protection, biodiversity protection will remain out of the scope of ethical consideration for an indefinite period of time. Third, anthropocentric motivations can only make a positive contribution to the environment in situations where humans are conscious of a direct benefit to themselves. Fourth, ‘self-love’ alone is an inadequate basis for environmental concern and action. We also explore the question of agency, shared responsibility, and a fair attribution of blame for our environmental predicaments.

Alissa Cordner, Vanessa Y De La Rosa, L. Schaider et al.

Communities across the U.S. are discovering drinking water contaminated by perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and determining appropriate actions. There are currently no federal PFAS drinking water standards despite widespread drinking water contamination, ubiquitous population-level exposure, and toxicological and epidemiological evidence of adverse health effects. Absent federal PFAS standards, multiple U.S. states have developed their own health-based water guideline levels to guide decisions about contaminated site cleanup and drinking water surveillance and treatment. We examined perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) water guideline levels developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state agencies to protect people drinking the water, and summarized how and why these levels differ. We referenced documents and tables released in June 2018 by the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council (ITRC) to identify states that have drinking water and groundwater guideline levels for PFOA and/or PFOS that differ from EPA’s health advisories (HAs). We also gathered assessment documents from state websites and contacted state environmental and health agencies to identify and confirm current guidelines. Seven states have developed their own water guideline levels for PFOA and/or PFOS ranging from 13 to 1000 ng/L, compared to EPA’s HA of 70 ng/L for both compounds individually or combined. We find that the development of PFAS guideline levels via exposure and hazard assessment decisions is influenced by multiple scientific, technical, and social factors, including managing scientific uncertainty, technical decisions and capacity, and social, political, and economic influences from involved stakeholders. Assessments by multiple states and academic scientists suggest that EPA’s HA is not sufficiently protective. The ability of states to develop their own guideline levels and standards provides diverse risk assessment approaches as models for other state and federal regulators, while a sufficiently protective, scientifically sound, and enforceable federal standard would provide more consistent protection.

Azka Amin, Eyup Dogan

Even though a great number of researches have explored the determinants of carbon emissions, the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the environment has not been fully investigated in the energy-environment literature. Since recent studies show a strong relationship between the external environment and uncertainty, the present study for the first time in the literature aims to explore the function of EPU in the energy-environment nexus for China by using the novel bounds testing with dynamic simulations. The empirical results indicate that increases in the real income and energy intensity contribute to environmental pollution while increases in renewable energy lower the level of emissions. Besides, an increase in EPU causes an increase in the volume of carbon emissions. As EPU increases, the government's attention to implement environmental protection policies decreases, and the execution of the environment-related strategies is likely directed in an expected way. The empirical findings suggest that the government should establish consistency in economic and environmental policies to mitigate environmental pollution and thus to reach environmental sustainability.

Xavier Pleimling, Sifat Muhammad Abdullah, Gunjan Balde et al.

Advances in Generative AI (GenAI) have led to the development of various protection strategies to prevent the unauthorized use of images. These methods rely on adding imperceptible protective perturbations to images to thwart misuse such as style mimicry or deepfake manipulations. Although previous attacks on these protections required specialized, purpose-built methods, we demonstrate that this is no longer necessary. We show that off-the-shelf image-to-image GenAI models can be repurposed as generic ``denoisers" using a simple text prompt, effectively removing a wide range of protective perturbations. Across 8 case studies spanning 6 diverse protection schemes, our general-purpose attack not only circumvents these defenses but also outperforms existing specialized attacks while preserving the image's utility for the adversary. Our findings reveal a critical and widespread vulnerability in the current landscape of image protection, indicating that many schemes provide a false sense of security. We stress the urgent need to develop robust defenses and establish that any future protection mechanism must be benchmarked against attacks from off-the-shelf GenAI models. Code is available in this repository: https://github.com/mlsecviswanath/img2imgdenoiser

Semra Gunduc, David J. Butts, Michael S. Murillo

Agent-based models typically treat systems in isolation, discarding environmental coupling as either computationally prohibitive or dynamically irrelevant. We demonstrate that this neglect misses essential physics: environmental degrees of freedom create memory effects that fundamentally alter system dynamics. By systematically transforming linear update rules into exact generalized Langevin equations, we show that unobserved environmental agents manifest as memory kernels whose timescales and coupling strengths are determined by the environmental interaction spectrum. Network topology shapes this memory structure in distinct ways: small-world rewiring drives dynamics toward a single dominant relaxation mode, while fragmented environments sustain multiple persistent modes corresponding to isolated subpopulations. We apply this framework to covert influence operations where adversaries manipulate target populations exclusively via environmental intermediaries. The steady-state response admits a random-walk interpretation through hitting probabilities, revealing how zealot opinions diffuse through the environment to shift system agent opinions toward the zealot mean - even when zealots never directly contact targets.

R. Jones, R. Dunlap

Fan Zhao, Yufei Mao, Jiahong Yang et al.

This study investigated the effects of fertilizers on the biofilm formation, ultraviolet (UV) resistance, and insecticidal activity of <i>Bacillus thuringiensis</i> (Bt). <i>Bacillus thuringiensis</i>, a widely used microbial pesticide, has a minimal environmental impact and is highly effective against specific pests but is susceptible to environmental factors in field applications. Bacterial biofilms provide protection for Bt, enhancing its survival and functionality in the environment. However, the mechanisms by which fertilizers regulate the characteristics of microbial pesticides and enhance biofilm formation are not well understood. This study evaluated the effects of six fertilizers on the bacterial biofilm formation, the UV resistance, and the insecticidal activities of Bt wettable powders. The results demonstrated that fertilizers significantly enhanced the performance of three Bt preparations (Lv’an, Kang’xin, and Lu’kang). A compound fertilizer with 8.346 g/L of KCl, 2.751 g/L of ZnSO₄·7H₂O, and 25.681 μL/mL of humic acid was identified by response surface optimization, achieving the maximum BBF formation with OD₅₉₅ value of 2.738. Furthermore, KH₂PO₄, HA, and ZnSO₄·7H₂O notably improved the survivability of Bt preparations under prolonged UV exposure, with the compound fertilizer providing the greatest protection. What’s more, fertilizers reduced the LC₅₀ values of all Bt preparations, with the compound fertilizer decreasing the LC₅₀ of the Lv’an Bt wettable powder to 0.139 g/L, a 3.12-fold increase in efficacy. This study demonstrated that fertilizers significantly enhance the UV resistance and insecticidal activity of Bt wettable powders by promoting bacterial biofilm formation. Herein, this study provides new strategies and theoretical support for Bt applications in modern sustainable agriculture.

Liviu Radu

<p>This article analyzes the origins and evolution of public administration by framing it as collective action aimed at achieving common goals. It highlights cooperation and purpose as the defining features of administration and shows how administrative systems develop in response to environmental, geographical, and political challenges. Drawing on historical examples, the article illustrates how different contexts have produced distinct forms of state organization. A key component of the analysis is the theory of the social contract as articulated by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Their ideas offer contrasting justifications for political authority, ranging from the need for security and order to the protection of natural rights and the assertion of popular sovereignty. The article also examines the practical and normative limits of these theories. Finally, the study compares major European administrative models, particularly the Napoleonic and Germanic traditions, emphasizing differences in centralization, legalism, federalism, and bureaucratic professionalism. It concludes that public administration is shaped by a persistent tension between state effectiveness and democratic accountability.</p>