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This work is part of the research included in the European project AQUATERRA, focused on the study of different persistent organic pollutants in different risk zones along the Ebro River basin. This chapter summarizes brominated flame retardant research in the Ebro area. Within a monitoring program at different risk zones in this river, two high contaminated areas were detected. The first one is located along the Cinca River, a tributary of Ebro River, downstream a heavily industrialized town (Monzón) and data showed a high HBCD contamination in this area. The second one is located along the Vero River, a tributary of Cinca River, downstream an industrial park in Barbastro. In this case, high contamination of deca-BDE-209 was found. Our work included the analysis of sediments and biota, with special attention on aspects such as temporal trends, bioavailability, and bioaccumulation of these contaminants. Moreover, an attempt of identification of source contamination was carried out, with the analysis of industrial effluents. In both cases, the industry responsible of the contamination was identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are ubiquitous environmental contaminants, which persist and may bioaccumulate through the food chain (Haukås et al. 2007; Martin et al. 2004b; Taniyasu et al. 2003). As a consequence, several PFCs have been detected in different biota worldwide. In recent years, an increasing number of papers report high levels of PFCs in blood, tissues, and breast milk from both occupationally and non-occupationally exposed human populations (Kannan et al. 2004; Kärrman et al. 2007; Olsen et al. 2007). The most important exposure pathways of perfluorinated compounds for humans are thought to be intake of drinking water and food and inhalation of dust (Björklund et al. 2009; Ericson et al. 2008a). Due to the widespread distribution, environmental degradation, and metabolism of the PFCs released into the environment, a very complex exposure situation exists (Fromme et al. 2007a). As a result, the relative contribution to human exposure from different routes or from a single source (e.g., diet) is not yet known. More specifically, it is currently unknown as to what extent exposure to drinking water, food, or dust contributes to the PFCs measured in human breast milk and blood. Moreover, data on levels of PFCs in the human diet are rather scarce (Kärrman et al. 2009; Tittlemier et al. 2006, 2007). Only PFC levels in fish appear to be well documented (Houde et al. 2006). Few studies, however, report the levels of PFCs in drinking water or human food such as vegetables, meat, and eggs (FSA 2006; US EPA 2001). Food processing such as cooking (boiling, baking, or grilling) could alter the concentration of PFCs in food and as a consequence affect the risk for humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Meconium is the first fecal material passed by the newborn. It begins to form between 12 and 16 weeks of gestation and therefore, may provide a history of in utero drug exposure during the second and third trimesters. Although meconium is easy to collect, small sample sizes, lack of homogeneity, different metabolic profiles, and the requirement for low limits of detection present analytical challenges for drug testing. Immunoassay screening assays and mass spectrometric-based confirmation procedures have been described for the common drugs-of-abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ovarian cancer is a major cause of deaths worldwide. As a result, women are not diagnosed until the cancer has advanced to later stages. Accurate prognosis is required to determine the suitable therapeutic decision. Since abnormalities of hemostasis and increased risk of thrombosis are observed in cancer patient, assay involving hemostatic parameters can be potential prognosis tool. Thus a biological brain-inspired Complementary Learning Fuzzy Neural Network (CLFNN) is proposed, to complement the hemostasis in ovarian cancer prognosis. Experimental results that demonstrate the confluence of hemostasis and CLFNN offers a promising prognosis tool. Apart from superior performance, CLFNN provides interpretable rules to facilitate validation and justification of the system. Besides, CLFNN can be used as a concept validation tool for ovarian cancer prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the problem of ecologically coloring a graph. Intuitively, an ecological coloring of a graph is a role assignment to the nodes of the graph, such that two nodes surrounded by the same set of roles must be assigned the same role (Borgatti and Everett, 1992). We prove that, for any simple undirected graph G with nG distinct neighborhoods and for any integer k with 1 ≤ k ≤ nG, G admits an ecological coloring which uses exactly k roles, and that this coloring can be computed in polynomial time. Our result strongly contrasts with the NP-completeness result of the regular coloring problem, where it is required that two nodes with the same role must be surrounded by the same set of roles (Fiala and Paulusma, 2005). Hence, we conclude that not only the ecological coloring is easier to understand as a model of social relationships (Borgatti and Everett, 1994), but it is also feasible from a computational complexity point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reconstruct a history of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) pollution in the Gulf of Trieste, one of the largest urbanized areas in the Adriatic Sea, we analyzed three long sediment cores collected between 1996 and 1997. Concentrations of total PAHs, the sum of 16 PAH compounds and six of their methylated analogues, in all three cores show a decrease from 600-800 ng g−1, at the surface, to levels below 250 ng g−1 in deepest layers (down to 3 m). The same trend was shown with separate representative pyrogenic PAHs (pyrene, benzofluoranthene and phenanthrene). Using Hg as a recent geochronological tracer, we observe an increasing input of PAHs since the beginning of the 20th Century and, especially, after the Second World War coinciding with increasing industrialization and urbanization of the region. This correlation is supported by PAH ratios that are indication of combustion processes and represent a marker for anthropogenic inputs. No correlation exists between PAHs and black carbon within the core profiles, indicating two different fractions of the ‘black carbon continuum'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 17 August 1999 a powerful earthquake struck the eastern part of Marmara Region and Izmit Bay, the most industrialized and populated area of the region. Environmental effects of the earthquake and subsequent refinery fire were partly investigated by several scientists (Okay et al., 2001, 2003; Tolun et al., 2001, 2006; Balkıs, 2003; Unlu and Alpar, 2004; Karakaş and Pekey, 2005). As a part of the previous efforts, in this study, the levels of total PCBs, sum of the marker PCBs and TEqs in mussels collected immediately after and 1 year later the earthquake were presented. Total PCB (# 1-209) levels in mussels from different coastal locations were found between 5.47 and 14 ng/g in September 1999 and between 11.2 and 36.0 ng/g in June 2000. June 2000 samples from throughout the Bay contained higher quantities of total, marker PCBs and TEq values when compared with the before earthquake values. The elevated concentrations of PCBs in mussels collected after the earthquake implies an input of PCBs to the water column form different sources such as underlying sediments and/or land-based sources such as industrial inputs. Although WHO-TEq values found in this study for Izmit Bay (0.4 ± 0.1 − 1.4 ± 0.7 pg/g) are lower than the proposed values for fisheries products (4 pg/g) by EC Regulation 199/2006, considering the TDI value as 2 pg WHO-TEq/kg bw (COT, 2001) it was concluded that consumable mussels from Izmit Bay pose a risk for health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]