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Environmental planning at different levels has been called for by environmental departments in China during last years to integrate environment consideration to economic development. Based on the accomplished environmental planning practice in Xiamen China, the paper suggests a general environmental planning process with ecological function zoning as its key steps, at the same time an effective method for ecological function zoning was formulated. The case studies of Dongfu suburban town environmental planning and Xiamen eco-city conceptual planning indicate that scientifically sound results of ecological function zoning can contribute to improving not only the adaptability and acceptability of environmental planning, also the environmental management and the decision-making. The experience shows that the ecological function zoning methods should be applied according to the principles of adaptive management, resource-based and community-based, so that it can integrate science into decision-making process, avoiding both narrow-minded viewpoints of planners and natural resource use conflicts among variety of stakeholders. Problems to be resolved in the future are also pointed out in the ending part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nitrogen (N) budget was developed for Jiulong River Watershed (JRW), an agricultural watershed in a warm and humid area of southeast China. Water quality monitoring, field surveys, modelling and GIS techniques were applied to estimate N flux of atmospheric deposition, mineralization, runoff, denitrification, and ammonia volatilization. Over the whole watershed, fertilizers, import of animal feeds, biotic fixation, mineralization and atmospheric deposition contributed 67.1%, 16.5%, 2.1%, 4.9% and 9.5%, respectively, of total N input (129.3 kg N ha−1 year−1). Runoff, sale of production, denitrification, and ammonia volatilization contributed 7.3%, 24.4%, 10.5% and 57.8% of total N output (72.9 kg N ha−1 year−1), respectively. The N budget for the JRW suggested that more than 50% of the N input was lost to the environment, and about 14% was discharged as riverine N, which indicated that agricultural and human activities in the watershed substantially impacted the estuary and coastal water quality, and so altered the N biogeochemistry process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selection and genetic drift can create genetic differences between populations. Cytokines and chemokines play an important role in both hematopoietic development and the inflammatory response. We compared the genotype frequencies of 45 SNPs in 30 cytokine and chemokine genes in two healthy Chinese populations and one Caucasian population. Several SNPs in IL4 had substantial genetic differentiation between the Chinese and Caucasian populations ( F ST ~0.40), and displayed a strikingly different haplotype distribution. To further characterize common genetic variation in worldwide populations at the IL4 locus, we genotyped 9 SNPs at the IL4 gene in the Human Diversity Panel’s ( N = 1056) individuals from 52 world geographic regions. We observed low haplotype diversity, yet strikingly different haplotype frequencies between non-African populations, which may indicate different selective pressures on the IL4 gene in different parts of the world. SNPs in CSF2, IL6, IL10, CTLA4, and CX3CR1 showed moderate genetic differentiation between the Chinese and Caucasian populations (0.15 < F ST < 0.25). These results suggest that there is substantial genetic diversity in immune genes and exploration of SNP associations with immune-related diseases that vary in incidence across these two populations may be warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted genome-wide association studies of non-Hodgkin lymphoma using Illumina HumanHap550 BeadChips to identify subtype-specific associations in follicular, diffuse large B-cell and chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphomas. We found that rs6457327 on 6p21.33 was associated with susceptibility to follicular lymphoma (FL; N = 189 cases, 592 controls) with validation in another 456 FL cases and 2,785 controls (combined allelic P = 4.7 × 10−11). The region of strongest association overlapped C6orf15 (STG), located near psoriasis susceptibility region 1 (PSORS1). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]