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Sustainability should be viewed as the ultimate goal of human beings. However, the reality is still not optimistic. Over the years, sustainability in shipping has attracted growing attention through green or sustainable shipping, similar to sustainable development and green development being the prominent approaches to sustainability in development. However, the concepts of green or sustainable shipping, as well as those for green or sustainable development, remain vague. This paper thus distinguishes these four seemingly similar but essentially different concepts with respect to their theoretical bases, objectives, and implications through a structured literature review. Many have discussed the concept of sustainable development, while only a few have explored these concepts for green development, sustainable shipping, and green shipping. The main difference between sustainable and green development is whether or not the method is anthropocentric: the former emphasizes satisfying the needs of the present and future generations, while the latter is non-anthropocentric or eco-centric, focusing on conserving the health of nature. We argue that green shipping should follow the concept of green development. It is a better approach to reach sustainability than sustainable shipping which follows sustainable development. Finally, a definition of green shipping is proposed for the consideration of sustainability by decision-makers.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of our study was to evaluate the association between occupational exposure to trichloroethylene (TCE), a suspected lymphomagen, and serum levels of miRNAs in a cross-sectional molecular epidemiology study of TCE exposed workers and comparable unexposed controls in China. METHODS: Serum levels of 40 miRNAs were compared in 74 workers exposed to TCE (median: 12 ppm) and 90 unexposed control workers. Linear regression models were used to test for differences in serum miRNA levels between exposed and unexposed workers and to evaluate exposure-response relationships across TCE exposure categories using a three-level ordinal variable (i.e., unexposed

Sustainability is a necessity for the future earth. As international shipping, the lifeblood of the global economy, moves toward door-to-door, strategic planning for sustainability of such movements becomes extremely important and challenging. Extant research on strategic planning for sustainability in shipping is rare. This study adopts a structured literature review in conjunction with content analysis to identify whether the existing strategic planning encourages sustainability in international shipping. A broad review of maritime logistics is also conducted to understand whether its strategic planning contributes to sustainability. Key findings include (1) the most strategic planning in shipping is limited to “port-to-port”; (2) the efforts of strategic planning toward sustainability in shipping are fragmented; (3) maritime logistics represents an active research area but lags behind in strategic planning; (4) proactive efforts to encourage green or sustainable maritime logistics have emerged; and (5) the research gaps include the distinction between the terms of sustainability, “green,” and “sustainable,” and the lack of an appropriate approach, methods, and a collaborative research-practice network of strategic planning for sustainability in international shipping. The findings suggest directions for future research to make international shipping fit for the sustainability challenge.

Background Despite the growing and widespread use of glyphosate, a broad-spectrum herbicide and desiccant, very few studies have evaluated the extent and amount of human exposure. Objective We review documented levels of human exposure among workers in occupational settings and the general population. Methods We conducted a review of scientific publications on glyphosate levels in humans; 19 studies were identified, of which five investigated occupational exposure to glyphosate, 11 documented the exposure in general populations, and three reported on both. Results Eight studies reported urinary levels in 423 occupationally and para-occupationally exposed subjects; 14 studies reported glyphosate levels in various biofluids on 3298 subjects from the general population. Average urinary levels in occupationally exposed subjects varied from 0.26 to 73.5 μg/L; environmental exposure urinary levels ranged from 0.16 to 7.6 μg/L. Only two studies measured temporal trends in exposure, both of which show increasing proportions of individuals with detectable levels of glyphosate in their urine over time. Conclusions The current review highlights the paucity of data on glyphosate levels among individuals exposed occupationally, para-occupationally, or environmentally to the herbicide. As such, it is challenging to fully understand the extent of exposure overall and in vulnerable populations such as children. We recommend further work to evaluate exposure across populations and geographic regions, apportion the exposure sources (e.g., occupational, household use, food residues), and understand temporal trends. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12940-018-0435-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Specific cytogenetic alterations and changes in DNA methylation are involved in leukemogenesis. Benzene, an established human leukemogen, is known to induce cytogenetic changes through its active metabolites including hydroquinone (HQ), but the specific alterations have not been fully characterized. Global DNA hypomethylation was reported in a population exposed to benzene, but has not been confirmed in vitro. In this study, we examined cytogenetic changes in chromosomes 5, 7, 8, 11 and 21, and global DNA methylation in human TK6 lymphoblastoid cells treated with HQ for 48 h, and compared the HQ-induced alterations with those induced by two well-known leukemogens, melphalan, an alkylating agent, and etoposide, a DNA topoisomerase II inhibitor. We found that rather than inducing cytogenetic alterations distinct from those induced by melphalan and etoposide, HQ induced alterations characteristic of each agent. HQ induced global DNA hypomethylation at a level intermediate to melphalan (no effect) and etoposide (potent effect). These results suggest that HQ may act similar to an alkylating agent and also similar to a DNA topoisomerase II inhibitor in living cells, both of which may be potential mechanisms of benzene toxicity. In addition to cytogenetic changes, global DNA hypomethylation may be another mechanism underlying the leukemogenicity of benzene.

This paper presents the study carried out for controlling agricultural non-point source pollution (NSP) in a medium-sized watershed covering 1.47 × 104 km2 in Southeast China using quantitative analysis coupled with geographic information system (GIS), universal soil loss equation (USLE), soil conservation service-curve number (SCS-CN), nutrient loss equations, and annualized agricultural nonpoint source model (AnnAGNPS). Based on the quantitative results derived from GIS and environmental models, five control division units were generated for NSP control in Jiulong River watershed, namely, controlling unit for soil losses, controlling unit for livestock breeding and soil losses, controlling unit for excessive fertilizer use and livestock breeding, controlling unit for soil losses and fertilizer use, and controlling unit for excessive fertilizer use and soil losses. This study proved that integrating GIS with environmental models can be adopted to efficiently evaluate major sources and contributors of NSP, and identify the critical source areas of NSP, which enables adjusting measures to local conditions by further control division units developed through such study for control and management of water quality degradation induced by NSP in the Jiulong River watershed.

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.

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 approximately 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 (0.15F ST0.25). 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.

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.

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 x 10(-11)). The region of strongest association overlapped C6orf15 (STG), located near psoriasis susceptibility region 1 (PSORS1).