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The article aims to provide insights into the effectiveness of international water treaties in addressing environmental challenges in river basins. The Ganga and Indus River basins, encompassing a vast expanse of 2.20 million square kilometers, serve as the lifeblood for roughly one billion inhabitants of the South Asian region. However, the escalating challenges of water scarcity, climate change, over-extraction, pollution, and reduced flow that stem from burgeoning population growth, urbanization, industrialization, and agricultural activities, have critically endangered the water quality and quantity of these basins. The Ganga and Indus Water Treaties were created to promote collaboration and address water-related environmental issues. However, their limitations in addressing these threats make it necessary to review their effectiveness and examine their gaps and inadequacies. The study examines treaties related to the Indus and Ganga River basins regarding environmental threats, identifying gaps that need attention. A comparative analysis with the UN Watercourse Convention will be conducted to assess their effectiveness and adherence to global standards. Key Words: Environmental threats, IWT, Ganga treaty, UNWC

To explore the anatomical parameters proximal femoral cavity and developmental dysplasia of the hip.The retrospective study was conducted at Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, China, and comprised data of adult patients of either gender who underwent total hip arthroplasty from January 2009 to August 2015. Paients with a diagnosis of primary osteoarthrosis or aseptic necrosis of the femoral head were taken as the control group A, while patients with developmental dysplasia of the hip in group B were graded into subgroups I-IV using the Crowe classification. For each patient, the inner diameter of the proximal femoral medullary cavity was measured on preoperative radiographs using Noble's technique. Data was analysed using SPSS 20.Of the 835 hips, 571(68.4%) were in group A and 264(31.6%) in group B. The mean age of the patients at the time of surgery was 58.3 ± 12.3 years. Overall, there were 404(48.4%) hips of male patients; 59(22.3%) in group B. There were 431(51.6%) hips of female patients; 205(77.7%) in group B. In group B, 186(70.5%) hips were graded I, 38(14.4%) grade II, 22(8.3%)grade III, and 18(6.8%) hips were graded IV. There were significant differences in femoral offset, height of the femoral head, and canal flare index of the metaphysis between groups A and B (p0.05). There was no significant difference in the morphology of the marrow cavity between subgroups II and III. The femoral offset, height of the femoral head, canal flare index of the metaphysis and medullary cavity isthmus were significantly smaller in the subgrop IV than group B (p0.05). There was significantly greater stenosis in the diaphysis in subgroup IV than in the remaining subgroups (p0.05).The morphology of the marrow cavity was significantly different between patients with proximal femoral cavity and those with developmental dysplasia of the hip. Patients with developmental dysplasia grade IV had a narrower metaphyseal and diaphyseal cavity.

The study aimed to investigate the influences of the active ingredient in Caulis Mahoniae, total alkaloids, on the proliferation and apoptosis of cervical cancer cells and the caspase-3 expression. The total alkaloids were extracted in vitro from Caulis Mahoniae, and cervical cancer HeLa cell lines were used as experimental objects. The half inhibitory concentration (IC50) of total alkaloids on HeLa cell lines was detected via the preliminary experiment, the influences of total alkaloids at different concentrations on the proliferation of HeLa cell lines were detected via methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) assay, and the cell growth curve was plotted. Moreover, the cell cycle and apoptosis after treatment with total alkaloids at different concentrations were detected via flow cytometry, and the caspase-3 gene and protein expressions were detected via reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Western blotting. The IC50 of total alkaloids in Caulis Mahoniaeon HeLa cell lines was 12.5 μg/mL. With the gradual increase of concentration of total alkaloids in the treatment of cervical cancer cells, the inhibitory rate on cancer cells was gradually increased, and the proportion of cells in the G0/G1 phase was gradually decreased, while that in S and G2/M phases was gradually increased. Besides, with the increase in the concentration of total alkaloids, the apoptotic rate of cervical cancer cells was gradually increased, and both caspase-3 gene and protein expressions were also gradually increased. The total alkaloids extracted from Caulis Mahoniae can effectively inhibit the proliferation and promote the apoptosis of cervical cancer HeLa cells, which may be realized by promoting the expression of apoptosis-related factor caspase-3.

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of taking Baihe Gujin decoction combined with Shengmai powder on IL-1β and IL-1Ra expression in peripheral blood CD14+ monocytes from patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. For this purpose, one hundred adult patients with primary pulmonary tuberculosis were selected for the study. The age of the enrolled cases ranged from 18 to 60 years old, with a controlled male to the female sex ratio of about 1:1. The Chinese medical evidence was considered to be a qi-yin deficiency type of pulmonary consumption. The patients were randomly divided into experimental and control groups, 50 cases each. In addition, 50 cases of healthy people were selected as a healthy control group, totaling 150 cases. In the experimental group, patients were given Baihe gujin decoction and Shengmai powder based on conventional western medicine, 1 dose for 1 day, 150mL/time for 2 times. The control group was treated with conventional Western medicine. 2 mL of fasting elbow venous blood from the subjects was taken in the morning. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated by density centrifugation. Monocytes were obtained after incubation with 5 μL of CD14+ immune magnetic beads at 4°C. The relative expression of IL1β and IL1R genes were measured using real-time quantitative PCR (RT-PCR), respectively. Results showed that the relative expression of IL1β and IL1R genes was significantly lower in the experimental group after 3 months compared with the control group, and the statistical difference was highly significant (p

Aptamers have been introduced to analytical applications, target validation, and drug discovery processes and, recently, applied directly as therapeutic agents. Aptamers can be generated by a method called SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment). This is quite remarkable for such a young technology, which is only created in the early 1990s. This paper reviews recent new applications of aptamers in stem cell research and tissue engineering.

This article presents a study of vehicle acceleration measurements at the stop line of a traffic light in an urban environment. Accurate representation of vehicle acceleration behavior is an important parameter to traffic simulation tools especially when the emissions related to the simulated traffic need to be calculated. A smart eye traffic data sensor (TDS) system was used to record the vehicle trajectories. This device is based on dynamic vision sensor technology that features 1 millisecond temporal resolution, wide dynamic range of 120 dB of illumination, zero-redundancy and asynchronous data output. The trajectories of the detected vehicles from the vision sensor temporal contrast event data have been manually annotated in a space-time representation using a graphical tool. From these extracted trajectories the acceleration of the vehicles has been calculated. We present results of acceleration distributions obtained from over 300 passenger-car acceleration cycles observed in the field. The measurements focus on the first phase of acceleration from the stop line up to a maximum speed of 40 km/h. The results are compared to the results from a traffic micro simulation tool obtained for a similar stop line scenario. The results will be used in the traffic micro-simulation that serves as a basis for a decision support tool for adaptive traffic management developed in the CARBOTRAF FP7 EU project.

For investigating the winter air quality of the typical rural building in southwest of Shandong province, concentrations of particles (PM1.0), gaseous pollutants (CO and CO 2 ) in the main room and courtyard were measured. Concentrations of contaminants in both rooms appeared consistent trend, with peak values in the three periods of mealtimes. Contaminants in the main rooms mainly derived from the courtyard, as well as contribution of occupants' activity. Using stove to warm the main room produced substantive gaseous contaminants, especially higher concentration of CO when stove was quenching. Comparing biomass and fossil fuel, the former produced more particles, while the latter made more gaseous pollutants. In addition, setting off fireworks seriously contaminated air quality of rural buildings, and concentrations of contaminants depended on the patterns of fireworks.

Oxygen transfer limitation inside the sludge particles presents a significant technical challenge in the aerobic composting process. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of sludge particle size (SPS) on oxygen transfer, microbial activity and biological stabilization of organic matters in the composting of anaerobic digested sludge. Oxygen uptake rate (OUR), CO 2 production rate and respiratory quotient (RQ) were measured and evaluated in the tests carried out with 0.25 g, 1 g and 4 g particles of dewatered sludge. The effect of SPS on the moisture, volatile solid (VS) and water extract organic carbon (WEOC) was investigated in a lab-scale composting system. The results showed that OUR, CO 2 production rate, the biodegradation rate of WEOC and VS increased significantly with the decline of SPS within the early phase of composting. The moisture of smaller particles was considerably lower in the latter stage. There were also spatial and temporal differences in aerobic conditions inside of different size particles. Oxygen transfer inside solid particles was demonstrated to be the rate-limiting step in the early stage of composting.

Synthetic aperture radiometer has the potential to meet the spatial resolution requirement of passive microwave remote sensing from space. A one-dimensional prototype of aperture synthesis radiometer at millimeter wave band is introduced in this paper. It contains 16 antenna elements, 16 receiving channels, 16 ADCs, and image reconstruction part. Error correction is made in the image reconstruction. Experiment results show the radiometer can give good images of natural scenes.