Tools for the Microbiome: Nano and Beyond

Non-technical summary There is abundant research about the impacts that large-scale mining produces on territories to the detriment of their social and environmental sustainability. However, during our research in Chile and Peru, we also identified local transformative initiatives that pursue sustainable development by proposing alternatives to how the socio-ecological impacts of natural resource extraction are produced and distributed throughout society. Specifically, we ask the question: How do local communities in Chile and Peru that are affected by mining activities engage in community-based environmental monitoring (CBEM)? Technical summary By examining how local communities in Chile and Peru engage in community environmental monitoring, this paper argues that local political organisation and institutional innovations are crucial for the emergence of transformations towards sustainability. Local political organisation and mobilisation can create a window of opportunity for discussion about extractive activities and their impacts, as well as possible proposals for alternatives. Institutional innovations triggered by local political work can lead to the implementation of such initiatives. Our findings are based on qualitative case studies of CBEM in Chile and Peru, in areas with high levels of environmental degradation due to mining. In Chile we analysed a case of community air monitoring in a copper processing area, and in Peru a case of community water monitoring in a mining area. Drawing on debates on social transformation and political ecology theory, this study aims to show CBEM promotes changes towards a more democratic and preventive environmental governance, and encourages the recognition of environmental injustices. Social media summary This paper analyses how local communities in Chile and Peru engage in community environmental monitoring in areas affected by the presence of extractive industries. We identified local transformative initiatives that pursue sustainable development by proposing alternatives to how the socio-environmental impacts of natural resource extraction are produced and distributed in society. Our findings are based on qualitative case studies of community-based air and water monitoring in extractive areas in Chile and Peru.

The great promise of single-molecule/assembly measurements is to understand how critical variations in structure, conformation, and environment relate to and control function. New approaches to sensing, imaging, and analysis are keys to elucidating these associations. I will discuss current and upcoming advances and will pose the challenges that lie ahead in creating, developing, and applying new tools for biology and medicine. These advances include using biomolecular recognition in sensor arrays to probe dynamic chemistry in the brain and microbiome systems. They also includes fusing spectroscopic imaging modalities and freeing up bandwidth in measurements to record simultaneous data streams and to expand our dynamic range. Recent advances in sparsity and compressive sensing can be applied both to new analysis methods and to directing measurements so as to assemble and to converge structural and functional information. Early examples will be discussed.

Based on the results of an extensive literature research, we summarize the research progress of remote sensing monitoring in terms of identifying mining area boundaries and monitoring land use or land cover changes of mining areas. We also analyze the application of remote sensing in monitoring the biodiversity, landscape structure, vegetation change, soil environment, surface runoff conditions, and the atmospheric environment in mining areas and predict the prospects of remote sensing in monitoring the ecological environment in mining areas. Based on the results, the accurate classification of land use or land cover and the accurate extraction of environmental factors are the basis for remote sensing monitoring of the ecological environment in mining areas. In terms of the extraction of ecological factors, vegetation extraction is relatively advanced in contrast to the extraction of animal and microbial data. For the monitoring of environmental conditions of mining areas, sophisticated methods are available to identify pollution levels of vegetation and to accurately monitor soil quality. However, the methods for water and air pollution monitoring in mining areas still need to be improved. These limitations considerably impede the application of remote sensing monitoring in mining areas. The solving of these problems depends on the progress of multi-source remote sensing data and stereoscopic monitoring techniques.

This report presents results from eight tasks which were formed to demonstrate commercial viability of a new technology for the early detection of corrosion damage. The tasks produced three products which are deployed to commercialize the technology: (1)Experimentally verified software package which allows instrument specification for wall thinning detection. (2) Eighteen months of field experience in the installation and monitoring of radioactive tracers for wall thinning. (3) Technology for environmental and process monitoring, which was not developed under this contract but evolved as a natural extension of the subject invention. Radioactive tracers are deployed to provide early seaming of corrosion attack on pipes and tanks. The results of this project clearly demonstrate that these monitors are ideal for harsh and difficult to access environments. It is believed that no other technology is capable of providing in situ wall thinning data in such environments. The early warning of wall thinning with radioactive tracers will be commercialized via licensing agreements. Power plants and refineries have the capabilities to deploy the technology which was developed and demonstrated under this project. Funds from licensing agreements will be invested in the establishment of a service to conduct the actual monitoring. This service will extend beyond corrosion monitoring to include environmental monitoring. Current environmental regulation and cleanup of polluted sites has created a market for low cost, in- situ, monitoring. Through its ownership of US Patents which offer the most economical means of monitoring vast areas for toxic compounds, the company is in a unique position to profit from the emerging new market. Negotiations are underweight with companies with existing sales and distribution outlets for the formation of joint ventures. Proposals for the AREA initiative and the DOE/SIR have been prepared in the area of environmental monitoring.

The Special Issue “Remote Sensing in Applied Geophysics” is focused on recent and upcoming advances in the combined application of remote sensing and applied geophysics techniques, sharing the advantages of being non-invasive research methods, suitable for surface and near-surface high-resolution investigations of even wide and remote areas [...]

The need to monitor ice conditions has motivated the launch of several earth observation (EO) satellites and ice mapping applications are among the highest consumers of satellite data. However, oil and gas operations (O&G) in ice-prone (both sea ice and iceberg) environments have largely been using EO data for upstream, strategic reports on ice conditions. There are many recent and upcoming advances in EO technology that are already enabling satellites to be used for other critical operations and there is value in using satellites extensively for ice management. The remainder of this paper briefly describes these advances and their impact on detecting ice conditions to support oil and gas operations.

Aiming at the problem of ecological environment monitoring, the paper proposes an IoT technology for ecological environment monitoring based on wavelet sampling algorithm and multi-sensor network platform. This technology divides the monitoring area into several different clusters, each cluster collects and collects various types of environmental monitoring data, and different types of sensors such as temperature, humidity, noise sensors, etc. can be set according to the monitoring needs; Set up mobile Agent nodes in the monitoring area, establish a real-time two-dimensional positioning table based on network energy consumption, use wavelet sampling algorithm projection method to select the optimal path, construct a mobile plan, collect the collected data and forward it to the control centre. Simulation experiments and mathematical analysis show that the technology has real-time and reliability for remote data collection and transmission for environmental monitoring, and the overall network energy consumption is low.

4eMedicine refers to the current digital revolution in medicine facing harmful scenarios for individuals’ and community health. Priorities of general concern are Emergency, Extreme and Environmental medicine issues, needing careful digital risk analysis and management. Limited information deriving by controlled clinical investigations and by bioinformatics approaches to big‐data management are available.4e Electronic, Emergency, Extreme and Environmental medicine (Figure ) shares the objective of a more effective, sustainable and comprehensive approach to practice, innovation and research in many health domains. Actually, extreme medicine shares with emergency and environment medicine challenges on Earth and beyond Earth, to health and well‐being (hot, cool, sun and ice exposure, starvation, sea, deserts and mountains, different gravity, endurance and extreme sports, war and catastrophic scenarios). In many subsets, with advanced or limited resources and facilities, the study of extreme physiology and psychology, also by models, is still a neglected or concealed component of medical research and best practice evidences. Challenges to human body and mind in extreme situations were, are and will be sources of information on unsuspected coping, reactions and solutions.The aim is to display a research profile of this multidisciplinary approach using the 321,599 research studies recorded at October 2019 in the ClinicalTrials.gov, detailing the areas of overlap by five main keywords: Electronics, Environment, Extreme, Emergency, Bioinformatics (Table 1). Also Pubmed was searched concurrently (Table 2).Results256 Pubmed articles claim the use of bioinformatics approaches in areas of binary overlap of the 4eMedicine components. Nonetheless, completed or ongoing investigations in ClinicalTrials.gov are fewer, only 91.ConclusionEmergency Medicine and complementary, but equally relevant Extreme Medicine, are the fields of experience and of the challenges to understanding mechanisms of disease and survival in different environments. New answers may still derive from ongoing or future comprehensive clinical practice and investigations, better if conducted by clinical trials and bioinformatics tools: this is needed for managing numerous and different data. Such awareness warrants greater cross‐disciplinary working and a quest for more supportive management of big data‐bases. Enhancing research, increasing literacy, competences and skills in research methods and bioinformatics, promoting international harmonization of emergency service facilities, also by reliable and sustainable e‐learning courses, are realistic goals and ongoing actions.Support or Funding InformationThis abstract is also an information tool of the EU iProcure Security Project, https://project.iprocuresecurity.eu/, Strategic Partnership of Emergency Medical Service, and of the BioS Project https://bios‐project.eu/site/. The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflect the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.The Four Pillars of 21st Century 4eMedicine, within the current digital revolution, are Electronic, Emergency, Extreme and Enviromental Medicine. All should be managed by appropriate scientific approaches which include accurate and reliable project planning and bioinformatics.Figure 1 Absolute number of completed and on‐going investigations in ClinicalTiials.gov Overlapping Electronics Environment Emergency Extreme Bioinformatics Electronics – 30 67 24 13 Environment 30 – 26 29 15 Emergency 67 26 ‐‐ 82 50 Extreme 24 29 82 ‐‐ 13 Bioinformatics 13 15 50 13 ‐‐ Absolute number of published investigations in PUBMED Overlapping Research Trials Electronics Environment Emergency Extreme Bioinformatics & computational Electronics – 18 4 17 Environment 108 ‐‐ 1806 159 263 Emergency 18 1806 ‐‐ 58 50 Extreme 4 159 58 ‐‐ 26 Bioinformatics & computational 17 263 50 26 ‐‐ ClinicalTrials.gov is a database of privately and publicly funded clinical studies conducted around the world, here detailing the areas of overlap of five general fields of medical and scientific work: Electronics, Environment, Extreme, Emergency, Bioinformatics (Table 1). Pubmed database was searched concurrently for finding by the same criteria areas of overlap of the same issues (Table 2).

The natural environment is essential for human survival and development since it provides water resources, land resources, biological resources and climate resources etc. As a developing country, China has witnessed a significant change in the natural environment in recent decades; and therefore, monitoring and mastering the status of the environment is of great significance. Due to the characteristics of large-scale and dynamic observation, remote sensing technology has been an indispensable approach for environmental monitoring. This paper reviews the satellite resources, institutions and policies for environmental monitoring in China, and the advances in research and application of remote sensing from five aspects: ecological index retrieval, environmental monitoring in protected areas, rural areas, urban areas and mining areas. The remote sensing models and methods for various types of environmental monitoring, and the specific applications in China are comprehensively summarized. This paper also points out major challenges existing at the current stage: satellite sensor problems, integrated use challenges of datasets, uncertainty in the retrieval process of ecological variables, scaling effect problems, a low degree of automation, the weak ability of forecasting and comprehensive analysis, and a lack of computational power for massive datasets. Finally, the development trend and future directions are put forward to direct the research and application of environmental monitoring and protection in the new era.

Performance of a radiophotoluminescence (RPL) system in environmental and area monitoring

Conventional environmental monitoring is not surrogate of personal exposure. In contrast, biomonitoring provides information on the presence of substances in the human body, making it highly relevant to the assessment of exposure to toxic substances. Induced sputum (IS) is a noninvasive technique for detecting inflammation and reflecting particulate matter content in the airways. In this study, we mapped particulate matter dispersion in metropolitan Tel Aviv by both biomonitoring techniques employing IS samples and by environmental monitoring. All adults referred to the Pulmonary Lab for respiratory symptom evaluation in 2007 and in 2009 were enrolled. Pulmonary function tests were performed by conventional methods. Particulate size distribution in IS was analyzed, and maps of air pollution were created. Biomonitoring was more informative and enabled mapping of wider areas. Integration of biomonitoring and environmental monitoring should be considered in forming public health policy on containment of airborne particles of toxic substances.

Textile industry has been widely implicated in environmental pollution. The health effects of residing near manufacturing industries are not well documented in India, especially in central India. Hence, a cross-sectional environmental monitoring and health assessment study was initiated as per directions of the local authorities. Comprehensive exposure data about the concentrations of relevant pollutants in the ambient air and ground water samples in the study area will be collected over one year. Using stratified random sampling, 3003 apparently healthy adults will be selected from the study area. Sociodemographic and anthropometric information, relevant medical and family history, and investigations including spirometry, electrocardiogram, neurobehavioral tests, and laboratory investigations (complete blood count, lipid profile and random blood glucose) will be conducted. Finally Iodine azide test and heavy metal level detection in urine and blood samples respectively will be conducted in a subset of selected participants to assess individual pollution exposure. Ethics approval has been obtained from the Institutional Ethics Committee of the National Institute for Research in Environmental Health (No: NIREH/IEC-7-II/1027, dated 07/01/2021). This manuscript describes the protocol for a multi-disciplinary study that aims to conduct environmental monitoring and health assessment in residential areas near viscose rayon and associated chemical manufacturing industries. Although India is the second largest manufacturer of rayon, next only to China, and viscose rayon manufacturing has been documented to be a source of multiple toxic pollutants, there is a lack of comprehensive information about the health effects of residing near such manufacturing units in India. Therefore implementing this study protocol will aid in filling in this knowledge gap.

Linking archival and remotely sensed data for long-term environmental monitoring

This research presents the conception and building of an inexpensive remotely operated vehicle (ROV) system to ease the tasks of underwater inspection and environmental monitoring in areas where the global positioning system (GPS) signal is not available. A Raspberry Pi-based control unit, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), and depth sensors are merged in the system so that simple data acquisition and remote operation can be carried out. ROV hydrodynamic drag and stability for a state of ideal balance and maneuverability were assessed through tests based on preliminary simulations in Fusion 360 and empirical calculations. The ROV is confirmed to be behaving as expected in terms of stability, imaging capabilities, and responsiveness to operator control in the testing that was done in controlled water environments. This paper, the work, and the testing, in fact, present the initial design, but it is a significant step towards the consideration of the possible further embedding of autonomous features “simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)-based navigation, doppler velocity log (DVL), light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems” for completely autonomous underwater guided missions.

Buchan (1968) has related some comments regarding personnel monitoring in diagnostic radiology that we would like to consider further. His correspondence is to be commended, because it reminds us that we in diagnostic radiology must continually review our radiation safety procedures. He is correct in saying that a film badge cannot measure the dose to the critical organ—in most cases it would be difficult enough to identify the critical organ. But, we disagree with his suggestion that the personnel monitor is a “site monitor”. During the development of the specialty of health physics a number of terms have come into use which have been identified by various authors. For example: (a) Environmental monitoring. Surveillance, through radiation sampling networks, of the environment in public areas for the purpose of providing data for estimating public exposure and doses relating to environmental radioactivity (Radioassay Procedures for Environmental Samples, 1967). (b) Area monitoring. Routine monitoring of t...