Total mercury and methylmercury in rice: Exposure and health implications in Bangladesh.

Rice methylmercury (MeHg) contamination has attracted global attention, especially in countries where rice is considered a staple food. The daily rice intake rate in Bangladesh ranks first in the world; however, no attention has been paid to rice MeHg contamination in Bangladesh. Total Hg (THg) and MeHg concentrations of commercial rice (n = 172) from Bangladesh were first analyzed to accurately evaluate both rice MeHg and inorganic Hg (IHg) exposure in different age-gender groups of Bangladeshis.

Relationship between Macroeconomic Indicators and Economic Cycles in U.S.

We analyze monthly time series of 57 US macroeconomic indicators (18 leading, 30 coincidental, and 9 lagging) and 5 other trade/money indexes. Using novel methods, we confirm statistically significant co-movements among these time series and identify noteworthy economic events. The methods we use are Complex Hilbert Principal Component Analysis (CHPCA) and Rotational Random Shuffling (RRS).

Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures.

City-size distributions are known to be well approximated by power laws across a wide range of countries. But such distributions are also meaningful at other spatial scales, such as within certain regions of a country. Using data from China, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States, we first document that large cities are significantly more spaced out than would be expected by chance alone.

Propagation of negative shocks across nation-wide firm networks.

This study examines how negative shocks due to, for example, natural disasters propagate through supply chains. We apply a simulation technique to actual supply chain data covering most Japanese firms. To investigate the property of the propagation in the network, we test different types of artificial negative shocks.

Socioeconomic effects of protected areas in Spain across spatial scales and protection levels.

Impacts of the legal designation of protected areas (PAs) may have contrasting implications for different stakeholders, and at different spatial scales. In this study, we analysed the organisational perception on the socioeconomic effects of PA designation from all sectors of activity in Spain, accounting for PAs' legal stringency. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to 68 organisations at national, regional (Andalusia) and local scales (two municipalities in the Almeria province, Andalusia) through an online survey.

Are the effects of blood pressure lowering treatment diminishing?: meta-regression analyses.

Background: Previous studies have suggested that the effects of medical interventions tend to diminish over time. We investigated whether the effects of blood pressure lowering treatment on all-cause mortality and stroke have diminished over time.

Methods: We conducted meta-regression analyses.

Data on accessibility of corporate information and business transparency in Russia.

Empirically based, the data description covers business transparency in Russia and availability of corporate information for interested parties. Entry barriers in the form of a fee for hard copies of documents are perceptible as an important indicator of business publicity. The study made it possible to summarize current data on 5070 Russian enterprises in order to estimate document copying cost differentiation according to the developed model.

Age-Specific Excess Mortality Patterns During the 1918-1920 Influenza Pandemic in Madrid, Spain.

Although much progress has been made to uncover age-specific mortality patterns of the 1918 influenza pandemic in populations around the world, more studies in different populations are needed to make sense of the heterogeneous death impact of this pandemic. We assessed the absolute and relative magnitudes of 3 pandemic waves in the city of Madrid, Spain, between 1918 and 1920, on the basis of age-specific all-cause and respiratory excess death rates. Excess death rates were estimated using a Serfling model with a parametric bootstrapping approach to calibrate baseline death levels with quantified uncertainty.

Protected area effectiveness against land development in Spain.

Land use-land cover (LULC) changes towards artificial covers are one of the main global threats to biodiversity conservation. In this comprehensive study, we tested a number of methodological and research hypotheses, and a new covariate control technique in order to address common protected area (PA) assessment issues and accurately assess whether different PA networks have had an effect at preventing development of artificial LULCs in Spain, a highly biodiverse country that has experienced massive socioeconomic transformations in the past two decades. We used digital census data for four PA networks designated between 1990 and 2000: Nature Reserves (NRs), Nature Parks (NPs), Sites of Community Importance (SCIs) and Special Protection Areas (SPAs).

[Design and implementation of data checking system for Chinese materia medica resources survey].

The Chinese material medica resources (CMMR) national survey information management system has collected a large amount of data. To help dealing with data recheck, reduce the work of inside, improve the recheck of survey data from provincial and county level, National Resource Center for Chinese Materia Medical has designed a data checking system for Chinese material medica resources survey based on J2EE technology, Java language, Oracle data base in accordance with the SOA framework. It includes single data check, check score, content manage, check the survey data census data with manual checking and automatic checking about census implementation plan, key research information, general survey information, cultivation of medicinal materials information, germplasm resources information the medicine information, market research information, traditional knowledge information, specimen information of this 9 aspects 20 class 175 indicators in two aspects of the quantity and quality.

[Design and implementation of mobile terminal data acquisition for Chinese materia medica resources survey].

In this paper, a data acquisition system based on mobile terminal combining GPS, offset correction, automatic speech recognition and database networking technology was designed implemented with the function of locating the latitude and elevation information fast, taking conveniently various types of Chinese herbal plant photos, photos, samples habitat photos and so on. The mobile system realizes automatic association with Chinese medicine source information, through the voice recognition function it records the information of plant characteristics and environmental characteristics, and record relevant plant specimen information. The data processing platform based on Chinese medicine resources survey data reporting client can effectively assists in indoor data processing, derives the mobile terminal data to computer terminal.

Effects of five-minute internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy and simplified emotion-focused mindfulness on depressive symptoms: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Notwithstanding a high expectation for internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT) for reducing depressive symptoms, many of iCBT programs have limitations such as temporary effects and high drop-out rates, possibly due to their complexity. We examined the effects of a free, simplified, 5-minute iCBT program by comparing it with a simplified emotion-focused mindfulness (sEFM) exercise and with a waiting list control group.

Methods: A total of 974 participants, who were recruited using the website of a market research company, were randomly assigned to the iCBT group, the sEFM group, and the control group.

Analyzing the coevolution of interorganizational networks and organizational performance: Automakers' production networks in Japan.

Organizations create networks with one another, and these networks may in turn shape the organizations involved. Until recently, such complex dynamic processes could not be rigorously empirically analyzed because of a lack of suitable modeling and validation methods. Using stochastic actor-oriented models and unique longitudinal survey data on the changing structure of interfirm production networks in the automotive industry in Japan, this paper illustrates how to quantitatively assess and validate (1) the dynamic micro-mechanism by which organizations form their networks and (2) the role of the dynamic network structures in organizational performance.

Effects of Betaine Aldehyde Dehydrogenase-Transgenic Soybean on Phosphatase Activities and Rhizospheric Bacterial Community of the Saline-Alkali Soil.

The development of transgenic soybean has produced numerous economic benefits; however the potential impact of root exudates upon soil ecological systems and rhizospheric soil microbial diversity has also received intensive attention. In the present study, the influence of saline-alkali tolerant transgenic soybean of betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase on bacterial community structure and soil phosphatase during growth stages was investigated. The results showed that, compared with nontransgenic soybean as a control, the rhizospheric soil pH of transgenic soybean significantly decreased at the seedling stage.

The Long-Run Socio-Economic Consequences of a Large Disaster: The 1995 Earthquake in Kobe.

We quantify the 'permanent' socio-economic impacts of the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake in 1995 by employing a large-scale panel dataset of 1,719 cities, towns, and wards from Japan over three decades. In order to estimate the counterfactual--i.e.

Environmental efficiency of energy, materials, and emissions.

This study estimates the environmental efficiency of international listed firms in 10 worldwide sectors from 2007 to 2013 by applying an order-m method, a non-parametric approach based on free disposal hull with subsampling bootstrapping. Using a conventional output of gross profit and two conventional inputs of labor and capital, this study examines the order-m environmental efficiency accounting for the presence of each of 10 undesirable inputs/outputs and measures the shadow prices of each undesirable input and output. The results show that there is greater potential for the reduction of undesirable inputs rather than bad outputs.

A non-destructive distinctive method for discrimination of automobile lubricant variety by visible and short-wave infrared spectroscopy.

A novel method which is a combination of wavelet packet transform (WPT), uninformative variable elimination by partial least squares (UVE-PLS) and simulated annealing (SA) to extract best variance information among different varieties of lubricants is presented. A total of 180 samples (60 for each variety) were characterized on the basis of visible and short-wave infrared spectroscopy (VIS-SWNIR), and 90 samples (30 for each variety) were randomly selected for the calibration set, whereas, the remaining 90 samples (30 for each variety) were used for the validation set. The spectral data was split into different frequency bands by WPT, and different frequency bands were obtained.

[Discrimination of varieties of brake fluid using visual-near infrared spectra].

A new method was developed to fast discriminate brands of brake fluid by means of visual-near infrared spectroscopy. Five different brands of brake fluid were analyzed using a handheld near infrared spectrograph, manufactured by ASD Company, and 60 samples were gotten from each brand of brake fluid. The samples data were pretreated using average smoothing and standard normal variable method, and then analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA).