To assess the toxicity of nonylphenol towards aquatic crustaceans, Neocaridina denticulata were exposed short-term to sublethal concentration (0.001-0.5 mg/L). Following treatment, differentially expressed genes were identified using suppression subtractive hybridization on samples prepared from whole specimens. There were 20 differentially expressed sequence tags that corresponded to known genes and could be divided into six functional classes: defence, translation, metabolism, ribosomal gene expression, respiration, and genes involved in the stress response. Using semi-quantitative RT-PCR, we found that 14 of the differentially expressed sequence tags significantly responded to nonylphenol, including six at a nominal concentration of 0.01 mg/L; among them, 12 genes were down-regulated. These results suggest that under non-lethal concentrations of nonylphenol, the polluted aquatic environment may still present a potential risk to N. denticulata.

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Steel wire coils are used as semi-finished products for the production of fastener billets. The process usually requires preliminarily drawing wire coil to reduce the diameter of products. The drawn wire usually has to be annealed to improve the cold formability. In the fastener industry, most companies use a subcritical process for spheroidized annealing. The quality of spheroidize annealed steel wire affects the forming quality of screws. Various parameters affect the quality of spheroidized annealing such as spheroidized annealing temperature, prolonged heating time, furnace cooling time and flow rate of nitrogen. The effects of spheroidized annealing parameters affect the quality characteristics of wires, such as tensile strength and hardness. In this study, a series of experimental tests are carried out and Taguchi method is used to obtain optimum spheroidized annealing conditions to improve the mechanical properties of two AISI 1022 low carbon steel wires, WA and WB. It is revealed experimentally that, for wire WA, spheroidized annealing temperature and prolonged heating time are the significant factors; however, for wire WB, spheroidized annealing temperature and furnace cooling time are the significant factors to influence the mechanical properties of steel wires.