Highlights d The wAlbB strain of Wolbachia bacteria was established in Aedes aegypti populations d Wolbachia frequencies remained high and stable at some sites d Dengue incidence decreased at release sites

[I] Top-down constraints on global sulfur dioxide (S02) emissions are inferred through inverse modeling using S02 column observations from two satellite instruments (SCIAMACHY and OMI). We first evaluated the S02 column observations with surface S02 measurements by applying local scaling factors from a global chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) to S02 columns retrieved from the satellite instruments. The resulting annual mean surface S02 mixing ratios for 2006 exhibit a significant spatial correlation (r 0.86, slope 0.91 for SCIAMACHY and r 0.80, slope 0.79 for OMI) with coincident in situ measurements from monitoring networks throughout the United States and Canada. We evaluate the GEOS-Chem simulation of the S02 lifetime with that inferred from in situ measurements to verity the applicability of GEOS-Chem for inversion of S02 columns to emissions. The seasonal mean S02 lifetime calculated with the GEOSChem model over the eastern United States is 13 h in summer and 48 h in winter, compared to lifetimes inferred from in situ measurements of 19 ± 7 h in summer and 58 ± 20 h in winter. We apply S02 columns from SCIAMACHY and OMI to derive a top-down anthropogenic S02 emission inventory over land by using the local GEOS-Chem relationship between S02 columns and emissions. There is little seasonal variation in the top-down emissions «15%) over most major industrial regions providing some confidence in the method. Our global estimate for annual land surface anthropogenic S02 emissions (52.4 Tg S yr-I from SCIAMACHY and 49.9 Tg S yr-I from OMI) closely agrees with the bottom-up emissions (54.6 Tg S yr-1 ) in the GEOS-Chem model and exhibits consistency in global distributions with the bottom-up emissions (r 0.78 for SCIAMACHY, and r 0.77 for OMI). However, there are significant regional differences.Citation: Lee, C., R. V. Martin, A. van Donkelaar, H. Lee, R. R. Dickerson, J. C. Hains, N. Krotkov, A. Richter, K. Vinnikov, and J. 1. Schwab (20ll), S02 emissions and lifetimes: Estimates from inverse modeling using in situ and global, space-based (SCIAMACHY and OMI) observations, J. Geophys. Res., 116, D06304, doi:1O.1029

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The Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) is scheduled for launch in February 2020 to monitor air quality (AQ) at an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution from a geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) for the first time. With the development of UV–visible spectrometers at sub-nm spectral resolution and sophisticated retrieval algorithms, estimates of the column amounts of atmospheric pollutants (O3, NO2, SO2, HCHO, CHOCHO, and aerosols) can be obtained. To date, all the UV–visible satellite missions monitoring air quality have been in low Earth orbit (LEO), allowing one to two observations per day. With UV–visible instruments on GEO platforms, the diurnal variations of these pollutants can now be determined. Details of the GEMS mission are presented, including instrumentation, scientific algorithms, predicted performance, and applications for air quality forecasts through data assimilation. GEMS will be on board the Geostationary Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite 2 (GEO-KOMPSAT-2) satellite series, which also hosts the Advanced Meteorological Imager (AMI) and Geostationary Ocean Color Imager 2 (GOCI-2). These three instruments will provide synergistic science products to better understand air quality, meteorology, the long-range transport of air pollutants, emission source distributions, and chemical processes. Faster sampling rates at higher spatial resolution will increase the probability of finding cloud-free pixels, leading to more observations of aerosols and trace gases than is possible from LEO. GEMS will be joined by NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) and ESA’s Sentinel-4 to form a GEO AQ satellite constellation in early 2020s, coordinated by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS).

[1] In order to investigate the optical properties of atmospheric aerosol in the urban area of Beijing, in situ and remote measurements of particulate pollutants were conducted at an urban site ( , respectively. Average mass scattering efficiency of PM 10 and PM 2.5 particle were found to be 2.5 ± 1.1 and 3.4 ± 1.2 m 2 g À1 , respectively. Average single scattering albedo (SSA) of dry PM 10 was characterized to be 0.82 ± 0.09. It was found that SSA decreased to lower values of $0.75 during the relatively clean condition while it increased up to $0.86 during polluted condition mainly owing to the increases of ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, and organic mass by carbon's contributions to PM mass concentrations. Pollution episodes in Beijing were strongly related to wind speed and wind direction. Stagnant weather conditions with southerly wind and low wind speed accelerated the accumulation of the pollutants in Beijing, which led to severe haze. It has been found that high PM 2.5 /AOT (aerosol optical thickness) ratio of 228.2 mg m À3 was observed when air mass was transported from western or northern China while significantly lower PM 2.5 /AOT of 107.6 mg m À3 was observed when it was affected mostly by local air pollutants in Beijing.

BackgroundAntimicrobial resistance is currently a major global issue. As the rate of emergence of antimicrobial resistance has superseded the rate of discovery and introduction of new effective drugs, the medical arsenal now is experiencing shortage of effective drugs to combat diseases, particularly against diseases caused by the dreadful multidrug-resistant strains, such as the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The ability of fly larvae to thrive in septic habitats has prompted us to determine the antibacterial activity and minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of larval extract of flies, namely Lucilia cuprina, Sarcophaga peregrina and Musca domestica against 4 pathogenic bacteria [Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli] via a simple and sensitive antibacterial assay, resazurin-based turbidometric (TB) assay as well as to demonstrate the preliminary chemical profile of larval extracts using gas chromatography-mass spectrophotometry (GC-MS).ResultsThe resazurin-based TB assay demonstrated that the L. cuprina larval extract was inhibitory against all tested bacteria, whilst the larval extract of S. peregrina and M. domestica were only inhibitory against the MRSA, with a MIC of 100 mg ml-1. Subsequent sub-culture of aliquots revealed that the larval extract of L. cuprina was bactericidal against MRSA whilst the larval extracts of S. peregrina and M. domestica were bacteriostatic against MRSA. The GC-MS analysis had quantitatively identified 20 organic compounds (fatty acids or their derivatives, aromatic acid esters, glycosides and phenol) from the larval extract of L. cuprina; and 5 fatty acid derivatives with known antimicrobial activities from S. peregrina and M. domestica.ConclusionThe resazurin-based turbidometric assay is a simple, reliable and feasible screening assay which evidently demonstrated the antibacterial activity of all fly larval extracts, primarily against the MRSA. The larval extract of L. cuprina exerted a broad spectrum antibacterial activity against all tested bacteria. The present study revealed probable development and use of novel and effective natural disinfectant(s) and antibacterial agent(s) from flies and efforts to screen more fly species for antibacterial activity using resazurin-based TB assay should be undertaken for initial screening for subsequent discovery and isolation of potential novel antimicrobial substances, particularly against the multi-drug resistant strains.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12866-017-0936-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The contributions of long range transported aerosol in East Asia to carbonaceous aerosol and particulate matter (PM) concentrations in Seoul, Korea were estimated with potential source contribution function (PSCF) calculations. Carbonaceous aerosol (organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC)), PM(2.5), and PM(10) concentrations were measured from April 2007 to March 2008 in Seoul, Korea. The PSCF and concentration weighted trajectory (CWT) receptor models were used to identify the spatial source distributions of OC, EC, PM(2.5), and coarse particles. Heavily industrialized areas in Northeast China such as Harbin and Changchun and East China including the Pearl River Delta region, the Yangtze River Delta region, and the Beijing-Tianjin region were identified as high OC, EC and PM(2.5) source areas. The conditional PSCF analysis was introduced so as to distinguish the influence of aerosol transported from heavily polluted source areas on a receptor site from that transported from relatively clean areas. The source contributions estimated using the conditional PSCF analysis account for not only the aerosol concentrations of long range transported aerosols but also the number of transport days effective on the measurement site. Based on the proposed algorithm, the condition of airmass pathways was classified into two types: one condition where airmass passed over the source region (PS) and another condition where airmass did not pass over the source region (NPS). For most of the seasons during the measurement period, 249.5-366.2% higher OC, EC, PM(2.5), and coarse particle concentrations were observed at the measurement site under PS conditions than under NPS conditions. Seasonal variations in the concentrations of OC, EC, PM(2.5), and coarse particles under PS, NPS, and background aerosol conditions were quantified. The contributions of long range transported aerosols on the OC, EC, PM(2.5), and coarse particle concentrations during several Asian dust events were also estimated. We also investigated the performance of the PSCF results obtained from combining highly time resolved measurement data and backward trajectory calculations via comparison with those from data in low resolutions. Reduced tailing effects and the larger coverage over the area of interest were observed in the PSCF results obtained from using the highly time resolved data and trajectories.

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