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Abstract. Global policies that regulate anthropogenic mercury emissions to the environment require quantitative and comprehensive source-receptor relationships for mercury emissions, transport and deposition among major continental regions. In this study, we use the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model to establish source-receptor relationships among 11 major continental regions worldwide. Source-receptor relationships for surface mercury concentrations (SMC) show that some regions (e.g., East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Europe) should be responsible for their local surface Hg(II) and Hg(P) concentrations due to near-field transport and deposition contributions from their local anthropogenic emissions (up to 64 and 71 % for Hg(II) and Hg(P), respectively, over East Asia). We define the region of primary influence (RPI) and the region of secondary influence (RSI) to establish intercontinental influence patterns. Results indicate that East Asia is the SMC RPI for almost all other regions, while Europe, Russia, and the Indian subcontinent also make some contributions to SMC over some receptor regions because they are dominant RSI source regions. Source-receptor relationships for mercury deposition show that approximately 16 and 17 % of dry and wet deposition, respectively, over North America originate from East Asia, indicating that transpacific transport of East Asian emissions is the major foreign source of mercury deposition in North America. Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent are also important mercury deposition sources for some receptor regions because they are the dominant RSIs. We also quantify seasonal variation on mercury deposition contributions over other regions from East Asia. Results show that mercury deposition (including dry and wet) contributions from East Asia over the Northern Hemisphere receptor regions (e.g., North America, Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and Middle Asia) vary seasonally, with the maximum values in summer and minimum values in winter. The opposite seasonal pattern occurs on mercury dry deposition contributions over Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

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Precise estimation of postmortem interval (PMI) is crucial in some criminal cases. This study aims to find some optimal markers for PMI estimation and build a mathematical model that could be used in various temperature conditions. Different mRNA and microRNA markers in rat brain samples were detected using real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR at 12 time points within 144 h postmortem and at temperatures of 4, 15, 25, and 35 °C. Samples from 36 other rats were used to verify the animal mathematical model. Brain-specific mir-9 and mir-125b are effective endogenous control markers that are not affected by PMI up to 144 h postmortem under these temperatures, whereas the commonly used U6 is not a suitable endogenous control in this study. Among all the candidate markers, ΔCt (β-actin) has the best correlation coefficient with PMI and was used to build a new model using R software which can simultaneously manage both PMI and temperature parameters. This animal mathematical model is verified using samples from 36 other rats and shows increased accuracy for higher temperatures and longer PMI. In this study, β-actin was found to be an optimal marker to estimate PMI and some other markers were found to be suitable to act as endogenous controls. Additionally, we have used R code software to build a model of PMI estimation that could be used in various temperature conditions.

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