The Lancang-Mekong River significantly affects the livelihood of residents in the basin as well as the lives of people in other regions of the world in terms of great development potential and its economic and ecological values. In the meanwhile, the river attracts the attention of countries in the basin and the international community because it raises potential for international conflicts. The Lancang-Mekong River leaves China from Xishuangbanna and the ecosystem status in Xishuangbanna constitutes one of the top concerns related to the basin. The study comprehensively evaluates the status of freshwater ecosystem health of the Lancang River in Xishuangbanna for the first time, with reference to aspects of ecosystem vitality, ecosystem services, as well as governance and stakeholders, firstly, linking the ecosystem and the benefits it provides as well as human activities as an organic whole. The methodology used, Freshwater Health Index, is newly developed and constitutes revision of the first attempt of its usage. Basically, the freshwater ecosystem in the studied area and period remains healthy according to the research, and the ecosystem is considered to be capable of providing sufficient services and benefits to meet the economic and societal development demands. Recommendations are proposed for more sustainable local freshwater management and utilization accordingly.
The International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) is an empirical model widely used to describe ionospheric characteristics. In the previous research, high-precision total ionospheric electron content (TEC) data derived from global navigation satellite system (GNSS) data were used to adjust the ionospheric global index IG12 used as a driving parameter in the standard IRI model; thus, the errors between IRI-TEC and GNSS-TEC were minimized, and IRI-TEC was calibrated by modifying IRI with the updated IG12 index (IG-up). This paper investigates various interpolation strategies for IG-up values calculated from GNSS reference stations and the calibrated TEC accuracy achieved using the modified IRI-2016 model with the interpolated IG-up values as driving parameters. Experimental results from 2015 and 2019 show that interpolating IG-up with a 2.5° × 5° spatial grid and a 1-h time resolution drives IRI-2016 to generate ionospheric TEC values consistent with GNSS-TEC. For 2015 and 2019, the mean absolute error (MAE) of the modified IRI-TEC is improved by 78.57% and 77.42%, respectively, and the root mean square error (RMSE) is improved by 78.79% and 77.14%, respectively. The corresponding correlations of the linear regression between GNSS-TEC and the modified IRI-TEC are 0.986 and 0.966, more than 0.2 higher than with the standard IRI-TEC.
The study first systematically assessed the ecosystem health status of the plateau freshwater lake of Erhai Lake in Yunnan Province of China, using the revised Freshwater Health Indicator methodology, which comprised three components, i.e., “Ecosystem Vitality,” “Ecosystem Services,” and “Governance and Stakeholders.” To better reflect the real health status of the basin, the cask short board effect was considered during aggregation of the indicators. In addition, analysis of the coupling coordination relationship among the three components was conducted to study the mutual influences among them as well as the comprehensive development level of the studied area. Basically, the ecosystem of the Erhai Lake basin remained healthy during the studied period according to the research due to specific measures and actions taken to manage the environmental problems caused by a former local economic development and urbanization process. However, there were still aspects to improve for more sustainable ecosystem management and utilization in the basin. The “short boards” of the Erhai Lake basin show room for improvement in local freshwater ecosystem management and underline governance problems that need to be addressed. Suggestions are provided for the local stakeholders consequently for the more sustainable development of the studied basin.
Sinomenine is a natural alkaloid with important biological activities (e.g. anti-cancer, antiinflammatory, and anti-allergic). However, the unstability and short half-life absolutely limited its application to foods. Microencapsulation technology can offer a way to solve these issues. In this study, polylactic acid microcapsules loading sinomenine hydrochloride were fabricated by phase inversion emulsification-drying in liquid technique. The results showed that microcapsules had nice spherical shape, uniform particle size, and free flowing. The encapsulation efficiency was 89.2% and drug loading was 8.9% under the optimal conditions. In vitro release assays demonstrated that release of sinomenine from microcapsules was sustained and slow. Moreover, it was found that the sinomenine release fitted Fickian diffusion mechanism. The results of cytotoxicity study showed that sinomenine-loaded microcapsules were biocompatible. Sinomenine-loaded
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