Overview of the Leather Industry and Pollution Impact

The growing awareness of the human and environmental vulnerability, to the pollution resulting from industrial activity, highlights the urgent need for control and mitigate the degradation of the world as we know it. The leather industry, considered as one of the industries with a significant environmental impact, applies several chemicals, some of them considered as hazardous chemicals, such as chromium, in leather production. The restricted EU environmental regulations have driven the search for a process that ensures regulatory compliance and a final product that fulfills society’s requirements. The present review describes alternative options, applied in the leather tanning process in the last five years, to overcome some of the industry barriers, without compromising the final characteristics of leather.

Investigation into the rationale of migration intention due to air pollution integrating the Homo Oeconomicus traits

Air pollution is a considerable environmental stressor for urban residents in developing countries. Perceived health risks of air pollution might induce migration intention among inhabitants. The current study employed the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) to investigate the rationale behind the domestic and international migration intentions among 475 inhabitants in Hanoi, Vietnam – one of the most polluted capital cities worldwide. We found that people perceiving more impacts of air pollution in their daily life are more likely to have migration intention. The effect of perceived air pollution impact on international migration intention is stronger than that of domestic migration. Acknowledging a family member’s air pollution-induced sickness moderated the association between perceived air pollution impact and domestic migration intention, while the personal experience of air pollution-induced sickness did not. In contrast, the moderation effect of personal experience of sickness became significant in the international migration circumstance, but the effect of information about a family member’s sickness was trivial. The findings suggest that urban inhabitants’ consideration of air pollution averting strategies reflects some characteristics of Homo Oeconomicus. Additionally, the individual’s socio-economic decision is seemingly insignificant on a social scale. Still, through environmental stressors as catalysts, such decisions might result in considerable social outcomes (e.g., internal migration and emigration).

Study on Calculation Method of Contribution Rates of Water Pollution of Trans-Boundary Rivers

The calculation of the contribution rates of the upstream and downstream administrative regions to water pollution of trans-boundary rivers is an important research subject. In this paper, a method based on the water quality mathematical model was proposed, which includes three steps: (1) Establishment of a model for a trans-boundary river; (2) Analysis of the pollution impact on the water quality at the control sections of the trans-boundary river; and (3) Calculation of the contribution rates to water pollution of the trans-boundary river. Taking Zhaosutai River, a trans-boundary river flowing through Jilin and Liaoning Provinces, as the study case, the contribution rates of these two provinces to water pollution of the river were determined by this method. The results showed that for the COD concentrations in the Control Sections of Laoqujiadian, Qijiazi and Dasijiazi of the main stream in January 2017, the contribution rates of the upstream pollution loads we 96.2%, 81.0% and 70.5%, respectively. The method of calculating the contribution rates to water pollution of trans-boundary rivers based on the mathematical water quality model proposed in this paper quantitatively can be used to identify the responsibilities of upstream and downstream administrative regions for water pollution of trans-boundary rivers.

Research Trends in Octopus Biological Studies

Octopuses represent interesting model studies for different fields of scientific inquiry. The present study provides a bibliometric analysis on research trends in octopuses biological studies. The analysis was executed from January 1985 to December 2020 including scientific products reported in the Web of Science database. The period of study was split into two blocks (“earlier period” (EP): 1985−2010; “recent period” (RP): 2011−2020) to analyze the evolution of the research topics over time. All publications of interest were identified by using the following query: ((AK = octopus) OR (AB = octopus) OR (TI = octopus)). Data information was converted into an R-data frame using bibliometrix. Octopuses studies appeared in 360 different sources in EP, while they increased to 408 in RP. Sixty countries contributed to the octopuses studies in the EP, while they were 78 in the RP. The number of affiliations also increased between EP and RP, with 835 research centers involved in the EP and 1399 in the RP. In the EP 5 clusters (i.e., “growth and nutrition,” “pollution impact,” “morphology,” “neurobiology,” “biochemistry”) were represented in a thematic map, according to their centrality and density ranking. In the RP the analysis identified 4 clusters (i.e., “growth and nutrition,” “ecology,” “pollution impact,” “genes, behavior, and brain evolution”). The UK with Ireland, and the USA with Canada shared the highest number of publications in the EP, while in the RP, Spain and Portugal were the leading countries. The current data provide significant insight into the evolving trends in octopuses studies.