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This study highlights how Chinese economic development detrimentally impacted water quality in recent decades and how this has been improved by enormous investment in environmental remediation funded by the Chinese government. To our knowledge, this study is the first to describe the variability of surface water quality in inland waters in China, the affecting drivers behind the changes, and how the government-financed conservation actions have impacted water quality. Water quality was found to be poorest in the North and the Northeast China Plain where there is greater coverage of developed land (cities + cropland), a higher gross domestic product (GDP), and higher population density. There are significant positive relationships between the concentration of the annual mean chemical oxygen demand (COD) and the percentage of developed land use (cities + cropland), GDP, and population density in the individual watersheds (p < 0.001). During the past decade, following Chinese government-financed investments in environmental restoration and reforestation, the water quality of Chinese inland waters has improved markedly, which is particularly evident from the significant and exponentially decreasing GDP-normalized COD and ammonium (NH4+-N) concentrations. It is evident that the increasing GDP in China over the past decade did not occur at the continued expense of its inland water ecosystems. This offers hope for the future, also for other industrializing countries, that with appropriate environmental investments a high GDP can be reached and maintained, while simultaneously preserving inland aquatic ecosystems, particularly through management of sewage discharge.

Plant-soil feedback (PSF) describes the process whereby plant species modify the soil environment, which subsequently impacts the growth of the same or another plant species. Our aim was to explore PSF by two maize varieties (a landrace and a hybrid variety) and three arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) species (Funneliformis mosseae, Claroideoglomus etunicatum, Gigaspora margarita, and the mixture). We carried out a pot experiment with a conditioning and a feedback phase to determine PSF with different species of AMF and with a non-mycorrhizal control. Sterilized soil was conditioned separately by each variety, with or without AMF; in the feedback phase, each soil community was used to grow each in its "home" soil and in the "away" soil. Plant performance was assessed as shoot biomass, phosphorus (P) concentration and P content, and fungal performance was assessed as mycorrhizal colonization and hyphal length density. Both maize varieties were differentially influenced by AMF in the conditioning phase. In the feedback phase, PSF was generally negative for non-mycorrhizal plants or when plants were colonized by G. margarita, whereas PSF was positive in the other three AMF treatments. When plants were grown on home soil, hyphal length density was larger than on away soil. We conclude that different maize varieties can strengthen positive plant-soil feedback for themselves through beneficial mutualists for themselves, but not across the maize varieties.

This paper deals with the medium between two reconfigurable sensor nodes characterized by radio interfaces that support multiple channels for exchanging real-time messages under energy constraints. These constraints are violated if the consumed energy in transmission is higher than the remaining quantity of energy. A reconfiguration, i.e., any addition or removal of tasks in devices and consequently of messages on the medium, can cause the violation of real-time or energy constraints at run time. To achieve a feasible scheduling in time (i.e., message deadlines will be respected) and energy (i.e., there is available energy) on the medium, we propose new dynamic solutions: Balance, Dilute, and a Combination of them to manage any addition or removal of messages. The proposed approach utilizes the energy harvesting techniques and the PowerControl algorithm to reduce the nonharvested consumed energy. The proposed strategies achieve significant improvement over existing methods and provide the highest percentage of adding messages, with a lower average in response time and energy consumption. They reach a percentage of success in adding the highest priority messages while meeting deadlines up to 85%.

AbstractAlthough canopy height has long been a focus of interest in ecology, it has remained difficult to study at large spatial scales. Recently, satellite‐borne LiDAR equipment produced the first systematic high resolution maps of vegetation height worldwide. Here we show that this new resource reveals three marked modes in tropical canopy height ~40, ~12, and ~2 m corresponding to forest, savanna, and treeless landscapes. The distribution of these modes is consistent with the often hypothesized forest‐savanna bistability and suggests that both states can be stable in areas with a mean annual precipitation between ~1,500 and ~2,000 mm. Although the canopy height states correspond largely to the much discussed tree cover states, there are differences, too. For instance, there are places with savanna‐like sparse tree cover that have a forest‐like high canopy, suggesting that rather than true savanna, those are thinned relicts of forest. This illustrates how complementary sets of remotely sensed indicators may provide increasingly sophisticated ways to study ecological phenomena at a global scale.

The potential of renewable energy should be fully exploited in the transportation sector to achieve a cleaner production. Therefore, this paper proposes an on-grid hybrid hydrogen refueling and battery swapping station powered by wind energy. This novel concept can promote the development of low-carbon emission vehicles including hydrogen-based vehicle and battery electric vehicle. During the daily operation of the station, the multiple uncertainties may lead to a higher operational cost. To address this problem, a hybrid stochastic/distributionally robust optimization method is proposed to handle different uncertainties for the energy management problem. The first type of uncertainties can be depicted by a certain distribution, i.e. electricity price and wind power, which is processed by a stochastic optimization method. The second type of uncertainties is associated with human behaviors and is difficult to find its probability distribution, i.e. the hydrogen demand of hydrogen-based vehicles, so the second type is processed by a distributionally robust optimization method. The overall objective is to minimize the total operational cost of the station, which also considers the battery swapping station overstock punishment. Because a reasonable battery swapping scheduling can reduce the waiting time of users and operational cost of the station. The results indicate that the proposed method can effectively address the conservatism of solutions as its total operational cost is 4.4% lower than that of the hybrid stochastic/robust optimization method under a high confidence level.

Nanosecond-level transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED), including very fast transient overvoltage caused by operation of disconnectors, high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, and many other fast transients may interfere or even damage the electrical equipment. As one of the main overvoltage protective equipment, the protective performance of metal-oxide surge arresters (MOAs) under nanosecond-level TED should be investigated and then compared with that under microsecond-level TED, especially the lightning impulse. Based on a testing platform containing a 400-kV pulse generator with adjustable rise time from 5 to 100 ns, the behaviors of nonlinearity, fast impulse response, and converting impedances of three types of 10-kV MOAs under TED with different rise time were explored experimentally in this article. The peak residual voltages of 10-kV MOAs under TED with the rise time of 5 ns at 5 kA are 50.2–60.7% higher than those under the lightning impulse. The rise time of TED has significant influence on the peak voltage and impedance converting behaviors of MOAs. A circuit model of 10-kV MOAs under nanosecond-level TED is built and validated by experimental results, which can be applied in insulation coordination and design of protective devices against TED.