Water competition between the food and energy sector is a critical component of the food-energy-water nexus. However, few studies have systematically characterized the geospatial and, especially, the sub-annual variations in such competition and the associated environmental impacts and targeted mitigation opportunities. This study characterizes competing water uses for crop-specific irrigated agriculture and fuel-specific power generation across global major river basins to reveal their resulting impacts on local water scarcity for global population under both current and a warming climate. Under annual (and most seasonal) accounting, almost all basins currently suffering from extremely high water scarcity are dominated by agricultural water consumption (e.g. accommodating 26%–49% of basin-total population across seasons), which are often simultaneously exposed to potentially decreasing seasonal water availability under a 4 °C warming scenario. Only 13%–20% of population are located in basins dominated by seasonal power sector water uses, which are predominantly with low water scarcity. Agriculture sector provides the most basin-specific water mitigation opportunities across mid-latitude basins in all four seasons. Nevertheless, power sector becomes more important in affecting seasonal water scarcity and provides unique seasonal water mitigation opportunities, particularly in basins among higher northern latitudes in winter. This analysis highlights irrigated agriculture is currently and will likely remain the key in global water management for basins facing the severest water scarcity, yet increasing attention on the seasonal and spatial variations in cross-sector water use competition is needed to better identify region- and season- specific mitigation opportunities.
Abstract Angiosperm sexual systems are fundamental to the evolution and distribution of plant diversity, yet spatiotemporal patterns in angiosperm sexual systems and their drivers remain poorly known. Using data on sexual systems and distributions of 68453 angiosperm species, we present the first global maps of sexual system frequencies and evaluate sexual system evolution during the Cenozoic. Frequencies of dioecy and monoecy increase with latitude, while hermaphrodites are more frequent in warm and arid regions. Transitions to dioecy from other states were higher than to hermaphroditism, but transitions away from dioecy increased since the Cenozoic, suggesting that dioecy is not an evolutionary end point. Transitions between hermaphroditism and dioecy increased, while transitions to monoecy decreased with paleo-temperature when paleo-temperature >℃. Our study demonstrates the biogeography of angiosperm sexual systems from a macroecological perspective, and enhances our understanding of plant diversity patterns and their response to climate change.
The Dutch East Indies government adopted the so-called Ethical Policy in the early 20th century, resulting in complex repercussions for Chinese minorities. Education was among the most contended battleground between Dutch authorities and the Chinese community and within the Chinese community itself. While the establishment of the Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan schools galvanized the rise of Chinese nationalistic sentiment, the colonial government also founded a Dutch-language school system specifically tailored for the Chinese to counterweight the potential ideological threat. By exploring the competitions and intricacies between the two systems, this paper seeks to problematize the existing literature that predominantly focuses on only one side of the story. The paper argues that the emergence of the two systems was neither a natural result of the Dutch Ethical Policy nor merely driven by the Indies Chinese’s desperate demand for education. Instead, it vividly reflects various tensions within the heterogeneous Chinese community and its entangled relationships with the transforming colonial state and the ancestral homeland.
From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions.
Acetaminophen (ACE) is commonly used in analgesic and antipyretic drug, which is hardly removed by traditional wastewater treatment processes. Herein, amorphous Co(OH)2 nanocages were explored as peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activator for efficient degradation of ACE. In the presence of amorphous Co(OH)2 nanocages, 100% of ACE removal was reached within 2 min with a reaction rate constant k1 = 3.68 min−1 at optimum pH 5, which was much better than that of crystalline β-Co(OH)2 and Co3O4. Amorphous materials (disorder atom arrangement) with hollow structures possess large specific surface area, more reactive sites, and abundant vacancies structures, which could efficiently facilitate the catalytic redox reactions. The radicals quenching experiment demonstrated that SO4− radicals dominated the ACE degradation rather than OH radicals. The mechanism of ACE degradation was elucidated by the analysis of degradation intermediates and theoretical calculation, indicating that the electrophilic SO4− and OH tend to attack the atoms of ACE with high Fukui index (f −). Our finding highlights the remarkable advantages of amorphous materials as heterogeneous catalysts in sulfate radicals-based AOPs and sheds new lights on water treatment for the degradation of emerging organic contaminants.