Ammonia (NH3) emissions, mainly from agricultural sources, generate substantial health damage due to the adverse effects on air quality. NH3 emission reduction strategies are still far from being effective. In particular, a growing trade network in this era of globalization offers untapped emission mitigation potential that has been overlooked. Here we show that about one-fourth of global agricultural NH3 emissions in 2012 are trade-related. Globally they induce 61 thousand PM2.5-related premature mortalities, with 25 thousand deaths associated with crop cultivation and 36 thousand deaths with livestock production. The trade-related health damage network is regionally integrated and can be characterized by three trading communities. Thus, effective cooperation within trade-dependent communities will achieve considerable NH3 emission reductions allowed by technological advancements and trade structure adjustments. Identification of regional communities from network analysis offers a new perspective on addressing NH3 emissions and is also applicable to agricultural greenhouse gas emissions mitigation.
System efficient electrostatic discharge (ESD) design is an effective method for simulating the ESD behaviors of a system. Based on this simulation method, this article mainly investigates the transient behaviors of a system-level ESD protection circuit with and without a 2.5 V power supply. During power-ON state, latch-up levels of a feedback power clamp protected by off-chip elements are predicted and mainly analyzed under machine model stress. During power-OFF state, the physical failure of a hybrid-triggered power clamp under surge stress is investigated. In addition to the utilization of transmission line pulsing (TLP) I-V curves, transient TLP waveforms are also used for building the component modelsin the system-level ESD protection circuit. Moreover, the relevant measurements for the power-ON state and power-OFF state areincluded in this article for verifying the simulation results. For ESD designers, this article provides a complete modeling and analysisprocess of co-design protection circuit to investigate the electrical behaviors.
Introduction: The COVID-19 global epidemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is a great public health emergency. Discovering antiviral drug candidates is urgent for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Objectives: This work aims to discover natural SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors from the traditional Chinese herbal medicine licorice. Methods: We screened 125 small molecules from Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch. (licorice, Gan-Cao) by virtual ligand screening targeting the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Potential hit compounds were further evaluated by ELISA, SPR, luciferase assay, antiviral assay and pharmacokinetic study. Results: The triterpenoids licorice-saponin A3 (A3) and glycyrrhetinic acid (GA) could potently inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection, with EC50 of 75 nM and 3.17 µM, respectively. Moreover, we reveal that A3 mainly targets the nsp7 protein, and GA binds to the spike protein RBD of SARS-CoV-2. Conclusion: In this work, we found GA and A3 from licorice potently inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection by affecting entry and replication of the virus. Our findings indicate that these triterpenoids may contribute to the clinical efficacy of licorice for COVID-19 and could be promising candidates for antiviral drug development. Keywords: COVID-19; Glycyrrhetinic acid; Licorice; Licorice-saponin A3; SARS-CoV-2.
The common pool resource (CPR) theory has made invaluable contributions to the governance of natural resources in the past decades, but few literatures have specifically paid attention to the different property right arrangements of resource system and resource units, and their relationship. In this paper, we take two types of grassland property right system on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) in China, one is grassland contract system under that the previous grassland common use was given up and the other is grazing quota system under that the common use is still kept in the community level, as cases to present the different consequences on the ecological conditions, herders’ livelihoods and livestock husbandry. Furthermore, from the perspective of property rights of resource system-units, we explore why the two systems resulted in the different consequences. We find that the grazing quota system indicated by the number of livestock each household allowed to raise has more advantages in improving the herders’ livelihoods and reducing the livestock production costs, and both systems could alleviate the grazing pressure though the long-term effects of the contract system might be negative on ecological conditions. The main reason why the grazing quota system works better is that this type of individual use rights were clarified based on the resource units so the grassland could be kept common use as an integrated resource system, while the contract system was claimed by physically dividing the resource system by fencing, thus the resource system was fragmented which led to mismatch with the large scope movement needs of livestock grazing. We argue that, theoretically, the grazing quota system is a private property rights embedded in the grassland common property right system, which forms a nested property right regime. Our findings have important implications for both of the CPR theory and practical rangeland management worldwide.
A growing number of governments and companies are pledging net-zero emissions by 2050. For the US as a whole to achieve this requires eliminating or offsetting today's emission of ~6 billion tCO2e/year. There is a dearth of analysis for understanding requirements, costs, and impacts of this transition. The goal of this study is to help fill this gap by providing insights at visceral, human scales of how the nation will look following a pathway to net-zero and the localized benefits, costs, and impacts for different industries, professions, and communities. The analysis aims to inform debates on public and corporate policies needed to achieve net-zero, but specific policy recommendations are not offered.Energy service demands projected to 2050 by the EIA for 14 regions across the continental US provide the starting point for modeling. Five different pathways are constructed for meeting these demands by varying exogenously applied constraints to create the different pathways.End-use technologies to meet service demands are exogenously specified in 5-year time steps to determine final energy demands that must be delivered by the energy supply system. Pathways to net-zero emissions by 2050 are constructed by finding the energy supply mix that minimizes the 30-year NPV of total energy-system costs, subject to exogenous constraints. The model has perfect foresight and seamless integration between all sectors. These modeling results are “downscaled” to state or sub-state geographies to quantify local plant and infrastructure investments, construction activities, land-use, jobs, and health impacts, 2020 - 2050.