Elemental concentrations of single hair samples taken from 2003 to 2012 had been evaluated by X-ray fluorescence for the assessment of the relation between calcium and cancer. Early results implied a mechanism linking hair and serum element concentrations with a shift in element levels over time. After 2009, pollution-attributable differences were seen in the levels of Ca, Sr, P, Cl, Br, K, S, …
Trace elements (TEs) play an important role in human health. Toxic effects are caused by deficiency or excess of TEs. TEs have significant effects on both dental health and human health. It participates in important biological polyphosphate compound functions such as ATP, DNA, and RNA. TEs are present at different concentrations in the tooth structure. Changes in the density of some TEs affect …
Microelements play different important roles in many physiological processes in all biological systems in both normal physiological and pathological conditions. They take part in the transport of nutrients and gases, support temperature, acid-base balance, homeostasis of the human organisms, maternal and child mental health, the functioning of enzymes, protein and DNA syntheses, cytoskeleton ac…
Introductory Chapter: An Introduction to Trace Elements
Several environmental contaminants including toxic trace metals are being discharged into the coastal environment causing serious threat to marine organisms and posing public health risk. Marine bivalves (mussel, oyster, and clam) have been successfully used as sentinel organisms for monitoring contaminant levels, including trace metals, in coastal waters around the globe. Chemical analyses mea…
When a group of liberal arts students embark on a university assignment about the natural environment, no one could have quite prepared them for the bewildering array of questions and provocations to confront them in their task. What starts out as an earnest attempt to understand nature in the modern world, turns into a philosophical and practical tangle that only a good transdisciplinary educa…
This book explains the EU’s climate policies in an accessible way, to demonstrate the step-by-step approach that has been used to develop these policies, and the ways in which they have been tested and further improved in the light of experience. The latest changes to the legislation are fully explained throughout. The chapters throughout this volume show that no single policy instrument can …
Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars spent, two thirds of people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to electricity, a vital pre-cursor to economic development and poverty reduction. Ambitious international policy commitments seek to address this, but scholarship has failed to keep pace with policy ambitions, lacking both the empirical basis and the theoretical perspective to i…
The fourth Factor X publication from the German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA), Sustainable Development and Resource Productivity: The Nexus Approaches explores the interdependencies of sustainable development paths and associated resource requirements, describing and analysing the necessities for a more resource efficient world.The use of and competition for increasingly scarce reso…
The LIBER Architecture Group reflects on experience of European library building projects from the past twenty years in order to plan the next generation of library buildings. This documentation of recent library building projects accompanies the 14th Seminar of the LIBER Architecture Group, taking place in Budapest and Debrecen (Hungary) 8–12 of April 2008. Most described projects refer to s…