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A pot experiment was conducted to explore the plant-assisted degradation efficiency of di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) and pyrene. Three plant species: Ceylon spinach, sunflower, and leaf mustard were cultivated in co-contaminated soils under three contamination levels: control (T0), 20 mg kg−1 (T20), and 50 mg kg−1 (T50). The results showed that a higher DEHP and pyrene degradation efficiency was observed evidently in planted cases, increasing from 42 to 53–59% (T0), 61 to 65–76% (T20) and 52 to 68–78% (T50) for DEHP, and from 22 to 30–49% (T0), 58 to 62–72% (T20), and 54 to 57–70% (T50) for pyrene. Under T20 contamination level, soil phospholipid fatty-acid analysis depicted the increased microbial biomass in rhizosphere, especially the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus that is effective for the degradation of organic pollutants. The study also revealed that the activities of dehydrogenase, acid phosphomonoesterase, urease, and phenol oxidase negatively correlated with pollutant concentration. In general, the removal rate of DEHP and pyrene was highest in the soil planted with leaf mustard for each contamination level considered. For soils at T20 level, sunflower and leaf mustard appeared as interesting phytoremediation plants due to the improved removal rates of organic pollutants and the soil microbial activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A combined analysis of transient simulation and statistical method is proposed for comparative study of signalling methods applied to high-speed backplane transceivers. This method enables fast and accurate signal-to-noise ratio and symbol error rate estimation of a serial link based on a four-dimension design space, including channel characteristics, noise scenarios, equalisation schemes, and signalling methods. The proposed combined analysis method chooses an efficient sampling size for performance evaluation. A comparative study of non-return-to-zero (NRZ), PAM-4, and four-phase shifted sinusoid symbol (PSS-4) using parameterised behaviour-level simulation shows PAM-4 and PSS-4 has substantial advantages over conventional NRZ in most of the cases. A comparison between PAM-4 and PSS-4 shows PAM-4 gets significant bit error rate degradation when noise level is enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Plants and associated microbial communities can actively participate in the biodegradation of organic pollution. Potexperiments were conducted to explore the plant–microbe interrelations on Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) and pyrene degradation in a soil culture system. Three dicotyledonous plant species, Ceylon spinach (Gynuracusimbua(D. Don) S.Moore), sunflower (Helianthus annuusL.), and Shuidong mustard (Brassica juncea(L.) Coss.var.foliosaBailey), were cultivated for 45 days in DEHP and pyrene co-contaminated soils using three initial content levels: 0 (T0), 20 (T20) and 50 mg kg−1(T50) with no plants (NP) as control. The results demonstrated that Shuidong mustard biomass and sunflower biomass had significantly positive correlations with the removal rate of DEHP (P < .05), respectively, while Ceylon spinach biomass has no significant correlation with the removal rate of DEHP. Shuidong mustard–actinomycetes and Ceylon spinach–actinomycetes accelerated the removal rate of pyrene, and sunflower–gram-positive bacteria could also enhance the removal rate of pyrene. Our results suggest that a better understanding of plant–microbe interrelations could be exploited to enhance the phytoremediation of organic co-contaminated soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]