Proposition on Improving Environmental Forensic System in China

In the early period of China,economy developed rapidly at the cost of environment.Recently,it is generally recognized that the heavily polluted environment not only puts a brake on economic development but also paces negative impact on people’health as well as probably next decades of generations.Accordingly,the latest Environmental Protection Law revised in 2014 makes a clear‑cut division of environmental responsibility and regulates stricter penalties of breaching law.As the new environmental law is enforced gradually,environmental forensic is increasingly required in the process of ascertaining facts in judicial proceedings of environmental cases.Based on the outcomes of documentary analysis for all environmental cases judged on the basis of new environmental law,it is concluded that there still exists problems in the present system of environmental forensic.Thus,this paper is aimed to make proposition on improving Chinese environmental forensic system,which involves:(i)promoting capability of EFS to handle professional questions;(ii)develop price mechanism;(iii)multidepartments cooperate to establish unifying and complete EFS system;and(iv)enhance the probative value of results of EFS.Such protocol for amending present regulation on environmental forensic is of significant importance because a quality report of environmental forensic will contribute to provide strong probative evidence of culprits’activity of releasing contaminant into environment,degree of damages for victims,and above all,causality between the behavior of public nuisance and damages.

Biofuel production from lignocellulose via thermophile-based consolidated bioprocessing

The depletion of fossil fuels and their impact on the environment have led to efforts to develop alternative sustainable fuels.While biofuel derived from lignocellulose is considered a sustainable,renewable,and green energy source,enhancing biofuel production and achieving a cost-effective bioconversion of lignocellulose at existing bio-refineries remains a challenge.Consolidated bioprocessing(CBP)using thermophiles can simplify this operation by integrating multiple processes,such as hydrolytic enzyme production,lignocellulose degrada-tion,biofuel fermentation,and product distillation.This paper reviews recent developments in the conversion of lignocellulose to biofuel using thermophile-based CBP.First,advances in thermostable enzyme and thermophilic lignocellulolytic microorganism discovery and development for lignocellulosic biorefinery use are outlined.Then,several thermophilic CBP candidates and thermophilic microbes engineered to drive CBP of lignocellulose are reviewed.CRISPR/Cas-based genome editing tools developed for thermophiles are also highlighted.The poten-tial applications of the Design-Build-Test-Learn(DBTL)synthetic biology strategy for designing and constructing thermophilic CBP hosts are also discussed in detail.Overall,this review illustrates how to develop highly sophis-ticated thermophilic CBP hosts for use in lignocellulosic biorefinery applications.