Prospect of China's ambient air quality standards

Ambient air quality standards are the core strategic goal of ambient air quality management.Countries worldwide have given importance to research on the development of ambient air quality standards.To understand the history of the development of China’s ambient air quality standards,this study analyzed the background associated with all previous formulations and revisions of the standards,classification of functional areas,standard grading,pollutants,and evolution of the standard limits over the past 40 years.The results show that since the initial release of the“Ambient Air Quality Standard”by China in 1982,it has been supplemented once,revised twice,and modified twice.The first ambient air quality standard specified the standard limits of six pollutants commonly found in ambient air.With the development of ambient air quality management,the number of pollutants has increased to ten.Since the release of the“Ambient Air Quality Standards”in 2012,the ambient air quality in China has significantly improved.However,the proportion of cities meeting these standards is still low.At present,China is suitably positioned to make the standards associated with 24 hr SO2concentrations more stringent such that it meets the values defined in the World Health Organization(WHO)interim target-2 and the WHO air quality guideline(AQG).We further suggested that the SO2standard should be revised promptly.Simultaneously,regions with a relatively high proportion of cities meeting the standard are encouraged to introduce more stringent interim target limits in due course to manage the local ambient air quality.

Comparison of inorganic chemical compositions of atmospheric TSP,PM10 and PM2.5 in northern and southern Chinese coastal cities

To compare the inorganic chemical compositions of TSP（total suspended paniculate）,PM10（particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm） and PM2.5（particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm） in southern and northern cities in China,atmospheric particles were synchronously collected in Dalian（the northern city）and Xiamen（the southern city） in spring and autumn of 2004.The mass concentrations,twenty-three elements and nine soluble ions were assessed.The results show that in Dalian,the mass concentrations of Mg,Al,Ca,Mn and Fe in spring were 4.0-10.1,2.6-8.0,4.1-12,1.2-3.6 and 2.9-7.9 times higher,respectively,than those in Xiamen.The dust storm influence is more obvious in Dalian in spring.However,in Xiamen,heavy metals accounted for 13.9%-17.9%of TSP,while heavy metals contributed to 5.5%-9.3%of TSP in Dalian.These concentrations suggest that heavy metal pollution in Xiamen was more serious.In addition,the concentrations of Na＋,Cl-,Ca2＋ and Mg2＋ were higher in Dalian due to the influence of marine aerosol,construction activities and soil dust.The NO3-/SO42- ratios in Dalian（0.25-0.49） were lower than those in Xiamen（0.51-0.62）,indicating that the contributions of vehicle emission to particles in Xiamen were higher.Coefficient of divergence values was higher than 0.40,implying that the inorganic chemical composition profiles for the particles of Dalian and Xiamen were quite different from each other.

Vernier But Not Grating Acuity Contributes to an Early Stage of Visual Word Processing

The process of reading words depends heavily on efficient visual skills, including analyzing and decomposing basic visual features. Surprisingly, previous reading-related studies have almost exclusively focused on gross aspects of visual skills, while only very few have investigated the role of finer skills. The present study filled this gap and examined the relations of two finer visual skills measured by grating acuity（the ability to resolve periodic luminance variations across space） and Vernier acuity（the ability to detect/discriminate relative locations of features） to Chinese character-processing as measured by character form-matching and lexical decision tasks in skilled adult readers. The results showed that Vernier acuity was significantly correlated with performance in character form-matching but not visual symbol formmatching, while no correlation was found between grating acuity and character processing. Interestingly, we found no correlation of the two visual skills with lexical decisionperformance. These findings provide for the first time empirical evidence that the finer visual skills, particularly as reflected in Vernier acuity, may directly contribute to an early stage of hierarchical word processing.