Carbon Dioxide

Health care is ubiquitous in the lives of industrialized people. Yet, every medical development, technique, and procedure impact the environment. Green Bioethics synthesizes environmental ethics and biomedical ethics, thus creating an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable health care. Notably, Green Bioethics addresses, not the structure of environmental sustainability in health care institutions, but the sustainability of individual health care offerings.

Green Bioethics parallels traditional biomedical ethics by providing four principles for ethical guidance. Through these four principles, Green Bioethics presents a coherent framework for evaluating the sustainability of medical developments, techniques, and procedures. The principles of Green Bioethics are:
- Distributive Justice (Allocate Basic Medical Resources before Special Interest Access)
- Resource Conservation (Provide Health Care Needs before Health Care Wants)
- Simplicity (Reduce Dependence on Medical Interventions)
- Ethical Economics (Humanistic Health Care Instead of Financial Profit)

The future of our world may very well depend on how effectively we halt ecological destruction and conserve our resources. The principles of Green Bioethics, in tandem with the concrete examples given in this book, will support sustainability in health care.

The South American lungfish, Lepidosiren paradoxa inhabits seasonal environments in the Central Amazon and Paraná-Paraguay basins that undergo significant oscillations in temperature throughout the year. They rely on different gas exchange organs, such as gills and skin for aquatic gas exchange while their truly bilateral lungs are responsible for aerial gas exchange; however, there are no data available on the individual contributions of the skin and the gills to total aquatic gas exchange in L. paradoxa. Thus, in the present study we quantify the relative contributions of skin and gills on total aquatic gas exchange during warm (35°C) and cold exposure (20°C) in addition to the effects of aerial and aquatic hypercarbia on aquatic gas exchange and gill ventilation rate (fG; 25°C), respectively. Elevated temperature (35°C) caused a significant increase in the contribution of cutaneous (from 0.61±0.13 to 1.34±0.26ml. STPD.h(-1)kg(-1)) and branchial (from 0.54±0.17 to 1.73±0.53ml. STP...

The performance of a hollow fibre artificial lung ('Capiox E') was analysed by measurement of the 'parallel deadspace' of the device under varying conditions in 21 patients. The efficiency with which carbon dioxide was exchanged was determined by the time available for equilibration between the blood and gas phases. When this equilibration coefficient was less than 12 seconds per litre of blood flow per litre of gas flow, there was a marked reduction in the efficiency of gas exchange. Under certain conditions, the 'counter-current' design of the device apparently permitted the clearance of carbon dioxide at a partial pressure greater than that which was found in the mixed venous blood. This anomalous behaviour may represent in vivo confirmation of the Haldane effect.

We investigated whether spiders fed lipid-rich rather than protein-rich prey elevate metabolism to avoid carrying excessive lipid deposits, or whether they store ingested lipids as a buffer against possible future starvation. We fed wolf spiders (Pardosa prativaga) prey of different lipid:protein compositions and measured the metabolic rate of spiders using closed respirometry during feeding and fasting. After a 16-day feeding period, spider lipid:protein composition was significantly affected by the lipid:protein composition of their prey. Feeding caused a large and fast increase in metabolism. The cost of feeding and digestion was estimated to average 21% of the ingested energy irrespective of diet. We found no
difference in basal metabolic rate between dietary treatments. During starvation ˙VO2 and ˙VCO2 decreased gradually, and the larger lipid stores in spiders fed lipid-rich prey appeared to extend survival of these spiders under starvation compared to spiders fed protein-rich prey. The results show that these spiders do not adjust metabolism in order to maintain a constant body composition when prey nutrient composition varies. Instead, lipids are stored efficiently and help to prepare the spiders for the long periods of food deprivation that may occur as a consequence of their opportunistic feeding strategy.

In this study, 27 CDC traps were modified with various attractive features and compared with a CDC trap with no light source or baits to evaluate the effects on attraction to Phlebotomus papatasi (Scopoli) north of the Dead Sea near Jericho. Attractive features included CO2, lights, colored trap bodies, heat, moisture, chemical lures and different combinations of the same. Traps were placed 20m apart and rotated from one trap location to the next after 24h trapping periods. The most significant attractive feature was CO2, which attracted more sand flies than any other feature evaluated. Ultraviolet light was the next most attractive feature, followed by incandescent light. When evaluated alone, black or white trap bodies, heat and moisture, all influenced trap catch but effects were greater when these attractive features were used together. The results of this study suggest that traps with CO2 and UV light could be used in batteries as control interventions if suitable CO2 sources b...

This study projects electricity savings, cost-benefit analysis and emission reduction of lighting retrofits in Malaysia residential sector. The cost-benefit is determined as a function of energy savings due to retrofit of more efficient lighting system. The energy savings were calculated based on 25, 50 and 75% of potential retrofits of inefficient lighting in residential sector. The study found that, this strategy save a significant amount of energy and consumers money. However, an effort to create energy efficiency awareness among consumers and subsidies efficient lighting should be identified, because this efficient lighting is quite expensive in Malaysia. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0378778804003329/1-s2.0-S0378778804003329-main.pdf?_tid=350c247c-a9c6-11e3-99d9-00000aab0f01&acdnat=1394615631_782b65a7b4a65cc35b795363f0df0acb 
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778804003329

One limitation of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic response has been the lack of widely available, practical tools to measure factors, such as ventilation and airflow, that can impact transmission risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that steps be taken to improve ventilation in healthcare facilities, schools, businesses, and households. 1 However, limited guidance has been provided on how to evaluate the adequacy of ventilation. To be useful in real-world settings, tools to assess ventilation must be inexpensive, safe, and easy to use. An ideal tool would provide rapid and easy-to-interpret results that could be used to identify areas with inadequate ventilation and to assess the impact of interventions. One promising candidate as a practical tool to assess ventilation is carbon dioxide monitoring using inexpensive handheld devices that measure carbon dioxide concentrations. The concentration of carbon dioxide in outdoor air is ∼400 parts per million (ppm) versus ∼40,000 ppm in exhaled breath. 2 Thus, carbon dioxide levels rise in occupied spaces that are inadequately ventilated. 2 According to the CDC, carbon dioxide readings >800 ppm in buildings are an indicator of suboptimal ventilation requiring intervention. 1 Carbon dioxide monitoring has been used to assess ventilation and to identify measures to reduce risk in settings such as schools, university buildings, dental offices, motor vehicles, and hospitals. 3-7 The most important limitation of carbon dioxide monitoring is that it does not account for filtering of air. For example, carbon dioxide levels rise above 800 ppm in the cabin of airplanes both in flight and during boarding and deplaning, but the risk for viral transmission may remain low because the air conditioning system provides rapid recirculation of air through high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters. 5 Other potential tools to assess ventilation include handheld particle counters and devices that measure total volatile organic compounds. 8,9 In an assessment of ventilation in public spaces,

The leaf economics spectrum (LES) represents a suite of intercorrelated leaf traits concerning construction costs per unit leaf area, nutrient concentrations, and rates of carbon fixation and tissue turnover. Although broad trade-offs among leaf structural and physiological traits have been demonstrated, we still do not have a comprehensive view of the fundamental constraints underlying the LES trade-offs. Here, we investigated physiological and structural mechanisms underpinning the LES by analysing a novel data compilation incorporating rarely considered traits such as the dry mass fraction in cell walls, nitrogen allocation, mesophyll CO2 diffusion and associated anatomical traits for hundreds of species covering major growth forms. The analysis demonstrates that cell wall constituents are major components of leaf dry mass (18-70%), especially in leaves with high leaf mass per unit area (LMA) and long lifespan. A greater fraction of leaf mass in cell walls is typically associated...

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) produces three-dimensional objects directly from a computer-aided design (CAD) solid model, without part-specific tooling, by repeatedly depositing thin layers of fusible powder and selectively sintering each layer to the next with a ...

A thermodynamic equilibrium analysis on the multi-reaction system for carbon dioxide reforming of methane in view of carbon formation was performed with Aspen plus based on direct minimization of Gibbs free energy method. The effects of CO 2 /CH 4 ratio (0.5–3), reaction temperature (573–1473 K) and pressure (1–25 atm) on equilibrium conversions, product compositions and solid carbon were studied. Numerical analysis revealed that the optimal working conditions for syngas production in Fischer–Tropsch synthesis were at temperatures higher than 1173 K for CO 2 /CH 4 ratio being 1 at which about 4 mol of syngas (H 2 /CO = 1) could be produced from 2 mol of reactants with negligible amount of carbon formation. Although temperatures above 973 K had suppressed the carbon formation, the moles of water formed increased especially at higher CO 2 /CH 4 ratios (being 2 and 3). The increment could be attributed to RWGS reaction attested by the enhanced number of CO moles, declined H 2 moles and...