Embassies are important buildings, involving the diplomatic image of a country’s government in another foreign country. Given the rising tensions between countries, either political, economic, religion or war, attacks on embassies have been increasing in recent years. Thus, it is evident that appropriate measures are to be taken to reduce the potential impact of an attack. The paper discusses the measures in enhancing building security of embassies. The principles for Security Planning and Design are discussed, followed by an introduction to a systematic security risk assessment framework. The framework is evaluated regarding the potential security risk posed by an attack against elements of the mega infrastructure using explosives. Further options to increase the security of embassies are also explored to reduce the risk of a potential attack. A security-enhanced building, planned and constructed well to specifications, can provide benefits to the client, including greater cost advantage and increase of value for the structure.

Phytomediation is an environmentally friendly green rehabilitation technology that is often incorporated with an application to improve calcium peroxide and phytohormones required for the growth of agricultural plants with the expectation to improve the effectiveness of plant rehabilitation. This study mainly consists of two parts: (1) water culture experiment and (2) pot culture experiment. In the water culture experiment, we attempt to understand the influence of the addition of calcium peroxide, phytohormones (IAA and GA₃) and a chelating agent on the growth of sunflower plants. However, in the pot culture experiment, when hormones and the chelating agent EDTA are introduced to different plant groups at the same time, if the nutrition in the water required by plants is not available, the addition of the hormone cannot negate the toxicity caused by EDTA. In terms of calcium peroxide, due to quick release of oxygen in water, this study fails to apply calcium peroxide to the water culture experiment.

When the pot culture experiment is used to examine the influence of hormones at different concentration levels on the growth of sunflowers, GA₃ 10^-8 M is reported to have the optimal effectiveness, followed by IAA 10^-8 M; IAA 10^-12 M has the lowest effectiveness. According to an accumulation analysis of heavy metals at different levels, GA₃ concentrates in leaves to transport nutrition in soil to leaves. This results in an excellent TF value of 2.329G of GA₃ than 1.845 of the control group indicating that the addition of the hormone and chelating agent to GA₃ increases the TF value and the chelating agent is beneficial to the sunflower plant. If we examine phytoattenuation ability, the one-month experiment was divided into three stages for ten days each. The concentration level of heavy metals in the soil at each stage dropped continuously while that of the control group decreased from 31.63 mg/kg to 23.96 mg/kg, GA₃ from 32.09 mg/kg to 23.04 mg/kg and EDTA from 30.65 mg/kg to 25.93 mg/kg indicating the quickest growth period of the sunflowers from the formation of the bud to blossom. During the stage, the quick upward transportation of nutrition results in quick accumulation of heavy metals; the accumulated speed of heavy metals is found higher than that of directly planted plants. This study shows an improvement in the effectiveness of the addition of hormones on plant extraction and when rehabilitation is incorporated with sunflowers with the beginning bud formation, better treatment effectiveness can be reached.

Regarding to the influence of chloride and fluoride ions on the corrosion resistance, the electrochemical behavior of Ti alloys has been deeply studied. In this work, the main goal was to investigate the electrochemical behavior of cp-Ti and Ti-Mo alloys containing 6, 10 and 15 wt% of Mo concentrations. All the samples were immersed in different solutions, such as 0.15 mol L^-1 Na₂SO₄, 0.15 mol L^-1 Ringer, 0.15 mol L^-1 Ringer plus 0.036 mol L^-1 NaF and 0.036 mol L^-1 NaF. Simulating the commercial fluorinated gels, the NaF solutions naturally-aerated were prepared with 1450 ppm of fluoride ions. The electrochemical techniques applied in this work were the open-circuit potential, cyclic voltammetry, besides the technique for chemical identification, which was X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The formation and growth of TiO₂ and MoO₂ were identified, without pitting corrosion. The electrochemical stability and the corrosion resistance of the Ti-Mo alloys decreased in the solutions containing chloride and fluoride ions, with an appreciative decrease especially in the fluorinated medium. The Ti-Mo alloy with higher Mo content concentration was the material with higher corrosion resistance. Therefore, it is a promising candidate as a biomaterial, once the osseointegration needs a satisfactory corrosion resistance for being achieved.

The objective of this research is to examine the effects of income inequality, governance quality, and their interaction on environmental quality in Asian countries. Time series data are obtained from 45 Asian countries for the period 1996–2020 for this empirical analysis. The research has performed various econometric tests to ensure the robustness and reliability of the results. We have addressed different econometric issues, such as autocorrelation, heteroskedasticity, and cross-sectional dependence, using the Driscoll-Kraay (DK) standard error estimation and endogeneity issues by the system generalized method of moments (S-GMM). The results of the study revealed that income inequality and governance quality have a positive impact on environmental degradation, while the interaction of governance quality with income inequality has a negative effect on it. In addition, economic growth, population growth, urbanization, and natural resource dependency are found to deteriorate the quality of the environment. The findings of the study offer insightful policies to reduce environmental degradation in Asian countries.