With fresh bitter melon and green tea as main ingredients, xylitol, sucrose and citric acid as auxiliary ingredients, a new cool health tea beverage was developed. The optimum formula of low sugar bitter melon green tea compound beverage was developed by single factor experiment and orthogonal test based on sensory evaluation. The results showed that the optimum formula was as follows: Bitter melon juice was added at 7%, green tea extract was added at 20%, total xylitol and sucrose was 6% (mass ratio 1:1), citric acid was added at 0.2%, and the volume was fixed to 100% with deionized water. The product has light green color, harmonious aroma, moderate acidity and sweetness, and clear texture. The aftertaste is long, with tea polyphenol content of 342 mg/kg, soluble solids of 5.2% and pH 5.8.

Flood risk analysis is the instrument by which floodplain and stormwater utility managers create strategic adaptation plans to reduce the likelihood of flood damages in their communities, but there is a need to develop a screening tool to analyze watersheds and identify areas that should be targeted and prioritized for mitigation measures. The authors developed a screening tool that combines readily available data on topography, groundwater, surface water, tidal information for coastal communities, soils, land use, and precipitation data. Using the outputs of the screening tool for various design storms, a means to identify and prioritize improvements to be funded with scarce capital funds was developed, which combines the likelihood of flooding from the screening tool with a consequence of flooding assessment based on land use and parcel size. This framework appears to be viable across cities that may be inundated with water due to sea-level rise, rainfall, runoff upstream, and other natural events. The framework was applied to two communities using the 1-day 100-year storm event: one in southeast Broward County with an existing capital plan and one inland community with no capital plan.

The national park with Chinese characteristics is the highest level of protection of a kind of natural protection, its establishment marks the park will implement the strictest ecological protection means. It is of great value to construct the utilization system of national park resources under the new natural protected area system in the new era to avoid the misunderstanding of “ecological protection only” and explore how to carry out the sustainable utilization of resources in the reform of national park system and mechanism. According to the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Delphi method, the evaluation framework, indicators, reference standards and weights of resource utilization under the national park system were determined in combination with the requirements of constructing the protected natural area system and the total value of resource ecosystem services (including harvest value, existence value and future value). Based on the application research of Bawangling zone of Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, the optimal resource utilization system in the future was proposed, and two optimization strategies of ecological adjustment of resource utilization system and construction of suitable resource utilization system were put forward.

Increasingly, U.S. cities are focusing on transit-oriented development (TOD) policies to expand the stock of higher-density, mixed-use development near public transit stations within the context of a transit corridor and, in most cases, a regional metropolis. A TOD zone relies on a regulatory and institutional environment, public and private participation and investment, and development incentives to create vibrant, people-oriented communities and mobility options and to support business development. TODs provide local governments with more tax revenues due to increased property values (and, as applicable, income and sales tax revenues), but most planning for TODs ignores the non-transit infrastructure costs of increasing development density. This study focused on determining the water and sewer infrastructure costs for TOD zones along a rail line in southeast Florida. The finding was that millions of dollars in funds are needed to meet those water and sewer needs and that few are currently planned as a part of community capital improvement programs.