Statistical Analysis of Polycyclic Aromatic

Hydrocarbons Projects

Jianguo Feng, Guihua Li, Jintang Zhang, and Le Xia

Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Depositional Mineralization & Sedimentary

Minerals, College of Geological Sciences & Engineering,
Shandong University of Science and Technology Qingdao Shandong Province, 266590, China
fengjianguo20316@sohu.com

Abstract. With the rapid economic and social development of China, the
attention to environment is higher and higher by common people. To analyses
central government’s attention level, projects of polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAHs) funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (NSFC) in 1999 ~ 2011 were analyzed from project quantity distribution,
fund distribution, subject distribution, units and departments distribution. All
the data were collected by search function on ISIS. The results show that: the
number of projects funded and funding improved steadily; in the subject, units
and departments in terms of uneven distribution, showed strong dispersion; for
a long period of time, the question will always be researching focus.

Keywords: National Natural Science Foundation of China, polycyclic aromatic

hydrocarbons, statistical analysis.

1 Introduction

The competition among nations is the competition of technology and talent. As

reported on the 17th congress of the Communist Party of China, it is the core of the
development strategy and the key to improve the comprehensive national strength to
build an innovative country. In 21st century, our scientific undertaking is developing
by leaps and bounds, which is owed to the effect of the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (NSFC) [1].
In recent years, as the steady improvement of the comprehensive national strength,
China is paying more and more attention to strengthening the basic research, and the
NSFC is one of important projects on basic researches. The NSFC was founded in
1986, which has formed the evaluation principle that relying on experts, promoting
democracy, supporting preferentially, equitable and rational, established a mechanism
that equal competition, scientific and democratic, encouraging creativity, brought into
play the function that guidance, stabilization, incentives. After 20 years of continuous
exploration and development, NSFC has formed three funding levels of importance
project, emphasis project and surface project .It also has formed a funding pattern
which is combined of many kinds of funding types and special funds [2].

C. Liu, L. Wang, and A. Yang (Eds.): ICICA 2012, Part I, CCIS 307, pp. 288–293, 2012.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
 Statistical Analysis of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Projects 289

Now, the research data about the funding of the NSFC is as follows:
1) The NSFC has published the statistical reports of NSFC and the relevant
contents can be got from Statistical projects on the home page of the NSFC (As of
press time, it contains the data from 2001 to 2010. http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/
nsfc/cen/xmtj/index.html). The reports of 2010 analysis from the applications and
funding of the surface project, the Outstanding Youth Science Foundation, the key
project, the National Science Found for Distinguished Young Scholars of China, the
Research Fund for Scholars of Hong Kong, Macao and overseas and so on (the grant
of the NSFC in 2010).
2) Some experts and scholars have done some analysis aimed at the NSFC, such as
the analysis to the surface project in the field of atmospheric science from1986 to
2006 using the quantitative data of the project application forms and concluding
reports on the project files' electronic inquiring system of the NSFC by Xiaogang
Zhou [3],the analysis to the NSFC from 2006 to 2008 through the number and the
importance of items by Ying Li [4],the analysis to the NSFC about entomology of
2010 by Xiuxia Lv [5].
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) is a kind of hydrocarbons containing
two or more benzene rings and lining in line, angle, or clumps. There are more than
400 kinds with the effect of causing cancer in the PAHs which has been found. And
[a] has the strongest cancer toxicity, so it is used as the environment pollution index
by PAHs. PAHs have become the organic pollutants with the common concern. EPA
issued 129 kinds of priority monitoring pollutants in 1979, including 16 kinds of
PAHs. China also has listed 7 kinds of PAHs in China environmental priority
pollutants black list. The accumulation in the environment of PAHs is a serious threat
to human health [6-7].
Zhou Lihong, Wen-Chang Zhao [8-9] have shown that,PAHs in the air, water, river
(or lake) sediments and soil, a large part comes from the hydrocarbons in coal
incomplete combustion or hydrolyze in a reducing atmosphere. In addition, a part of
aromatic compounds forms low molecular weight PAHs in plant coalification process,
and this part of PAHs in coal with solid or liquid phase. PAHs in the raw coal were
heated and evaporated out is another source of PAHs in the environment [10].
This paper uses the comprehensive search function on ISIS system projects of the
NSFC (http://159.226.244.22/portal/proj_search.asp) with PAHs for the project
subject. It does an inquiry to the funded projects from 1999 to 2011 and makes a
statistical analysis from the NSFA and in China's scientific research development.

2 Funding Statistics

2.1 Number of Funded Project

NSFC has aided 193 projects related to PAHs from 1999 to 2011. Figure1 shows the
number of foundation project of each year.
Figure1 shows that the funding number related to PAHs form 1999 to 2006 is
relatively less, and rapid increase from 2007, 2011 up to 45 items.