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This work is a small effort in the production of an eco-friendly natural based antibacterial and anti-inflammatory finished cotton fabrics using the ethanolic extracts (Ex) of the sea grass Halophila stipulacea (H. stipulacea) and marine macroalgae [Colbomenia sinuosa (C. sinuosa) and Ulva fasciata (U. fasciata)]. The extracts were phytochemically screened for their constituents. These extracts were used to finish cotton fabrics by a variety of methods. Concerning this, fabrics (F) were singly treated with ethanolic extracts (ExF) of these marine organisms by the dip technique and the extract encapsulated with sodium alginate or meypro gum. The encapsulated fabric (EnF) was further finished individually with citric acid (CA), (EnF/CA) and mono-tert-butyl ether of glycerol (MTBG) binder (EnF/Bin) by the pad-dry-cure technique. The fabrics so-finished were evaluated for their antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activities without washing (control) and after different washing cycles. The results obtained showed that, both EnF/CA and EnF/Bin inhibit the bacterial growth by about 90% after 10 washing cycles for both Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). The anti-inflammatory activity, the potency% reached to 88.3% for the fabric encapsulated with microcapsules of sodium alginate/H. stipulacea sea grass and the EnF/CA.

Disease detection through gas analysis has long been the topic of many studies because of its potential as a rapid diagnostic technique. In particular, the pathogens that cause urinary tract infection (UTI) have been shown to generate different profiles of volatile organic compounds, thus enabling the discrimination of causative agents using an electronic nose. While past studies have performed data collection on either agar culture or jellified urine culture, this study measures the headspace volume of liquid urine culture samples. Evaporation of the liquid and the presence of background compounds during electronic nose (e-nose) device operation could introduce variability to the collected data. Therefore, a headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for quantitating ethanol in the headspace of the urine samples. By leveraging the new method to characterize the sample stability during e-nose measurement, it was revealed that ethanol concentration dropped more than 15% after only three measurement cycles, which equal 30 minutes for this study. It was further shown that by using only data within the first three cycles, better accuracies for between-day classification were achieved, which was 73.7% and 97.0%, compared to using data from within the first nine cycles, which resulted in 65.0% and 81.1% accuracies. Therefore, the newly developed method provides better quality control for data collection, paving ways for the future establishment of a training data library for UTI.

Chromium (Cr) is among the most widespread toxic trace elements found in agricultural soils due to various anthropogenic activities. However, the role of micronutrient-amino chelates on reducing Cr toxicity in crop plants was recently introduced. In the current experiment, the exogenous application of micronutrients [iron (Fe)] chelated with amino acid [lysine (lys)] was examined, using an in vivo approach that involved plant growth and biomass, photosynthetic pigments and gaseous exchange parameters, oxidative stress indicators and antioxidant response. The uptake and accumulation of Fe and Cr were determined under different levels of tannery wastewater (33, 66, 100%) used along with the exogenous supplementation of Fe-lys (5 mM) to Spinacia oleracea plants. Results revealed that tannery wastewater in the soil decreased plant growth and growth-related attributes, photosynthetic apparatus and Fe contents in different parts of the plants. In contrast, the addition of different levels of tannery wastewater to the soil significantly increased the contents of malondialdehyde (MDA), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and electrolyte leakage (EL), which induced oxidative damage in the roots and leaves of S. oleracea plants. However, S. oleracea plants increased the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT) and ascorbate peroxidase (APX), which scavenge the over-production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Cr toxicity can be overcome by the supplementation of Fe-lys, which significantly increased plant growth and biomass, improved photosynthetic machinery and increased the activities of different antioxidative enzymes, even in the plants grown under different levels of tannery wastewater in the soil. Furthermore, the supplementation of Fe-lys increased the contents of essential nutrients (Fe) and decreased the contents of Cr in all plant parts compared to the plants cultivated in tannery wastewater without application of Fe-lys. In conclusion, the application of Fe-lys is an innovative approach to mitigate Cr stress in spinach plants, which not only increased plant growth and biomass but also decreased the Cr contents in different plant organs.

Iron limitation in vast water bodies has been linked to decreased algal productivity, despite different iron-acquiring mechanisms, and the presence of ferritin in many algal species that act as an iron internal reservoir. Therefore, iron fertilization has been proposed to increase algal biomass and photosynthesis. This, in turn, will reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increase oxygen, thereby decreasing global warming, and achieving ecological balance. In addition, algal proliferation will hopefully lead to enhancement in biodiversity, Biological pump, fish productivity and, subsequently marine food industry. Many climate geoengineering experiments in the form of ocean iron fertilization have been conducted globally in order to achieve such a purpose. However, reservations remain as the outcomes are not as promising as were previously expected. As the temporal and spatial scales of iron fertilization experiments are limited, the effects on fish productivity remain speculative. On the other hand, side effects were also recorded. The main purpose of iron fertilization, for carbon dioxide sequestration and global warming mitigation, still remains to be fully realized and verified. Several improvements and future modifications are suggested, and legal issues are discussed in this review.

The freshwater environment suffers from a combination of stressors; pollution and global warming. Multiple effects of copper sulfate, cadmium chloride, and lead nitrate Pb were studied on Nile tilapia under three temperatures ranges, compared to bioremediation using effective microorganisms (EMs). The fish were divided into eight groups, with each group exposed to three temperatures (24, 28, and 32°C). Water physicochemical parameters were measured, and fish hematological, physiological, and biochemical changes were considered. Water quality parameters revealed a significant increase in both electrical conductivity and total dissolved solids in the EM/Cu fish group in the Cu fish group at 32°C. The chemical oxygen demand levels indicated a remarkable fluctuation with a slight decrease in the control group (at 28°C) while reduced in the control and EM. The results were highly significant incomplete blood cells, total red blood cell count, hemoglobin concentration (Hb), hematocrit, mean corpuscular Hb, mean corpuscular Hb concentration, and total protein (g/dl) in the EM group and control group. It can be concluded that using EM in fish farms (1:1000) could help fish adapt to different temperatures and reduce the effects of toxic pollutants.

The present experiment was carried out to study the influences of exogenously-applied nitric oxide (NO) donor sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as seed primers on growth and yield in relation with different physio-biochemical parameters, antioxidant activities, and osmolyte accumulation in wheat plants grown under control (100% field capacity) and water stress (60% field capacity) conditions. During soaking, the seeds were covered and kept in completely dark. Drought stress markedly reduced the plant growth, grain yield, leaf photosynthetic pigments, total phenolic content (TPC), total soluble proteins (TSP), leaf water potential (Ψw), leaf turgor potential (Ψp), osmotic potential (Ψs), and leaf relative water content (LRWC), while it increased the activities of enzymatic antioxidants and the accumulation of leaf ascorbic acid (AsA), proline (Pro), glycine betaine (GB), malondialdehyde (MDA), and H2O2. However, seed priming with SNP and H2O2 alone and in combination mitigated the deleterious effects of water stress on growth and yield by improving the Ψw, Ψs, Ψp, photosynthetic pigments, osmolytes accumulation (GB and Pro), TSP, and the antioxidative defense mechanism. Furthermore, the application of NO and H2O2 as seed primers also reduced the accumulation of H2O2 and MDA contents. The effectiveness was treatment-specific and the combined application was also found to be effective. The results revealed that exogenous application of NO and H2O2 was effective in increasing the tolerance of wheat plants under drought stress in terms of growth and grain yield by regulating plant–water relations, the antioxidative defense mechanism, and accumulation of osmolytes, and by reducing the membrane lipid peroxidation.

Chromium is one of the most significant metals used in the industry. There are many techniques for treating different types of industrial waste water that include chromium ion. In this study, the authors successfully adsorbed the chromium ion from alkaline aqueous solutions using different prepared types of chitosan as adsorbent materials. For the simultaneous sorption behaviour, the adsorption potential of the produced adsorbent was investigated for Cr+6 in a batch system. Natural chitosan was extracted from shrimp shell as it contains about 8–10% chitin which is used in the production of chitosan. The removal percentage of Cr+6 reached 99% after grafting natural and commercial chitosan at specific conditions. Several isotherm models have been used for mechanistic studies. The results indicated that the adsorption data for commercial chitosan is well-fitted by the Freundlich isotherm, Langmuir for commercial grafted, natural and natural grafted chitosan. Kinetic and equilibrium studies showed that the experimental data of Cr+6 were better described by the pseudo-first-order model for commercial chitosan and fitted the pseudo-second-order model for different types of chitosan used. Significantly, in order to scale this effective strategy on an industrial scale, response surface methodology (RSM) was used as a modelling tool to optimise process parameters such as ion concentrations, utilising Statistica Software.