Nanocarrier-mediated co-delivery systems for lung cancer therapy: recent developments and prospects

Environmental Chemistry Letters - Research has recently focused on combinational therapy using nanocarriers to overcome the obstacles associated with conventional therapy of lung cancer. The...     

Effect of pH on the fate of fenazaquin in soil and water under laboratory-simulated condition

The persistence of fenazaquin (4-t-butylphenylethyl quinazolin-4-yl ether) was studied in three different soils, namely, Gangetic alluvial (pH 6.9), laterite (pH 5.3), and terai (pH 5.1) soil and in water at three different pH values (4.0, 7.0, and 9.2) under laboratory-simulated condition and samples were analyzed upto 60 days at regular intervals. Fenazaquin was applied at 5 and 10 µg g^?1 for each soil and at 0.2 and 0.4 µg mL^?1 to each water sample. Dissipation of fenazaquin in soil and water followed first-order kinetics irrespective of any treatments. The half-life of fenazaquin was found in the range of 47–64 days in soils and 3.49–37.6 days in water irrespective of dose. The persistence of fenazaquin in soil significantly increased in the order of Gangetic alluvial soil (pH 6.9) > laterite soil (pH 5.3) > terai soil (pH 5.1), whereas in water the trend of persistence was pH 9.2 ≥ pH 7.0 > pH 4.0. The dissipation of fenazaquin in soil and water was found to be dependent on pH irrespective of doses.     

Arsenic-induced health crisis in peri-urban Moyna and Ardebok villages, West Bengal, India: an exposure assessment study

Drinking of arsenic (As)-contaminated groundwater has adverse effects on health of millions of people worldwide. This study aimed to determine the degree of severity of As exposure from drinking water in peri-urban Moyna and Ardebok villages, West Bengal, India. Arsenic concentrations in hair, nail and urine samp les of the individuals were determined. Arsenical dermatosis, keratosis and melanosis were investigated through medical evaluation. We have evaluated the association between As exposure from drinking water, and keratosis and melanosis outcomes. The results showed that 82.7?% of the sampled tube wells contain As concentrations above 10?μg/L, while 57.7?% contain As concentrations above 50?μg/L. The hair, nail and urine As concentrations were positively correlated with As concentrations in drinking water. In our study population, we observed a strong association between As concentrations ranging 51-99?μg/L and keratosis and melanosis outcomes, although the probability decreases at higher concentration ranges perhaps due to switching away from the use of As-contaminated tube wells for drinking and cooking purposes. High As concentrations in hair, nail and urine were observed to be associated with the age of the study population. The level of As concentrations in hair, nail and urine samples of the study population indicated the degree of severity of As exposure in the study region.     

A Bayesian approach to multi-source forest area estimation

In efforts such as land use change monitoring, carbon budgeting, and forecasting ecological conditions and timber supply, there is increasing demand for regional and national data layers depicting forest cover. These data layers must permit small area estimates of forest area and, most importantly, provide associated error estimates. This paper presents a model-based approach for coupling mid-resolution satellite imagery with plot-based forest inventory data to produce estimates of probability of forest and associated error at the pixel-level. The proposed Bayesian hierarchical model provides access to each pixel’s posterior predictive distribution allowing for a highly flexible analysis of pixel and multi-pixel areas of interest. The paper presents a trial using multiple dates of Landsat imagery and USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis plot data. The results describe the spatial dependence structure within the trial site, provide pixel and multi-pixel summaries of probability of forest land use, and explore discretization schemes of the posterior predictive distributions to forest and non-forest classes. Model prediction results of a holdout set analysis suggest the proposed model provides high classification accuracy, 88%, for the trial site.

Impact of Fly Ash from Coal-Fired Power Stations in Delhi, with Particular Reference to Metal Contamination

Indraprastha Power Station (IPP Stn) and Rajghat Power House (RPH), owned by Delhi Electric Supply Undertaking, are both coal-fired power stations located on Ring Road in New Delhi. Ash content of the coal used ranges between 38–47%. The ash is collected in electrostatic precipitators which have an efficiency of 99.3% (IPP station), and 99.7% (RPH). There are instances of major dust pollution around the power stations from fly ash dispersal. The main method of disposal of fly ash from the power stations is by mixing with water, the resultant slurry is pumped through pipes to ash disposal ponds. The supernatant from these ponds is discharged into River Yamuna. Field studies have revealed large quantities of fly ash being deposited into the river. Local populations of Eichhornia crassipes have reduced dramatically between 1987–1995, with a marked reduction in the year 1994–1995. Field studies, conducted in January, 1995 have investigated the impact of fly ash dispersal in the Delhi region with particular reference to metal contamination. Elemental concentrations for a range of elements are determined by ICP-AES in fly ash and top soils along four transects from the power stations up to a distance of 8 km. The effects of fly ash leachates from the ash settling ponds on the river are determined by analyzing river overbank soils and vegetation for their elemental contents. It is concluded that fly ash dispersal from the stacks are a source of alkali, alkaline-earth and to some extent heavy metals in soils in the vicinity of the power stations, and enrichment of elements in river overbank soils are a result of discharge of fly ash leachates from ash disposal ponds. However, the impact from both these sources of metal contamination is not large enough to give cause for concern. Marked reduction in populations of Eichhornia crassipes downstream of the river where it receives leachates from the ash disposal ponds are attributed to turbidity of the ash pond leachates and metal toxicity. Elemental enrichment in the floodplain soils, as a result of fly ash particle deposition during monsoons, may enhance the horticultural value of these soils as is shown by a healthy cultivated crop of Brassica juncea.     

Assessment of bioavailable nitrogen and phosphorus content in the sediments of Indian mangroves

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Efficient nutrient cycling and adequate sediment bioavailable nutrient supply are considered to be the two most important factors regulating the high...     

A lab fermenter level study on anaerobic hydrogen fermentation using potato peel waste: effect of pH,temperature, and substrate pre-treatment

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - Decades have passed, facing the energy crisis and environmental pollution and researching various possible solutions to tackle them. The use of...     

Kinetics of oxidation of methylhydrazines in water. Factors controlling the formation of 1,1-dimethylnitrosamine

The kinetics of oxidation of methylhydrazine ($\text{MMH}$) and 1,1-dimethylhydrazine ($\text{UDMH}$) by dissolved oxygen in water has been measured at various acidities as a function of catalyst (cupric ion) concentration. In dilute solutions the oxidation occurs through a cupric ion catalyzed process as well as by an uncatalyzed step. The extent of formation of nitrosodimethylamine ($\text{NDMA}$) depends upon the initial $\text{UDMH}$ concentration. In dilute solutions $\text{NDMA}$ is not formed, but in more concentrated solutions, $\text{NDMA}$ formation increases with increasing $\text{UDMH}$ content, reaches a maximum at 60–80% $\text{UDMH}$ (by volume) and then decreases. The $\text{NDMA}$ yield appears to approximately parallel the viscosity of the medium, and it is speculated that the factors which control viscosity may also be responsible for governing $\text{NDMA}$ formation.     

Bayesian areal wombling via adjacency modeling

Recently, public health professionals and other geostatistical researchers have shown increasing interest in boundary analysis, the detection or testing of zones or boundaries that reveal sharp changes in the values of spatially oriented variables. For areal data (i.e., data which consist only of sums or averages over geopolitical regions), Lu and Carlin (Geogr Anal 37: 265–285, 2005) suggested a fully model-based framework for areal wombling using Bayesian hierarchical models with posterior summaries computed using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, and showed the approach to have advantages over existing non-stochastic alternatives. In this paper, we develop Bayesian areal boundary analysis methods that estimate the spatial neighborhood structure using the value of the process in each region and other variables that indicate how similar two regions are. Boundaries may then be determined by the posterior distribution of either this estimated neighborhood structure or the regional mean response differences themselves. Our methods do require several assumptions (including an appropriate prior distribution, a normal spatial random effect distribution, and a Bernoulli distribution for a set of spatial weights), but also deliver more in terms of full posterior inference for the boundary segments (e.g., direct probability statements regarding the probability that a particular border segment is part of the boundary). We illustrate three different remedies for the computing difficulties encountered in implementing our method. We use simulation to compare among existing purely algorithmic approaches, the Lu and Carlin (2005) method, and our new adjacency modeling methods. We also illustrate more practical modeling issues (e.g., covariate selection) in the context of a breast cancer late detection data set collected at the county level in the state of Minnesota.