Could curcumin ameliorate titanium dioxide nanoparticles effect on the heart? A histopathological,immunohistochemical, and genotoxic study

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The evaluation of the toxicological effects of titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2NPs) is increasingly important due to their growing occupational...     

Selection and integration of environmental impacts in the Danish transport infrastructure assessment process

Transport projects have numerous consequences for the environment, society and economy, and thus an EU Directive has stated a number of impacts that need to be assessed prior to any major intervention. This paper is set in a Danish context where the EU requirements have been adopted in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regulation along with national requirements. In recent years, however, the EIAs have been criticised for an inconsistent inclusion of impacts and unclear assessment process. A selection of EIAs is for this reason reviewed and compared to the EU Directive and corresponding works in Sweden and the UK to identify potential opportunities for improvements. From the literature study, an overview table with all potential relevant impacts for transport projects is set up to assist the EIA process. For the sake of simplicity and transparency, the impacts selected from this table should, however, be further reduced in number to ensure that only the most important impacts are included in the process. To further increase simplicity and transparency in the EIA process, a novel framework for assessing different types of impacts is proposed. In this framework, a comprehensive decision support tool involving stakeholders is in focus. The framework is supplemented with a procedure for generating objectives and presenting results in an appropriate way to the many stakeholders involved. The impacts overview table and the assessment techniques are applied to a case study to illustrate the process, and finally, conclusions and perspectives for future work within the field are set out.     

A review on adsorptive removal of dyes from wastewater by hydroxyapatite nanocomposites

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Dye removal from wastewater is of prominence due to its hostile effects on human health and the environment. The complex structure of the dye molecule...     

Prospects and challenges of conservation agriculture in Bangladesh for sustainable sugarcane cultivation

Environment, Development and Sustainability - Sugarcane is an industrial crop globally used for producing biofuels and bioproducts and is the only source of white sugar in Bangladesh. However,...     

Trees,ground vegetation,sidewalks, cycleways: users’ preferences and economic values for different elements of an urban street—a case study in Taipei

Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - Streets are an essential element of cities, and their design has a profound impact on their functionality to the movement of people and their...     

How does eliminating mercury from artisanal and small-scale gold mining lead to achieving sustainable development goals?

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the principal anthropogenic activity that globally contributes to overloading our environment with mercury. Although the Minamata Convention, led by the United Nations, is a crucial instrument to eliminate its use progressively, novel approaches to accelerate this difficult transition are welcome. This article proposes a framework for policy-making or improvement, fostering the enforcement of mercury elimination through the lens of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing on the excluded artisanal and small-scale gold miners and their dependents. We move forward with a literature review of the Artisanal and Small Mining topic, taking each SDG as a unit of analysis. Understanding the problem as a puzzle of four sets of pieces, namely: (1) social, (2) environmental, (3) economic, and (4) institutional, the paper offers potential opportunities for the decision-makers and practitioners to accelerate the substitution of this heavy metal and develop sustainable futures for the ASGM communities. We conclude by proposing a pragmatic framework that synthesizes the means, actions, and ends to accelerate a sustainable transition.     

Critical pedagogy of place to enhance ecological engagement activities

Scientists in higher education institutions around the globe recognize the importance of engaging with public stakeholders to share their enthusiasm, explain their science, and encourage primary and secondary students to enter the sciences. However, without direct consideration of students’ and teachers’ perspectives and interests, scientists may design activities around their own goals, limiting the impact on school stakeholders (i.e., students, teachers, paraprofessional staff, students’ parents, and other caregivers). We drew from natural and social science research to describe how expanding the conception of place beyond the biophysical can help engage school stakeholders in meaningful ways. We describe the multidimensional PLACE framework that we developed to integrate perspectives, knowledge, and values of all stakeholders in engagement programming. The framework is organized around topics that stakeholders should discuss early on to ensure successful partnerships. We recommend that scientists identify and use pedagogy that is inclusive; language framed around dialogic communication methods; aims and motivations centered on engagement; cultural funds of knowledge of place (i.e., disciplinary, personal, or experiential knowledge); and evaluation of engagement based on meaningful metrics. Two case studies are presented to illustrate how the PLACE framework components, when addressed, can lead to robust, successful partnerships between scientists and schools.     

Nanoparticles Addition in Coir‐Basalt‐Innegra Fibers Reinforced Bio-synthetic Epoxy Composites

Journal of Polymers and the Environment - In the present investigation, the influence of coir micro-particles and titanium carbide (TiC) nanofillers on mechanical characteristics and thermal...     

Understanding the distribution of bushmeat hunting effort across landscapes by testing hypotheses about human foraging

Mitigating the massive impacts of defaunation on natural ecosystems requires understanding and predicting hunting effort across the landscape. But such understanding has been hindered by the difficulty of assessing the movement patterns of hunters in thick forests and across complex terrain. We statistically tested hypotheses about the spatial distribution of hunting with circuit theory and structural equation models. We used a data set of >7000 known kill locations in Guyana and hunter movement models to test these methods. Comparing models with different resistance layers (i.e., different estimates of how terrain and land cover influence human movement speed) showed that rivers, on average, limited movement rather than serving as transport arteries. Moreover, far more kills occurred close to villages than in remote areas. This, combined with the lack of support for structural equation models that included latent terms for prey depletion driven by past overhunting, suggests that kill locations in this system tended to be driven by where hunters were currently foraging rather than by influences of historical harvest. These analyses are generalizable to a variety of ecosystems, species, and data types, providing a powerful way of enhancing maps and predictions of hunting effort across complex landscapes.     

Assessing interactions,predicting function,and increasing degradation potential of a PAH-degrading bacterial consortium by effect of an inoculant strain

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - A natural phenanthrene-degrading consortium CON was inoculated with an exogenous strain Sphingobium sp. (ex Sp. paucimobilis) 20006FA yielding the...