Comparing the nutrient changes,heavy metals,and genotoxicity assessment before and after vermicomposting of thermal fly ash using Eisenia fetida

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Fly ash (FA) is available in an unstable state and can be ameliorated by vermicomposting. The different ratios of FA viz (FA10, FA15, FA20, FA25,...     

Role of standard incidence in an eco-epidemiological system: A mathematical study

Ecology and epidemiology are two major fields of study in their own right, but they have some common features. [Chattopadhyay, J., Pal, S., El Abdllaoui, A., 2003. Classical predator–prey system with infection of prey population—a mathematical model. Math. Meth. Appl. Sci. 26, 1211–1222] considered a predator–prey model with disease in the prey population. They analyzed the system based on the assumption that horizontal incidence follows simple mass action incidence. Mass action incidence is appropriate for a constant population, but for a large population, standard incidence is more appropriate. The complicated dynamics around (0, 0, 0) arise because of standard incidence. The conditions under which the population reaches the origin either by following the axis or in a spiral pattern were determined. Numerical experiments were performed to observe the dynamics of the system with mass action incidence and standard incidence. This investigation showed that the infection rate plays a crucial role for predicting the behavior of the dynamics in the long run.     

Performance of seed germination and growth of Vicia faba L. in fly ash amended soil

The performance of Vicia faba L. in soil amended by different concentrations of fly ash has been studied. The parameters considered are seed germination, growth behaviour and nodulation frequency of the plant. Results revealed that while fly-ash amendment to the soil improved the growth performance at initial stages with application of lower concentrations, it was inhibitory at higher exposure concentrations. Although there was no difference in survival rates, but the seedling growth was reduced in comparison to control plants. Fly ash delayed the nodulation as lesser number of nodules was recorded at higher amendments. Results suggested feasibility of growing V. faba in fly ash contaminated area.     

Determination of acetaldehyde in ambient air: comparison of thermal desorption-GC/FID method with the standard DNPH-HPLC method

In this work, the experimental compatibility between the standard DNPH-HPLC method and the gas chromatographic (GC) method (without any derivatization) was investigated for the analysis of atmospheric carbonyls. In the latter case, GC analysis was made based on adsorptive enrichment on solid sorbents followed by thermal desorption. For a comparative analysis between the two methods, we quantified the concentration levels of acetaldehyde from gaseous combustion samples of different charcoal products. The acetaldehyde concentration data, measured by the HPLC method (643 ± 1,689 ppb), were approximately 10% lower than the GC-based method (722 ± 1,788 ppb). As such, the differences in the measured concentrations were statistically insignificant. Although the percentage difference of the two methods fell within a relatively wide range, the results obtained by the GC-based method were comparable to those of the HPLC method with significantly strong correlations. The GC-based method, if tested for certain carbonyl species such as acetaldehyde, appeared to be a suitable alternative for the HPLC method.     

Heavy metal speciation,leaching and toxicity status of a tropical rain-fed river Damodar,India

Speciations of metals were assessed in a tropical rain-fed river, flowing through the highly economically important part of the India. The pattern of distribution of heavy metals (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn) were evaluated in water and sediment along with mineralogical characterization, changes with different water quality parameters and their respective health hazard to the local population along the Damodar River basin during pre-monsoon and post-monsoon seasons. The outcome of the speciation analysis using MINTEQ indicated that free metal ions, carbonate, chloride and sulfate ions were predominantly in anionic inorganic fractions, while in cationic inorganic fractions metal loads were negligible. Metals loads were higher in sediment phase than in the aqueous phase. The estimated values of I_geo in river sediment during both the seasons showed that most of the metals were found in the I_geo class 0–1 which represents unpolluted to moderately polluted sediment status. The result of partition coefficient indicated the strong retention capability of Cr, Pb, Co and Mn, while Cd, Zn, Cu and Ni have resilient mobility capacity. The mineralogical analysis of sediment samples indicated that in Damodar River, quartz, kaolinite and calcite minerals were dominantly present. The hazard index values of Cd, Co and Cr were >?1 in river water, which suggested potential health risk for the children. A combination of pragmatic, computational and statistical relationship between ionic species and fractions of metals represented a strong persuasion for identifying the alikeness among the different sites of the river.     

Regression model under skew-normal error with applications in predicting groundwater arsenic level in the Mekong Delta Region

Environmental and Ecological Statistics - Recently there has been some renewed interest in skew-normal distribution (SND) because it provides a nice and natural generalization (in terms of...     

Conducting polymers/zinc oxide-based photocatalysts for environmental remediation: a review

The accessibility to clean water is essential for humans, yet nearly 250 million people die yearly due to contamination by cholera, dysentery, arsenicosis, hepatitis A, polio, typhoid fever, schistosomiasis, malaria, and lead poisoning, according to the World Health Organization. Therefore, advanced materials and techniques are needed to remove contaminants. Here, we review nanohybrids combining conducting polymers and zinc oxide for the photocatalytic purification of waters, with focus on in situ polymerization, template synthesis, sol–gel method, and mixing of semiconductors. Advantages include less corrosion of zinc oxide, less charge recombination and more visible light absorption, up to 53%.

     

Assessing the impact of ecological insecurity on ecosystem service value in stone quarrying and crushing dominated areas

The present study has tried to develop ecological insecurity model (EIM) in the growing stone quarrying and crushing dominated areas using robust machine learning techniques and attempted to link it with ecosystem service value (ESV). Satellite image-based landscape metrics have been used for developing machine learning-oriented EIM, and the global coefficient of Costanza et al. (Glob Environ Change 26:152–158, 2014) has been used for computing ESV. Field parameter-based ecological insecurity index (EII) has been developed for validating the EIMs along with the statistical methods. Applied Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) revealed that 21.88 to 60.79% area has predicted as highly ecologically insecure in all the selected four stone quarrying and crushing dominated clusters and this is has inflated from 2000 to 2020. All the applied models are acceptable in terms of their performances, but the RF model is found to be the best representative in relation to EII. It causes considerable loss of ESV which ranges from 160,845.18 US$ to 757,445.17 US$ in all the clusters from 2000 to 2020. The findings of the study are useful for ecological management in this area. It further recommends applying such an approach in such similar fields to establish the general finding and provides knowledge to the state of arts.