Remediation of cadmium by Indian mustard (Brassica juncea L.) from cadmium contaminated soil: a phytoextraction study

Cadmium is a toxic metal for living organisms and an environmental contaminant. Soils in many parts of the world are slightly too moderately contaminated by Cd due to long term use and disposal of Cd-contaminated wastes. Cost effective technologies are needed to remove cadmium from the contaminated sites. Soil phytoextraction is engineering based, low cost and socially accepted developing technology that uses plants to clean up contaminants in soils. This technology can be adopted as a remediation of cadmium from Cd-contaminated soils with the help of Brassica juncea plant. The objective of this work was to evaluate the cadmium (Cd) accumulate and the tolerance of Brassica juncea. The Cd accumulates in all parts of plants (roots, stems and leaves). It was found that accumulating efficiency increased with the increase in the concentration of applied cadmium metal solution. Maximum accumulation of cadmium was found in roots than stem and leaves. Phytoextraction coefficient and translocation factor were highest to show the validity of the Brassica juncea species for hyperaccumulation of the Cd metal. These results suggested that Brassica juncea has a high ability to tolerate and accumulate Cd, so it might be a promising plant to be used for phytoextraction of Cd contaminated soil. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ije.v3i2.10533 International Journal of the Environment Vol.3(2) 2014: 229-237</p

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Global variation in anastomosis and end colostomy formation following left-sided colorectal resection

Background End colostomy rates following colorectal resection vary across institutions in high-income settings, being influenced by patient, disease, surgeon and system factors. This study aimed to assess global variation in end colostomy rates after left-sided colorectal resection. Methods This study comprised an analysis of GlobalSurg-1 and -2 international, prospective, observational cohort studies (2014, 2016), including consecutive adult patients undergoing elective or emergency left-sided colorectal resection within discrete 2-week windows. Countries were grouped into high-, middle- and low-income tertiles according to the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). Factors associated with colostomy formation versus primary anastomosis were explored using a multilevel, multivariable logistic regression model. Results In total, 1635 patients from 242 hospitals in 57 countries undergoing left-sided colorectal resection were included: 113 (6·9 per cent) from low-HDI, 254 (15·5 per cent) from middle-HDI and 1268 (77·6 per cent) from high-HDI countries. There was a higher proportion of patients with perforated disease (57·5, 40·9 and 35·4 per cent; P < 0·001) and subsequent use of end colostomy (52·2, 24·8 and 18·9 per cent; P < 0·001) in low- compared with middle- and high-HDI settings. The association with colostomy use in low-HDI settings persisted (odds ratio (OR) 3·20, 95 per cent c.i. 1·35 to 7·57; P = 0·008) after risk adjustment for malignant disease (OR 2·34, 1·65 to 3·32; P < 0·001), emergency surgery (OR 4·08, 2·73 to 6·10; P < 0·001), time to operation at least 48 h (OR 1·99, 1·28 to 3·09; P = 0·002) and disease perforation (OR 4·00, 2·81 to 5·69; P < 0·001). Conclusion Global differences existed in the proportion of patients receiving end stomas after left-sided colorectal resection based on income, which went beyond case mix alone

Experimental investigations on a new active swirl based microcombustor for an integrated micro-reformer system

In this paper, a new active swirl based concept has been proposed to enhance the flame stability limits in backward facing step microcombustors with premixed methane-air mixtures. A two step backward facing microcombustor with an inlet diameter of 2 mm along with 4 mm for first step and 6 mm diameter for second step is considered and the performance of various active and passive swirl generation techniques has been investigated and compared. For passive swirl techniques, such as strip and wire swirlers, the upper flame stability limits are enhanced as compared to the no swirl case. However, for active swirl case, when precisely controlled secondary flow is used for swirl generation, both upper and lower flame stability limits are significantly enhanced. For instance, the upper flame stability limits are enhanced by 54% and lower flame stability limits are enhanced by 17% at a mixture equivalence ratio of phi = 0.6 with active swirl flow. A stable flame has been observed to exist for a wide range of mixtures with equivalence ratio varying from 0.6 to 1.3 and flow rates varying from 98 to 1270 SCCM (equivalent thermal input 4.58-91.66 W). A minimum thermal input of 4.58 W with a heat release density of about 9.75 MW/m(3) was observed in the present experiments. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Extended BBCH scale of Moringa oleifera Lam. and its implications for growing in Urban Food Forests

The phenological studies of tree species is a potential tool to develop a keen observation for monitoring the gradual impact of climate change on biology of trees, manifested through variation in timing and duration of different phenological events in their life cycle. The documentation of these phenological growth stages reflect upon the implications for their responsiveness to seasonal variation in climate and potential utilization for the benefit of mankind. Pertaining to the immense significance of phenology, a study was conducted to document different growth and developmental stages in Moringa oleifera Lam. referencing to the BBCH scale (Biologische Bundesantalt, Bundessortenamt und Chemische Industrie), supplementing with significant Landmark stages (developed by the authors) under the subtropical conditions of Punjab state, India. The observation and the analysis of the growth stages in M. oleifera depicted asynchronous growth patterns exhibiting juvenile, vegetative and reproductive developmental stages within an individual tree canopy. These phenophases appeared simultaneously and were designated numerical values corresponding to principle growth stages (0–9) and secondary sub-stages (0–9) reflecting their relative intensity of occurrence. The novel landmark scale proposed for M. oleifera, defines the optimum stage(s) for its utilization such as tender leaves for culinary purpose; mature leaves for processing for manufacturing of fortified food products and herbal medicines; and immature pods for utilization in culinary preparations. The landmark stages proposed in M. oleifera reflect its immense significance for introducing as an edible tree species in Urban Food Forests as a source of nutrition besides offering other multi-functionalities of ecological, landscaping, esthetic and spiritual aspects