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Objective: To determine the frequency of Ceftazidime-Avibactam (CAZ-AVI) susceptibility in specimens of Carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA) at a tertiary care hospital. Study Design: Analytical cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Microbiology, Combined Military Hospital (CMH), Multan, Pakistan, from Jan-Jun 2024. Methodology: Specimens of carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa were included in the study to find the susceptibility of CAZ-AVI using the standard Kirby Bauer disc diffusion method. Zones were interpreted using a Vernier caliper following Clinical Standard Institute (CLSI) 2023, where zone of CAZ-AVI ≥21 was considered as susceptible. Results: The total sample size was 103 CRPA specimens, out of which, 47(45.60%) were found to be susceptible to CAZ-AVI with an average zone of inhibition of 16.9 ± 8.8 mm, with male patients showing more susceptibility as compared to females (51.00% vs. 40.40%). The majority 44(68.80%) of resistant cases were from inpatient department as compared to the outpatient department 12(30.80%) (p-value <0.001). Organisms were more susceptible in the specimens bronchioalveolar lavage sputum (87.50% and 75.00% respectively) whereas the most resistant isolates were found in Tracheal aspirate and blood specimens (100.00%) (p-value <0.001). Conclusion: The study demonstrates that approximately 45.60% of carbapenem‑resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA) isolates at a tertiary care hospital are susceptible to Ceftazidime‑Avibactam (CAZ‑AVI), supporting its potential role as a valuable treatment option.

Objective: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of PANBIO COVID-19 rapid antigen method in nasopharyngeal swab, for screening of COVID-19 infection in emergency cases. Study Design: Cross-sectional validation study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Microbiology, Combined Military Hospital, Multan, from Jan to Mar 2021. Methodology: After taking approval from institutional ethical review committee, total 1539 patients were included in this study according to sample size. With informed consent, nasopharyngeal swab specimens were taken for PANBIO COVID-19 rapid antigen method from each patient presenting as emergency medical/surgical case to Combined Military Hospital Multan as well as for Polymerase Chain Reaction for SARS CoV-2 RNA. PANBIO COVID-19 rapid antigen method and polymerase chain reaction for SARS CoV-2 RNA were performed simultaneously on swabs. Polymerase chain reaction for SARS CoV-2 RNA was considered to be the gold standard for comparison with the PANBIO COVID-19 rapid antigen method. Results: A total of 21 patients had SARS CoV-2 RNA detected by polymerase chain reaction indicating COVID-19 infection. Out of polymerase chain reaction positive patients, PANBIO™ COVID-19 Ag test was able to detect 19 cases. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy was calculated and found to be 90.47%, 100%, 100%, 99.8% and 99.8% respectively. Conclusion: PANBIO™ COVID-19 rapid antigen method was found to have excellent diagnostic accuracy in detection of COVID-19 infection. It can provide as a good alternate test for screening of masses with a short turn around time of only 15 minutes.

Objective: To determine the frequency of Ceftazidime-Avibactam (CAZ-AVI) susceptibility in specimens of Carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA) at a tertiary care hospital. Study Design: Analytical cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Microbiology, Combined Military Hospital (CMH), Multan, Pakistan, from Jan-Jun 2024. Methodology: Specimens of carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa were included in the study to find the susceptibility of CAZ-AVI using the standard Kirby Bauer disc diffusion method. Zones were interpreted using a Vernier caliper following Clinical Standard Institute (CLSI) 2023, where zone of CAZ-AVI ≥21 was considered as susceptible. Results: The total sample size was 103 CRPA specimens, out of which, 47(45.60%) were found to be susceptible to CAZ-AVI with an average zone of inhibition of 16.9 ± 8.8 mm, with male patients showing more susceptibility as compared to females (51.00% vs. 40.40%). The majority 44(68.80%) of resistant cases were from inpatient department as compared to the outpatient department 12(30.80%) (p-value <0.001). Organisms were more susceptible in the specimens bronchioalveolar lavage sputum (87.50% and 75.00% respectively) whereas the most resistant isolates were found in Tracheal aspirate and blood specimens (100.00%) (p-value <0.001). Conclusion: The study demonstrates that approximately 45.60% of carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA) isolates at a tertiary care hospital are susceptible to Ceftazidime-Avibactam (CAZ-AVI), supporting its potential role as a valuable treatment option.

Objective: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of PANBIO COVID-19 rapid antigen method in nasopharyngeal swab, for screening of COVID-19 infection in emergency cases. Study Design: Cross-sectional validation study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Microbiology, Combined Military Hospital, Multan, from Jan to Mar 2021. Methodology: After taking approval from institutional ethical review committee, total 1539 patients were included in this study according to sample size. With informed consent, nasopharyngeal swab specimens were taken for PANBIO COVID-19 rapid antigen method from each patient presenting as emergency medical/surgical case to Combined Military Hospital Multan as well as for Polymerase Chain Reaction for SARS CoV-2 RNA. PANBIO COVID-19 rapid antigen method and polymerase chain reaction for SARS CoV-2 RNA were performed simultaneously on swabs. Polymerase chain reaction for SARS CoV-2 RNA was considered to be the gold standard for comparison with the PANBIO COVID-19 rapid antigen method. Results: A total of 21 patients had SARS CoV-2 RNA detected by polymerase chain reaction indicating COVID-19 infection. Out of polymerase chain reaction positive patients, PANBIO™ COVID-19 Ag test was able to detect 19 cases. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy was calculated and found to be 90.47%, 100%, 100%, 99.8% and 99.8% respectively. Conclusion: PANBIO™ COVID-19 rapid antigen method was found to have excellent diagnostic accuracy in detection of COVID-19 infection. It can provide as a good alternate test for screening of masses with a short turn around time of only 15 minutes.

In the current investigation, the combination of selenium (Se) and epibrassinolide (EBL) exhibited a promising alleviative response against the concurrent stress of heat and drought in wheat plants. The compromised growth and photosynthetic performance of wheat plants under the combined stress of heat and drought were substantially improved with the treatment involving Se and EBL. This improvement was facilitated through the expression of Q9FIE3 and O04939 proteins, along with enhanced antioxidant activities. The heightened levels of antioxidant enzymes and the accumulation of osmoprotectant proline helped mitigate the overaccumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), including electrolyte leakage, H 2 O 2 accumulation, and lipid peroxidation, thus conferring tolerance against the combined stress of heat and drought. Studies have demonstrated that Se and EBL can assist wheat plants in recuperating from the adverse effects of heat and drought. As such, they are essential components of sustainable farming methods that aim to increase crop productivity.

Advances in audio synthesis techniques have led to the creation of highly realistic audio deepfakes, posing growing threats to digital integrity and public trust. These synthetic manipulations mimic natural speech with high fidelity, making detection increasingly challenging and fueling the spread of misinformation, identity fraud, and voice-based attacks. To address these concerns, this study proposes the Adaptive Spectro-Temporal Diffusion Transformer (ASTDT), a novel detection framework that tackles key challenges in generalization, interpretability, and adaptability across diverse audio generation techniques. ASTDT integrates a score-based diffusion model to augment training spectrograms with realistic deepfake variations, improving generalization to unseen text-to-speech and voice conversion attacks. An adaptive spectro-temporal feature extraction mechanism partitions audio into interpretable frequency and temporal segments, while a dual-modal attention fusion module jointly processes magnitude and phase features. These fused features are processed by a transformer encoder with diffusion-aware attention, enabling effective modeling of long-range temporal dependencies. To enhance transparency, ASTDT includes an interpretability module that combines quantitative feature attributions and spatial heatmaps to explain model predictions. Experimental results across four benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of ASTDT, with the model achieving the lowest equal error rate of 1.20% on the ASVspoof 2019 dataset.

Bamboo (subfamily Bambusoideae, Poaceae) ranks among the fastest-growing plants on Earth, achieving up to 1 m day−1, significantly faster than other fast growing woody plant such as Eucalyptus (up to 0.6 m day−1) and Populus (up to 0.5 m day−1). Native to Asia, South America and Africa, and cultivated on approximately 37 million ha worldwide, bamboo delivers multifaceted environmental, social, and economic benefits. Historically central to construction, handicrafts, paper and cuisine, bamboo has evolved into a high-value cash crop and green innovation platform. Its rapid renewability allows multiple harvests of young shoots in fast-growing species such as Phyllostachys edulis and Dendrocalamus asper. Its high tensile strength, flexibility, and ecological adaptability make it suitable for applications in bioenergy (bioethanol, biogas, biochar), advanced materials (engineered composites, textiles, activated carbon), and biotechnology (fermentable sugars, prebiotics, biochemicals). Bamboo shoots and leaves provide essential nutrients, antioxidants and bioactive compounds with documented health and pharmaceutical potential. With a global market value exceeding USD 41 billion, bamboo demand continues to grow in response to the call for sustainable materials. Ecologically, bamboo sequesters up to 259 t C ha−1, stabilizes soil, enhances agroforestry systems and enables phytoremediation of degraded lands. Nonetheless, challenges persist, including species- and age-dependent mechanical variability; vulnerability to decay and pests; flammability; lack of standardized harvesting and engineering codes; and environmental impacts of certain processing methods. This review traces bamboo’s trajectory from a traditional resource to a strategic bioresource aligned with Industry 5.0, underscores its role in low-emission, circular bioeconomies and identifies pathways for optimized cultivation, green processing technologies and integration into carbon-credit frameworks. By addressing these challenges through innovation and policy support, bamboo can underpin resilient, human-centric economies and drive sustainable development.

Cadmium (Cd) contamination has become a major environmental issue and has toxic effects on agricultural crops. Selenium (Se) is an essential trace element that plays an important role due to its impact on several physiological and biochemical processes in plants. This study addresses the mechanistic insights into the role of SeNPs in enhancing Cd stress tolerance, thereby contributing to sustainable nano-agronomic strategies for the soils contaminated with heavy metals (HMs). The current experimental approach involved a pot trial conducted in a greenhouse with two levels of cadmium stress (C 1  = control; C 2  = 20 mg kg −1 of soil w/w using CdCl 2 ), and four levels of SeNPs (0, 25, 50, and 75 mg L −1 ) in mungbean plants. The findings indicated that cd stressed conditions significantly affected the productivity of mungbean plants. The optimal level of SeNPs significantly enhanced the growth, biomass, and photosynthetic traits of mungbean. This study also indicated that Cd-stressed conditions increased lipid peroxidation and membrane damage. Moreover, SeNPs application increased soluble protein (110.10%), and decreased the proline accumulation (64.45%) and malondialdehyde (MDA) contents (64.25%) in comparison with control (0 mg L −1 of SeNPs). Furthermore, the SeNPs also decreased the leaf Cd contents by 64.95% and grain Cd contents by 64.88% by reduced Cd uptake. An optimum level of SeNPs offers great potential as an eco-friendly and feasible method for mitigating the effects of Cd stress on mungbean plants. However, long-term environmental impact of Se NPs, including their bioavailability, accumulation, and potential toxicity, is crucial for ensuring their safe and sustainable use in agriculture.

The ever-increasing water stress and availability of fresh drinking water are becoming a major challenge in rural and urban communities. The current high-end and large-scale technologies are becoming way more expensive and not friendly to the environment. In this regard, solar still is becoming a prominent and promising future technology due to its environment-friendly nature, less maintenance and operational costs, and simple design. The technological challenge regarding solar still is its low distillate yield. In this study, an attempt has been made to investigate the effect of tin oxide (SnO2) on the absorption surface of solar still towards improvement in sunlight absorption, which would lead to high distillate production rates. Various concentrations of SnO2, i.e., 0.5wt%, 1 wt%, 3 wt%, 5 wt%, 7 wt%, 10 wt%, 15 wt%, and 20 wt%, have been mixed in black and applied on the absorber plate to further optimize the suitable concentration. The experiments have been performed in both indoor (simulated) and outdoor conditions. An increase in surface temperature of absorber plate has been observed with increasing concentration of SnO2 under both the indoor and outdoor conditions, which is due to high solar spectrum absorption properties of SnO2 in the ultraviolet (UV) and near to far-infrared (IR) regions. The highest surface temperature of 101.61°C has been observed for specimens containing 15 wt% SnO2 in black paint under indoor conditions at 1000W/m2 irradiation levels, which is 53.67% higher compared to bare aluminum plate and 16.91% higher compared to only black paint coated aluminum plate. On the other hand, the maximum temperature of 74.96°C has been recorded for the identical specimens containing 15 wt% SnO2 under uncontrolled outdoor conditions. The recorded temperature is 47.96% higher than the bare aluminum plate and 14.88% higher than the black paint-coated aluminum plate. The difference of maximum temperatures under indoor and outdoor conditions is due to uncontrolled outdoor conditions and convective losses.

Sustainable supplier selection and order allocation (SSSOA) is paramount to sustainable supply chain management. It is a complex multi-dimensional decision-making process augmented with the triple bottom line of sustainability. This research presents a multi-phase decision framework to address a SSSOA problem for the multi-echelon renewable energy equipment (Solar PV Panels) supply chain. The framework comprises of fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision-Making techniques augmented with fuzzy multi-objective mixed-integer non-linear programming mathematical model. The various economic, environmental, and social objectives were optimized for a multi-period, multi-modal transportation network of the supply chain. The results show that among the various sustainable criteria selected in this study, product cost, environmental management system, and health and safety rights of employees are the most important for decision-makers. The results of the mathematical model highlighted the impact of multimodal transportation on overall cost, time, and environmental impact for all periods. An analysis of results revealed that transfer cost and customer clearance cost contribute significantly towards overall cost. Furthermore, defect rate was also observed to play a critical role in supplier selection and order allocation.