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L-Asparaginase (L-asparagine aminohydrolase, E.C. 3.5.1.1) has been proven to be competent in treating Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL), which is widely observed in paediatric and adult groups. Currently, clinical L-Asparaginase formulations are derived from bacterial sources such as Escherichia coli and Erwinia chrysanthemi . These formulations when administered to ALL patients lead to several immunological and hypersensitive reactions. Hence, additional purification steps are required to remove toxicity induced by the amalgamation of other enzymes like glutaminase and urease. Production of L-Asparaginase that is free of glutaminase and urease is a major area of research. In this paper, we report the screening and isolation of fungal species collected from the soil and mosses in the Schirmacher Hills, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, that produce L-Asparaginase free of glutaminase and urease. A total of 55 isolates were obtained from 33 environmental samples that were tested by conventional plate techniques using Phenol red and Bromothymol blue as indicators. Among the isolated fungi, 30 isolates showed L-Asparaginase free of glutaminase and urease. The L-Asparaginase producing strain Trichosporon asahii IBBLA1, which showed the highest zone index, was then optimized with a Taguchi design. Optimum enzyme activity of 20.57 U mL −1 was obtained at a temperature of 30 °C and pH of 7.0 after 60 hours. Our work suggests that isolation of fungi from extreme environments such as Antarctica may lead to an important advancement in therapeutic applications with fewer side effects.

Globalization persists the tendency to alter numerous aspects of today’s world including religion, transport, language, living styles, and international relations; however, its potential to influence quality of environment is the prime concern for trade and environmental policies guidelines (Audi and Ali 2018 ). In response to the growing interest for identifying the dynamic relationship between globalization and environmental performance, the present study seeks to investigate the critical link between globalization and ecological footprints in top 15 globalized countries between 1970 and 2016. Applying the novel methods of quantile-on-quantile regression (QQ) and Granger causality in quantiles, the findings examine the manners in which quantiles of globalization affect the quantiles of ecological footprints and vice versa. The empirical results suggest that globalization has a long-term positive effect on ecological footprint and vice versa in case of Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, and Portugal. On the other hand, the estimated results indicate a negative effect between globalization and ecological footprint in the case of France, Germany, the UK, and Hungary. These results extend the recent findings on the globalization–environment nexus implying that the magnitude of relationship among both variables varies with countries demanding individual focus and cautions for postulating environmental and trade policies.

This article focuses on the manner in which the US identifies the exchange rate and macroeconomic policies of its key trading partners and the policy advice it gives to them, when according to the US set criteria the trading partner's exchange rate and macroeconomic policies contribute to the US trade deficit. The article focuses on the US apparatus that is set in two different pieces of US legislation concerned essentially with currency manipulation mainly from the perspective of the WTO and IMF legal regimes. The paper concludes that although the US regime concerns currency manipulation, and is implemented to address a compliance void under the IMF and WTO procedures, it is flawed and that the Reports prepared under the US legislation are not qualitatively enlightening.

Waste rocks (WRs) from a lignite-producing coalfield and fly ash (FA) produced from the same lignite have been investigated in this study with a primary objective to determine the potential for co-disposal of WRs and FA to reduce the environmental contamination. Mixing WRs with FA and covering WRs with FA have been investigated. Particle size effect caused ≤2 mm particles to produce low pH (~2) and metal-laden leachates, indicating higher sulphide minerals’ reactivity compared to larger particles (≤10 mm, pH ~ 4). Co-disposal of FA as mixture showed an instantaneous effect, resulting in higher pH (~3–6) and better leachate quality. However, acidity produced by secondary mineralisation caused stabilisation of pH at around 4.5–5. In contrast, the pH of the leachates from the cover method gradually increased from strongly acidic (pH ~ 2) to mildly acidic (pH ~ 4–5) and circumneutral (pH ~ 7) along with a decrease in EC and elemental leaching. Gradually increasing pH can be attributed to the cover effect, which reduces the oxygen diffusion, thus sulphide oxidation. FA cover achieved the pH necessary for secondary mineralisation during the leaching experiment. The co-disposal of FA as cover and/or mixture possesses the potential for neutralisation and/or slowing down AMD and improving leachate quality.

Although extensively used, concerns have been expressed about the reliability and generalizability of grammaticality judgment tasks (GJTs; Alanazi, 2015). It has been argued that learners might guess grammaticality based on feel (Bialystock, 1979) and that the GJT-based results ignore grammatical complexity (Ellis, 1991). While several studies have attempted to validate the results of a GJT against other tasks, the tasks used in these studies required language production (e.g., Leow, 1996; Mandell, 1999), which is different from error identification and correction. The current study used an editing task (ET) to validate learners' performance on a GJT. An editing task, like a GJT, requires identification of grammatical inaccuracies. Besides, it situates errors in a meaningful context and offers opportunities for multiple corrections of the same error. Overall, 311 participants took part in the study. A paired sample t-test showed a significant difference (¬t = 24.10, p = .00, d = 1.91) between the two tasks. Fifteen percent of the data (45 participants) was further inspected to have a better understanding of learners' error correction-pattern on the editing task. The results revealed that about 20% of the errors identified were wrongly corrected, which exposes limitations of the GJTs that only require judging the well-formedness of a construction. Moreover, performance on the editing task revealed a greater level of diversity in learners' responses. On average, eight of the total twelve grammatical features were corrected in 5.87 (SD = 2.47) different ways. The variety of responses on the ET reveals the dynamic nature of learners' interlanguage that allows for multiple ways for correction. The ET, as compared to the GJT, provides an ecologically more valid way to assess L2 learners' grammatical proficiency.

India is a major emitter of mercury to the environment, mainly due to emissions from coal-fired power plants. Consumption of fish and rice, two important pathways for human exposure to mercury, is particularly high in South India. Here, we report concentrations of total mercury in hair (THghair) in 668 participants from South India. Three cities were covered: (i) a city on the east coast with four active coal-fired thermal power plants (Nellore), (ii) a city on the west coast with no major mercury source (Vasco da Gama), and (iii) a metropolitan city in the interior with no major mercury source (Hyderabad). Geometric mean of THghair of the entire study population is 0.14 µg/g (95% confidence interval, CI: 0.13–0.15 µg/g). Significant predictor variables are age, fish consumption, and occupations such as dental studies, subsistence fishing, and artisanal goldsmithing (which is different from artisanal scale gold mining). Our results support the hypothesis that people living in a city with active coal-fired power plants may have higher THghair than those in cities with no major mercury source.

Background Breast cancer is a heterogeneous illness in terms of histologic variants, natural history of disease, clinical behaviour, and response to therapy. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a biologically aggressive tumour with the worst prognosis among all subtypes, owing to higher grade and high proliferation capacity, and, restricted therapeutic choices. Despite numerous attempts to identify therapeutic aberrations that can be targeted, chemotherapy continues to be the primary systemic treatment for TNBC. It should be noted, however, that multiple studies have shown racial variation in the clinical behaviour of TNBCs and there remains a need to identify alternative, novel driver mutations in our ethnically diverse population, especially actionable mutations that might prove to be potential targets for precision therapy. This study was taken up with the aim to identify distinct targetable genetic alterations in TNBC patients and to report the frequencies of various subtypes. Results Among 353 breast cancer patients, 75 were TNBC, and 10 treatment-naïve TNBC cases were selected for the study. Selected TNBC FFPE (formalin fixed paraffin embedded) tissue samples were subjected to Genomic DNA extraction and whole-exome sequencing followed by bioinformatics analysis for detection of deleterious variants. A total of 812,598 non-synonymous SNPs were identified over the 10 samples. Following application of insilico prediction tools, 275 SNPs were identified. The most frequently mutated genes were OR9G1 and MUC6 . Six out of 10 TNBC cases in this study were found to harbour missense variants, c.505 C > T (p.Arg169Cys) and c.335 A > G (p.Tyr112Cys) in the OR9G1 gene. The second most frequently mutated gene in our samples was MUC6 with 5 samples harbouring the variant c.5618 C > A. Conclusion Detection of these variants in six out of 10 cases indicates probable role of these vastly unexplored genes in the pathogenesis of triple-negative breast tumours and warrants further exploration to establish their significance as targetable sites and facilitate drug development.

India is a major emitter of mercury to the environment. This mini-review condenses the information available since 2008 on mercury in air, soil, sediment, biota and human biomarkers near industrial locations. Information from eight regions was analyzed. More than 40% of studies did not report sufficient QA/QC information on analysis methods. Highest quality was observed for studies on human biomarkers, biota, and sediments, and the lowest on water quality. Concentrations of mercury in sediments (up to 3650 µg/kg), human biomarkers (up to 31 µg/g) and fish (up to 3 µg/g) in the vicinity of coal-fired power plants and iron and steel were high in general, and sometimes comparable to or higher than the global guideline, screening or reference values. Overall, impacts of industrial activities on mercury pollution of surrounding environment were evident, and warrant a speedy assessment of other industrial areas and implementation of mitigation measures.

Purpose An individual’s standard of living is profoundly affected by industrialization and technology’s continuous revolution. At present, the environment is uncontrollable and global warming is increasing. Therefore, there is a need to protect the earth immediately as the lives of all creatures are at risk. The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors related to green purchase behavior (GPB) by incorporating religious values (RGV) as a moderator. Moreover, the moderating role of RGV has been incorporated so that the importance of RGV in the life of millennials can be examined. Design/methodology/approach Smart partial least square (PLS) has been used for data analysis, and PLS-structural equation modeling has been used to assess measurement and structural models. Findings The findings reveal that environmental concern, environmental knowledge and green perceived value positively and significantly affect attitude and subjective norm (SN). Moreover, attitudes toward the purchase of green products and SNs also show a positive and significant relationship with green purchase intention (GPI). In addition, GPI is also positively and significantly associated with GPB. However, green brand knowledge portrays a positive but insignificant relationship with attitude and SN. Finally, RGV does not strengthen the relationship between intention and behavior. Originality/value Religion is a strong predictor of individual behavior as people are emotionally connected with Islam’s teachings. Therefore, the study provides a unique contribution by adding RGV as a moderator in the model of TRA. Also, the authors targeted the specific generation, i.e. millennials, so that millennials’ behavior can be identified as it covers Pakistan’s large population. Also, millennials are the people who are more involved in decision-making.