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Silver Orthophosphate (Ag3PO4) is a promising visible light driven photocatalyst. The morphology and structure of Ag3PO4 can be controlled by variety of synthetic methods for which it becomes the most extensively studied novel photocatalyst. Moreover, tailoring of Ag3PO4-based photocatalyst for performance enhancement attracts immense attention in recent times. The endeavour of this review paper to focus on the research progress of this material and the success gained so far by fabrication of Ag3PO4-based nanocomposite materials in photodegradation of selected toxic organic dyes. Some representative examples are discussed thoroughly. The underlying challenges and future perspectives are also brought into spotlight.Graphical abstract

Over the years, heavy metal pollution has become a very serious environmental problem worldwide. Even though anthropogenic sources are believed to be the major cause of heavy metal pollution, they can also be introduced into the environment from natural geogenic sources. Heavy metals, because of their toxicity and carcinogenicity, are considered to be the most harmful contaminants of groundwater as well as surface water, a serious threat to both human and aquatic life. Nanomaterials due to their size and higher surface area to volume ratio show some unique properties compared to their bulk counterpart and have drawn significant attention of the scientific community in the last few decades. This large surface area can make these materials as effective adsorbents in pollution remediation studies. In this review, an attempt has been made to focus on the applicability of different types of nanomaterials, such as clay-nanocomposites, metal oxide-based nanomaterials, carbon nanotubes, and various polymeric nanocomposites as adsorbents for removal of variety of heavy metals, such as As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sn, U, V, and Zn, from water as reported during the last few years. This work tries to analyze the metal–nanomaterial interactions, the mechanism of adsorption, the adsorption capacities of the nanomaterials, and the kinetics of adsorption under various experimental conditions. The review brings forward the relation between the physicochemical properties of the nanomaterials and heavy metal adsorption on them.

When characterizing the processes that shape ecosystems, ecologists increasingly use the unique perspective offered by repeat observations of remotely sensed imagery. However, the concept of change embodied in much of the traditional remote-sensing literature was primarily limited to capturing large or extreme changes occurring in natural systems, omitting many more subtle processes of interest to ecologists. Recent technical advances have led to a fundamental shift toward an ecological view of change. Although this conceptual shift began with coarser-scale global imagery, it has now reached users of Landsat imagery, since these datasets have temporal and spatial characteristics appropriate to many ecological questions. We argue that this ecologically relevant perspective of change allows the novel characterization of important dynamic processes, including disturbances, long-term trends, cyclical functions, and feedbacks, and that these improvements are already facilitating our understanding of critical driving forces, such as climate change, ecological interactions, and economic pressures.

Adsorption technology has gained popularity for removing contaminants from waste water during the last few decades. Banana peel is a popular choice as adsorbent due to its availability, cost-effectiveness, non-hazardous, and biodegradation quality. It is an attractive material for generation of emerging biosorbents by various chemical treatment methods. The use of both naturally and chemically activated biomass therefore got attention in the waste water treatment. The collection of data on decontamination of waste water by various adsorbents derived from the agro-waste, banana peel was found to be potential biomaterials in removal of various emerging water pollutants. This review paper analyzes the use of banana peel-based adsorbents for water pollution remediation, focusing on potential removing organic dyes, phenols, heavy metal ions, antibiotics, and pesticides. Future work should consider the use of agro-waste for actual contaminated water in single as well as multi-pollutants; regeneration, reuse, etc. should get importance. Graphical Abstract

The present work investigates the removal of Fe(III) ions from an aqueous solution by kaolinite, montmorillonite and their acid activated forms. The specific surface areas of kaolinite, acid activated kaolinite, montmorillonite and acid activated montmorillonite were 3.8, 15.6, 19.8 and 52.3 m2/g respectively whereas the cation exchange capacity (CEC) was measured as 11.3, 12.2, 153.0, and 341.0 meq/100 g for four clay adsorbents respectively. Adsorption increased with pH till Fe(III) became insoluble at pH > 4.0. The kinetics of the interactions is not certain, but the second order kinetics (k2 = 4.7 × 10− 2 to 7.4 × 10− 2 g mg− 1 min− 1) appears to give a better description. Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms were applied and isotherm coefficients were computed. The Langmuir monolayer capacity of the clay adsorbents was from 11.2 to 30.0 mg g− 1. The process was exothermic with Δ H in the range of −27.6 to −42.2 kJ mol− 1accompanied by decrease in entropy (Δ S = −86.6 to −131.8 J mol− 1 K− 1) and decrease in Gibbs energy. The results have shown that kaolinite, montmorillonite and their acid activated forms could be used as adsorbents for separation of Fe(III) from aqueous solution. Acid activation enhanced the adsorption capacity compared to the untreated clay minerals.

The human brain goes through numerous cognitive states, most of these being hidden or implicit while performing a task, and understanding them is of great practical importance. However, identifying internal mental states is quite challenging as these states are difficult to label, usually short-lived, and generally, overlap with other tasks. One such problem pertains to bistable perception, which we consider to consist of two internal mental states, namely, transition and maintenance. The transition state is short-lived and represents a change in perception while the maintenance state is comparatively longer and represents a stable perception. In this study, we proposed a novel approach for characterizing the duration of transition and maintenance states and classified them from the neuromagnetic brain responses. Participants were presented with various types of ambiguous visual stimuli on which they indicated the moments of perceptual switches, while their magnetoencephalogram (MEG) data were recorded. We extracted different spatio-temporal features based on wavelet transform, and classified transition and maintenance states on a trial-by-trial basis. We obtained a classification accuracy of 79.58% and 78.40% using SVM and ANN classifiers, respectively. Next, we investigated the temporal fluctuations of these internal mental representations as captured by our classifier model and found that the accuracy showed a decreasing trend as the maintenance state was moved towards the next transition state. Further, to identify the neural sources corresponding to these internal mental states, we performed source analysis on MEG signals. We observed the involvement of sources from the parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and cerebellum in distinguishing transition and maintenance states. Cross-conditional classification analysis established generalization potential of wavelet features. Altogether, this study presents an automatic classification of endogenous mental states involved in bistable perception by establishing brain-behavior relationships at the single-trial level.

Graphene and graphene oxide (GO) are used for adsorbing toxic heavy metal ions, but they have disadvantages like aggregation of graphene layers due to strong π–π interactions and difficulty in separation. Thus, adsorption efficiency of bare graphene and GO is quite low. Surface modification techniques have improved GO’s adsorption capacity. Various GO-based materials, including chemically modified functionalized GO, non-metal- and metal-based GO composites, metal oxide-based GO and GO-organic compound composites, have been designed for wastewater decontamination. In this review article, the chemistry of graphene-based composites reported by various group of workers since last ten years is reviewed. The synthesis processes, characterizations of prepared materials and application as scavengers or adsorbents were critically analysed. The limitations and the future directions are also highlighted. Graphical abstract

The coatomer complex has been implicated in cancer progression; however, a comprehensive pan-cancer analysis is lacking. Therefore, it is essential to identify the critical roles and essentiality of coatomer genes across pan-cancer. We systematically profiled the genetic alterations, expression patterns, prognostic relevance, and functional dependencies of all coatomer subunits across multiple cancers using more than 10,000 tumor samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas, complemented by functional perturbation data from CRISPR (n = 1178) and RNAi (n = 707) screens in DepMap. Functional validation was also performed to identify the essentiality of selectively essential coatomer genes in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Gene amplification, most notably of COPB2, was the most frequent alteration and was associated with poor survival in bladder and esophageal cancers. Mutations in COPA and SEC31A also demonstrated prognostic significance in endometrial carcinoma. Expression analyses revealed broad upregulation of coatomer genes across cancer types, with COPG1 and COPB1 emerging as strong risk-associated genes (HR > 2). Integrative functional dependency analyses identified COPG1 as selectively essential in multiple cancers, and its loss was associated with increased drug sensitivity. Functional validation in hepatocellular carcinoma revealed that COPG1 knockdown impaired malignant phenotypes and reduced tumorigenicity in vivo. Mechanistically, COPG1 depletion induced Golgi disruption and ER stress, increased ROS production, and suppressed PI3K–AKT signaling, thereby sensitizing cells to sorafenib and doxorubicin. Collectively, this pan-cancer analysis reveals the context-dependent roles of coatomer subunits and identifies COPG1 as a novel oncogenic driver and potential therapeutic target in HCC, mediating chemoresistance through redox modulation and PI3K–AKT pathway inhibition.

When characterizing the processes that shape ecosystems, ecologists increasingly use the unique perspective offered by repeat observations of remotely sensed imagery. However, the concept of change embodied in much of the traditional remote‐sensing literature was primarily limited to capturing large or extreme changes occurring in natural systems, omitting many more subtle processes of interest to ecologists. Recent technical advances have led to a fundamental shift toward an ecological view of change. Although this conceptual shift began with coarser‐scale global imagery, it has now reached users of Landsat imagery, since these datasets have temporal and spatial characteristics appropriate to many ecological questions. We argue that this ecologically relevant perspective of change allows the novel characterization of important dynamic processes, including disturbances, long‐term trends, cyclical functions, and feedbacks, and that these improvements are already facilitating our understanding of critical driving forces, such as climate change, ecological interactions, and economic pressures.

The interest in the wetlands ecosystems on Calcutta's periphery should be understood in the context of the search for development alternatives—for locally-adapted, appropriate modes of development rather than transplantation of alien models. Too often, planners look abroad for ideas without realizing that appropriate principles and practices are present in their own backyards. We are now coming to understand that ecodevelopment entails bringing together creative techniques with the ways in which people perceive and approach the issues of quality of life through environmental changes that are in the forefront of planning debates. Human and ecologically-sound planning requires an integration of such understanding with suitable techniques and procedures.