Exploring the promising application of Be12O12 nanocage for the abatement of paracetamol using DFT simulations.

The removal of paracetamol from water is of prime concern because of its toxic nature in aquatic environment. In the present research, a detailed DFT study is carried out to remove paracetamol drug from water with the help of Be12O12 to eliminate the related issues. Three different geometries (CMP-1, CMP-2, CMP-3,) are obtained with the highest adsorption energies value (Eads) of - 31.2316 kcal/mol for CMP-3 without any prominent structural change. It is observed from the study that O atom from the carbonyl group (C=O) and H atom from O-H group successfully interact with O and Be atoms of the nanocage respectively. Natural bonding orbitals analysis reveals charge transfer to paracetamol drug from Be12O12 nanocage with maximum charge transfer of - 0.159 e for CMP-3 with bond angle of 1.65 Å confirming the stability of the CMP-3 among the optimized complexes. The quantum theory of atoms in molecule concludes that the interaction between paracetamol drug molecule and Be12O12 is purely closed-shell weak electrostatic in nature in CMP-1 and CMP-3 and shared interaction in CMP-2. The thermodynamics analysis witnesses that the process is exothermic and spontaneous. The regeneration study reveals the reversible nature of the adsorbent. The overall study presents Be12O12 nanocage as a potential adsorbent and may be used in future for the purification of water from a number of emerging pollutants.

Molecular Characterization and Epidemiology of Antibiotic Resistance Genes of ß-Lactamase Producing Bacterial Pathogens Causing Septicemia from Tertiary Care Hospitals.

Septicemia is a systematic inflammatory response and can be a consequence of abdominal, urinary tract and lung infections. Keeping in view the importance of Gram-negative bacteria as one of the leading causes of septicemia, the current study was designed with the aim to determine the antibiotic susceptibility pattern, the molecular basis for antibiotic resistance and the mutations in selected genes of bacterial isolates. In this study, clinical samples (n = 3389) were collected from potentially infected male (n = 1898) and female (n = 1491) patients. A total of 443 (13.07%) patients were found to be positive for bacterial growth, of whom 181 (40.8%) were Gram-positive and 262 (59.1%) were Gram-negative. The infected patients included 238 males, who made up 12.5% of the total number tested, and 205 females, who made up 13.7%. The identification of bacterial isolates revealed that 184 patients (41.5%) were infected with Escherichia coli and 78 (17.6%) with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The clinical isolates were identified using Gram staining biochemical tests and were confirmed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), with specific primers for E. coli (USP) and P. aeruginosa (oprL). Most of the isolates were resistant to aztreonam (ATM), cefotaxime (CTX), ampicillin (AMP) and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (SXT), and were sensitive to tigecycline (TGC), meropenem (MEM) and imipenem (IPM), as revealed by high minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values. Among the antibiotic-resistant bacteria, 126 (28.4%) samples were positive for ESBL, 105 (23.7%) for AmpC ß-lactamases and 45 (10.1%) for MBL. The sequencing and mutational analysis of antibiotic resistance genes revealed mutations in TEM, SHV and AAC genes. We conclude that antibiotic resistance is increasing; this requires the attention of health authorities and clinicians for proper management of the disease burden.

The management of Industry 4.0 technologies and environmental assets for optimal performance of industrial firms in Malaysia.

The integration of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) has emerged as an innovative paradigm for industrial firms contemplating environmental and economic issues. This study explicates the role of I4.0 technologies (I4.0TEC) in reinforcing the management of environmental assets (ENVASS) as well as optimizing financial performance (FP). The data in this research was collected from 738 industrial firms in Malaysia between 2009 and 2018. The analyses of ordinary least square statistics (OLS) and structural equation modeling (SEM) delineated three major findings. The individual effect of ENVASS, robotization, and flexibility in production technologies has a marginal impact on sales, exports, and labor productivity indicators. The complementarities of these variables represent a similar effect on the performance indicators. The findings related to gross operating margin elucidate that ENVASS and I4.0TEC have neither individual nor complementarity effects. This was explained by developing a robust model by integrating ENVASS, I4.0TEC, spending and investing in R&D, flexibility in production, and human capital management. Our findings have confirmed that the proposed model offers a functional toolkit for the firms considering optimizing their profitability by leveraging ENVASS and I4.0TEC. This research also contributes to developing an ethical business model for the circular economy.

Evaluating the effects of environmental management practices on environmental and financial performance of firms in Malaysia: the mediating role of ESG disclosure.

The concepts of environmental and business sustainability are well-established in the business lexicon of progressive firms. However, firms are yet to examine the effects of environmental management practices (EMPs) on environmental performance (EP) and financial performance (FP) by connecting the missing linkage of environment, social, and governance disclosure (ESGD). This study analyses the impact of EMPs on EP and FP and offers empirical evidence of whether ESGD mediates the relationship between EP and FP of firms in Malaysia. The data from 141 listed firms on Bursa Malaysia was extracted between 2009-2020. The data was analyzed using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the generalized method of moments (GMM) technique. The findings reflect that EMPs have a significant positive effect on EP and all five proxies of EP have a significant positive effect on ESGD (except 'S') and FP. Also, ESGD together with its three proxies mediates the relationship between EP and FP. The findings of this research offer an empirical rationale for regulators and policymakers of industrial firms to accelerate their EMPs and improve ESGD mechanisms for better environmental and financial outcomes.

COVID-19 and dynamics of environmental awareness, sustainable consumption and social responsibility in Malaysia.

Despite a profound evidence of the human unsustainable behaviours' impact on the environment, stark disparities prevail on this narrative especially in the context of the current epidemiological situation ushered by the COVID-19. The ongoing pandemic is a global public health concern due to its sagacious impacts on environmental sustainability, social responsibility and people's quality of life. This study primarily focuses on analysing the impact of COVID-19 (COV) on the environmental awareness (EA), sustainable consumption (SC) and social responsibility (SR). Additionally, we aspire to investigate the impact of demographics of generations and religion on the proposed nexus in this study. The data was collected from 700 participants of different age groups and religious backgrounds in Malaysia, and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse this data and test the hypotheses. The findings indicate that COVID-19 has a significantly positive impact on EA, SC and SR, and the generations and religiosity moderate the relationship between COVID-19 and its impact on sustainable behaviours. This study contributes to analyse the difference in the perception of EA, SC and SR among the people that eventually will stimulate the scientific reasoning among the governments, policymakers and scientists to develop a holistic framework to combat unprecedented event such as COVID-19 and ensure the authentication of sustainable environment and exceptional quality of life. The policymakers in Malaysia may use the findings of this study to inspect the social and environmental aspects of the people during the transformation events.

The role of financial development indicators in sustainable development-environmental degradation nexus.

Sustainable development is significantly contributing the environmental degradation due to improvements in financial sector in One Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) region. Thus, the present research work constructs the sustainable development index for BRI. Afterwards, it unfolds the nexus of sustainable development-environmental degradation and also evaluates the role of financial development indicators in BRI economies. By utilizing the robust mean group, the present study quantifies the long-run marginal impacts of sustainable development, financial development indicators, energy consumption, and urban sprawl on environmental degradation, respectively. The marginal impacts infer an inverted U-shaped sustainable development environmental Kuznets curve in BRI region. The sustainable development, energy consumption, and urban sprawl are enriching the environmental degradation, whereas the financial development indicators have an adverse impact on environmental degradation by induction of interaction of sustainable development-financial development. Therefore, the improvements in financial development indicators will help to achieve the sustainable development. Note: + and _ depict the significant positive and negative impact respectively while illustrates ⇒ causal direction.

An Attempt Towards Lab And Clinical Combine Appraised, Including Future Concerns Regarding Dengue Infection.

BACKGROUND: Dengue infection is a deadly global pandemic due to its fatal nature, being emerged from mild stage to turn into more severe stages and consequently causing casualties. it upsurges various phases, namely subclinical infection, undifferentiated febrile fever, Dengue fever (DF) and devastating states which often ends to life, they are Dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) and Dengue shock syndrome (DSS). Dengue infection is a mosquito born disease which has engulfed many regions in general and tropical zone in particular, causing many casualties and has posed a threat to humanity, demanding strategies to resolve the global issue. It is reported that 50-200 million people fall prey to it globally by dint of its causative agents and imperative to mention that over proportional are the minor among the victims. Because of awful joint pain dengue fever is also named break bone fever. The common indicator in infected individuals is thrombocytopenia, coagulopathy and vasculopathy. Apart from supportive therapy, no aphoristic therapy has been introduced so far, however care may prove rescuer. Timely prognosis thwarts to enter it in deteriorating phase. METHODS: In the list of laboratory diagnosis virus serology and detection of Ribonucleic acid are primed. In general, there's no specific decisive diagnostic biomarker present through which accurate and prompt prognosis can possible during the entire patient presentation time, particularly in case of secondary dengue infection. Although, through the advancement and commercialization of point-care combined tests, capable of tracking disease markers present during various phases of infection (viral non-structural protein 1 and immunoglobulin M), such evaluation massively improved the treatment through lab-based. CONCLUSIONS: Despite such improvements, major hurdles persist in the clinical management of patients with dengue infection, particularly lack of dependable biomarkers that have an efficacious prognostic gauge to predict steady progress to severe disease. In the described review both clinical and laboratory diagnosis of dengue infection has been highlighted, including concern regarding future accessibility.

Correlation of IL28B rs12979860 genotype and gender with spontaneous clearance of HCV infection: a Pakistani cross-section study.

AIM: There is a strong correlation of IL28B rs12979860 genetic variations and gender with spontaneous clearance of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. MATERIALS & METHODS: HCV-infected subjects were categorized into HCV spontaneous clearance (SC) group and chronic hepatitis C (CHC) group on the basis of anti-HCV antibodies and HCV RNA level and follow-up of 6 months. 35 subjects were classified in SC group and 165 subjects were classified in CHC group. IL28B rs12979860 genotypes were determined by allele-specific PCR. RESULTS & CONCLUSION: Multinominal logistic regression analyses revealed that both genders favor IL28B rs12979860 CT genotype (OR: 4.80; CI: 2.22-10.35; p = 0.0005) and (OR: 3.47; CI: 1.63-7.43; p = 0.001) for male and female, respectively, are significant in spontaneous clearance of HCV infection.

Predictive value of IL-28B rs12979860 variants for peg-IFN, sofosbuvir plus ribavirin treatment of HCV infection in Pakistani population.

AIM: The correlation of IL28-B genetic variants (rs12979860) with combinational therapy (peg-interferon, sofosbuvir plus ribavirin) of hepatitis C virus infection were studied in 154 chronic hepatitis C patients. METHODS & RESULTS: The sustained virological response for efficient antiviral regimen was achieved in 75.32% treated individuals. Three genotypes of rs12979860 (CC, CT and TT) were compared both in sustained virological response and nonresponders groups (p = 0.25, p ≤ 0.001, p = 0.10, respectively). CT genotype demonstrated a significant correlation (p ≤ 0.001) in both groups with higher positive predictive value (81.55%). CONCLUSION: IL28 polymorphism and positive predictive value may be considered as the markers for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the treatment regimen. Further clinical trials are recommended to verify the role of IL28-B in hepatitis C virus treatment.