An Opportunity for Synergizing Desalination by Membrane Distillation Assisted Reverse-Electrodialysis for Water/Energy Recovery.

Industry, agriculture, and a growing population all have a major impact on the scarcity of clean-water. Desalinating or purifying contaminated water for human use is crucial. The combination of thermal membrane systems can outperform conventional desalination with the help of synergistic management of the water-energy nexus. High energy requirement for desalination is a key challenge for desalination cost and its commercial feasibility. The solution to these problems requires the intermarriage of multidisciplinary approaches such as electrochemistry, chemical, environmental, polymer, and materials science and engineering. The most feasible method for producing high-quality freshwater with a reduced carbon footprint is demanding incorporation of industrial low-grade heat with membrane distillation (MD). More precisely, by using a reverse electrodialysis (RED) setup that is integrated with MD, salinity gradient energy (SGE) may be extracted from highly salinized MD retentate. Integrating MD-RED can significantly increase energy productivity without raising costs. This review provides a comprehensive summary of the prospects, unresolved issues, and developments in this cutting-edge field. In addition, we summarize the distinct physicochemical characteristics of the membranes employed in MD and RED, together with the approaches for integrating them to facilitate effective water recovery and energy conversion from salt gradients and freshwater.

Efficient reduction of antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements in organic waste composting via fenton-like treatment.

Livestock manure harbors antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), and aerobic composting (AC) is widely adopted for waste management. However, mitigating ARG resurgence in later stages remains challenging. This work aims to curb ARGs rebounding through a Fenton-like reaction during food waste and swine manure co-composting. Results revealed that 0.025 % zerovalent iron (ZVI) + 0.5 % hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) facilitated maximum ARG, mobile genetic elements (MGEs), and 16 s rRNA removal with reductions of 2.68, 2.69, and 1.4 logs. Spectroscopic analysis confirmed Fenton-like reaction and cell apoptosis analysis indicated that 0.025 % ZVI and 0.5 % H2O2 treatment had the maximum early apoptosis, least observed, and normal cells on day 30. Redundancy analysis highlighted the influence of bacterial communities and physicochemical properties on ARGs, with MGEs playing a crucial role in Fenton treatments. Our findings suggest incorporating ZVI and H2O2 in composting can significantly reduce ARGs and enhance waste management practices.

Revealing the compressive and flow properties of novel bone scaffold structure manufactured by selective laser sintering technique.

Additive manufacturing is revolutionizing the field of medical sciences through its key application in the development of bone scaffolds. During scaffold fabrication, achieving a good level of porosity for enhanced mechanical strength is very challenging. The bone scaffolds should hold both the porosity and load withstanding capacity. In this research, a novel structure was designed with the aim of the evaluation of flexible porosity. A CAD model was generated for the novel structure using specific input parameters, whereas the porosity was controlled by varying the input parameters. Poly Amide (PA 2200) material was used for the fabrication of bone scaffolds, which is a biocompatible material. To fabricate a novel structure for bone scaffolds, a Selective Laser Sintering machine (SLS) was used. The displacement under compression loads was observed using a Universal Testing Machine (UTM). In addition to this, numerical analysis of the components was also carried out. The compressive stiffness found through the analysis enables the verification of the load withstanding capacity of the specific bone scaffold model. The experimental porosity was compared with the theoretical porosity and showed almost 29% to 30% reductions when compared to the theoretical porosity. Structural analysis was carried out using ANSYS by changing the geometry. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis was carried out using ANSYS FLUENT to estimate the blood pressure and Wall Shear Stress (WSS). From the CFD analysis, maximum pressure of 1.799 Pa was observed. Though the porosity was less than 50%, there was not much variation of WSS. The achievement from this study endorses the great potential of the proposed models which can successfully be adapted for the required bone implant applications.

Molecular characterization and expression of cyclic nucleotide gated ion channels 19 and 20 in Arabidopsis thaliana for their potential role in salt stress.

Cyclic nucleotide gated ion channels (CNGCs) in plants have very important role in signaling and development. The study reports role of CNGC19 and CNGC20 in salt stress in A. thaliana. In-silico, genome wide analysis showed that CNGC19 and CNGC20 are related to salt stress with maximum expression after 6 h in A. thaliana. The position of inserted T-DNA was determined (in-vivo) through TAIL-PCR for activation tagged mutants of CNGC19 and CNGC20 under salt stress. The expression of AtCNGC19 and AtCNGC20 after cloning under 35S promoter of expression vectors pBCH1 and pEarleyGate100 was determined in A. thaliana by real-time PCR analysis. Genome wide analysis showed that AtCNGC11 had lowest and AtCNGC20 highest molecular weight as well as number of amino acid residues. In-vivo expression of AtCNGC19 and AtCNGC20 was enhanced through T-DNA insertion and 35S promoter in over-expressed plants under high salt concentration. AtCNGC19 was activated twice in control and about five times under 150 mM NaCl stress level, and expression value was also higher than AtCNGC20. Phenotypically, over-expressed plants and calli were healthier while knock-out plants and calli showed retarded growth under salinity stress. The study provides new insight for the role of AtCNGC19 and AtCNGC20 under salt stress regulation in A. thaliana and will be helpful for improvement of crop plants for salt stress to combat food shortage and security.

On the Investigation of Surface Integrity of Ti6Al4V ELI Using Si-Mixed Electric Discharge Machining.

Surface modification is given vital importance in the biomedical industry to cope with surface tissue growth problems. Conventionally, basic surface treatment methods are used which include physical and chemical deposition. The major drawbacks associated with these methods are excessive cost and poor adhesion of coating with implant material. To generate a bioactive surface on an implant, electric discharge machining (EDM) is a promising and emerging technology which simultaneously serves as machining and surface modification technique. Besides the surface topology, implant material plays a very important role in surgical applications. From various implant materials, titanium (Ti6Al4V ELI) alloy is the best choice for long-term hard body tissue replacement due to its superior engineering, excellent biocompatibility and antibacterial properties. In this research, EDM's surface characteristics are explored using Si powder mixed in dielectric on Ti6Al4V ELI. The effect of powder concentration (5 g/L, 10 g/L and 20 g/L) along with pulse current and pulse on time is investigated on micro and nanoscale surface topography. Optimized process parameters having a 5 g/L powder concentration result in 2.76 µm surface roughness and 13.80 µm recast layer thickness. Furthermore, a nano-structured (50-200 nm) biocompatible surface is fabricated on the surface for better cell attachment and growth. A highly favourable carbon enriched surface is confirmed through EDS which increases adhesion and proliferation of human osteoblasts.