Perspective Chapter: The Toxic Silver (Hg)

In the late 1950s, residents of a Japanese fishing village known as “Minamata” began falling ill and dying at an alarming rate. The Japanese authorities stated that methyl-mercury-rich seafood and shellfish caused the sickness. Burning fossil fuels represent ≈52.7% of Hg emissions. The majorities of mercury’s compounds are volatile and thus travel hundreds of miles with wind before being deposited on the earth’s surface. High acidity and dissolved organic carbon increase Hg-mobility in soil to enter the food chain. Additionally, Hg is taken up by areal plant parts via gas exchange. Mercury has no identified role in plants while exhibiting high affinity to form complexes with soft ligands such as sulfur and this consequently inactivates amino acids and sulfur-containing antioxidants. Long-term human exposure to Hg leads to neurotoxicity in children and adults, immunological, cardiac, and motor reproductive and genetic disorders. Accordingly, remediating contaminated soils has become an obligation. Mercury, like other potentially toxic elements, is not biodegradable, and therefore, its remediation should encompass either removal of Hg from soils or even its immobilization. This chapter discusses Hg’s chemical behavior, sources, health dangers, and soil remediation methods to lower Hg levels

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Comment on “Ti-spaces I, II”

In this comment, we show that some assertions made in Bayoumi and Ibedou (2002) [1] and Bayoumi and Ibedou (2002) [2] are incorrect. Specifically, one implication from Theorem 3.1 made in Bayoumi and Ibedou (2002) [1] is erroneous. Consequently, Propositions 5.1 and 6.1 introduced in Bayoumi and Ibedou (2002) [2] are incorrect. In addition, one implication from Theorems 5.1 and 6.1, made in Bayoumi and Ibedou (2002) [2] are incorrect. We give some counterexamples to support our claim

Fuzzy soft connected sets in fuzzy soft topological spaces II

In this paper, we introduce some different types of fuzzy soft connected components related to the different types of fuzzy soft connectedness and based on an equivalence relation defined on the set of fuzzy soft points of X. We have investigated some very interesting properties for fuzzy soft connected components. We show that the fuzzy soft C5-connected component may be not exists and if it exists, it may not be fuzzy soft closed set. Also, we introduced some very interesting properties for fuzzy soft connected components in discrete fuzzy soft topological spaces which is a departure from the general topology

Multiset proximity spaces

A multiset is a collection of objects in which repetition of elements is essential. This paper is an attempt to explore the theoretical aspects of multiset by extending the notions of compact, proximity relation and proximal neighborhood to the multiset context. Examples of new multiset topologies, open multiset cover, compact multiset and many identities involving the concept of multiset have been introduced. Further, an integral examples of multiset proximity relations are obtained. A multiset topology induced by a multiset proximity relation on a multiset M has been presented. Also the concept of multiset δ- neighborhood in the multiset proximity space which furnishes an alternative approach to the study of multiset proximity spaces has been mentioned. Finally, some results on this new approach have been obtained and one of the most important results is: every T4- multiset space is semi-compatible with multiset proximity relation δ on M (Theorem 5.10)

IP-separation axioms in ideal bitopological ordered spaces II

The main purpose of this paper was to continue the study of separation axioms which is introduced in part I (Kandil et al., 2015). Whereas the part I (Kandil et al., 2015) was devoted to the axioms IPTi-ordered spaces, i=0,1,2, in the part II the axioms IPTi-ordered spaces, i=3,4,5 and IPRj-ordered spaces, j=2,3,4 are introduced and studied. Clearly, if I={ϕ} in these axioms, then the previous axioms (Singal and Singal, 1971; Abo Elhamayel Abo Elwafa, 2009) coincide with the present axioms. Therefore, the current work is a generalization of the previous one. In addition, the relationships between these axioms and the previous one axioms have been obtained. Some examples are given to illustrate the concepts. Moreover, some important results related to these separations have been obtained

On the modulational of Schamel nonlinear Schrödinger equation and the associated envelope excitations in a degenerate relativistic quantum complex plasma

The modulational instability (MI) of Schamel/modified nonlinear Schrödinger equation (SNLSE) or (mNLSE) and the associated envelope excitations, including bright solitons in a multicomponent dense plasma consisting of relativistically degenerate electrons, trapped ions, and non-degenerate dust species are reported. A conventional multiple scales perturbative technique is utilized to get a SNLSE. This equation is different from the standard NLSE which the SNLSE has a nonlinear term with fractional order (3/2). The MI criteria are derived in detail. Also, the occurrence of envelope solitary wave and the effects of the different physical parameters on its profile are briefly discussed. The current results are advantageous to understand the mechanism of the propagation of the envelope excitations in complex plasmas with trapped ions and relativistically degenerate electrons, such as those observed in space observations and laboratory complex plasma

Microscopic evaluation of cadmium-induced nephrotoxicity and the protective role of date palm fruit extract

Chronic cadmium exposure is known to be a major health concern due to its nephrotoxic effects. Consequently, this study aimed to assess the potential protective effects of date palm fruit extract (DPFE) against cadmium-induced renal toxicity in male albino rats. A total of 48 rats were divided equally into four groups and subjected to specific treatments. Group I (control given 1 ml distal water orally daily), group II (200 mg DPFE /kg b.wt. orally daily), Group III (5 mg CdCl2/kg b.wt. orally, twice a week), and VI (DPFE and CdCl2). Serum samples were collected after 4 and 8 weeks for biochemical analysis, and kidney tissue specimens were obtained for histopathological examination. The administration of cadmium chloride for 4 and 8 weeks resulted in a significant (p<0.05) increase in the serum creatinine, urea, and uric acid levels, indicating kidney dysfunction. Histopathological changes, including vascular lesions, hemorrhage, edema, periglomerular, perivascular and interstitial fibrosis, mononuclear leucocytic cellular infiltration and excessive glomerular and tubular degeneration and necrosis which further confirmed the nephrotoxic effects of cadmium. However, pre-treatment with DPFE exhibited a substantial ameliorative effect against cadmium-induced nephrotoxicity. DPFE supplementation led to a significant reduction in kidney biochemical parameters toward normal levels and improved renal tissue architecture. Our findings indicate that date palm fruit extract has a time-dependant protective effect on kidney function indices and histopathological alterations induced by cadmium, highlighting its potential as a natural medication to mitigate renal damage caused by chronic cadmium exposure

Nephroprotective Properties of Palm Dates and Olive Leaves Extracts on Cadmium-Induced Acute Renal Toxicity in Albino Rats

Cadmium (Cd) is a well-known industrial and environmental pollutant having hazardous and poisonous properties in various forms of kidney impairment. Consequently, this study aimed to evaluate the nephroprotective effect of palm dates extract (PDE) and olive leaves extract (OLE) against cadmium chloride (CdCl2)-induced nephrotoxicity. A total of 36 adult male albino rats were divided into six equal groups. Group 1: control group injected with physiological saline, group 2: oral gavage with PDE, group 3: orally administrated with OLE, group 4: injected daily with CdCl2 (3 mg/kg, i.p.). Groups 5 and 6: were orally treated with either PDE or OLE, respectively one hour prior to ip administration of CdCl2. After one-week samples were collected from all groups for serum biochemical analysis of kidney function as well as investigation of malondialdehyde (MDA), catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and glutathione peroxidase (GPx). Kidney tissue specimens were obtained for histopathological examination. CdCl2 exposure caused a significant elevation (P<0.05) in serum creatinine, urea, uric acid and MDA levels with marked reduction in CAT, SOD and GPx indicating renal damage. CdCl2 induced severe congestion and vasculitis with marked perivascular edema, inflammation, hemorrhage, glomerular shrinkage, massive degeneration, necrosis and apoptosis in the renal tubular epithelium. PDE and OLE treatment resulted in significant improvement in kidney function and oxidative markers with a marked reduction of MDA level. Histopathological changes were also ameliorated. In conclusion, PDE or OLE treatment significantly reduced the deleterious effects of acute CdCl2 renal damage by reducing oxidative stress as a protective mechanism