Raw Materials Synthesis from Heavy Metal Industry Effluents with Bioremediation and Phytomining: A Biomimetic Resource Management Approach

Heavy metal wastewater poses a threat to human life and causes significant environmental problems. Bioremediation provides a sustainable waste management technique that uses organisms to remove heavy metals from contaminated water through a variety of different processes. Biosorption involves the use of biomass, such as plant extracts and microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, algae, yeast), and represents a low-cost and environmentally friendly method of bioremediation and resource management. Biosorption-based biosynthesis is proposed as a means of removing heavy metals from wastewaters and soils as it aids the development of heavy metal nanoparticles that may have an application within the technology industry. Phytomining provides a further green method of managing the metal content of wastewater. These approaches represent a viable means of removing toxic chemicals from the effluent produced during the process of manufacturing, and the bioremediation process, furthermore, has the potential to save metal resources from depletion. Biomimetic resource management comprises bioremediation, biosorption, biosynthesis, phytomining, and further methods that provide innovative ways of interpreting waste and pollutants as raw materials for research and industry, inspired by materials, structures, and processes in living nature

Bio-Inspired Polarized Skylight-Based Navigation Sensors: A Review

Animal senses cover a broad range of signal types and signal bandwidths and have inspired various sensors and bioinstrumentation devices for biological and medical applications. Insects, such as desert ants and honeybees, for example, utilize polarized skylight pattern-based information in their navigation activities. They reliably return to their nests and hives from places many kilometers away. The insect navigation system involves the dorsal rim area in their compound eyes and the corresponding polarization sensitive neurons in the brain. The dorsal rim area is equipped with photoreceptors, which have orthogonally arranged small hair-like structures termed microvilli. These are the specialized sensors for the detection of polarized skylight patterns (e-vector orientation). Various research groups have been working on the development of novel navigation systems inspired by polarized skylight-based navigation in animals. Their major contributions are critically reviewed. One focus of current research activities is on imitating the integration path mechanism in desert ants. The potential for simple, high performance miniaturized bioinstrumentation that can assist people in navigation will be explored

Nanostructural Colouration in Malaysian Plants: Lessons for Biomimetics and Biomaterials

Plant tissues include leaves, flower petals, and fruits. These can provide us with variety of design inspirations. Biomimetics allows us to learn from nature and transfer the knowledge we gain from studying sophisticated and amazing biological structures, materials and processes to engineering and the arts. The microstructures of morphology and anatomy of plant tissue have potential applications in technology through bioinspired design, which can mimic the properties found in nature or use them as inspiration for alternative applications. Many applications have been developed as a result of studying physical properties of plant tissues. Structural colours, for example, have been applied in the design of thin films both with regard to single or multilayer thin film interference, scattering, and diffraction gratings. Iridescent, metallic, or greyish colouration found naturally in plants is the result of physical structures or physical effects and not pigmentation. Phenotypical appearance of plants with structural colouration in tropical Malaysia is correlated with environmental parameters such as location (shady understory rainforest, sunny conditions) and altitude (highlands, lowlands). Various examples of bioinspired technical innovations with structural colours highlight the importance of inspiration by structural colours in living nature

Polarized Light-Based Cancer Cell Detection Techniques: A Review

Cancer is becoming raging phenomenon in clinical and pharmaceutical studies worldwide. It can be diagnosed by several step, including physical examination, blood or serum tests, and medical screening and imaging. Screening and imaging used to only be recommended if clear symptoms were observed, and positive results obtained from a blood test analysis were only significant if there was a high level of cancer markers observed. Optical biosensors are currently being developed that may be ideal for sensitive, selective and label free detection but burdensome and sophisticated. Recent studies of interest rely more on the application of nanomaterial (for indirect biochemical assays) than direct testing for in situ discrimination of the morphology of normal and cancerous cells. This review will be devoted to a description of the most recent developments of polarized light-based cancer cell/biomarker detection devices. These devices mostly operate based on a degree of polarization (DOP) and angle of polarization (AOP) of light parameters in separate devices. The main aim of this review is to provide an in-depth insight into the future use of device that measures the AOP in a single integrated device for cancer cell/tissue detection. © 2001-2012 IEEE

Analisis Keperluan Pembangunan Manual Psikospiritual Islam Dalam Penjagaan Paliatif

Penjagaan paliatif ialah penjagaan secara holistik melibatkan aspek fizikal, spiritual, mental dan sosial kepada pesakit terminal atau pesakit tiada harapan sembuh seperti pesakit kanser, pesakit yang mengalami kegagalan buah pinggang dan lain-lain. Kajian ini membawa pendekatan Islam dalam konsep penjagaan pesakit tersebut. Artikel ini membincangkan analisis keperluan kajian reka bentuk dan pembangunan manual psikospiritual Islam dalam penjagaan paliatif dan elemen yang menjadi keperluan dalam penjagaan tersebut. Metodologi kajian menggunakan kaedah Reka Bentuk dan Pembangunan (DDR) yang mempunyai tiga fasa utama dibangunkan oleh Richey dan Klein. Artikel ini memberi fokus kepada fasa pertama kajian iaitu analisis keperluan. Pendekatan kajian berbentuk kuantitatif yang menggunakan instrumen soal selidik kepada 210 orang responden. Analisis data dilakukan menggunakan perisian SPSS versi 25 bagi memperolehi kadar kekerapan (ƒ) dan purata min (x̅) dalam dapatan kajian. Dapatan kajian mendapati majoriti yang terdiri daripada pengamal perubatan, penjaga, pesakit dan populasi awam bersetuju dengan pembinaan manual berasaskan psikospiritual Islam. Selain itu dapatan kajian juga menunjukkan heirarki elemen penekanan dalam manual bermula dengan elemen sokongan emosi dalam manual dengan kadar purata min (x̅) tertinggi, diikuti dengan penekanan kepercayaan kepada Tuhan, sokongan spiritual dan keagamaan, pengurusan diri dan fizikal, pengurusan trauma atau pengalaman lalu dan yang terakhir ialah sokongan dalam aktiviti bersosial (Abstract by authors