Plant height is among the most important agronomic traits influencing crop yield. Wheat lines carrying Rht genes are important in plant breeding due to their both higher yield capacity and better tolerance to certain environmental stresses. However, the effects of dwarf-inducing genes on stress acclimation mechanisms are still poorly understood. Under the present conditions, cadmium stress induced different stress responses and defence mechanisms in the wild-type and dwarf mutant, and the mutant with the Rht-B1c allele exhibited higher tolerance. In the wild type after cadmium treatment, the abscisic acid synthesis increased in the leaves, which in turn might have induced the polyamine and proline metabolisms in the roots. However, in the mutant line, the slight increment in the leaf abscisic acid content accompanied by relatively high salicylic acid accumulation was not sufficient to induce such a great accumulation of proline and putrescine. Although changes in proline and polyamines, especially putrescine, showed similar patterns, the accumulation of these compounds was antagonistically related to the phytochelatin synthesis in the roots of the wild type after cadmium stress. In the dwarf genotype, a favourable metabolic shift from the synthesis of polyamine and proline to that of phytochelatin was responsible for the higher cadmium tolerance observed.

The contaminated Kaynaklar soil containing high level of diesel (100,000 mg/kg dw) was treated in slurry systems with solid-to-liquid ratios (S/L) of 1/5, 1/10, and 1/20 to describe the performance of physical treatment. The soil microbial mass was inhibited by using mercury chloride and autoclaving prior to the diesel spiking in order to eliminate any bacterial degradation of non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) and has been treated in the reactor systems for 8 h. The removal performance of PAHs in soil slurry systems was evaluated according to the number of benzene rings: 3, 4, and 5and 6 ring PAHs. The experimental results showed that PAH treatment efficiency sharply decreases in slurry soils with increasing number of benzene rings; maximum treatment efficiencies in soil were 82%, 56%, and 42% for 3 ring (ACY), 4 ring (PY), and 5 and 6 ring (BbF) PAHs, respectively. In addition, a significant correlation between the PAH removal efficiencies and their vapor pressures has found. The impact of solid-to-liquid ratio on slurry system performance was found negligible; therefore, higher solid-to-liquid ratios are recommendable to be applied on the contaminated sites to remove high concentrations of PAHs from soil for reducing the investment and operational costs. The soil used in this study has relatively large specific surface area and considerable amount of clay. The removal performance of slurry systems may be elevated with sandy soils containing high concentrations of PAHs, where can be faced at the seashores due to the off shore oil spills.

Phytoremediation is a cost-effective and relatively cleaner method for remediating contaminated areas using plants. Certain plants, including some sunflower species, have already been identified as potential phytoremediation candidates because of their ability to accumulate heavy metals. This study investigated the ability of Tithonia rotundifolia (red sunflower) to accumulate lead from lab-contaminated soils. T. rotundifolia was assessed as a candidate for phytoremediation of lead soils. The study also assessed whether the form (species) of lead as the source of contamination or whether arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi had effects on plant uptake of the metal. Results showed that T. rotundifolia was able to accumulate up to 33% of the lead from the contaminated soils making it a promising candidate for phytoremediation. The amount of lead taken up by the plant ranged from 0.1 to 1.2 mg/kg of plant biomass. The source of the contamination, either lead nitrate or lead carbonate, had a significant impact on the amount of lead that accumulated in the plant. The sunflowers grown in the lead nitrate treatment were able to accumulate significantly more lead than the sunflowers grown in the lead carbonate treatment.

Microcystins (MCs) are the most studied toxins of cyanobacteria in freshwater bodies worldwide. However, they are poorly documented in coastal waters in several parts of the world. In this study, we investigated the composition of cyanobacteria and the presence of microcystins (MCs) in several coastal aquatic ecosystems of Nigeria. Direct morphological analysis revealed that members of the genus Oscillatoria were dominant with five species, followed by Trichodesmium with two species in Nigerian coastal waters. Oso Ibanilo had the highest cyanobacterial biomass (998 × 10³ cells/L), followed by Rivers Ocean (156 × 10³ cells/L). Except for the Cross River Ocean, cyanobacteria were present in all the investigated aquatic ecosystems. Ten (10) out of twenty water bodies examined had detectable levels of MCs. Furthermore, genomic DNA analysis for the mcyE gene of microcystin synthetase (mcy) cluster showed identities higher than 86% (query coverage > 96%) with toxic strains of cyanobacteria in all the samples analyzed. Also, the sequences of samples matched those of uncultured cyanobacteria from recreational lakes in Southern Germany. Our findings indicate that the presence of toxic cyanobacteria in coastal waters of Nigeria is of public and environmental health concern.

Cancer is still considered a “hopeless case”, besides all of the advancements in oncology research. On the other hand, the natural products, as effective lead molecules, have gained significant interest for research due to the absence of toxic and harmful side effects usually associated with conventional treatment methods. Medicinal properties of herbal plants are strongly evidenced in traditional medicine from ancient times. In the context above, withaferin A (WA) was identified as the active principle of the plant Withania somnifera, its molecule being reported to have excellent anticancer and tumour inhibition activities in various cell lines. Furthermore, the in silico approaches in the medicinal chemistry of WA revealed the biological targets and gave momentum for the research that leads to many amazing pharmacological activities of WA which are not yet explored. This includes a broad spectrum of anticancer actions manifested in different organs (breast, pancreas, colon), melanoma and B cell lymphoma, etc. This review is an extensive survey of the most recent anticancer studies reported for WA, along with its mechanism of action and details about its in vitro and/or in vivo behaviour.

The identification of heavy metals in the atmosphere has increased a strong and growing interest. Thereby, monitoring of elements in aerobiological samples could be a powerful tool for detection of environmental pollution. In this work, a simple and fast method for the determination of trace metals bound to aeroparticles such as pollen was optimized. A single-step procedure for the dissolution of aerobiological samples in nitric acid and further determination by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) with a high-efficiency sample introduction system was developed. The procedure involved low dilution and low detection limits with adequate precision and its direct introduction into the ICP-MS system. The novel method proposed was successfully applied to determine five elements in concentrations from 0.04 mg g⁻¹ (U) to 14.1 mg g⁻¹ (Mn) in aerobiological samples. Through this procedure, the most significant correlations between pollen of Cupressaceae, Ulmus, and Moraceae with Mn, and pollen of Moraceae with Pb were found. This methodology could be a very useful tool to assess air pollution. We are not only proposing a new strategy to analyze air samples particles but also giving new information of the elemental composition carried by pollen. Graphical Abstract Development of elements determination in aerobiological samples based on the nitric acid dissolution and its direct introduction into the ICP-MS system

Energy saving and emission reduction are the most concerned issues in the world. Objective and accurate prediction of carbon emissions can provide reference and early warning for the implementation of the government’s environmental strategy. Based on the traditional grey Verhulst model, this paper analyzes the main causes of its errors, introduces the extrapolation method to optimize the background value, and uses particle swarm optimization algorithm to optimize its parameters. In order to evaluate the performance of the models, six commonly statistical evaluation indicators are used to compare the new model with other optimization models and grey universal models, and the effect of the new model is basically better than other models. Finally, it is applied to the prediction of carbon dioxide emission of three kinds of coal in China. The results show that the increase of carbon dioxide related to raw coal slows down in 2016–2020, while the increase of carbon dioxide related to clean coal and other washed coal is 12.7097% and 19.2024%, respectively. Therefore, in order to prevent a strong rebound in carbon emissions, China should increase efforts to save energy and reduce emissions, and reduce energy consumption, especially coal consumption.

Given the relatively harsh natural environment in semi-arid valley areas, the attraction and radiation functions of semi-arid valley cities have become the foci of further development in Western China. This study takes Lanzhou City (a semi-arid river valley city) as an example and uses the theoretical framework of pressure-state-response to optimize the response strategies of the tourism environmental needs of the City’s core stakeholders from the multi-scenario and time series diversity perspectives. Based on the index system of the tourism environment system (TES) in semi-arid valley cities, the system dynamics model is used to forecast the index system of the tourism environment from multi-scenario perspectives. Based on the evolutionary optimization algorithm NSGA-II, the core stakeholders are optimized to meet the tourism environment needs, and the optimal solution set is selected based on the decision makers’ preferences. Finally, several measures to improve the anti-interference ability of semi-arid valley cities’ TES are proposed, namely standardizing the preferences of decision makers, improving the resilience of the destination TES, carrying out the safety management of valley cities’ TES, and adjusting the seasonality of such cities to improve their tourism environment and promote the welfare of various stakeholders.

Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are promising adsorbents for the removal of various contaminants from water. However, a comprehensive understanding of how ternary LDHs differ from the divalent ones in terms of dye adsorption capacity and the underlying mechanisms still remain unknown. Remazol brilliant blue reactive (RBBR) adsorption on pristine and calcined (C) ZnAl, MgAl, and ZnMgAl LDHs were comprehensively investigated for the first time in this study. The characteristics of the pristine and calcined samples were established with X-ray diffractometer, Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer, zeta potential analyzer, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method. A considerably larger adsorption capacity was obtained with pristine MgAl (220 mg/g) and ZnAl (191 mg/g) compared to that of ZnMgAl (164 mg/g) at all studied initial dye concentrations (10–250 mg/L) and solution pH (3–12). However, when the LDH samples were calcined, the largest RBBR mass adsorbed was achieved with ZnMgAl-C (263 mg/g) followed by MgAl-C (247 mg/g) and ZnAl-C (236 mg/g). In comparison to the pristine samples, the faster adsorption rate and higher adsorption capacity of the calcined samples were attributed to the large specific surface area and enhanced electrostatic interactions due to the higher positive charge obtained after calcination. ZnMgAl-C had the largest surface area and the charge, explaining its superior adsorption capacity over the divalent LDHs. Pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order, and Elovich models described the kinetics data well while Freundlich and Redlich–Peterson isotherms suitably fit to the equilibrium data for the pristine and calcined LDHs. Surface adsorption via electrostatic interactions was found to be the effective mechanism for RBBR adsorption on all pristine and calcined LDHs while intercalation was not.