Ever since the emancipation of a country, its environmental quality has undergone a significant transition during the development phases; Bangladesh is no exception. Bangladesh is facing a serious threat in the age of global warming, and climate change as the country is looking forward in achieving the SDGs by 2030. Yet, there is a dearth of study regarding the relationship among crucial macroeconomic drivers and ecological footprint (a proxy for environmental degradation). Under the circumstances, this study explores the effects of economic growth, capital formation, urbanization, trade openness, energy use, and technological innovation on the ecological footprint by adopting the novel dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) simulations approach for Bangladesh, using annual frequency data from 1972 to 2017. Empirical results from the bounds test ascertained that there exists a long-run equilibrium association among the outlined variables. Furthermore, the novel dynamic ARDL simulation results revealed that Bangladesh is yet to achieve the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. It was observed that the Bangladesh economy is still at the scale stage of its economic trajectory, emphasizing economic growth relative to her environmental status. However, capital formation, urbanization, and energy use seemed to degrade environmental quality, while trade openness and technological innovation upgraded the environmental quality. Putting it more elaborately, a unit escalation in GDP per capita increases the ecological footprint by 0.829% in the long run, while a unit increase in energy consumption upsurges the ecological footprint by 1.074% and 0.761% in the long run and short run, respectively. As regards technology innovation, one unit increase in it cutbacks the ecological footprint by 0.596% in the long run. Furthermore, the frequency domain causality unveiled the long-run feedback effect between economic growth and ecological footprint. The study further presents possible recommendations that can sustainably address environmental issues, keeping the economy buoyant.

Fish development can be affected by environmental pollutants such as crude oil (anthropogenic or natural sources), causing alterations especially in cardiac function and morphology. Most such studies have focused on saltwater species, whereas studies in freshwater fishes are scant. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the effects of crude oil exposure (as 0, 5, 10, 15, or 20% high-energy water accommodated fractions, HEWAF) on cardiac function and edema formation during two early periods of development (embryo and eleuteroembryo, 48 h each) individually using the tropical gar Atractosteus tropicus as a model. Embryos did not exhibit alterations in body mass, total length, condition factor, and cardiac function as a function of oil. In contrast, eleuteroembryos proved to be more sensitive and exhibited increased body mass, total length, and condition factor, decreased heart rate and phenotypic alterations such as cardiac dysmorphia (tubular hearts) and spine curvature at high concentrations of HEWAF. Moreover, edema formation was observed in both stages This study shows different functional responses of A. tropicus after crude oil exposure and provides useful information of the developmental impacts of these compounds on the early life stages of freshwater tropical fishes.

The study vigilantly considered the load of Pb, Cd, Cr, Cu, and Zn in a variety of tissues (muscle, gills, and liver) of 5 fish species (Mystus gulio, Notopterus notopterus, Notopterus chitala, Mugil cephalus, and Glossogobius giuris) collected from six sites in the lower Gangetic area. The study showed the lowest concentration of metals in the muscles. The accumulated patterns of heavy metals differed in different regions and concentrations fluctuated between the liver and gills. The target hazard quotient (THQ) value has been measured in contaminated fish. The THQ values for all the metals in respective fishes are below 1 that indicate that indirect intake of metals by consuming these selected fishes will not result in potential health hazard in human. The estimated daily intake (EDI) results were also calculated. EDI levels of all elements are lower than the permissible limit indicating a lower chance for health risk to occur. However, doses below the recommended levels do not indicate that they are completely safe for consumption or those above are not to be used. Thus, it can be demonstrated that occurrence of Cd, Cr, Pb, Cu, and Zn in the preferred tissues of the selected fish species in the present study may not pretense severe human health risk after consumption at its existing concentration.

With increasing global awareness of sustainable development and environmental protection, the importance of green supplier selection has become widely recognized. Recently, more and more literature focus on the green supplier selection issue and measurement of supplier performance; the measurement indicators mainly defined two sets of criteria, including management criteria and green criteria. A novel methodology based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been developed, which is effective for solving multi-criteria decision problems in supplier selection and evaluating the performance of a set of homogeneous decision-making units (DMUs). To solve the green supplier selection problem, previous studies apply the DEA method by dividing management criteria as inputs and green criteria as outputs. This paper aims to propose a DEA-type green supplier selection methodology by considering the management criteria and green criteria. Unlike the previous method, we define a reasonable and effective division of measurement indicators, where management criteria consist of input variables, desirable and undesirable output variables, while green criteria consist of desirable and undesirable output variables. We also provide an improved model with multi-criteria and multi-objective programming by considering DEA efficiency decomposition, which evaluates management, green, and overall efficiency of candidate suppliers simultaneously. The multi-criteria decision model will help companies to select the best green supplier. To demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of our proposed model, we present a numerical example at last.

Water pollution caused by heavy metals poses a serious threat to the ecosystem and human health. Among the various treatment techniques for water remediation, adsorption is an efficient method due to its high capacity, low cost, and simplicity. Thallium (Tl) is highly toxic to mammals and its removal from water is gaining increasingly prominent attention. In this study, three fungal strains (Fusarium sp. FP, Arthrinium sp. FB, and Phoma sp. FR) were tested for removal of Tl (I) from aqueous solutions and showed excellent removal performance. The prepared inactive fungal strains were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, SEM, and XPS analyses. The effects of pH, contact time, biomass dosage, and reaction temperature on the removal efficiency of Tl (I) were systematically investigated. The results indicated that the adsorption isotherm data fit well with the Langmuir model, and the pseudo-second-order model was more consistent with the kinetic data description. The maximum adsorption capacity of the fungal strain (Fusarium sp. FP, Arthrinium sp. FB, and Phoma sp. FR) for Tl (I) was found to be 94.69 mg/g, 66.97 mg/g, and 52.98 mg/g, respectively. The thermodynamic data showed that the sorption process was spontaneous and endothermic. The present study showed that the inactive fungal strains could be a promising adsorbent material for Tl (I) removal.

Radiometric measurement of building materials is very important to assess the internal and external exposure caused by the ionizing radiation emitted from terrestrial radionuclides in building materials. The activity concentrations of ²²⁶Ra, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K in fifty-eight samples of fifteen different structural and covering building materials commonly used in Osmaniye province located in the Mediterranean region of Turkey were measured by using gamma-ray spectroscopy. The activity concentrations of ²²⁶Ra, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K varied from 2.5 ± 0.1 (marble) to 145.7 ± 4.4 (clay brick), 1.3 ± 0.1 (marble) to 154.3 ± 4.1 (marble), and 8.6 ± 0.2 (sand) to 1044.1 ± 70.3 (granite), respectively. Radiological parameters (activity concentration index, alpha index, indoor absorbed gamma dose rate and the corresponding annual effective dose rate, and excess lifetime cancer risk) were estimated to evaluate the health hazards associated with these building materials. Since the estimated values of these parameters are within the recommended safety limits or criteria values, the use of the studied building materials in the construction of dwellings can be considered to be safe for the residents of the region.

The solar photovoltaic system is an emerging renewable energy resource. The performance of the solar photovoltaic system is predicted based on the historical experimental dataset. In this work, the real-time prediction models are developed for the output power prediction of the STPV system. The performance of the semitransparent photovoltaic system is predicted for the Kovilpatti region where the climatic condition is hot and humid. The short-term power is predicted for the hourly, daily, and weekly average are considered. The feature selected for the prediction of the output power of the STPV system comprises of the solar radiation, ambient temperature, and wind velocity of the Kovilpatti region. The result reveals that the output power prediction of the hourly, daily, and weekly power have the very high value of the correlation coefficient of R. The final model produced accurate forecasts, with a Root mean square (RMSE) of 0.25 in ELMAN and 0.30 in FFN and 0.426 in GRN. These features of the training algorithm indicate that the model is not dependent on the model’s position or configuration in the simulation.

Plant species surviving in the arid regions have developed novel leaf features to harvest atmospheric water. Before the collected water evaporates, it is absorbed and transported for storage within the tissues and move toward the root zone through the unique chemistry of leaf structures. Deep insights into such features reveal that similarities can be found in the wheat plant. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the leaf rolling dynamics among wheat genotypes and their relationships with moisture harvesting and its movement on the leaf surface. For this purpose, genotypes were characterized for leaf rolling at three distinct growth stages (tillering, booting, and spike emergence). The contact angle of leaf surface dynamics (adaxial and abaxial), water budget, and morphophysiological traits of genotypes were measured. The results indicate that leaf rolling varies from inward to twisting type among genotypes and positively affected the water use efficiency and soil moisture difference at all growth stages under normal and drought conditions. Results of wetting property (hydrophilic < 90°) of the leaf surface were positively associated with the atmospheric water collection (4–7 ml). The lower values of contact angle hysteresis (12–19°) also support this mechanism. Thus, genotypes with leaf rolling dynamics (inward rolled and twisted) and surface wettability is an efficient fog harvesting system in wheat for interception and utilization of fog water in drought-prone areas. These results can be exploited to develop self-irrigated and drought-tolerant crops.

As an element relevant to human health, iodine is highly worthy of researchers’ attention, especially the mechanism of iodine migration and enrichment in groundwater systems. A total of 43 groundwater, 1 seawater, 107 sediment, and 111 pore water samples from two boreholes (toward to Bohai Sea: BT, HH) were collected along a groundwater flow path at the North China Plain to investigate hydro-geochemical processes controlling groundwater iodine. High iodine groundwater (> 100 μg/L) was characterized by Na-Cl type, with high TDS values (827–2,400 mg/L) and high Cl (110–705 mg/L) and Br (416–1,180 μg/L) concentrations, which may be related to marine influence. Borehole BT and HH had pore water I concentration ranges of 1.4–132 μg/L and 3.6–830 μg/L, with high level that occurred near to coastline and corresponded to ancient transgression events. The results of sequential extraction of borehole sediments indicate that the fractions of sediment inorganic iodine mainly consisted of exchangeable, carbonate, and Fe-oxides associated fractions. Fe-oxides associated iodine was the main occurrence state in borehole BT far from the coastline, but high exchangeable iodine fractions (up to 92% of total extracted iodine) were observed in a high salinity borehole HH located near Bohai Bay, corresponding to the occurrence of high iodine pore water and groundwater. The analysis of iodine species indicates that iodide with strong migration ability dominated high iodine groundwater, pore water, and exchangeable sediment iodine, reflecting the occurrence of adsorption/desorption processes of iodine in groundwater system. High iodine groundwater and pore water exhibited iodine enrichment relative to Cl and Br, which suggests that iodine adsorbed on sediment desorbed under suitable pH and high solution ionic strength and subsequently released to pore water and aquifers. Inverse geochemical modeling stressed that ion exchange plays an important role in iodine enrichment of groundwater system.

Mercury (Hg) in the form of highly toxic methyl mercury (MeHg) accumulates in aquatic food webs to an extent where it may threaten fish health in many freshwaters. Selenium (Se) mitigates the toxicity of accumulated Hg by forming strong bonds with it, a drawback being diversion of Se from biosynthetic pathways of essential selenoenzymes. We measured Se and Hg in muscle tissue of Eurasian perch (Perca fluviatilis) and vendace (Coregonus albula). For the perch, Se and Hg correlated positively. For the vendace, a positive relationship was seen when the effect of fish size was accounted for. All fish displayed surplus Se (mol Se – mol Hg > 0). For both fish species, the Se molar surplus ((nmol Se – nmol Hg)/g ww) decreased with fish weight. It was higher in the perch than in the vendace and showed the least variation among the small perch (4–34 g). For the large perch (79–434 g), the Se molar surplus decreased with increasing Hg below 0.5 µg Hg but then increased with further Hg increment despite Hg being a negative term in the Se molar surplus. In case the Se molar surplus reflected the weight-specific Se requirement, the latter clearly decreased with increasing fish size for the vendace. This was less clear for the perch because of the strong correlation between Hg and weight. Together, these Se–Hg relationships suggest that Se accumulation was at least partly subject to homeostatic control and responded to the Hg body burden and the Se requirement.