Recently, there is a growing research interest in the applications and development of novel sustainable hydrogel materials in waste water treatment because of radically distinctive chemical and physical characteristics of hydrogels such as hydrophilicity, swell ability and modifiability to name a few. Hydrogels have exposed the hypernym functioning in the removal of a wide range of aqueous pollutants containing toxic dyes and heavy metal ions. A large amount of water gets incorporated in the three dimensional networks of hydrophilic structures of hydrogels. The prime objective of this review article is to render a presentation on the recent advances in the modifications of sodium alginate based hydrogels for the adsorptive removal of toxic pollutants. In addition, article also briefly gives the classification and properties of hydrogels and alginate.

Recycling is groundwork of the worldwide efforts to diminish the amount of plastics in waste. Mostly around 7.8-8.2 million tons of poorly-used plastics enter the oceans every year. Nonbiodegradable plastics settlements in landfills are uncertain, which hinders the production of land resources. Non-biodegradable plastic solid wastes, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, various air pollutants, cancerous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins, released to the environment cause severe damage and harmfulness to the inhabitants. Due to the bio-degradability and renewability of biopolymers, petroleum-based plastics can be replaced with bio-based polymers in order to minimize the environmental risks. In this review article, bio-degradability of polymers has been discussed. The mechanisms of bio-recycling have been particularly emphasized in the present article.

Due to their superior properties, plastics derived from petroleum have been extensively used almost in everyday life since last few decades. Because of lack in the manageability of plastic solid waste, their volume is increasing steadily in the natural world. Unfortunately, the disposal of plastics wastes in the oceans and land filling has led to a global issue. To effectively and efficiently deal with plastic solid waste is becoming a great challenge for the society as plastic solid waste creates big threat to our environment. Recycling of plastics solid waste should be performed to produce products having same quality to original plastics. This review article gives an overview of plastics solid waste with particular emphasis on the recent progress in polystyrene based plastics.

Aim:The aim was to detect virulence gene associated with the Salmonella serovars isolated from pork and Slaughterhouse environment.Materials and Methods:Salmonella isolates (n=37) used in this study were isolated from 270 pork and slaughter house environmental samples collected from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation Slaughter House, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. Salmonella serovars were isolated and identified as per BAM USFDA method and serotyped at National Salmonella and Escherichia Centre, Central Research Institute, Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh, India). Polymerase chain reaction technique was used for detection of five genes, namely invA, spvR, spvC, fimA and stn among different serovars of Salmonella.Results:Out of a total of 270 samples, 37 (13.70%) Salmonella were isolated with two serovars, namely Enteritidis and Typhimurium. All Salmonella serovars produced 284 bp invA gene, 84 bp fimA and 260 bp amplicon for enterotoxin (stn) gene whereas 30 isolates possessed 310 bp spvR gene, but no isolate possessed spvC gene.Conclusion:Presence of invA, fimA and stn gene in all isolates shows that they are the specific targets for Salmonella identification and are capable of producing gastroenteric illness to humans, whereas 20 Typhimurium serovars and 10 Enteritidis serovars can able to produce systemic infection.

Plasma membrane (PM) Ca2+ pump is a Ca+-Mg2+-ATPase that expels Ca2+ from cells to help them maintain low concentrations of cytosolic Ca2+ . There are no known extracellularly acting PM Ca2+ pump inhibitors, as digoxin and ouabain are for Na+ pump. In analogy with digoxin, we define caloxins as extracellular PM Ca2+ pump inhibitors and describe caloxin 2A1. Caloxin 2A1 is a peptide obtained by screening a random peptide phage display library for binding to the second extracellular domain (residues 401-413) sequence of PM Ca2+ pump isoform 1b. Caloxin 2A1 inhibits Ca2+-Mg2+-ATPase in human erythrocyte leaky ghosts, but it does not affect basal Mg2+-ATPase or Na+-K+-ATPase in the ghosts or Ca2+-Mg2+-ATPase in the skeletal muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum. Caloxin 2A1 also inhibits Ca2+-dependent formation of the 140-kDa acid-stable acylphosphate, which is a partial reaction of this enzyme. Consistent with inhibition of the PM Ca2+ pump in vascular endothelium, caloxin 2A1 produces an endothelium-dependent relaxation that is reversed by N(G)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester. Thus caloxin 2A1 is a novel PM Ca2+ pump inhibitor selected for binding to an extracellular domain.