In this paper, we propose an unsupervised and automated method to identify noun sense changes based on rigorous analysis of time-varying text data available in the form of millions of digitized books and millions of tweets posted per day. We construct distributional-thesauri-based networks from data at different time points and cluster each of them separately to obtain word-centric sense clusters corresponding to the different time points. Subsequently, we propose a split/join based approach to compare the sense clusters at two different time points to find if there is ‘birth’ of a new sense. The approach also helps us to find if an older sense was ‘split’ into more than one sense or a newer sense has been formed from the ‘join’ of older senses or a particular sense has undergone ‘death’. We use this completely unsupervised approach (a) within the Google books data to identify word sense differences within a media, and (b) across Google books and Twitter data to identify differences in word sense distribution across different media. We conduct a thorough evaluation of the proposed methodology both manually as well as through comparison with WordNet.

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The steady-state and time-resolved studies of the sensitized emission of the excited-state proton transfer (ESIPT) probe 3-hydroxy-2-naphthoic acid (3HNA) when bound to bovine serum albumin (BSA) and human serum albumin (HSA) indicate that the nonradiative dipole-dipole Förster type energy transfer from Trp singlet state of proteins to the ESIPT singlet state of 3HNA is greater in the case of HSA. This is supported by the distance and the orientation of the donor-acceptor pair obtained from the protein-ligand docking studies. The docking studies of the complex of BSA-3HNA also indicate that Trp 134 rather than Trp 213 is involved in the energy transfer process. The local environment of Trp 134 in BSA rather than that of Trp 213 is perturbed because of interaction with 3HNA as revealed by the optical resolution of Trp 134 phosphorescence in the complex at 77 K. Docking studies support the larger rotational correlation time, thetac (approximately 50 ns), observed for Trp residue/residues in the complexes of HSA and BSA compared with that in the free proteins.

Plastic pollution has become a global concern for ecosystem health and biodiversity conservation. Concentrations of plastics are manifold higher in the terrestrial system than the aquatic one. Micro/nanoplastics (M/NP) have the ability to alter soil enzymatic system, soil properties and also affect soil borne microorganisms and earthworms. Despite, the knowhow regarding modulatory effects of plastics are acquired from the study on aquatic system and reports on their phytotoxic potentials are limited. The presence of cell wall that could restrict M/NP invasion into plant roots might be the putative cause of this limitation. M/NP inhibit plant growth, seed germination and gene expression; and they also induce cytogenotoxicity by aggravating reactive oxygen species generation. Dynamic behavior of cell wall; the pores formed either by cell wall degrading enzymes or by plant–pathogen interactions or by mechanical injury might facilitate the entry of into roots M/NP. This review also provides a possible mechanism of large sized microplastics‐induced phytotoxicity especially for those that cannot pass through cell wall pores. As M/NP affect soil microbial community and soil parameters, it is hypothesized that they could have the potential to affect N2 fixation and research should be conducted in this direction. Reports on M/NP‐induced toxicity mainly focused only on one polymer type (polystyrene) in spite of the toxicological relevancies of other polymer types like polyethylene, polypropylene etc. So, the assessment of phytotoxic potential of M/NP should be done using other plastic polymers in real environment as they are known to intract with other environmental stressors as well as can alter the the soil–microbe–plant interaction.