Pulp and paper mill effluent is highly polluting and is a subject of great environmental concern. In the present research we studied the removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and colour from paper mill effluent, using the coagulation process. A batch coagulation study was conducted using various coagulants such as aluminium chloride (AlCl3), polyaluminium chloride (PAC) and copper sulphate (C...

Solute transport through homogeneous media has long been assumed to be scale-independent and can be quantified by the second-order advection-dispersion equation (ADE). This study, however, observed the opposite in the laboratory, where transport of CuSO4 through relatively homogeneous silica-sand columns exhibits sub-diffusion growing with the spatial scale. Only at a very small travel distance...

The full length cDNA of a novel metallothionein (LbMT2) gene was cloned from a cDNA library of Limonium bicolor. The LbMT2 gene cloned is 518 bp in length, which includes a 64 bp of 5' untranslated region (UTR) and a 205 bp of 3' untranslated region. This gene has an open reading frame (ORF) of 249 bp in length, encoding a protein of 82 amino acid residues with the molecular mass of 8.1 kDa and...

Nitrovasodilators-sodium nitroprusside (SNP; 10(-9)-10(-4) M) and 3-morpholino-sydnonimine (SIN-1; 10(-9)-10(-4) M) produced concentration-dependent relaxation of the fourth generation sheep pulmonary artery, preconstricted with 5-hydroxytryptamine (1 microM). Oxidizing agents [oxidized glutathione (GSSG, 1 mM) and CuSO4 (5 and 20 microM)] and reducing agents [dithiothreitol (DTT, 0.1 mM), asco...

Copper is an integral component of various enzymes, necessary for mitochondrial respiration and other biological functions. Excess copper is related with neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer and is able to modify cellular redox environment, influencing its functions, signaling, and catabolic pathways. Tryptophan degradation through kynurenine pathway produces some metabolites with redox prop...

The effect of copper on the production of extracellular trypsin-like proteases of Trichoderma harzianum T66 was examined. Trypsin-like protease enzyme activities were significantly enhanced in the presence of copper ion. It was demonstrated that instead of raising the activity of previously produced enzymes, copper ions are able to induce the secretion of extracellular trypsin-like proteases. S...

Bacteria are used in ecotoxicology for their important role in marine ecosystems and their quick, reproducible responses. Here we applied a recently proposed method to assess the ecotoxicity of nanomaterials on the ubiquitous marine bacterium Vibrio anguillarum, as representative of brackish and marine ecosystems. The test allows the determination of 6-h EC50 in a wide range of salinity, by ass...

Various indispensable metabolic processes are reliant on minute amounts of essential trace elements i.e., Fe and Cu and on FeCu association as well to maintain normal health. An excess of both elements can render abnormality in liver function. The aim of this work was to evaluate the acute hepatotoxicity of Fe & Cu by analyzing the biochemical functions of liver. Adult male Wistar rats (200g) w...

Cu ion was electrodeposited potentiostatically in 0.05 M CuSO4 aqueous solutions onto a foreign substrate of TiN film sputtered on a stainless steel sheet. The amount of electricity was limited to 31.8 mC cm , which corresponds to a 10 nm thick film, deposited uniformly without any void formation. Two different electrolytic cell configurations were designed in order to discuss quantitatively th...