The adsorption technique using chemically treated powder of bark of Acacia arabica was applied for the removal of toxic heavy metals from polluted waste water. The extent of adsorption found to be dependent on the pH and the time of contact. The adsorbent is effective for the quantitative removal of various toxic metals from the contaminated aqueous sample. The method is quite feasible, economi...

Childhood lead (Pb2+) intoxication is a global public health problem and accounts for 0.6% of the global burden of disease associated with intellectual disabilities. Despite the recognition that childhood Pb2+ intoxication contributes significantly to intellectual disabilities, there is a fundamental lack of knowledge on presynaptic mechanisms by which Pb2+ disrupts synaptic function. In this s...

Addition of 2 mg of Pb2+/g of soil concident with or after amendment with starch or maltose resulted in 75 and 50% decreases in net synthesis of amylase and alpha-glucosidase, respectively. Invertase synthesis in sucrose-amended soil was transiently reduced after Pb2+ addition. Amylase activity was several times less sensitive to Pb2+ inhibition than was enzyme synthesis. In most cases, the rat...

Novel avian H7N9 virus emerged in China in 2013 resulting in a case fatality rate of around 39% and continues to pose zoonotic and pandemic risk. Amino acid substitutions in PB2 protein were shown to influence the pathogenicity and transmissibility of H7N9 following experimental infection of ferrets and mice. In this study, we evaluated the role of amino acid substitution PB2-627K or compensato...

By applying a multitude of experimental techniques including 1 H, 14 N, 207 Pb NMR and 127 I NMR/NQR, tracer diffusion, reaction cell and doping experiments, as well as stoichiometric variation, conductivity, and polarization experiments, iodine ions are unambiguously shown to be the mobile species in CH3 NH3 PbI3 , with iodine vacancies shown to represent the mechanistic centers under equilibr...

Guanine-rich sequences of DNA are able to create tetrastranded structures known as G-quadruplexes; they are formed by the stacking of planar G-quartets composed of four guanines paired by Hoogsteen hydrogen bonding. G-quadruplexes act as ligands for metal ions and aptamers for various molecules. Interestingly, the G-quadruplexes form a complex with anionic porphyrin hemin and exhibit peroxidase...

A surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) detection method for environmental copper ions (Cu2+) was developed according to the vibrational spectral change of diethyldithiocarbamate (DDTC) on gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). The ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) absorption spectra indicated that DDTC formed a complex with Cu2+, showing a prominent peak at ~450 nm. We found Raman spectral changes in DDTC ...