Feature Article

Agro wastes such as carrot peel, onion peel, potato peel and sugar beet peel are products subjected to saccharification process by Penicillium sp. for the hydrolysis, this process was followed by the fermentation using yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for the production of alcohol which was fermented at 14, 21, 28 days to produce alcohol. The aim of the study was to determine alcohol content of fermented agro wastes based on different fermentation time. The fermented product was purified by primary distillation process at 780C and the fraction was collected.

Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-economic, political, ecological and climatic processes at various spatial and temporal scales. Over the course of 2 days, the authors discussed how communities could live with fire challenges at local, national and transnational scales. Exploiting our diverse, international and interdisciplinary expertise, we outline generalizable properties of fire-adaptive communities in varied settings where cultural knowledge of fire is rich and diverse.

Changes to the grounding line, where grounded ice starts to float, can be used as a remotely-sensed measure of ice-sheet susceptibility to ocean-forced dynamic thinning. Constraining this susceptibility is vital for predicting Antarctica's contribution to rising sea levels. We use Landsat imagery to monitor grounding line movement over four decades along the Bellingshausen margin of West Antarctica, an area little monitored despite potential for future ice losses.

The National Academy of Medicine has called for an increase in the minimum age of tobacco product sales. It is not clear what age increase would garner the greatest public support, or whether trust in the U.S. government predicts policy support. The data for these analyses are from a nationally representative telephone sample of U.S. adults (N=4,880) conducted from September 2014 to May 2015.

Original Source

It is estimated that more than two-thirds of the population in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) must leave their home to collect water, putting them at risk for a variety of negative health outcomes. There is little research, however, quantifying who is most affected by long water collection times.

The effects of urban heat islands(UHIs) have a substantial bearing on the sustainability of cities and environs. This paper examines the efficacy of green and cool roofs as potential UHI mitigation strategies to make cities more resilient against UHI.

Original Source

Power plants constitute roughly 40% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States. Climate change science, air pollution regulation, and potential carbon trading policies rely on accurate, unbiased quantification of these large point sources. Two US federal agencies—the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency—tabulate the emissions from US power plants using two different methodological approaches. The researchers have analyzed those two data sets and have found that when averaged over all US facilities, the median percentage difference is less than 3%.

Although it is known that acetaminophen causes oxidative injury in the liver, it is not known whether it causes oxidative stress in the respiratory tract. If so, this widely used analgesic may potentiate the adverse effects of oxidant air pollutants. The goal of this study was to determine if acetaminophen induces respiratory tract oxidative stress and/or potentiates the oxidative stress and irritant responses to an inhaled oxidant: environmental tobacco smoke (ETS).

Original Source

Traffic noise affects a large number of people, particularly in urbanized areas. Noise causes stress and annoyance, but less is known about the relationship between noise and depression. The researchers investigated the association of residential road traffic noise with depressive symptoms using 5-year follow-up data from a German population-based study.

Original Source

Malnutrition, which encompasses under- and overnutrition, is responsible for an enormous morbidity and mortality burden globally. Malnutrition results from disordered nutrient assimilation but is also characterized by recurrent infections and chronic inflammation, implying an underlying immune defect. Defects emerge before birth via modifications in the immunoepigenome of malnourished parents, and these may contribute to intergenerational cycles of malnutrition.