Tuberculosis transmission continues to be a major public health challenge. In this cluster-randomized, controlled trial conducted in Vietnam, active community-wide screening for tuberculosis over 4 ...years is shown to decrease the prevalence of tuberculosis.
Floating treatment wetlands (FTW) are nature-based solutions for the purification of open water systems such as rivers, ponds, and lakes polluted by diffuse sources as untreated or partially treated ...domestic wastewater and agricultural run-off. Compared with other physicochemical and biological technologies, FTW is a technology with low-cost, simple configuration, easy to operate; has a relatively high efficiency, and is energy-saving, and aesthetic. Water remediation in FTWs is supported by plant uptake and the growth of a biofilm on the water plant roots, so the selection of the macrophyte species is critical, not only to pollutant removal but also to the local ecosystem integrity, especially for full-scale implementation. The key factors such as buoyant frame/raft, plant growth support media, water depth, seasonal variation, and temperature have a considerable role in the design, operation, maintenance, and pollutant treatment performance of FTW. Harvesting is a necessary process to maintain efficient operation by limiting the re-pollution of plants in the decay phase. Furthermore, the harvested plant biomass can serve as a green source for the recovery of energy and value-added products.
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•Design, operation and maintenance of floating treatment wetland (FTW) were examined.•Removal mechanisms of FTW are plant uptake and degradation by biofilm.•Benefits, limitations, and solutions for improvement of FTW were also discussed.•Plant biomass harvesting from FTW has been used for value-added products.
This study aims to investigate the spatiotemporal trends and impact of COVID-19 lockdowns to the profile of physiochemical parameters in the influent of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) around ...Brisbane, Australia. One 24-hr composite influent sample was collected from 10 WWTPs and analyzed for a range of physiochemical parameters per week (i.e., chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), ammonia, volatile suspended solid (VSS)) and per month (i.e., Ni and Cr) from 2012 to 2020, including the period of COVID-19 lockdowns in the region. The catchments studied were urban, with a mix of domestic and industrial activities contributing towards the contaminant profile. Statistical analysis identified that industrial and commercial land use, as well as population size had a large impact to the parameter loads and profile. Per capita mass loads of Cr in one catchment were 100 times higher than in others from one industrial point source. TP demonstrated a potential monotonic decrease over time due to practical reduction policies that have been implemented for phosphorous content in household detergents, except for one catchment where trade waste from food manufacturing industries contributed to an overall increase of 6.9%/year TP. The COVID-19 lockdown (March–April 2020) posed different impact on different catchments, either decrease (7–61%) or increase (2–40%) of most parameter loads (e.g., COD, TOC, TN, TP, VSS, Ammonia), which was likely driven by catchment characteristics (i.e., the proportion of residential, commercial, and industrial land uses). This study enhances our understanding of spatiotemporal trend of contaminants in the catchments for further effective source control.
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•Mass loads of 8 contaminants analyzed over 9 years in 10 urban catchments in Australia.•Specific trade waste categories linked as main contributors to total catchment loads.•Large outliers observed with Cr 100 times higher in one catchment due to one customer.•Long-term decrease of TP in WWTPs due to phase-out of phosphorous in detergents.•Change of contaminant loads during lockdown depends on the social-demographic and land use profile of the catchment.
Foreign body-related complications are rare but possibly fatal events in clinical practice. Liver abscess as a result of gastrointestinal perforation caused by foreign bodies is even more rare. We ...report a case of a 63-year-old man who was admitted with fever and left epigastric pain. Further investigation revealed a liver abscess without resolution despite antibiotic therapy for several weeks. In the second admission, an enhanced computerized tomography scan revealed multiple abscesses in the left lobe of the liver, with a linear radio-dense foreign body within the collection. Open surgery was performed to extract the foreign body. The patient made a satisfactory postoperative recovery without complications and was discharged on the sixth postoperative day.
Among various advanced oxidation processes applied in wastewater treatment, photocatalysis has attracted attention in research and industry due to its advantages, such as low cost, high efficiency, ...and eco-friendliness. With a unique layered structure, bismuth oxyhalides have been widely applied as high-efficiency photocatalysts for organic pollutant degradation in the aqueous environment. However, the large bandgap of BiOCl and the high recombination rate of BiOBr limit their practical application. Tuning bandgap by forming a solid solution is an efficient method to engineer bandgap and prolong the lifetime of photo-induced electron-hole pairs. In this study, a facile solid-state reaction in a vapor chamber was applied to prepared solid solutions of BiOCl1−xBrx. Their photocatalytic performance is significantly improved in comparison with the end components. The optimal composition at x = 0.5 performed degradation efficiencies of 92.3% and 82.6% for rhodamine B and tetracycline degradation, after 70 mins of reaction under light emitting diode (LED) irradiation, respectively. This improvement is attributed to the reduction in bandgap and the effective charge recombination due to the favorable electronic and crystal structure variation, demonstrated by the photoelectrochemical results and density functional theory calculation.
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•Novel solid-state reaction in the vapor chamber of BiOCl1−xBrx solid solution.•Crystal and electronic structure variation by solid solution formation.•Significant improvement in visible-light-driven photocatalytic activity.•DFT study on oxygen vacancy formation and charge re-distribution.
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