Groundwater contamination in the Indo-Gangetic alluvial plain has reportedly been affected by various factors, such as mineral dissolution, overexploitation, precipitation, and ion exchange. This ...study was designed to interpret the hydrochemical fluctuations in the groundwater sources of a rural area in Raebareli district. Groundwater is slightly alkaline and affected by the issues of fluoride, salinity, hardness, and nitrate. The Pollution Index of Groundwater significantly categorize 57% and 79% of the samples under the “insignificant pollution” category during pre-monsoon and post-monsoon periods. The Health risk assessment indicated the high susceptibility of children toward health risks. It also indicated that fluoride had greater impact than nitrate in the study area. The multivariate statistical analysis indicates that anthropogenic activities, such as agricultural practices, including excessive fertilizer application and improper domestic and cattle waste management, are probable causes of groundwater contamination through NO
3
−
, Cl
−
, Na
+
, and K
+
. Furthermore, the base exchange index classified 71.43% samples in pre-monsoon and 78.57% in post-monsoon as Na-HCO
3
type. The meteoric genesis index suggested that 78.57% and 85.71% of the samples belong to shallow meteoric water percolation type during pre- and post-monsoon periods, respectively. The Piper plots revealed that HCO
3
–Ca·Mg and SO
4
·Cl–Na + K type are the prominent facies in the area, with dominance of alkalis and weak acids. According to Gibbs plot, majority of the samples fall under “rock dominance” suggesting that “rock-water” interaction was the dominant natural process controlling the groundwater chemistry.
Nitrate is an important and widespread contaminant of groundwater and surface water resources. Nitrate formed either by the natural processes (atmospheric fixation, lightning storms) or added through ...anthropogenic activities (fertilizer applications, septic tanks) enters the hydrosphere with virtual ease. In this article we review various concepts discussing the different sources behind elevated nitrate levels. Moreover, an attempt is also made towards preparing a comprehensive framework to understand the leaching of nitrate in groundwater. This framework would effectively help in understanding the origin and dynamics controlling the fate of nitrate in groundwater, which is vital for managing the associated risks and safeguarding the water supplies.
Provision of safe drinking water sources is one of the most important agenda of the governing bodies in developing countries across the globe. Hence, the current study was taken up to assess the ...overall groundwater quality and the spatial distribution of the physico-chemical parameters governing the groundwater quality in Raebareli district (North India). In general, the groundwater was found to be slightly alkaline, with the order of ionic abundance being F
−
< K
+
< Ca
2+
< NO
3
−
< Mg
2+
< SO
4
2−
< Na
+
< HCO
3
−
. The results of ‘Pollution Index of Groundwater’ (PIG) suggest that around 50% of the samples were in the category of ‘insignificant pollution’, with 1 sample each under ‘high’ and ‘very high’ pollution categories. The dominant water type in the study area was found to be ‘mixed CaNaHCO
3
type’ through hydrochemical facies assessment. The spatial distribution suggests that the north and central parts were the most affected areas with respect to PIG. The non-carcinogenic effects of consuming water contaminated with F
−
and NO
3
−
were assessed through Hazard Quotient (HQ) and Total Hazard Index (THI) values. The HQ
Fluoride
varies between 0.16–6.34, 0.12–4.69, and 0.14–5.54 for the children, male, and female, respectively. The HQ
Nitrate
varies between 0.03–4.96, 0.02–3.67, and 0.02–4.33 in the case of children, male, and female, respectively. The spatial distribution of THI suggested that central parts of the study area were under high risk. The potential health risks to the residents in the study area should cause immediate attention from the society, governing authorities, and the research community.
The COVID-19 lockdown has been reported as a “ventilator” for the reinstatement of natural resources across the globe. Hence, the present study attempts to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on ...the water quality of River Gomti across its stretch of ~960 km through the assessment of ‘Water Quality Index’ (WQI). The study also highlights the potential risk of faecal-oral transmission of COVID-19 through intake of river water facing the issue of direct discharge of domestic sewage. A deterioration in the water quality was witnessed at ~69% sampling locations during the lockdown period (May 2020). Interestingly, none of the water samples during the pre-lockdown, lockdown, and post-lockdown periods across the whole stretch belonged to the “excellent” category (WQI<25). The DO levels fell across ~69% and ~88% of the sites during the lockdown and post-lockdown periods, respectively. Moreover, there was an increase in the BOD
5
levels across ~69% and 75% of the sites during lockdown and post-lockdown periods, respectively. These findings indicate that the release of sewage without or with partial treatment is a chief contributor of water pollution in the groundwater fed River Gomti. Thereby, highlighting the possible risk of faecal-oral transmission of the corona virus, and creating a major concern for the residents across its stretch. The urban sprawl and riverfront development in Lucknow city also emerge as potential causes of water quality deterioration in River Gomti, considering that the water quality at five sites within the city was under the “unfit” category regardless of the lockdown situation. Thus, the urgent need of management of domestic sewage release into the river and further research on the potential risk of faecal-oral transmission of COVID-19 have been suggested in the study.
A
bstract
Realistic models based on the renormalizable grand unified theories have varieties of scalars, many of which are capable of mediating baryon (
B
) and lepton (
L
) number non-conserving ...processes. We identify all such scalar fields residing in
10
,
126
¯
and
120
dimensional irreducible representations of SO(10) which can induce baryon and lepton number violating interactions through the leading order
d
= 6 and
d
= 7 operators. Explicitly computing their couplings with the standard model fermions, we derive the effective operators including the possibility of mixing between the scalars stemming from a given representation. We find that such interactions at
d
= 6 are mediated by only three sets of scalars:
T
(3
,
1
,
−1
/
3),
T
(3
,
1
,
−4
/
3) and
T
(3
,
3
,
−1
/
3) and their conjugates. In the models with
10
and
126
¯
, only the first has appropriate couplings to mediate the proton decay. While
T
and
T
can induce baryon number violating interactions when
120
is present,
T
does not contribute to the proton decay at tree level because of its flavour antisymmetric coupling. Three additional colour triplets and their conjugates can mediate nucleon decay via
d
= 7 operators which violate also the
B
−
L
. We give general expressions for partial widths of proton in terms of the fundamental Yukawa couplings and use these results to explicitly compute the proton lifetime and branching ratios for the minimal non-supersymmetric SO(10) model based on
10
and
126
¯
Higgs. We find that the proton preferably decays into
ν
¯
K
+
or
μ
+
K
0
and list several distinct features of scalar mediated proton decay. If the latter dominates over the gauge mediated contributions, the proton decay spectrum provides a direct probe to the flavour structure of the underlying grand unified theory.
Genome editing critically relies on selective recognition of target sites. However, despite recent progress, the underlying search mechanism of genome-editing proteins is not fully understood in the ...context of cellular chromatin environments. Here, we use single-molecule imaging in live cells to directly study the behavior of CRISPR/Cas9 and TALEN. Our single-molecule imaging of genome-editing proteins reveals that Cas9 is less efficient in heterochromatin than TALEN because Cas9 becomes encumbered by local searches on non-specific sites in these regions. We find up to a fivefold increase in editing efficiency for TALEN compared to Cas9 in heterochromatin regions. Overall, our results show that Cas9 and TALEN use a combination of 3-D and local searches to identify target sites, and the nanoscopic granularity of local search determines the editing outcomes of the genome-editing proteins. Taken together, our results suggest that TALEN is a more efficient gene-editing tool than Cas9 for applications in heterochromatin.
Fog computing (FC) is an evolving computing technology that operates in a distributed environment. FC aims to bring cloud computing features close to edge devices. The approach is expected to fulfill ...the minimum latency requirement for healthcare Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. Healthcare IoT devices generate various volumes of healthcare data. This large volume of data results in high data traffic that causes network congestion and high latency. An increase in round-trip time delay owing to large data transmission and large hop counts between IoTs and cloud servers render healthcare data meaningless and inadequate for end-users. Time-sensitive healthcare applications require real-time data. Traditional cloud servers cannot fulfill the minimum latency demands of healthcare IoT devices and end-users. Therefore, communication latency, computation latency, and network latency must be reduced for IoT data transmission. FC affords the storage, processing, and analysis of data from cloud computing to a network edge to reduce high latency. A novel solution for the abovementioned problem is proposed herein. It includes an analytical model and a hybrid fuzzy-based reinforcement learning algorithm in an FC environment. The aim is to reduce high latency among healthcare IoTs, end-users, and cloud servers. The proposed intelligent FC analytical model and algorithm use a fuzzy inference system combined with reinforcement learning and neural network evolution strategies for data packet allocation and selection in an IoT-FC environment. The approach is tested on simulators iFogSim (Net-Beans) and Spyder (Python). The obtained results indicated the better performance of the proposed approach compared with existing methods.
Introduction: Determining the seroprevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in pregnant women offers essential data for monitoring the trend of HIV and assists in prevention from ...mother-to-child transmission. Aim: To determine the prevalence of HIV infection among pregnant women. Materials and Methods: A retrospective observational study was conducted at Autonomous State Medical College, Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, India from July 2016 to June 2019. A total of 6,974 pregnant females were referred to the antenatal clinic during the study period, and all were included in this study. HIV antibodies were tested using the three ELISA/Rapid/Supplemental tests protocol. A woman was identified as HIV infected if tested positive on more than two HIV ELISA tests. The data were entered into MS Excel and analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0. A Chi-square test was employed to assess the association between the variables. Results: Out of 6,974 females, a total of 32 (0.46%) pregnant females were found to be seropositive (13 patients from July 2016 to June 2017, 10 patients from July 2017 to June 2018, and 9 patients from July 2018 to June 2019). Among the 32 HIV-positive pregnant women, 2 (6.3%) were aged <20 years, 19 (59.4%) were aged 21-30 years, 9 (28.1%) were aged 31- 40 years, and 2 (6.2%) were aged over 40 years. Illiteracy was associated with seropositivity, as 53.1% of seropositive patients were illiterate. Conclusion: Seroprevalence has been decreasing in recent years, indicating that we are on the right track. However, efforts should be made to provide universal access to antenatal care and services for prevention parent-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS.
The aim of the present study was to assess the status of heavy metal contamination and health risks associated with the use of water from River Gomti by millions of people. The value of the degree of ...contamination (C
d
) was found to be ‘11.93’, signifying ‘high’ risk levels due to heavy metal contamination in River Gomti across an approximate stretch of 61 km including upstream, midstream, and downstream locations of Lucknow city. The potential sources of heavy metal pollution in River Gomti include both sewage and industrial effluents, being transported by drains which overflow into the river. The heavy metals were found to have low mobility owing to the ‘near neutral’ pH of river water. The findings from the human health risk assessment revealed that the hazard index associated with non-carcinogenic risks exceeded the permissible limits at all sampling stations. The highest health risk was found at Bharwara sewage treatment plant discharge point, downstream of Lucknow city signifying the elevated levels of heavy metal in the river water post treatment from Bharwara STP. The results of carcinogenic risk assessment suggested that children were more susceptible to health risks, and immediate remedial measures are required to control the elevated levels of heavy metals at all the sampling stations.
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