Resource efficient metal extraction and silicon wafer recovery from end-of-life monocrystalline solar cells: A chemical and environmental perspective.

With the rapid expansion of photovoltaic technology, managing photovoltaic-solid waste has become a growing challenge. This study presents an efficient process for recovering metals and silicon wafers from end-of-life solar cells, which has significant potential for generating auxiliary sources of revenue for the world economy and mitigating resource depletion risks along with environmental offsets. Following aluminium removal from the back of the solar cells utilizing hydrochloric acid, 99.

An analysis of occupational illness and injuries of the industrial workers in slums.

The achievement of Sustainable Development Goals 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) requires addressing the occupational health challenges and unsafe working conditions faced by industrial workers in slums, particularly migrant laborers lacking adequate training and literacy. This study examines health challenges among 320 slum-dwelling workers across 17 industries in West Bengal, categorized into civil/mechanical, textile, consumable, and chemical sectors. employed across 17 industries in West Bengal, categorized into civil/mechanical, textile, consumable, and chemical sectors.

MXenes and MXene-based composites for biomedical applications.

MXenes, a novel class of two-dimensional materials, have recently emerged as promising candidates for biomedical applications due to their specific structural features and exceptional physicochemical and biological properties. These materials, characterized by unique structural features and superior conductivity, have applications in tissue engineering, cancer detection and therapy, sensing, imaging, drug delivery, wound treatment, antimicrobial therapy, and medical implantation. Additionally, MXene-based composites, incorporating polymers, metals, carbon nanomaterials, and metal oxides, offer enhanced electroactive and mechanical properties, making them highly suitable for engineering electroactive organs such as the heart, skeletal muscle, and nerves.

Flexible and wearable electronic systems based on 2D hydrogel composites.

Flexible electronics is a rapidly developing field of study, which integrates many other fields, including materials science, biology, chemistry, physics, and electrical engineering. Despite their vast potential, the widespread utilization of flexible electronics is hindered by several constraints, including elevated Young's modulus, inadequate biocompatibility, and diminished responsiveness. Therefore, it is necessary to develop innovative materials aimed at overcoming these hurdles and catalysing their practical implementation.

New insights into the coal-associated methane architect: the ancient archaebacteria.

Exploration and marketable exploitation of coalbed methane (CBM) as cleaner fuel has been started globally. In addition, incidence of methane in coal basins is an imperative fraction of global carbon cycle. Significantly, subsurface coal ecosystem contains methane forming archaea.

Smart materials for flexible electronics and devices: hydrogel.

In recent years, flexible conductive materials have attracted considerable attention for their potential use in flexible energy storage devices, touch panels, sensors, memristors, and other applications. The outstanding flexibility, electricity, and tunable mechanical properties of hydrogels make them ideal conductive materials for flexible electronic devices. Various synthetic strategies have been developed to produce conductive and environmentally friendly hydrogels for high-performance flexible electronics.

Whether occupational injuries of the industrial workers can be prevented: an analysis from the slums of West Bengal-India?

A lack of research exists concerning the heterogeneity of the occupational injuries of slum dwellers across industries which has a close link with health expenditure and hence livelihood. It necessitates analysing their occupational injuries and associated out-of-pocket health expenditures. Multi-stage random sampling is used to collect the primary data and the logit model is used for data analyses.

Correction: Highly active spherical amorphous MoS: facile synthesis and application in photocatalytic degradation of rose bengal dye and hydrogenation of nitroarenes.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1039/C5RA19442C.].

Patient-specific femoral implant design using metamaterials for improving load transfer at proximal-lateral region of the femur.

Loading configuration of hip joint creates resultant bending effect on femoral implants. So, the lateral side of femoral implant which is under tension retracts from peri‑implant bone due to positive Poisson's ratio. This retraction of implant leads to load shielding and gap opening in proximal-lateral region, thereby allowing entry of wear particle to implant-bone interface.

Iron and zinc porphyrin linked MoO(dithiolene) complexes in relevance to electron transfer between Mo-cofactor and cytochrome in sulfite oxidase.

Oxo-molybdenum (dithiolene) complexes covalently linked individually to iron and zinc porphyrin have been synthesized to show an electron transfer between the two metal centres in relevance to electron transfer from Mo-cofactor to cytochrome domains in the oxidative half of the catalytic cycle of native sulfite oxidase. This association has been investigated by electrochemical, EPR measurement and X-ray absorbance spectroscopy techniques.

Utilizing microblogs for optimized real-time resource allocation in post-disaster scenarios.

In the aftermath of a disaster event, it is of utmost important to ensure efficient allocation of emergency resources (e.g. food, water, shelter, medicines) to locations where the resources are needed (need-locations).

First-principles based simulations of electronic transmission in ReS/WSe and ReS/MoSe type-II vdW heterointerfaces.

Electronic transmission in monolayer ReS[Formula: see text] and ReS[Formula: see text] based van der Waals (vdW) heterointerfaces are studied here. Since ReS[Formula: see text]/WSe[Formula: see text] and ReS[Formula: see text]/MoSe[Formula: see text] type-II vdW heterostructures are suitable for near infrared (NIR)/short-wave infrared (SWIR) photodetection, the role of interlayer coupling at the heterointerfaces is examined in this work. Besides, a detailed theoretical study is presented employing density functional theory (DFT) and nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) combination to analyse the transmission spectra of the two-port devices with ReS[Formula: see text]/WSe[Formula: see text] and ReS[Formula: see text]/MoSe[Formula: see text] channels and compare the near-equilibrium conductance values.

Systematic Review on Treatment Trials of Tocilizumab: A Repurposing Drug against COVID-19.

Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become a global issue today. There exists an ongoing health crisis all over the world, and efficacious drugs against COVID-19 are not available yet. Therefore, on an urgent basis, scientists are looking for safe and efficacious drugs against SARSCoV- 2.

Boron vacancy: a strategy to boost the oxygen reduction reaction of hexagonal boron nitride nanosheet in hBN-MoS heterostructure.

The incorporation of vacancies in a system is considered a proficient method of defect engineering in general catalytic modulation. Among two-dimensional materials, the deficiency of surface active sites and a high band gap restrict the catalytic activity of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) material towards the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), which hinders its applicability in fuel cells. A bane to boon strategy has been introduced here by coupling two sluggish ORR materials (hBN & MoS) by a probe-sonication method to form a heterostructure (termed HBPS) which fosters four electron pathways to assist the reduction of oxygen.

3D Bioprinting of Tumor Models for Cancer Research.

The exact mechanistic understanding of cancer metastasis continues to be unknown, although it is a major cause of death worldwide. Along with the tumor mass, the tumor microenvironment also contributes to pathogenesis and treatment resistance. Tumors are characterized by a high degree of heterogeneity and complexity.

A Scaffold Free 3D Bioprinted Cartilage Model for In Vitro Toxicology.

Bioprinting has emerged as a promising method for precise spatiotemporal patterning of biological materials such as living cells, genetic materials, and proteins, which are sensitive to any other fabrication techniques. Bioprinting allows the generation of tissue constructs and models that closely mimic the anatomical and physiological attributes of a chosen tissue. In vitro toxicology assays can greatly benefit from bioprinting as drugs can be screened with higher efficiencies in a significantly reduced period.

3D bioprinting for reconstituting the cancer microenvironment.

The cancer microenvironment is known for its complexity, both in its content as well as its dynamic nature, which is difficult to study using two-dimensional (2D) cell culture models. Several advances in tissue engineering have allowed more physiologically relevant three-dimensional (3D) in vitro cancer models, such as spheroid cultures, biopolymer scaffolds, and cancer-on-a-chip devices. Although these models serve as powerful tools for dissecting the roles of various biochemical and biophysical cues in carcinoma initiation and progression, they lack the ability to control the organization of multiple cell types in a complex dynamic 3D architecture.

Scaling laws for external fluid flow induced by controlled periodic heating of a solid boundary.

We demonstrate that considerable variation of mean Prandtl number (Pr_{0}) from unity brings in an additional length scale (called the viscous penetration depth, δ_{v}) into the dynamics of instantaneous as well as time-averaged (mean) flow induced by thermoviscous expansion along a periodically heated solid wall. We investigate the limiting cases of high and low Prandtl numbers (Pr_{0}≫1 and Pr_{0} ≪ 1) through detailed order-of-magnitude analysis. Our study reveals that the viscous penetration depth scales universally with Pr_{0} so long as such depth remains small compared to the wavelength of the applied thermal wave.

Binuclear and tetranuclear Zn(ii) complexes with thiosemicarbazones: synthesis, X-ray crystal structures, ATP-sensing, DNA-binding, phosphatase activity and theoretical calculations.

Two Zinc(ii) complexes [Zn(L)]·2HO (1) and [Zn(L)]·2HO (2) of pyruvaldehydethiosemicarbazone ligands are reported. The complexes were characterized by elemental analysis, IR, NMR, UV-vis spectroscopy and by single-crystal X-ray crystallography. X-ray crystal structure determinations of the complexes show that though Zn : ligand stoichiometry is 1 : 1 in both the complexes, the molecular unit is tetranuclear for 1 and binuclear for 2.

Nanoparticulate formulations of radiopharmaceuticals: Strategy to improve targeting and biodistribution properties.

Application of nanotechnology principles in drug delivery has created opportunities for treatment of several diseases. Nanotechnology offers the advantage of overcoming the adverse biopharmaceutics or pharmacokinetic properties of drug molecules, to be determined by the transport properties of the particles themselves. Through the manipulation of size, shape, charge, and type of nanoparticle delivery system, variety of distribution profiles may be obtained.

A gold nanoparticle-intercalated mesoporous silica-based nanozyme for the selective colorimetric detection of dopamine.

Highly dispersed aggregation-free gold nanoparticles intercalated into the walls of mesoporous silica (AuMS) were synthesized using thioether-functionalized silica as a nanozyme, which exhibited an excellent peroxidase mimic activity. The AuMS material was characterized XRD, N adsorption-desorption, FESEM, SEM-EDS particle mapping, TEM, and XPS. The peroxidase-like activity of the AuMS material was studied thoroughly, and the effect of pH and temperature was evaluated.

New regimes of dispersion in microfluidics as mediated by travelling temperature waves.

We unveil new regimes of dispersion in miniaturized fluidic devices, by considering fluid flow triggered by a travelling temperature wave. When a temperature wave travels along a channel wall, it alters the density and viscosity of the adjacent fluid periodically. Successive expansion-contraction of the fluid volume through a spatio-temporally evolving viscosity field generates a net fluidic current.

Exciton dissociation in an NIR-active triohybrid nanocrystal leading to efficient generation of reactive oxygen species.

Lead sulfide (PbS) colloidal quantum dots (QDs) are emerging materials for fundamental studies because of their potential application in near infrared (NIR) light harvesting technologies. However, inefficient electron separation, facile charge recombination and defect state trapping of photoexcited carriers are reported as limitations of the PbS QDs to achieve efficient energy conversion. In the present study, we have synthesized a triohybrid by assembling a semiconductor titanium dioxide (TiO), an organic oxidizing molecule phenothiazine (PTZ) and PbS QDs.

Thermally-controlled extrusion-based bioprinting of collagen.

Thermally-crosslinked hydrogels in bioprinting have gained increasing attention due to their ability to undergo tunable crosslinking by modulating the temperature and time of crosslinking. In this paper, we present a new bioink composed of collagen type-I and Pluronic® F-127 hydrogels, which was bioprinted using a thermally-controlled bioprinting unit. Bioprintability and rheology of the composite bioink was studied in a thorough manner in order to determine the optimal bioprinting time and extrusion profile of the bioink for fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) constructs, respectively.

3D bioprinting for modelling vasculature.

Though models provide the most physiologically-relevant environment for studying tissue development and function, an substitute is being offered by the advancement of three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technology, which is a reproducible and scalable fabrication strategy providing precise 3D control compared to conventional microfluidic tissue fabrication methods. In this review, vasculature models printed using extrusion-, droplet-, and laser-based bioprinting techniques are summarized and compared. Besides bioprinting of hydrogels as bioinks, an alternative method to obtain vascular models by bioprinting is to use exogenous biomaterial-free cell aggregates such as tissue spheroids and cell pellet, which has also been discussed here.