B etween 1900 and 2010, the global volume of natural resources used in buildings and transport infrastructure increased 23-fold (1). Sand and gravel are the largest portion of these primary material inputs (79% or 28.6 gigatons per year in 2010) and are the most extracted group of materials worldwide, exceeding fossil fuels and biomass (2). In most regions, sand is a common-pool resource, i.e.,...

Experiments were conducted during January 2009 at CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur, (HP) India to study the effect of light and temperature on seed germination of important medicinal and aromatic plants viz., Stevia rebaudiana, Salvia sclarea and Tagetes minuta in sand and filter paper. The treatments comprised of two factors viz., light and temperature regimes under...

High-Efficiency Oil–Water Filter In article number 2100594, Jiawei Hu, Yi Chen, and co-workers prepare a high-efficiency oil–water filter by coating sodium alginate hydrogel layer in the surface of porous sand core. This exhibits excellent separation ability toward mixed liquor emulsion. Moreover, it has chemical stability, easy cleanliness, strong durability. All these characteristics make thi...

In this paper, the effect of plant density, sediment type, and macrophyte fragment size on the fragment colonization ability of Myriophyllum spicatum was evaluated in an outdoor experiment. The relative growth rate (RGR) was higher in the mud and low-density treatments than in the sand and high-density treatments. The relative elongation rate (RER) decreased with increasing density and fragment...

This study presents a filter system for the removal of pathogenic microorganisms from potable water using silver nanoparticle-modified silica sand. While sand has potential applications in wastewater treatment, its effectiveness microbial filtration falls short. Thus, there is need an environmentally friendly enhancement method. The nanoparticles were synthesized Commelina maculata leaf extract...

Alpha toxin derived from Clostridium perfringens was used for diagnosis of Streptococcus agalactiae (St.agalactiae) by rapid and spot CAMP tests. The selected Cl.perfringens strain was cultured in optimized conditions; the supernatant of culture was concentrated by ultra filter and purified by DEAE cellulose chromatography. The efficacy of both purified and crude α-toxins were examined by rapid...

A new concept for household and large-scale safe drinking water production is presented. Raw water is successively filtered through a series of sand and iron filters. Sand filters mostly remove suspended particles (media filtration) and iron filters remove anions, cations, micropollutants, natural organic matter, and micro-organisms including pathogens (reactive filtration). Accordingly, treatm...