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Topic Review
Silica’s Impact on Concrete Properties in Civil Engineering
Microsilica, a by-product of silicon or ferrosilicon production. Widely utilized within the construction industry, microsilica serves as a modifying component in concrete production, leveraging its chemical composition and physical attributes as a highly active pozzolan. Natural additives encompass crushed volcanic and sedimentary rocks, diatomites, volcanic ash, and tuff. Within technogenic additives lie waste or by-products from various industries, such as fly ash, granulated blast furnace slag, and microsilica.
  • 2.1K
  • 11 Dec 2023
Topic Review
Heavy Metals in Medicinal Plants
It is possible for heavy metals (HMs) to be present in pharmaceutical herb materials coming from anthropogenic activities like agriculture, industrial waste, and natural sources. In various ethnic groups, there is evidence that contaminants were purposefully added in the belief that they had some sort of therapeutic benefit. HM toxicity of medicinal plant products has been linked to a wide range of adverse health effects, causing dysfunction of the liver, kidney, and heart, and even death.
  • 2.1K
  • 17 Feb 2023
Topic Review
Ectomycorrhizal Mushrooms
Environmental changes and heavy metal pollution are some of the consequences of anthropogenic activities. Many ecosystems, including edaphic ecosystems, suffer from the effects of pollution. The accurate assessment of soil heavy metal contamination leads to better approaches for remediating soils. The exploration of different ways, including biological methods, to conduct environmental monitoring is still ongoing.
  • 2.1K
  • 17 May 2022
Topic Review
Climate State
Climate state describes a state of climate on Earth and similar terrestrial planets based on a thermal energy budget, such as the greenhouse or icehouse climate state. The main climate state change is between periodical glacial and interglacial cycles in Earth history, studied from climate proxies. The climate system is responding to the current climate forcing and adjusts following climate sensitivity to reach a climate equilibrium, Earth's energy balance. Model simulations suggest that the current interglacial climate state will continue for at least another 100,000 years, due to CO2 emissions - including complete deglaciation of the Northern Hemisphere.
  • 2.1K
  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Fossil Fuel Phase-Out
Fossil fuel phase-out is the gradual reduction of the use of fossil fuels to zero use. Current efforts in fossil fuel phase-out involve replacing fossil fuels with alternative energy sources in sectors such as transport, heating and industry.
  • 2.1K
  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Abundance of Mycoplankton and Its Ecological Role
Mycoplankton are saprophytic organisms in plankton communities in marine and freshwater ecosystems. They consist of filamentous free-living fungi and yeasts associated with planktonic particles or phytoplankton. Similar to planktonic bacteria, these aquatic fungi play important roles in heterotrophic mineralization and nutrient cycling. Planktonic bacteria can be up to 20 mm in diameter and over 50 mm in length
  • 2.1K
  • 23 May 2022
Topic Review
Eco-safe Rural Roads assessment
Rural roads are important for the communities in the hilly areas of Nepal as they introduce livelihood opportunities at the local level, provide better access to the health care, education and resources. Yet, most of the rural roads in Nepal are unplanned and non-engineered, and these roads are often closed for many months during and after the monsoon. Such roads require huge investments, especially post-monsoon, to clear debris and to keep them operational. In parallel, there is evidence that such roads lead to large number of slope failures and accelerated sedimentation, which degrade the environment and ecosystem services. To remedy such roadside slope failures, eco-engineering practices were tested and demonstrated in partnership with three communities in the Panchase Region of the Nepal’s Central-Western Middle Hills.  Eco-engineering is a hybrid approach, combining civil engineering works for drainage and slope stability, with the plantation of deep-rooted vegetation. It is one activity contributing to Nature based Solutions (NbS) for the sustainable and long-term operation of the rural roads in the Panchase geographic region. This paper describes the inter-disciplinary and community-based research, monitoring and evaluation methods applied, including, the establishment of onsite demonstration plots and Rhizotrons in which Key performance Indicators (KPI) analysis of plant species were performed. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of eco-engineering for reducing risk, while creating ecological co-benefits along rural roads (or eco-safe roads) in hilly areas.  Based on this research, an ‘Eco-safe Rural Road Assessment Framework’ was developed, outlining the systematic process to be followed for the design of eco-safe rural roads for more sustainable road construction and maintenance. The ecological engineering practices which are being promoted by this framework have been accepted by communities and could be further implemented by local government bodies and up-scaled in other similar hilly areas around the country. 
  • 2.1K
  • 30 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Volatile Fatty Acid recovery
Volatile fatty acids (VFAs) are low-molecular-weight carboxylic acids containing two to six carbon atoms that are produced as the final product of acidogenic fermentation in anaerobic digestion process.
  • 2.1K
  • 28 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Nickel Toxicity Effects on Crop and Soil
Low or moderate nickel concentrations in soils can cause environmental problems. The main effects of this potentially toxic element on the soil biota and the most common crop species are addressed.
  • 2.1K
  • 11 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Reducing Phosphorus Loads
The wide application of fertilizers in tile-drained agricultural systems commonly results in the loss of phosphorus (P) to the underground tile drains during precipitation events and emission to downstream surface waters. As different catchments are subject to local geological and climatic conditions, among other factors, it is observed a large spatiotemporal variation in the dynamics of P emissions, including the load and dominant form (i.e., particulate or dissolved). In-farm practices may be able to mitigate this problem to some extent (e.g. by optimizing the P application), but may not suffice in areas saturated with P. Therefore, systems designed to reduce the excess P loads at relatively low costs and located at the edge of tile-drained catchments have been tested and implemented. This has been done by increasing the hydraulic residence time of the drainage discharge, allowing sedimentation of particles and biogeochemical processes between the water, soil/sediments and biota to occur; by trapping P at the bank of watercourses; and by enhancing the retention of dissolved P with filters rich in P sorbents. The retention of P by these measures, however, can be rather variable and largely depends on the catchment conditions. Thus, a series of considerations, e.g., in regards to design parameters, long-term stability of the P retained and retention of different P forms, must be taken into account, including major constraints (e.g., use of agricultural land), to ensure successful application of edge-of-field measures and achieve the desired cost-efficiency.
  • 2.0K
  • 01 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy
Social acceptance of renewable energy is the attitude of the local population of a given territory to accept the presence, installation or expansion of plants, projects and processes for the production of energy from renewable sources (RES) such as geothermal, sun, wind and biomass. It differs from the generally favorable predisposition of a population towards RES in places far from their homes: indeed, social acceptance of local RES can hinder the development of renewable energy projects, even for a population whose general acceptance of RES is relatively high. 
  • 2.0K
  • 08 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Driving Cycles for Estimating Vehicle Emission Levels
Standard driving cycles (DCs) and real driving emissions (RDE) legislation developed by the European Commission contains significant gaps with regard to quantifying local area vehicle emission levels and fuel consumption (FC). The aim of this paper was to review local DCs for estimating emission levels and FC under laboratory and real-world conditions. This review article has three sections.
  • 2.0K
  • 12 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Urban Overheating in Australia
Cities in Australia are experiencing unprecedented levels of urban overheating, which has caused a significant impact on the country’s socioeconomic environment. This study provides a comprehensive review on urban overheating, its impact on health, energy, economy, and the heat mitigation potential of a series of strategies in Australia. Existing studies show that the average urban heat island (UHI) intensity ranges from 1.0 °C to 13.0 °C. The magnitude of urban overheating phenomenon in Australia is determined by a combination of UHI effects and dualistic atmospheric circulation systems (cool sea breeze and hot desert winds). The strong relation between multiple characteristics contribute to dramatic fluctuations and high spatiotemporal variabilities in urban overheating. In addition, urban overheating contributes to serious impacts on human health, energy costs, thermal comfort, labour productivity, and social behaviour. 
  • 2.0K
  • 16 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Biomethane Production of Distillery Stillage
Distillery stillage has a high energy potential (13.6 MJ/kg TS, 10.4 MJ/kg COD), which indicates that it can be processed via anaerobic digestion and is a suitable substrate for conversion into energy. Distillery stillage consists of compounds that are easily biodegraded during anaerobic digestion, such as proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates. Among the carbohydrates, the concentration of cellulose can be on the level of 32.2%, hemicelluloses—20.9%, and lignin—3.2% in the distillery stillage obtained from maize.
  • 2.0K
  • 16 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Carbon Sequestration by Biofuel Crop Switchgrass
Under the macroenvironmental background of global warming, all countries are working to limit climate change. Internationally, biofuel plants are considered to have great potential in carbon neutralization. Several countries have begun using biofuel crops as energy sources to neutralize carbon emissions. Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) is considered a resource-efficient low-input crop that produces bioenergy. 
  • 2.0K
  • 30 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Aquatic Ecology of Southern African Watersheds
Southern Africa (SA) is rich in large river basin networks, from the over 1.4 million km2 Zambezi River Basin in the upper parts and extending further to the 0.4 million km2 Limpopo and 0.9 million km2 Orange River Basin systems southwards. Given that most SA river basins hold vast mineral deposits, the mining waste generated by artisanal and mechanised mining industries has significantly affected the health of its aquatic ecosystems.
  • 2.0K
  • 17 Feb 2022
Topic Review
Flower Strips
Wildflower strips, a semi-natural manmade habitat comprising mixtures of native herbaceous species, can be sown on arable field margins to provide multiple ecological, agricultural and conservation benefits. The main aim of creating flower strips is to enrich the fauna of farmland with the species that are beneficial in terms of the agricultural economy: animals that limit the population density of pests (e.g., parasitic insects, including parasitoids, predatory insects and spiders and birds) and pollinators (insects that feed on pollen or nectar), including those with economic significance. For this reason, flower strips should be included in agri-environmental programs to enhance sustainable plant production and the biodiversity of pollinators on farmland or natural aphid enemies. Flower strips are thus increasingly frequently promoted in environmental programmes, and financial support is being implemented as an additional business incentive.
  • 2.0K
  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Indoor Clean Air: Plants help
Urban civilization has a high impact on the environment and human health. The pollution level of indoor air can be 2–5 times higher than the outdoor air pollution, and sometimes it reaches up to 100 times or more in natural/mechanical ventilated buildings. Even though people spend about 90% of their time indoors, the importance of indoor air quality is less noticed. Cleaning indoor air using plants is an affordable and more environmentally friendly means to purify polluted air. Furthermore, studies show that indoor plants can be used to regulate building temperature, decrease noise levels, and alleviate social stress. Sources of indoor air pollutants and their impact on human health are briefly discussed in our paper. The available literature on phytoremediation, including experimental works for removing volatile organic compound (VOC) and particulate matter from the indoor air and associated challenges and opportunities, are reviewed. The potential role of green walls and potted plants for improving indoor air quality is examined. A list of plant species suitable for indoor air phytoremediation is proposed. Our review paper will help in making informed decisions about integrating plants into the interior building design.
  • 2.0K
  • 11 May 2021
Topic Review
Environmental Applications of Chitin
Chitin’s environmentally friendly nature has been well documented, further allowing scientists to develop novel techniques utilizing chitin in the environmental sector. Chitin has a very high surface area due to the size of the biopolymer, which is applicable as a pollutant absorber and is used for other modifications that can be made into nanocomposites, best suited for environmental applications for soil and water pollutants.
  • 2.0K
  • 09 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Solar Energy Systems into Seawater Desalination
Solar energy, amongst all renewable energies, has attracted inexhaustible attention all over the world as a supplier of sustainable energy. The energy requirement of major seawater desalination processes such as multistage flash (MSF), multi-effect distillation (MED) and reverse osmosis (RO) are fulfilled by burning fossil fuels, which impact the environment significantly due to the emission of greenhouse gases. The integration of solar energy systems into seawater desalination processes is an attractive and alternative solution to fossil fuels. 
  • 2.0K
  • 29 Sep 2022
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