An increase in the consumption of smokeless tobacco has been noticed among high school, college students, and adults. Despite the antiquity and popularity of chewing tobacco in India, its effects have not been investigated systematically in humans. The aim of this study was to investigate acute effects of gutkha chewing on heart rate variability (HRV) among healthy young adults.
Microalgae are the major photosynthesizers on earth and produce important pigments that include chlorophyll a, b and c, β-carotene, astaxanthin, xanthophylls, and phycobiliproteins. Presently, synthetic colorants are used in food, cosmetic, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical industries. However, due to problems associated with the harmful effects of synthetic colorants, exploitation of microalgal pigments as a source of natural colors becomes an attractive option. There are various factors such as nutrient availability, salinity, pH, temperature, light wavelength, and light intensity that affect pigment production in microalgae. This paper reviews the availability and characteristics of microalgal pigments, factors affecting pigment production, and the application of pigments produced from microalgae. The potential of microalgal pigments as a source of natural colors is enormous as an alternative to synthetic coloring agents, which has limited applications due to regulatory practice for health reasons.
This study explores the impact of fiscal policy on environmental pollution, employing the vector autoregressive (VAR) model on annual data from 1976 to 2018 in Pakistan. We estimate the effect of total expenditure, total revenue, education expenditures, health expenditures, and other dynamic determinants such as gross domestic product (GDP), private investment, market rate, and crude oil price on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in particular. Further, this study creates impulse response functions to check the fiscal shocks, coordinating with five scenarios of public expenditures, segregated into government revenue, and education and health expenditures. The outcomes indicate that government spending in the public sectors (education and health) had a diminishing effect on CO2 emissions, whereas government revenue that was collected from taxes improved economic growth but at a cost of environmental pollution. In Pakistan, a fiscal policy scenario has been implemented that increases government expenditures to alleviate the effects of CO2 emissions. Therefore, policymakers should provide the right direction for the feasible distribution of resources in every public sector through a powerful structure, which will ultimately reduce the overall level of environmental deficit.
Despite remarkable success in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to achieve maximum economic growth, the Next-11 emerging economies grappling with an undesirable situation of environmental degradation have become a hot topic at COP28. Researchers have long focused on this connection, emphasizing the urgent need for international and national environmentalists to promote sustainable development (SD) in these rapidly growing economies under the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change action plans. As a result, this study examines the role of FDI in the N-11 emerging economies, focusing on energy usage and technological innovation within the theoretical framework of the Halo-Haven hypothesis, covering the period from 1990 to 2022. We utilize ARDL, FMOLS, and DOLS techniques to analyze both short-term dynamics and long-term equilibrium relationships, effectively managing heterogeneity, time dynamics, and cross-sectional dependence issues to produce comprehensive results. The long-term analysis supports the haven hypothesis, demonstrating an affirmative relationship between FDI, economic growth, and carbon emissions, whereas energy usage is negatively associated with carbon emissions. Furthermore, the D-H test established a reciprocal causal relationship between variables such as FDI, economic growth, trade openness, and environmental pollution. However, we found a one-way causal correspondence in the usage of green energy, the technological innovation index, and carbon emissions. Given the mixed findings, policymakers should focus on attracting FDI to the green energy sector while reinforcing regulations and implementing stringent oversight for FDI in energy-intensive industries. This approach will ensure that such investments adhere to high environmental standards, thereby benefiting future generations.
The aim of this study was to determine the effect of different light sources and media (wastewater and BBM) on the growth of Pseudanabaena mucicola and its phycobiliprotein production. Results showed that P. mucicola grown in white light using wastewater as medium attributed higher biomass (0.55 g L-1) and when extracted with water, also showed significantly higher (P
Cancer nanotherapy is progressing rapidly with the introduction of many innovative drug delivery systems to replace conventional therapy. Although the antitumor activity of zerumbone (ZER) has been reported, there has been no information available on the effect of ZER-loaded nanostructured lipid carrier (NLC) (ZER-NLC) on murine leukemia cells. In this study, the in vitro and in vivo effects of ZER-NLC on murine leukemia induced with WEHI-3B cells were investigated. The results from 3-[4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide, Hoechst 33342, Annexin V, cell cycle, and caspase activity assays showed that the growth of leukemia cells in vitro was inhibited by ZER-NLC. In addition, outcomes of histopathology, transmission electron microscopy, and Tdt-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling analyses revealed that the number of leukemia cells in the spleen of BALB/c leukemia mice significantly decreased after 4 weeks of oral treatment with various doses of ZER-NLC. Western blotting and reverse-transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction assays confirmed the antileukemia effects of ZER-NLC. In conclusion, ZER-NLC was shown to induce a mitochondrial-dependent apoptotic pathway in murine leukemia. Loading of ZER in NLC did not compromise the anticancer effect of the compound, suggesting ZER-NLC as a promising and effective delivery system for treatment of cancers.