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Heavy Metal Contamination of Hand-Pressed Well Water in HuNan, China

Long et al. | Oct 20, 2019

Heavy Metal Contamination of Hand-Pressed Well Water in HuNan, China

Unprocessed water from hand-pressed wells is still commonly used as a source of drinking water in Chenzhou, the “Nonferrous Metal Village” of China. Long et al. conducted a study to measure the heavy metal contamination levels and potential health effects in this area. Water samples were analyzed through Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICPOES) and the concentrations of 20 metal elements. Results showed that although none of the samples had dangerous levels of heavy metals, the concentrations of Al, Fe, and Mn in many locations substantially exceeded those suggested in the Chinese Drinking Water Standard and the maximum contaminant levels of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The authors have made an important discovery regarding the water safety in HuNan and their suggestions to install water treatment systems would greatly benefit the community.

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Beeing sustainable: Honey as a bioindicator for pollution

Donnellan et al. | Oct 06, 2021

Beeing sustainable: Honey as a bioindicator for pollution

In this study, Donnellan and colleagues investigated how environmental pollution may be affecting honey samples from Chicago apiaries. They found no significant correlation between heavy metal concentration in honey to distance from local industries, suggesting a minimal effect of proximity to industrial pollution on honey contamination.

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Rhizosphere metagenome analysis and wet-lab approach to derive optimal strategy for lead remediation in situ

Bhat et al. | Jul 18, 2023

Rhizosphere metagenome analysis and wet-lab approach to derive optimal strategy for lead remediation <i>in situ</i>
Image credit: Karolina Grabowska

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports a significant number of heavy metal-contaminated sites across the United States. To address this public health concern, rhizoremediation using microbes has emerged as a promising solution. Here, a combination of soil microbes were inoculated in the rhizosphere in soil contaminated with 500 parts per million (ppm) of lead. Results showed rhizoremediation is an effective bioremediation strategy and may increase crop productivity by converting nonarable lands into arable lands.

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Jet optimization using a hybrid multivariate regression model and statistical methods in dimuon collisions

Chunduri et al. | Jun 09, 2024

Jet optimization using a hybrid multivariate regression model and statistical methods in dimuon collisions
Image credit: Chunduri, Srinivas and McMahan, 2024.

Collisions of heavy ions, such as muons result in jets and noise. In high-energy particle physics, researchers use jets as crucial event-shaped observable objects to determine the properties of a collision. However, many ionic collisions result in large amounts of energy lost as noise, thus reducing the efficiency of collisions with heavy ions. The purpose of our study is to analyze the relationships between properties of muons in a dimuon collision to optimize conditions of dimuon collisions and minimize the noise lost. We used principles of Newtonian mechanics at the particle level, allowing us to further analyze different models. We used simple Python algorithms as well as linear regression models with tools such as sci-kit Learn, NumPy, and Pandas to help analyze our results. We hypothesized that since the invariant mass, the energy, and the resultant momentum vector are correlated with noise, if we constrain these inputs optimally, there will be scenarios in which the noise of the heavy-ion collision is minimized.

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