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With the increase in the growing rate of municipal solid waste throughout the world and due to the high moisture and organic components of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste, dry anaerobic digestion has become the future direction to cope with this waste while reducing the impact on the environment, including climate change. Dry anaerobic digestion has become a promising technology that converts the organic fraction of municipal solid waste into combustible biogases, which can be used as an alternative energy source. However, the technology faces several challenges that must be addressed to enhance its performance and adoption. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the current technologies used for dry anaerobic digestion in OFMSW and delves into the various factors that influence the performance of these technologies. This review paper also identifies and discusses the challenges faced in optimizing and scaling up these technologies, such as feedstock pretreatment requirements, characteristics of inoculum, and other crucial parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient strategy towards stereoselective amidation of alkynes is reported. The given method features operational simplicity, excellent functional group tolerance, broad substrate scope and fast kinetics to furnish Z-enamides. Moreover, the method was successfully applied for the facile synthesis of the natural products lansiumamide A, lansiumamide B and Z-alatamide. Notably, DMSO plays two vital roles: hydrogen source and solvent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern-day agriculture supply chains have evolved from sovereign and autonomous local stakeholders to a worldwide interconnected system of multiple participants linked by complicated interactions, impacting the production, processing, transportation, and delivery of food to end consumers. Regular instances of fraudulent acts reveal a lack of openness in agriculture supply chains, raising worries about financial losses, eroding customer trust, and lowering corporate brand value. To develop an efficient and reliable trading environment, several fundamental modifications in the present supply chain architecture are required. There is broad consensus that blockchain can improve transparency in agriculture-food supply chains (agri-food SCs). Consumers now demand safe, sustainable, and equitable food production processes, and businesses are using blockchains and the internet of things to meet these needs. For enhanced responsiveness in agri-food SCs, new concepts have evolved that combine blockchains with various Industry 5.0 technologies (e.g., blockchain technology, big data, internet of things (IoT), radio frequency identification (RFID), near field communication (NFC), etc.). It is critical to cut through the hype and examine the technology's limits, which might stymie its acceptance, implementation, and scalability in agri-food supply chains. This study presents Agri-SCM-BIoT (Agriculture Supply Chain Management using Blockchain and Internet of things) architecture to address the storage and scalability optimization, interoperability, security and privacy issues security, and privacy of personal data along with storage concerns with present single-chain agriculture supply chain systems. We also discussed the classification of security threats with IoT infrastructure and possible available blockchain-based defense mechanisms. Finally, we discussed the features of the proposed supply chain architecture, followed by a conclusion and future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse betulinic acid-dithiocarbamate conjugates were designed and synthesized via a two-step reaction at room temperature. Among the fourteen dithiocarbamate analogs of betulinic acid, DTC2 demonstrated the best antifungal activity against Candida albicans , with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 4 μg mL -1 , achieving 99% fungicidal activity at the same concentration. These compounds were found to be ineffective against common Gram-negative and Gram-positive pathogens, suggesting their specificity to fungi. Furthermore, DTC2 exhibited synergistic effects with the antifungal drugs fluconazole and nystatin, resulting in a significant decrease in MIC by 64 and 16 folds, respectively, when co-administered. Notably, the molecule also hindered hyphae formation in Candida albicans , thereby reducing its pathogenicity. Furthermore, it displayed time- and concentration-dependent kill kinetics, sterilizing C. albicans within 8 hours at 8× MIC. Additionally, DTC2 exhibits greater efficacy against β-carbonic anhydrase with better docking scores and binding patterns than ethoxyzolamide, a well-known inhibitor of β-carbonic anhydrase., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interest or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Plants often experience variations in light intensity, referred to as light stress, that negatively impact important aspects of plant growth and development, including photosynthesis and antioxidant system. The photosynthetic machinery is susceptible to these disturbances, especially photosystem II and its reaction centers. We aimed to evaluate the role of brassinosteriod in plants under both high and low light conditions by examining various physiological parameters such as photosynthetic efficiency, pigment levels, and enzymatic activity of various antioxidant enzymes in one month old tomato plants. We investigated various chlorophyll fluorescence parameters under low light (LL) and high light (HL) conditions and the associated gene expression related to photosynthesis, including plastocyanin, ferredoxin, and photosystem II oxygen-evolving enhancer protein 3 (PsbQ). Our results indicate that exogenous brassinosteroid application considerably increased tolerance to both high and low light stress in 4-week-old tomato as treated plants displayed enhanced photosynthesis, reduced oxidative damage, and increased antioxidant enzyme activity in comparison to control plants. Furthermore, brassinosteroid treatment enhanced the expression of genes associated with antioxidant pathways, which significantly contributed to the recovery of chlorophyll fluorescence parameters crucial for plant growth and development. Our results provide valuable insights into how brassinosteroid reduces light-induced stress in tomato plants.

An unprecedented, one-step strategy for the synthesis of 5-(methylthio)pyridazin-3(2 H )-one derivatives has been developed through iodine triggered deaminative coupling of glycine esters with methyl ketones and hydrazine hydrate in DMSO. These transformations in the absence of hydrazine helped to generate different 3-methylthio-4-oxo-enoates in good yields. Notably, DMSO played multiple roles such as oxidant, methylthiolating reagent, and solvent.

AT-rich interactive domain-containing protein 1A (ARID1A), TP53 and programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PDL1) are involved in several protein interactions that regulate the expression of various cancer-related genes involved in the progression of the cell cycle, cell proliferation, DNA repair, and apoptosis. In addition, gene expression analysis identified some common downstream targets of ARID1A and TP53. It has been established that tumors formed by ARID1A -deficient cancer cells exhibited elevated PDL1 expression. However, the aberrations in these molecules have not been studied in this population especially in Gastric Cancer (GC). In this backdrop we aimed to investigate the role of the ARID1A mutation and expression of ARID1A , TP53 and PDL1 genes in the etiopathogenesis of Gastric Cancer (GC) in the ethnic Kashmiri population (North India). The study included 103 histologically confirmed GC cases. The mutations, if any, in exon-9 of ARID1A gene was analysed by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) followed by Sanger sequencing. The mRNA expression of the ARID1A , TP53 and PDL1 genes was analysed by Quantitative real time-PCR (qRT-PCR). We identified a nonsense mutation (c.3219; C > T) in exon-9 among two GC patients (∼2.0%), which introduces a premature stop codon at protein position 1073. The mRNA expression of the ARID1A, TP53 and PDL1 gene was significantly reduced in 25.3% and elevated in 47.6 and 39.8% of GC cases respectively with a mean fold change of 0.63, 2.93 and 2.43. The data revealed that reduced mRNA expression of ARID1A and elevated mRNA expression of TP53 and PDL1 was significantly associated with the high-grade and advanced stage of cancer. Our study proposes that ARAD1A under-expression and overexpression of TP53 and PDL1 might be crucial for tumor progression with TP53 and PDL1 acting synergistically., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Qadir, Majid, Khan, Rashid, Wani and Bhat.)