Search

Hardness is one of the basic parameters of water, and a high-level hardness of drinking water may be harmful to human health. Thus, it is very important to monitor drinking water hardness. In this work, a portable lateral flow distance-based paper sensor for the semi-quantitative detection of drinking water hardness is demonstrated. In the presence of Ca2+/Mg2+, the hydrogel can be formed via the chelation between sodium alginate and Ca2+/Mg2+, inducing a phase separation process. The viscosity change of the sodium alginate solution is directly related to the Ca2+/Mg2+ concentration and can be determined by the water lateral flow distance on test strips. The sensor successfully realizes the quantification of Ca2+ and Mg2+ in the range of 0-10 mmol L-1 and 4-20 mmol L-1, respectively. The recoveries are found varied from 95% to 108.9%. The water hardness is acceptable for drinking if the Cr values lies in the range of 0.259 to 0.419, and it is high with the Cr value above 0.595. Remarkably, the performance of the sensor is comparable with the commercial kit for real water samples, which avoids the subjective judgment. Overall, this method provides a portable approach for semi-quantitative detection of drinking water hardness with the merits of convenience and low cost, which shows great potential for the potential application., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Liu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Objectives: The purpose of our study was to determine the order in which science and health researchers read scientific papers, their reasons for doing so and the perceived difficulty and perceived importance of each section., Study Design and Setting: An online survey open to science and health academics and researchers distributed via existing research networks, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn., Results: Almost 90% of respondents self-declared to be experienced in reading research papers. 98.6% of the sample read the abstract first because it provides an overview of the paper and facilitates a decision on continuing to read on or not. Seventy-five percent perceived it to be the easiest to read and 62.4% perceived it to be very important (highest rank on a 5-point Likert scale). The majority of respondents did not read a paper in the IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results And Discussion) format. Perceived difficulty and perceived importance influenced reading order., Conclusion: Science and health researchers do not typically read scientific and health research papers in IMRAD format. The more important a respondent perceives a section to be, the more likely they are to read it. The easier a section is perceived, the more likely it will be read. We present recommendations to those teaching the skill of writing scientific papers and reports., Competing Interests: The authors declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Shiely et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)