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The leve of nutrients in the treated effluent should be maintained at a low level to mitigate the rapid algal bloom and the associated risks in the receiving water bodies. Electrocoagulation (EC) was proven to be an effective method to remove a broad range of impurities in different water matrices. This study evaluated the EC technique as a polishing step for the treated effluent targeting phosphate, nitrate, and dissolved organic matter (DOM). A factorial design was implemented to evaluate the effects of two factors (voltage, and treatment time) at three levels (high, centre, and low) on the EC process. Two electrode types (Fe and Al) performances were compared. The results revealed that both electrodes were capable of high removal of phosphate (100%) from the treated effluent within 10 minutes for both tested voltages 3 and 5 volts. However, the nitrate showed a high persistence for both electrode types and the removal never exceed 10%. Interestingly, aluminum electrodes achieved higher removal (54.5%) of DOC compared to 25.7% by iron electrodes. The main drawback of using the iron electrode was its contribution to the original turbidity which makes it less favourable compared to the Al electrode. The results of this study revealed that the aluminum-based EC process could achieve the target level of nutrient removal without compromising the water quality.

A UV-HPLC method optimized by Box-Behnken design model was developed to determine caffeine in pharmaceutical preparations and urine samples. The chromatographic conditions followed were mobile phase: methanol/water/ citrate buffer (pH 4.6) (40:25:35, v/v/v),Acclaim TM Dionex C18 column (ODS 100A˚, 5 µm; 4.6 × 250 mm),flow rate (0.9 mL min -1 ), column temperature (30 °C) and UV-detection wavelength (204 nm). The chromatographic variables: pH (A), % methanol fraction (B), flow rate(C) and column temperature (D) were optimized at 50 μg mL -1 caffeine using BBD model. The chromatogram resulted in the asymmetry factor (1.23), theoretical plate 13,786 and retention time (5.79 min). The proposed HPLC method's greenness point was assessed byAnalytical Eco-scale and found to be 78 (as per guidelines, ranked as excellent). The linearity was ranged from2.0 to 70 µg mL -1 with coefficient of correlation (r = 0.999) and detection limit of 0.19 µg mL -1 . The proposedmethod was developed successfully and applied for the assay of active caffeine in pharmaceutical preparations and urine samples. The % recovery obtained by both (proposed and reference) methods ranged from 99.98 to 100.05 % followed the compliance (100 ± 2 %) with Canadian Health Protection regulatory guidelines. The performance of the proposed method was compared with published papers and found to be acceptable and superior. The proposed method was quite effective as the reference method, and hence can be used as an alternative method for the assay of active caffeine in pharmaceutical preparations and urine samples., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The circulation of Bluetongue (BT) and Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) in the Middle East has already been reported following serological analyses carried out since the 1980s, mostly on wild ruminants. Thus, an EHD virus (EHDV) strain was isolated in Bahrain in 1983 (serotype 6), and more recently, BT virus (BTV) serotypes 1, 4, 8 and 16 have been isolated in Oman. To our knowledge, no genomic sequence of these different BTV strains have been published. These same BTV or EHDV serotypes have circulated and, for some of them, are still circulating in the Mediterranean basin and/or in Europe. In this study, we used samples from domestic ruminant herds collected in Oman in 2020 and 2021 for suspected foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) to investigate the presence of BTV and EHDV in these herds. Sera and whole blood from goats, sheep and cattle were tested for the presence of viral genomes (by PCR) and antibodies (by ELISA). We were able to confirm the presence of 5 BTV serotypes (1, 4, 8, 10 and 16) and the circulation of EHDV in this territory in 2020 and 2021. The isolation of a BTV-8 strain allowed us to sequence its entire genome and to compare it with another BTV-8 strain isolated in Mayotte and with homologous BTV sequences available on GenBank.

High levels of vanadium have been reported in groundwater (<0.05-5300μgL -1 V) from different parts of Argentina, yet no detailed study of vanadium speciation has been performed. A highly selective strong anion exchange - solid phase extraction (SAX-SPE) method was used (in-situ) for vanadium speciation analysis of groundwater samples from La Pampa - LP (General San Martin and Eduardo Castex) and Buenos Aires - BA (San German) provinces in Argentina. In this method both vanadyl (V IV ) and vanadate (V V ) were trapped by the complexation with disodium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid on a pre-conditioned SAX cartridge. In the laboratory, vanadium species were separated at different eluent pH levels. V IV was eluted at pH 4 using methanol and tetrabutylammonium hydroxide. V V was eluted at pH 8 using dihydrogen ammonium phosphate. The eluted species were analysed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). This method was validated using an inter-analytical method comparison with HPLC-ICP-MS. A Paired t-test revealed that there was no significant difference (probability, P<0.05) between the two methods. V V was found to be predominate species in both sample collection areas (LP: 69 - 100%, BA: ‎33 - 89% of species) over the range of 158.0 - 4748.0μgL -1 in LP and 88.5 - 504.0μgL -1 in BA. V IV was found at higher levels (29.0-301.0μgL -1 ) in Buenos Aires compared to General San Martin groundwater (4.4 - 161.0μgL -1 ). The results enhance the potential knowledge of the speciation of vanadium in terms of water quality and human health., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)