Cancer is an abnormal state of cells where they undergo uncontrolled proliferation and produce aggressive malignancies that causes millions of deaths every year. With the new understanding of the molecular mechanism(s) of disease progression, our knowledge about the disease is snowballing, leading to the evolution of many new therapeutic regimes and their successive trials. In the past few decades, various combinations of therapies have been proposed and are presently employed in the treatment of diverse cancers. Targeted drug therapy, immunotherapy, and personalized medicines are now largely being employed, which were not common a few years back. The field of cancer discoveries and therapeutics are evolving fast as cancer type-specific biomarkers are progressively being identified and several types of cancers are nowadays undergoing systematic therapies, extending patients' disease-free survival thereafter. Although growing evidence shows that a systematic and targeted approach could be the future of cancer medicine, chemotherapy remains a largely opted therapeutic option despite its known side effects on the patient's physical and psychological health. Chemotherapeutic agents/pharmaceuticals served a great purpose over the past few decades and have remained the frontline choice for advanced-stage malignancies where surgery and/or radiation therapy cannot be prescribed due to specific reasons. The present report succinctly reviews the existing and contemporary advancements in chemotherapy and assesses the status of the enrolled drugs/pharmaceuticals; it also comprehensively discusses the emerging role of specific/targeted therapeutic strategies that are presently being employed to achieve better clinical success/survival rate in cancer patients.

Nowadays, it is fascinating to engineer waste biomass into functional valuable nanomaterials. We investigate the production of hetero-atom doped carbon quantum dots (N-S@MCDs) to address the adaptability constraint in green precursors concerning the contents of the green precursors i.e., Tagetes erecta (marigold extract). The successful formation of N-S@MCDs as described has been validated by distinct analytical characterizations. As synthesized N-S@MCDs successfully incorporated on corn-starch powder, providing a nano-carbogenic fingerprint powder composition (N-S@MCDs/corn-starch phosphors). N-S@MCDs imparts astounding color-tunability which enables highly fluorescent fingerprint pattern developed on different non-porous surfaces along with immediate visual enhancement under UV-light, revealing a bright sharp fingerprint, along with long-time preservation of developed fingerprints. The creation and comparison of latent fingerprints (LFPs) are two key research in the recognition and detection of LFPs, respectively. In this work, developed fingerprints are regulated with an artificial intelligence program. The optimum sample has a very high degree of similarity with the standard control, as shown by the program’s good matching score (86.94%) for the optimal sample. Hence, our results far outperform the benchmark attained using the conventional method, making the N-S@MCDs/corn-starch phosphors and the digital processing program suitable for use in real-world scenarios.

In the era of industrialization, pollution has totally deteriorated the quality and diversity of life. Heavy metal contaminations are the major causes of environment deteriorations. The basic reasons are natural as well as anthropogenic. Chief sources of heavy metal contamination are air pollution, river sediments, sewage sludge, town waste composts, agricultural chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides, and industrial waste like factories releasing chemicals, anthropogenic activities, etc. Agricultural soils in many parts of the world are generally contaminated by heavy metal toxicity such as Cd, Cu, Zn, Ni, Co, Pb, Hg, As, etc. These are due to the long-term use of phosphate fertilizers, sewage sludge, dust from smelters, industrial waste, etc. Heavy metals in soils are detected with some specific instruments like atomic absorption spectroscopy, inductively coupled plasma, inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy, and X-ray fluorescence and spectroscopy. Among all these instruments, atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) is the best because it gives the precise quantitative determination. AAS is a method applied for measuring the quantity of the trace elements present in the soil or any other samples.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.gendis.2022.02.007.].

The term “dietary supplement” defines a comprehensive and diverse category of products that are essential to our health but are absent or insufficient in the diet and may be needed to take separately; requirement of dietary supplements varies at different stages of life, such as infant, child-adult, pregnancy, lactation, and geriatrics. Dietary supplements are not medicines, nor should they be considered a substitute for food. The USFDA defines dietary supplements in part as a product taken by mouth that contains “dietary ingredients.” Nutritional ingredients comprise vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and herbs or botanicals, in addition to other substances that can be considered to supplement the diet. The market is flooded with various dosage forms of dietary supplements, such as capsules, tablets, powders, energy bars, liquids, etc. These include vitamins, minerals, herbal products containing extracts from herbs as well as algae and fungi, concentrate, metabolite, constituent, or extract, enzyme supplement, essential amino, and fatty acids. This article describes the importance of the dietary supplement, source, diseases that arise by deficiency, and the recommended doses for different groups.