Bisphenols are important industrial materials for example for the production of plastics, but are also well known for their adverse health effects, in particular bisphenol A (BPA) is an endocrine disruptor. The widespread use of plastics has raised concerns. Therefore, the removal of bisphenols from wastewater has sparked the interest of the scientific community. This work introduces a novel hybrid technique of micro-nano bubbles assisted laccase (MNB-Lac) to degrade bisphenols in water. The feasibility of MNB-Lac using BPA as a model contaminant was evaluated by comparing with MNB, Lac, ultrasound (UL), UL-Lac, and UL-MNB-Lac. Comprehensive investigations were carried out to understand the specific influences of key process parameters including the initial pollutant concentration, temperature, air intake, pH, outlet pipe length, and Lac concentration on BPA degradation. The alkaline environment and extended length of outlet pipe could improve the degradation efficiency further. MNB-Lac exhibited 2.3–6.2 folds higher BPA degradation and less time than the other above process under the optimal parameters. The mechanism of MNB-Lac revealed that the generation of hydroxyl radical, high O₂ solubility, and high mass transfer efficiency induced by MNB play important roles on enhancing the degradation catalyzed by Lac. MNB-Lac was successfully used for treating bisphenol B, bisphenol C, and the mixture of three bisphenols with high removal efficiency. Subsequently, these degradation products were analyzed by GC–MS. MNB-Lac potentially represents an innovative technology with considerable advantages in contaminant cleanup and time efficiency for treating phenolic contaminated water. Furthermore, the findings provide new insights into the enhancement of the performance of an oxidizing enzyme by introducing MNB technology.

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Hypericin is considered to be the most biologically active substance in the crude extract of Hypericum perforatum L. (also known as St. John's wort) and has a wide range of pharmacological effects. In this study, a high resolution high performance liquid chromatography method for determining hypericin was established by comparing different chromatographic conditions. Xylanase-assisted extraction and microwave-assisted extraction can improve the extraction yield of hypericin significantly. And the coupling strategy between two methods resulted in a significant difference on the extraction yield. Microwave-assisted extraction after xylanase-assisted extraction was found to be the most efficient strategy for extracting hypericin. The yield was 0.319 ± 0.006 mg g ⁻¹ , which was a 209.7% increase over unassisted extraction. The combination of enzyme assisted extraction followed by microwave assisted extraction can be more commonly applied to improve extraction efficiency of bioactive compounds from plants.

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Green infrastructure (GI) plays a fundamental role in achieving urban pluvial flood management, mitigating urban heat island effect, and improving living suitability. Residents' participation is the main driving force of GI implementation. Based on semi-structured interviews, GIS spatial analysis, and multiple regression, we investigated residents' willingness to participate in the implementation of GI in public and private space and identified the influence factors in Shanghai, China. The results show that, compared with private space, residents prefer to implement GI in public space, where they have different preferences of GI measures. On urban scale, residents' willingness to participate in the implementation of GI in private space is characterized as "high in the inner city, low in the suburban areas", while the spatial difference is insignificant for public space. In addition, the factors affecting residents' willingness to participate in the implementation of GI are different in private and public space. The deterministic factors of GI participation are gender, education level, and floor for private space, while only include building age for public space, in addition to the common factors of free time, cognition of GI, perception of pluvial flood risk, supportive factors, and environment-improving factors that can influence both private and public space GI participation. Our analysis therefore provides valuable information for policymakers concerning nature-based solutions to climate change adaptation and urban sustainability.@en