Wilson College

Sterculia urens (Malvaceae), commonly known as Karaya or Indian Tragacanth, is an important ethnomedicinal tree extensively used in traditional healthcare practices throughout India. Different parts of the plant, including the bark, roots, leaves, seeds, and gum exudates, have long been utilized for managing wounds, infections, inflammation, constipation, oligospermia, and various metabolic disorders. The present review comprehensively compiles and critically analyzes available literature on the phytochemical constituents, biological activities, and therapeutic potential of Sterculia urens. A systematic literature search was performed using major scientific databases such as Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and PubMed, covering both experimental and non-experimental studies published up to 2026. Phytochemical investigations indicate that the plant is rich in diverse bioactive compounds, including flavonoids, phenolics, tannins, alkaloids, saponins, terpenoids, and proteins, which contribute to its wide range of pharmacological properties. Experimental evidence from in vitro and in vivo studies demonstrates notable antioxidant, antidiabetic, antimicrobial, antipyretic, and anticancer activities. In addition to its conventional medicinal value, recent advancements such as eco-friendly synthesis of silver nanoparticles and development of colon-specific drug delivery systems based on Sterculia urens gum highlight its growing relevance in modern pharmaceutical research. Despite these promising findings, challenges remain, including insufficient clinical validation, lack of standardized formulations, and limited understanding of underlying molecular mechanisms. Overall, Sterculia urens emerges as a valuable natural resource with significant potential for drug discovery and therapeutic applications, warranting further clinical, mechanistic, and formulation-based investigations.

Natural gas wells nearing the end of their production cycles represent both an environmental liability and an opportunity for sustainable land reuse in Appalachia. This study develops a fuzzy-logic geographic information system (GIS) model to identify well sites in West Virginia (WV) suitable for reclamation through small-ruminant agrivoltaic systems. The model integrates topographic, solar, and accessibility variables—slope, aspect, land cover, solar radiation, and distance to roads—each standardized by fuzzy membership functions and combined through fuzzy overlay to generate a continuous suitability surface. A biologically derived pairwise buffer analysis couples a 2.02 ha well-pad exclusion zone with a 1.48 ha grazing buffer representing the minimum forage area required for rotational grazing. Within a four-county case study, the model isolated 129 wells of high suitability, primarily in Tyler, Doddridge, and Harrison Counties. The framework provides a reproducible spatial decision tool for targeting post-extraction sites where solar infrastructure and managed grazing can co-locate, supporting both renewable-energy and land-restoration goals in the Appalachian region.

Inductively Coupled Plasma–Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) has established itself as a preeminent technique in analytical science, providing powerful capabilities for trace element and isotope analysis due to its outstanding sensitivity, accuracy, and multi-element detection. This review offers a comprehensive overview of ICP-MS, covering its fundamental principles and instrumentation. The technique functions by ionizing samples in an argon plasma and separating ions according to their mass-to-charge ratios, achieving detection limits at the parts-per-trillion level. ICP-MS finds applications across diverse areas, including environmental monitoring, food authentication, pharmaceutical and drug testing, forensic investigations, and biomedical research on toxic elements and metal bioaccumulation. Its capacity for isotopic ratio determination and species-specific analysis provides valuable insights into contamination pathways, metabolic mechanisms, material provenance, and cellular heterogeneity. By combining high sensitivity with precision and versatility, ICP-MS continues to advance modern analytical science, enabling comprehensive, high-throughput elemental and isotopic characterization across environmental, industrial, biomedical and life science domains.

Conductive media in which ions carry charge through a solution are foundationally important to batteries, supercapacitors, and ionotronic devices. Shifts in ion mobility imposed by physical changes in the solution can dynamically impact the conductivity of the medium. This paper reports a class of temperature-responsive phase-change organogels in which a polymer network is formed within salt solutions in organic solvents with melting points between room temperature and 100 °C. The conductivity in the molten state (up to ∼10-4 to 10-3S/cm) exceeded that in the frozen state by over 10000-fold and remained stable after holding at 90 °C for 3 h or over 100 freezing/melting cycles. A diverse range of salts can be used, and the conductivity/temperature relationship can be tuned by selecting or mixing solvents with different melting points. Depending on the solvent composition, these phase-change organogels can either produce approximately digital (binary) thermal responses to function as switches or respond continuously as analog temperature sensors or other transducers. An advantage of this strategy over prior literature is that the identity of the charge carrier and the phase behavior of the solvent can be tuned independently, presenting a wide design space for electrolyte materials whose conductivity responds to temperature.

Textiles used in firefighting turnout gear were previously treated or manufactured with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to provide water and oil repellency, help pass flammability requirements, and provide increased breathability for heat relief. Due to concerns about potential exposure and health risks, manufacturers developed non-PFAS-treated textiles; however, new chemistries remain undisclosed, particularly in moisture barriers that replaced expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE). To probe new chemistries that may be used in these textiles, this study tested 12 used turnouts manufactured between 2013 and 2024, including three advertised as non-PFAS-treated. All three layers of each garment were separately tested for 52 PFAS and 19 brominated flame retardants (BFRs) using mass spectrometry and for total fluorine and bromine using combustion ion chromatography (CIC). BFRs were found in significantly higher concentrations (p < 0.01) compared to PFAS, and in all three layers of the garments tested. Notably, non-ePTFE moisture barriers contained decabromodiphenyl ethane (DBDPE), a BFR, at concentrations ranging from 7,290 to 10,600 ng/cm2, indicating intentional addition rather than contamination during use. CIC and nontargeted GC-HRMS analyses of the moisture barriers also confirmed that nine garments from one manufacturer had intentional applications of polymeric BFRs while three garments from another manufacturer did not. These results highlight a need to study BFR exposures among firefighters.