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The emergence of several complex environmental pollutants from various industrial activities has posed a global challenge for ecorestoration and sustainable development. The use of Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) for the remediation of soil pollution has gained recognition as a promising biotechnological tool for sustainable development. Recent advances in metagenomic approaches have allowed for the detection of rhizospheric bacterial communities from polluted soils revealing their contributions to the degradation of complex pollutants through the production of potential enzymes as a novel technique. In addition, protein/enzyme engineering and the fate of heavy metals accumulation in plant tissues, through bacterial-assisted phytoremediation, has expanded the role of PGPR in soil reclamation by improving their efficacy, understanding their mechanisms of action, and integrating them with other innovative approaches been reported as advance technique. These advancements give strong evidence for more efficient and sustainable soil remediation strategies, aiding in the restoration of contaminated soil and ensuring environmental sustainability. These techniques and PGPR attributes will provide a green technology for environmental safety.

Smart buildings are the need of the day with increasing demand-supply ratios and considerable deficiency to generate them. In any modern nonindustrial infrastructure, these demands mainly comprise thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs), which can be maneuvered. TCLs, such as air-conditioners, heaters, and refrigerators, are ubiquitous and their operating times can be controlled to achieve desired aggregate power. This power aggregation, in turn, helps achieve load management targets and thereby serves as an ancillary service (AS) to the power grid. In this work, a distributed averaging protocol is used to achieve the desired power aggregate set by the utility using steady-state desynchronization. The results are verified using a computer program for a homogeneous and heterogeneous population of TCLs. Furthermore, a load following scenario has been implemented using the utility as a reference. Apart from providing a significant AS to the power grid, the proposed idea also helps reduce the amplitude of power system oscillations imparted by the TCLs. Hardware-based results are obtained to verify its implementation feasibility in real-time.