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Department of Chemistry, PAHER University, Udaipur-313 024, Rajasthan, India Department of Chemistry, B. N. University, Udaipur-313 002, Rajasthan, India Department of Chemistry, J. R. N. Rajasthan Vidhyapeeth (Deemed to be University), Udaipur-313 002, Rajasthan, India E-mail: hardeepshre@gmail.com Manuscript received online 20 October 2020, revised and accepted 28 November 2020 Calcium molybdates (undoped and carbon-doped) were synthesized and used as photocatalysts for the degradation of meth­ylene blue. These photocatalysts have been characterized by different techniques such as FE-SEM, EDX and XRD. The progress of the photocatalytic degradation was observed spectrophotometrically. The effect of different parameters such as pH, concentration of dye, amount of semiconductor and light intensity on the rate of degradation of methylene blue was ob­served. Optimum values were obtained as pH = 8.5, concentration of methylene blue = 1.10×10–4 M, amount of CaMoO4 = 0.10 g and light intensity = 50.0 mW cm–2. A tentative mechanism for the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue has been proposed. Scavenger studies indicated that hydroxyl radical is acting as an oxidizing species for this degradation. It was observed that 2% C-doped showed almost 1.4 times better photocatalytic performance than undoped CaMoO4 sample. &nbsp

Urinary neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminidase (NAG), and interleukin 18 (IL-18) were found to be useful for early detection of acute kidney injury (AKI). The objective of this study was to determine the predictive ability of biomarkers for mortality and variation in levels in relation to different stages of AKI, need for dialysis, etiologies, and with duration of hospital stay.Urinary NGAL, NAG, and IL-18 levels were measured in 50 children with AKI and 30 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. AKI was classified as per pediatric Risk, Injury, Failure, Loss, and End-stage (RIFLE) criteria.Median NGAL, NAG, and IL-18 values were significantly increased in AKI patients compared with controls (p 0.001), with significant increase among risk, injury, and failure stages. Nonsurvivors had significantly higher median levels of NGAL (p = 0.008) and NAG (p = 0.018) than survivors. NGAL had highest area under the curve (AUC) at 0.750 [confidence interval (CI) 0.580-0.920], followed by NAG at 0.724 (CI 0.541-0.907), with sensitivity and specificity of 75 % each; and IL-18 (AUC 0.688, CI 0.511-0.864), with sensitivity 62.5 % and specificity 70.8 %, for predicting mortality. Values were significantly higher in patients who required peritoneal dialysis (PD) than in those in whom it was not indicated. Levels were comparable among different etiologies. Only NGAL level was found to be a significant risk factor associated with longer duration of hospital stay.Urinary NGAL and NAG had modest predictive ability for mortality. Children requiring dialysis had significantly raised levels, and the NGAL level had significant association with duration of hospital stay.