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A newfound appreciation for the benefits of herbal treatments has emerged in recent decades. However, herbal medication production still needs to establish standardized protocols that adhere to strict guidelines for quality assurance and risk minimization. Although the therapeutic effects of herbal medicines are extensive, the risk of herb–drug interactions remains a serious concern, limiting their use. Therefore, a robust, well-established liver model that can fully represent the liver tissue is required to study potential herb–drug interactions to ensure herbal medicines’ safe and effective use. In light of this, this mini review investigates the existing in vitro liver models applicable to detecting herbal medicines’ toxicity and other pharmacological targets. This article analyzes the benefits and drawbacks of existing in vitro liver cell models. To maintain relevance and effectively express the offered research, a systematic strategy was employed to search for and include all discussed studies. In brief, from 1985 to December 2022, the phrases “liver models”, “herb–drug interaction”, “herbal medicine”, “cytochrome P450”, “drug transporters pharmacokinetics”, and “pharmacodynamics” were combined to search the electronic databases PubMed, ScienceDirect, and the Cochrane Library.

Poverty affects nearly a billion of the world population and many of these people are living in rural communities. Smallholder irrigation development plays a pivotal role in reducing rural poverty. Many smallholder schemes have failed in the past due to poor planning and community disputes. This paper presents a promising framework, the CDAA, for developing sustainable smallholder irrigation schemes which is currently applied in the LUSIP project in Swaziland. The strength of the framework is that; 1) it makes the primary beneficiary (community) the main driver of the development, and 2) it significantly changes the economic state of the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current practices in some water-treatment facilities have reported that natural organic matter (NOM) blocks the adsorption sites of activated carbon resulting in lower geosmin and 2-methylisoborneol (2-MIB) removal. Humic acid has been reported to compete with geosmin and 2-MIB removal in the same way. The removal of odour chemicals such as geosmin and 2-MIB is important for potable-water treatment by water supply companies and municipalities. We have previously demonstrated that cyclodextrin polyurethanes are capable of removing a number of organic pollutants from water, but are not able to reduce the levels of NOM significantly. We wished to determine if the polymers would selectively remove geosmin and 2-MIB, despite the presence of NOM. Humic acid was chosen as a model for NOM since NOM constitutes about 70% of humic acid. Results obtained from this study indicate that the presence of humic acids at different concentrations could not affect the removal of geosmin and 2-MIB when cyclodextrin polymers were used since 90% removal was achieved. However the UV-Vis analysis showed a low removal of humic acids (3 to 20%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The water treatment processes employed by coal-fired power stations do not completely remove most of the natural organics (volatile component) from the feed water used for power generation. Currently, polyaluminium chloride, polyelectrolyte and ion exchange resins are used to treat water at power stations. The effectiveness of water-insoluble cyclodextrin (CD) polymers in the removal of natural organics (volatile component), dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and total organic carbon (TOC) from water collected at a specific power plant is reported. Results obtained from this study show that, despite the usage of the treatment processes, natural organic species emanating from raw water still persist throughout the stages of the water treatment process. The polymers on the other hand demonstrated the ability to remove dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from raw water by as much as 84%, whilst TOC removal was relatively low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]