This chapter advances SDG 6 and 11 by exploring the technological landscape of water purification in India, focusing on strategies for treatment of wastewater as a potential water source.

Deterioration of water quality due to economic development, climate change and other factors has become a challenge to human beings and the ecosystem. Most countries have recognized this problem and have resorted to actions for improving water quality. However, the effect on water quality improvements due to these actions is uncertain due to the plausibility of multiple scenarios like climate change scenarios and socio- economic scenarios.

This chapter advances SDG 3 and 5 by exploring some of the factors associated with high mortality rates in Indian girls including in the 5 to 14 age group.

Women represent a majority of the tourism workforce globally, yet they remain under-represented in management roles and over-represented in part-time/casual work and low paid jobs. Prior research suggests women in employment, generally, and in tourism employment, specifically, experience gender discrimination, labour market and workplace segregation, work/family conflict, and other barriers to their employment and career progression.

Objective: Smoking is an important causative factor of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and females are considered more susceptible to the effects of smoking than males. However, in previous Korean studies, the effects of sex differences on the association between smoking and COPD have been controversial. In this study, the effects of sex differences on the association between smoking and COPD and the effects of female hidden smokers on that association in Korean adults were investigated.

This study assessed the carbon (C) budget and the C stocks in major compartments of the soil food web (bacteria, fungi, protists, nematodes, meso- and macrofauna) in an arable field with/without litter addition. The C stocks in the food web were more than three times higher in topsoil (0–10 cm) compared to subsoil (>40 cm). Microorganisms contained over 95% of food web C, with similar contributions of bacteria and fungi in topsoil. Litter addition did not alter C pools of soil biota after one growing season, except for the increase of fungi and fungal feeding nematodes in the topsoil.

Non-vascular plants such as mosses, lichens and especially microalgae are widespread in terrestrial ecosystems, but their contribution in the nutrient cycling and energy budget of soil food webs is generally neglected. Despite a relatively low total biomass, soil microalgae can be very productive and contribute to the diet of many soil decomposers such as Collembola. Using 15N/14N ratios we showed that phycophagy is of particular importance for Collembola in extreme habitats like rock surfaces, or seasonally during the wintertime.

Recent perspective has highlighted the microbial importance of interplay between catabolic breakdown and anabolic synthesis in influencing soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics and persistence. However, studies on these contrasting activities remain rare, despite value to global discussions on economic and ecologically sustainable ecosystem management. Here we investigate microbial response in a no-till farm in Northeast China after an 8-year manipulation of plant residue returns of varying quantity including control (0%, NT0), low (33%, NT33), medium (67%, NT67) and high (100%, NT100).

Previous studies already demonstrated that biochar addition reduces nitrogen (N) leaching in soil, but little information is available about its effects on N leaching and bacterial community structure under the application of organic N. This study investigated the effects of corn-straw biochar under the application of urea (250 kg N ha-1) in layered soil columns. The PCR-amplified partial 16S rRNA genes in soil were sequenced before and after biochar treatment in order to assess the change of bacterial diversity and community structure utilizing the Illumina technology.

Non-ribosomal peptides (NRPs) and polyketides (PKs) are among the most profuse families of secondary metabolites (SM) produced by bacteria. These compounds are believed to play an important ecological role in microbe-microbe and microbe-plant interactions in soil and roots microbiomes. Over the years, screening of NRPs and PKs in soil bacteria has resulted in high rates of rediscovery, mainly due to challenges associated with bacterial isolation.