Fluoride contamination in water is a major problem across the globe, with health hazards such as dental and skeletal fluorosis. Most earlier studies are confined to local or regional scales. As the problem has serious socioeconomic implications, there is a need for a global perspective. Thus, here we review worldwide research for nearly a century on fluoride contamination in water. We investigated the distribution of fluoride contamination in water, its sources, mobilization and association. The major findings are: (1) Anomalous fluoride concentration in groundwater is mainly confined to arid and semiarid regions of Asia and North Africa. (2) The geogenic sources of fluoride in water are mainly fluorine-bearing minerals in rocks and sediments, whereas anthropogenic sources of fluoride in water are mainly pesticides and industrial waste.(3) Fluoride mobilization from geogenic sources is mainly controlled by alkalinity and temperature. (4) Fluoride occurrence in water is associated with ions such as sodium, arsenic chloride and bicarbonate. There are few associations of fluoride in water with calcium and magnesium.

The Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM) payload on board Chandrayaan-2 provides disk-integrated solar spectra in the 1–15 keV energy range with an energy resolution of 180 eV (at 5.9 keV) and a cadence of 1 s. During the period from 2019 September to 2020 May, covering the minimum of Solar Cycle 24, it observed nine B-class flares ranging from B1.3 to B4.5. Using time-resolved spectroscopic analysis during these flares, we examined the evolution of temperature, emission measure, and absolute elemental abundances of four elements–Mg, Al, Si, and S. These are the first measurements of absolute abundances during such small flares and this study offers a unique insight into the evolution of absolute abundances as the flares evolve. Our results demonstrate that the abundances of these four elements decrease toward their photospheric values during the peak phase of the flares. During the decay phase, the abundances are observed to quickly return to their preflare coronal values. The depletion of elemental abundances during the flares is consistent with the standard flare model, suggesting the injection of fresh material into coronal loops as a result of chromospheric evaporation. To explain the quick recovery of the so-called coronal “First Ionization Potential bias” we propose two scenarios based on the Ponderomotive force model.

Elements with low first ionization potential (FIP) are known to be 3–4 times more abundant in active region loops of the solar corona than in the photosphere. There have been observations suggesting that this observed “FIP bias” may be different in other parts of the solar corona and such observations are thus important in understanding the underlying mechanism. The Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM) on board the Chandrayaan-2 mission carried out spectroscopic observations of the Sun in soft X-rays during the 2019–2020 solar minimum, considered to be the quietest solar minimum of the past century. These observations provided a unique opportunity to study soft X-ray spectra of the quiescent solar corona in the absence of any active regions. By modeling high-resolution broadband X-ray spectra from XSM, we estimate the temperature and emission measure during periods of possibly the lowest solar X-ray intensity. We find that the derived parameters remain nearly constant over time with a temperature around 2 MK, suggesting the emission is dominated by X-ray bright points. We also obtain the abundances of Mg, Al, and Si relative to H, and find that the FIP bias is ∼2, lower than the values observed in active regions.

Abstract. A number of "modified" Newtonian potentials of various forms are available in the literature which accurately approximate some general relativistic effects important for studying accretion discs around a Schwarzschild black hole. Such potentials may be called "pseudo-Schwarzschild" potentials because they nicely mimic the spacetime around a non-rotating/slowly rotating compact object. In this paper, we examine the validity of the application of some of these potentials to study the spherically symmetric, transonic, hydrodynamic accretion onto a Schwarzschild black hole. By comparing the values of various dynamical and thermodynamic accretion parameters obtained for flows using these potentials with full general relativistic calculations, we have shown that though the potentials discussed in this paper were originally proposed to mimic the relativistic effects manifested in disc accretion, it is quite reasonable to use most of the potentials in studying various dynamical as well as thermodynamic quantities for spherical accretion to compromise between the ease of handling of a Newtonian description of gravity and the realistic situations described by complicated general relativistic calculations. Also we have shown that depending on the chosen regions of parameter space spanned by specific energy E and adiabatic index γ of the flow, one potential may have more importance than another and we could identify which potential is the best approximation for full general relativistic flow in Scwarzschild space-time for particular values of E and γ.

Solar flares, with energies ranging over several orders of magnitude, result from impulsive release of energy due to magnetic reconnection in the corona. Barring a handful, almost all microflares observed in X-rays are associated with the solar active regions. Here we present, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of a large sample of quiet-Sun microflares observed in soft X-rays by the Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM) on board the Chandrayaan-2 mission during the 2019–2020 solar minimum. A total of 98 microflares having peak flux below GOES A-level were observed by the XSM during observations spanning 76 days. By using the derived plasma temperature and emission measure of these events obtained by fitting the XSM spectra along with volume estimates from concurrent imaging observations in EUV with the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, we estimated their thermal energies to be ranging from 3 × 1026 to 6 × 1027 erg. We present the frequency distribution of the quiet-Sun microflares with energy and discuss the implications of these observations of small-scale magnetic reconnection events outside active regions on coronal heating.

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There is a growing body of evidence that the plasma loops seen with current instrumentation (SOHO, TRACE, and Hinode) may consist of many subresolution elements or strands. Thus, the overall plasma evolution we observe in these features could be the cumulative result of numerous individual strands undergoing sporadic heating. This paper presents a short (10 9 cm 10 Mm) ''global loop'' as 125 individual strands, where each strand is modeled independently by a one-dimensional hydrodynamic simulation. The energy-release mechanism across the strands consists of localized, discrete heating events (nanoflares). The strands are ''coupled'' together through the frequency distribution of the total energy input to the loop, which follows a power-law distribution with index . The location and lifetime of each energy event is random. Although a typical strand can go through a series of well-defined heating/cooling cycles, when the strands are combined, the overall quasi-static emission-measure-weighted thermal profile for the global loop reproduces a hot apex /cool base structure. Localized cool plasma blobs are seen to travel along individual strands, which could cause the loop to ''disappear'' from coronal emission and to appear in transition or chromospheric emission. As increases (from 0 to 2.29 to 3.29), more weight is given to the smallest heating episodes. Consequently, the overall global loop apex temperature increases, while the variation of the temperature around that value decreases. Any further increase in saturates the loop apex temperature variations at the current simulation resolution. The effect of increasing the number of strands and the loop length, as well as the implications of these results for possible future observing campaigns for TRACE and Hinode, are discussed.

Using the observations recorded by Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on-board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) and the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) and X-Ray Telescope (XRT) both on-board Hinode, we present the evidence of chromospheric evaporation in a coronal loop after the occurrence of two active region transient brightenings (ARTBs) at the two footpoints. The chromospheric evaporation started nearly simultaneously in all the three hot channels of AIA such as 131 Å, 94 Å and 335 Å, which was observed to be temperature dependent, being fastest in the highest temperature channel. The whole loop became fully brightened following the ARTBs after ≈ 25 s in 131 Å, ≈ 40 s in 94 Å, and ≈ 6.5 min in 335 Å. The DEM measurements at the two footpoints (i.e., of two ARTBs) and the loop-top suggest that the plasma attained a maximum temperature of ∼10 MK at all these locations. The spectroscopic observations from IRIS revealed the presence of redshifted emission of ∼20 km s −1 in cooler lines like C II and Si IV during the ARTBs that was co-temporal with the evaporation flow at the footpoint of the loop. During the ARTBs, the line width of C II and Si IV increased nearly by a factor of two during the peak emission. Moreover, enhancement in the line width preceded that in the Doppler shift which again preceded enhancement in the intensity. The observed results were qualitatively reproduced by 1-D hydrodynamic simulations where energy was deposited at both the footpoints of a monolithic coronal loop that mimicked the ARTBs identified in the observations.