RETRACTED: Effects of Bacillus subtilis on the reduction of U(VI) by nano-Fe0

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal ( https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal ). This article has been retracted at the request of the Executive Editor-in-Chief. Concern was raised about the EDX spectra shown by the insets of Figure 1D and the top two XPS spectra of Figure 9A (Fe 0 pH 3.5 and Fe 0 + B. Subtilis pH 3.5), as well as the FTIR spectra from Figure S6 and the XPS spectra from Figure S7B-E, which contained features and noise that indicated data fabrication. The corresponding authors were not able to provide reasonable explanations for these features and the Editor decided to retract the article. Moreover, the top EDX spectrum shown by the insets of Figure 1D is highly similar to the spectrum shown by the inset of Figure 1C of the article that the authors have previously published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials 280 (2014) 399–408 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2014.08.023 . One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents an abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.