The effects of oral iron supplementation on cognition in older children and adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background  

In observational studies anaemia and iron deficiency are associated with cognitive deficits, suggesting that iron supplementation may improve cognitive function. However, due to the potential for confounding by socio-economic status in observational studies, this needs to be verified in data from randomised controlled trials (RCTs).     

Synthesis and Characterization of Titanium-Substituted Large Pore SSZ-42 Zeolite

Titanium-substituted large pore SSZ-42 zeolite was synthesized for the first time using the corresponding borosilicate as starting material. Substitution of boron by titanium took place via either high temperature treatment with TiCl₄ vapor or by treatment with Ti(OiPr)₄ in dry toluene at 120°C. Both deboronated and boron-containing samples were found to be suitable for post-synthesis incorporation of titanium in the zeolite framework. The obtained materials were characterized by FTIR, UV-visible and XPS. Titanium-modified SSZ-42 was found to be active for phenol hydroxylation and cyclohexene epoxidation.     

Screening of Fe–BEA catalysts for wet hydrogen peroxide oxidation of crude olive mill wastewater under mild conditions

A series of Fe–BEA catalysts, differing in the amount of iron have been characterized by XRD, BET surface area, UV–vis spectroscopy and chemical analysis. The zeolite samples have been tested as heterogeneous catalysts for the wet hydrogen peroxide oxidation of crude olive mill wastewaters (OMW) under very mild conditions (at 28 °C and atmospheric pressure). All experiments were performed on a laboratory scale set-up.BSE-1/3 catalyst with a moderate Fe content (Fe/Al = 1.19) showed the best results in terms of catalytic activity and loss of active species into the aqueous solutions. The stability of Fe species has been shown to be strongly dependent on the Fe environment into the zeolite framework.Over the selected catalyst, application of catalytic procedure on diluted OMW solution permitted high removal efficiencies of pollutants. The process produces a removal capacity of 28% of total organic carbon (TOC), 40% of total phenols, 30% of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and 59% of colour, just after 12 h. 5-Day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD₅), and toxicity towards the bioluminescent bacteria Vibrio fischeri were selected to follow the performance of this process in terms of reducing the ecotoxicity of OMW. Results showed an increase in the biodegradability of the treated sample and a decrease of the microtoxicity from 100% to 70% load towards V. fischeri.Occurrence of small catalyst deactivation by carbonaeous during the oxidation reaction was observed through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and elemental analysis.     

Multidentate Cyclohexylphosphonic Acid as Corrosion Inhibitor for Structural Steel in 3.5% NaCl Solution: An Experimental and Computational Study

Protection of Metals and Physical Chemistry of Surfaces - The inhibition effect of cyclohexylphosphonic acid (CHPA) on the corrosion of structural steel (EN 10027) in 3.5% sodium chloride solution...     

Design and analysis of a peer-assisted VOD provisioning system for managed networks

With the rise of VOD (Video-on-Demand) services provisioning as a successful service on the Internet and managed networks, we are witnessing a drive towards cost-efficiency and economies of scale. Many broadband operators around the world are experimenting with P2P (Peer-to-Peer) systems centered on STBs (Set-Top-Boxes) to increase the competitiveness of their VOD services offering. By leveraging the storage and uplink bandwidth capacities available at a certain number of STBs operated by the broadband operator, the savings in terms of backend streaming capacities will represent sizable and decisive gains in cost. In these systems, video contents are usually fragmented into a number of complementary content fragments, called sub-streams, which are randomly injected in the network of STBs, and the VOD service is essentially provisioned through multisource streaming sessions from neighboring STBs to the requesting STB. One of the main challenges in such peer-assisted streaming systems remains the maximization of the utilization of STB resources utility for a given content popularity pattern. In this paper, we specifically focus on the content injection strategy and how the different content fragments should be dispatched in the network to achieve the highest performance in the VOD services provisioning epoch. We demonstrate that the random injection strategy is not appropriate for maximizing the number of simultaneous VOD streaming sessions in the network. Our objective is to first gain a better understanding of the factors driving P2P-based VOD streaming systems and provide guidelines to better operate such systems and ultimately give service operators the tools to achieve different performance objectives and/or fit specific network configurations. Further, we propose a new content dispatching strategy that maximizes the number of served VOD sessions by balancing the streaming load among the different STBs. Finally, we propose a complementary streaming resources reprovisioning mechanism that acts in real-time to reprovision the resources for serving VOD sessions to new STBs and to release trapped resources for new incoming VOD service requests.