Removal of ammonia from air on molybdenum and tungsten oxide modified activated carbons

Microporous coconut-based activated carbon was impregnated with solutions of ammonium metatungstate or ammonium molybdate and then calcined in air in order to convert the salts into their corresponding oxides. The surface of those materials was characterized using adsorption of nitrogen, potentiometric titration, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and thermal analysis. The results indicated a significant increase in surface acidity related to the presence of tungsten or molybdenum oxides. On the materials obtained, adsorption of ammonia from either dry or moist air was carried out. The oxides distributed on the surface provided Lewis and/or Br?nsted centers for interactions with ammonia molecules or ammonium ions. Water on the surface of carbon or in the gas phase increased the amount of ammonia adsorbed via involvement of Br?nsted-type interactions and/or by leading to the formation of molybdate or tungstate salts on the surface. Although the amount of ammonia adsorbed is closely related to the number of moles of oxides and their acidic centers, the carbon surface also contributes to the adsorption via providing small pores where ammonia can be dissolved in the water film.     

Reactive adsorption of NO2 on copper-based metal-organic framework and graphite oxide/metal-organic framework composites

Composites of a copper-based metal-organic framework (MOF) and graphite oxide (GO) were tested for NO2 adsorption and retention of NO in dry and moist conditions. The samples were analyzed before and after exposure to NO2 by thermal analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction, and adsorption of nitrogen at -196 °C. In dry conditions, the composites exhibit an enhanced NO2 breakthrough capacity compared to MOF and GO separately. This improvement is linked to the increased porosity and the reactive adsorption of NO2 on copper, which leads to the formation of bidentate and monodentate nitrate. Even though less NO2 is adsorbed in moist conditions than in dry ones, the materials are more stable than in dry conditions and the NO retention is enhanced. Water in the challenge gas competes with NO2 to bind to copper, and thus, the number of reactive adsorption sites on which NO2 can be adsorbed/reacted decreases.     

Cosmeceutical Therapy: Engaging the Repercussions of UVR Photoaging on the Skin’s Circadian Rhythm

Sunlight is an important factor in regulating the central circadian rhythm, including the modulation of our sleep/wake cycles. Sunlight had also been discovered to have a prominent influence on our skin’s circadian rhythm. Overexposure or prolonged exposure to the sun can cause skin photodamage, such as the formation of irregular pigmentation, collagen degradation, DNA damage, and even skin cancer. Hence, this review will be looking into the detrimental effects of sunlight on our skin, not only at the aspect of photoaging but also at its impact on the skin’s circadian rhythm. The growing market trend of natural-product-based cosmeceuticals as also caused us to question their potential to modulate the skin’s circadian rhythm. Questions about how the skin’s circadian rhythm could counteract photodamage and how best to maximize its biopotential will be discussed in this article. These discoveries regarding the skin’s circadian rhythm have opened up a completely new level of understanding of our skin’s molecular mechanism and may very well aid cosmeceutical companies, in the near future, to develop better products that not only suppress photoaging but remain effective and relevant throughout the day.     

Histological Methods to Assess Skeletal Muscle Degeneration and Regeneration in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive disease caused by the loss of function of the protein dystrophin. This protein contributes to the stabilisation of striated cells during contraction, as it anchors the cytoskeleton with components of the extracellular matrix through the dystrophin-associated protein complex (DAPC). Moreover, absence of the functional protein affects the expression and function of proteins within the DAPC, leading to molecular events responsible for myofibre damage, muscle weakening, disability and, eventually, premature death. Presently, there is no cure for DMD, but different treatments help manage some of the symptoms. Advances in genetic and exon-skipping therapies are the most promising intervention, the safety and efficiency of which are tested in animal models. In addition to in vivo functional tests, ex vivo molecular evaluation aids assess to what extent the therapy has contributed to the regenerative process. In this regard, the later advances in microscopy and image acquisition systems and the current expansion of antibodies for immunohistological evaluation together with the development of different spectrum fluorescent dyes have made histology a crucial tool. Nevertheless, the complexity of the molecular events that take place in dystrophic muscles, together with the rise of a multitude of markers for each of the phases of the process, makes the histological assessment a challenging task. Therefore, here, we summarise and explain the rationale behind different histological techniques used in the literature to assess degeneration and regeneration in the field of dystrophinopathies, focusing especially on those related to DMD.     

Hardware Implementation of Successive-Cancellation Decoders for Polar Codes

The recently-discovered polar codes are seen as a major breakthrough in coding theory; they provably achieve the theoretical capacity of discrete memoryless channels using the low-complexity successive cancellation decoding algorithm. Motivated by recent developments in polar coding theory, we propose a family of efficient hardware implementations for successive cancellation (SC) polar decoders. We show that such decoders can be implemented with O(N) processing elements and O(N) memory elements. Furthermore, we show that SC decoding can be implemented in the logarithmic domain, thereby eliminating costly multiplication and division operations, and reducing the complexity of each processing element greatly. We also present a detailed architecture for an SC decoder and provide logic synthesis results confirming the linear complexity growth of the decoder as the code length increases.     

Extraction of complex patterns from multiresolution remote sensing images: A hierarchical top-down methodology

The extraction of urban patterns from very high spatial resolution (VHSR) optical images presents several challenges related to the size, the accuracy and the complexity of the considered data. Based on the availability of several optical images of a same scene at various resolutions (medium, high, and very high spatial resolution), a hierarchical approach is proposed to progressively extract segments of interest from the lowest to the highest resolution data, and then finally determine urban patterns from VHSR images. This approach, inspired by the principle of photo-interpretation, has for purpose to use as much as possible the user's skills while minimising his/her interaction. In order to do so, at each resolution, an interactive segmentation of one sample region is required for each semantic class of the image. Then, the user's behaviour is automatically reproduced in the remainder of the image. This process is mainly based on tree-cuts in binary partition trees. Since it strongly relies on user-defined segmentation examples, it can involve only low level—spatial and radiometric—criteria, then enabling fast computation of comprehensive results. Experiments performed on urban images datasets provide satisfactory results which may be further used for classification purpose.     

Peer-mediation of the adoption of efficient software interaction methods: A model based on priming

Our peers are an important source from which we glean new information or are reminded of old information that influences our behavior (,  and ). One important domain in which this phenomenon functions is the adoption of efficient means of accomplishing our work (Peres, Tamborello, Fleetwood, Chung, & Paige-Smith, 2004). Using a novel peer mediation paradigm, we performed an empirical study of efficient method adoption in a software usage task and observed a causal effect of peer behavior modeling. Our computational cognitive model explains the peer modeling effect in terms of priming the memory of the efficient method. We conclude that behavior changes do result from peer interactions that prime memories for the targeted behaviors.