Gelatin as a promising printable feedstock for microbial fuel cells (MFC)

The microbial fuel cell (MFC) is an energy transducer that can directly produce electricity from bacterial oxidation of organic matter. MFCs consist of two reaction chambers (anode and cathode) separated by a semipermeable membrane. This study describes the work carried out towards the optimization of critical MFC components, with 3D fabricated materials. The response of the optimized fuel cells, which were fed with soft materials such as gelatin, alginate and Nafion?, is also reported. The optimised components were the membrane and the cathode electrode. A conventional Nafion membrane was substituted with a custom made terracotta sheet and the electrode used was a single sheet of carbon veil coated with an activated carbon paste. The results showed that among the soft materials tested within the anodic chamber, gelatin performed the best; it also revealed that even after a 10-day starvation period gelatin demonstrated better longevity. These results show that MFCs have the potential to be 3D-printed monolithically using the EVOBOT platform.     

Modeling metal binding to soils: the role of natural organic matter

The use of mechanistically based models to simulate the solution concentrations of heavy metals in soils is complicated by the presence of different sorbents that may bind metals. In this study, the binding of Zn, Pb, Cu, and Cd by 14 different Swedish soil samples was investigated. For 10 of the soils, it was found that the Stockholm Humic Model (SHM) was able to describe the acid-base characteristics, when using the concentrations of "active" humic substances and Al as fitting parameters. Two additional soils could be modeled when ion exchange to clay was also considered, using a component additivity approach. For dissolved Zn, Cd, Ca, and Mg reasonable model fits were produced when the metal-humic complexation parameters were identical for the 12 soils modeled. However, poor fits were obtained for Pb and Cu in Aquept B horizons. In two of the soil suspensions, the Lund A and Romfartuna Bhs, the calculated speciation agreed well with results obtained by using cation-exchange membranes. The results suggest that organic matter is an important sorbent for metals in many surface horizons of soils in temperate and boreal climates, and the necessity of properly accounting for the competition from Al in simulations of dissolved metal concentrations is stressed.     

Polyaniline dispersions. 3. Influence of the polymerization conditions

Several series of polyaniline dispersions were prepared by oxidative polymerization of aniline in aqueous medium. Ammonium persulfate was used as an oxidizing agent and poly(vinyl alcohol) as a steric stabilizer of dispersions. The amount of dispersion particles their size and uniformity and the fraction of the steric stabilizer attached to the particles were determined in dependence on the concentration of the individual components and on temperature. The properties of resulting dispersions are controlled mainly by the concentration of the oxidizing agent and by the polyaniline/stabilizer ratio.     

Effect of the talc filler content on the mechanical properties of polypropylene composites

This research examines the effect of a microsize/nanosize talc filler on the physicochemical and mechanical properties of filled polypropylene (108MF10 and 33MBTU from Saudi Basic Industries Corp. and HE125MO grade from Borealis) composite matrices. A range of mechanical properties were measured [tensile properties, bending properties, fracture toughness, notched impact strength (at the ambient temperature and ?20°C), strain at break, and impact strength] along with microhardness testing and thermal stability testing from 40 to 600°C as measured by differential thermal analysis and thermogravimetric analysis. Increasing filler content lead to an increase in the mechanical strength of the composite material with a simultaneous decrease in the fracture toughness. The observed increase in tensile strength ranged from 15 to 25% (the maximum tensile strength at break was found to be 22 MPa). The increase in mechanical strength simultaneously led to a higher brittleness, which was reflected in a decrease in the mean impact strength from the initial 18 kJ/m² (for the virgin polypropylene sample) to 14 kJ/m², that is, a 23% decrease. A similar dependency was also obtained for the samples conditioned at ?20°C (a decrease of 12.5%). With increasing degree of filling of the talc–polypropylene composite matrix, the thermooxidative stability increased; the highest magnitude was obtained for the 20 wt % sample (decomposition temperature = 482°C, cf. 392°C for the virgin polymer). © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008     

Copolymers of aniline and o‐methoxyaniline. II. Thermoanalytical studies

A study on the thermal stability, thermodynamical parameters, especially relaxation transition temperature (T_g), and their change upon irreversible reactions (crosslinking, postpolymerization, decomposition, etc.) taking place on heating of the undoped homo‐ and copolymers of aniline and o‐methoxyaniline was performed by using differential scanning calorimetry. It was found that polyaniline and its oligomers might be responsible for the postpolymerization process observed on heating thermograms of the polymers in their emeraldine base form. It can be stated that the proceeding of this process appears to be a reason for the higher thermal stability of polyaniline when compared with poly(o‐methoxyaniline). © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 104: 2729–2734, 2007     

Tocopherol and tocotrienol homologs in parenteral lipid emulsions

Parenteral lipid emulsions, which are made of oils from plant and fish sources, contain different types of tocopherols and tocotrienols (vitamin E homologs). The amount and types of vitamin E homologs in various lipid emulsions vary considerably and are not completely known. The objective of this analysis was to develop a quantitative method to determine levels of all vitamin E homologs in various lipid emulsions. An HPLC system was used to measure vitamin E homologs using a Pinnacle DB Silica normal phase column and an isocratic, n‐hexane:1,4 dioxane (98:2) mobile phase. An optimized protocol was used to report vitamin E homolog concentrations in soybean oil‐based (Intralipid®, Ivelip®, Lipofundin^® N, Liposyn^® III, and Liposyn^® II), medium‐ and long‐chain fatty acid‐based (Lipofundin^® , MCT and Structolipid®), olive oil‐based (ClinOleic® ), and fish oil‐based (Omegaven®) and mixture of these oils‐based (SMOFlipid®, Lipidem®) commercial parenteral lipid emulsions. Total content of all vitamin E homologs varied greatly between different emulsions, ranging from 57.9 to 383.9 µg/mL. Tocopherols (α, β, γ, δ) were the predominant vitamin E homologs for all emulsions, with tocotrienol content < 0.3%. In all of the soybean emulsions, except for Lipofundin® N, the predominant vitamin E homolog was γ‐tocopherol, which ranged from 57–156 µg/mL. ClinOleic® predominantly contained α‐tocopherol (32 µg/mL), whereas α‐tocopherol content in Omegaven® was higher than most of the other lipid emulsions (230 µg/mL). Practical applications: The information on the types and quantity of vitamin E homologs in various lipid emulsions will be extremely useful to physicians and healthcare personnel in selecting appropriate lipid emulsions that are exclusively used in patients with inadequate gastrointestinal function, including hospitalized and critically ill patients. Some emulsions may require vitamin E supplementation in order to meet minimal human requirements. Vitamin E homologs (tocopherols and tocotrienols) contain a chromanol ring and a hydrophobic side chain.     

A Comparison of Word- and Sense-Based Text Categorization Using Several Classification Algorithms

Most of the text categorization algorithms in the literature represent documents as collections of words. An alternative which has not been sufficiently explored is the use of word meanings, also known as senses. In this paper, using several algorithms, we compare the categorization accuracy of classifiers based on words to that of classifiers based on senses. The document collection on which this comparison takes place is a subset of the annotated Brown Corpus semantic concordance. A series of experiments indicates that the use of senses does not result in any significant categorization improvement.