Isotherms,kinetics, and thermodynamic studies for adsorption of pigments and oxidation products in oil bleaching from catfish waste

Abstract

The aim of this work was to study the bleaching of oil extracted from the heads of the catfish by thermomechanical process through equilibrium, kinetics, and thermodynamics adsorption studies. The condition for the bleaching step was with 1% (w/w) adsorbent composed of 95% activated earth and 5% activated carbon (w/w). The pseudo-first order and pseudo-second order models were the most appropriate to represent the adsorption kinetics. The temperature of 80?°C increased the adsorption capacity of the two adsorbates, and the activation energies values were of 47.47 and 44.82?kJ mol^?1, respectively, for the adsorption of carotenoids and peroxides. The Langmuir model was the most appropriate to describe the bleaching equilibrium curves. The thermodynamic parameters revealed that the processes were endothermic, favorable, and spontaneous and the interaction between adsorbent and adsorbate was physical.     

Chitosan and cyanoguanidine-crosslinked chitosan coated glass beads and its application in fixed bed adsorption

Abstract

The aim of this work was to coat glass beads with chitosan and cyanoguanidine-crosslinked chitosan and, afterward, to verify the potential of the coated beads as adsorbent for the FD&C Red 40 dye in fixed bed column. The coating was realized in eight experimental conditions, varying the technique (dip coating or casting) and the coating solution composition (different proportions of chitosan, cyanoguanidine, glycerol, sorbitol, sodium alginate, NaOH and CaCl₂). The beads coated in the eight experimental conditions were then applied to adsorb FD&C Red 40 in a fixed bed column, from aqueous solutions at pH 3.0 and 6.0. The breakthrough curves were fitted according to Thomas and Yoon-Nelson dynamic models. The coating was dependent of the solution composition. The casting technique presented coating percentage values of 92%, while the dip coating technique presented only 43%. The breakthrough curves revealed that the use of glass beads coated with cyanoguanidine-crosslinked chitosan had good performance, attaining adsorption capacity values higher than 80?mg g^?1. Thomas and Yoon-Nelson models were able to predict the breakthrough curves in all conditions.     

Thymosin β4 is differentially expressed in the cerebrospinal fluid of Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease patients: a MALDI‐TOF MS protein profiling study

MALDI‐TOF protein profiling analysis permits the detection of peptides and small proteins in complex protein mixtures with great accuracy. We applied this analysis to cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from 15 patients affected by Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease (CJD). We compared the levels of the normalized ion signals of 11 sporadic and 4 genetic CJD forms with those from ten healthy control subjects and eight non‐CJD relapsing‐remitting multiple sclerosis patients. In so doing, we detected 61 differentially expressed ion signals in CJD samples compared to controls. Among the 61 signals, 3 signals had significantly increased levels with high statistical significance (p <0.0001) and were located at 3238.3 m/z, 4963.7 m/z, and 8565.3 m/z. We characterized the 5.0 and 8.6 kDa proteins as thymosin β4 N‐acetylated and free ubiquitin, respectively, while the 3.2‐kDa peptide remained uncharacterized. Although elevated ubiquitin levels have previously been described in CJD, we have demonstrated for the first time the involvement of thymosin β4 in a neurodegenerative disease. To support the validity of thymosin β4 levels obtained by MALDI‐TOF analysis, an independent enzyme immunoassay analysis was performed. Moreover, a validation cohort consisting of CSF from three CJD patients, five healthy subjects, and six non‐CJD relapsing‐remitting multiple sclerosis patients was analyzed in a similar way, yielding superimposable results. We propose that thymosin β4 is a potential new candidate marker for the ante mortem diagnosis of CJD disease.     

Polymorphic bytecode instrumentation

Bytecode instrumentation is a widely used technique to implement aspect weaving and dynamic analyses in virtual machines such as the Java virtual machine. Aspect weavers and other instrumentations are usually developed independently and combining them often requires significant engineering effort, if at all possible. In this article, we present polymorphic bytecode instrumentation(PBI), a simple but effective technique that allows dynamic dispatch amongst several, possibly independent instrumentations. PBI enables complete bytecode coverage, that is, any method with a bytecode representation can be instrumented. We illustrate further benefits of PBI with three case studies. First, we describe how PBI can be used to implement a comprehensive profiler of inter‐procedural and intra‐procedural control flow. Second, we provide an implementation of execution levels for AspectJ, which avoids infinite regression and unwanted interference between aspects. Third, we present a framework for adaptive dynamic analysis, where the analysis to be performed can be changed at runtime by the user. We assess the overhead introduced by PBI and provide thorough performance evaluations of PBI in all three case studies. We show that pure Java profilers like JP2 can, thanks to PBI, produce accurate execution profiles by covering all code, including the core Java libraries. We then demonstrate that PBI‐based execution levels are much faster than control flow pointcuts to avoid interference between aspects and that their efficient integration in a practical aspect language is possible. Finally, we report that PBI enables adaptive dynamic analysis tools that are more reactive to user inputs than existing tools that rely on dynamic aspect‐oriented programming with runtime weaving. These experiments position PBI as a widely applicable and practical approach for combining bytecode instrumentations. © 2015 The Authors. Software: Practice and Experience Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

A new inhomogeneous partially reflecting surface for Fabry‐Perot antenna to reduce side lobe level

In this article, an extension of the spatial filter method to study Fabry‐Perot antennas with homogeneous or inhomogeneous partially reflecting surface (PRS) of finite size is proposed. This tool was subsequently validated through the study of different Fabry‐Perot antennas, with homogeneous PRS and inhomogeneous GRadient‐INdex (GRIN) PRS that present very high side lobe level (SLL). Since they are due to structure truncation, a new inhomogeneous PRS to reduce the SLL is designed with the new analytical tool. The new inhomogeneous PRS for Fabry‐Perot antenna is characterized by simulations and measurements. Compared to the homogeneous PRS antenna, the proposed PRS allows a SLL reduction of 5 dB without decreasing the 14 dBi directivity.     

Learning with elaborative interrogations and the impact of learners' emotional states

Self‐generated learning (SGL) activities are characterized as an active learning strategy that functions as a support for deeper comprehension. However, the question arises which factors could be essential to fully exploit the effectiveness of SGL activities. One possible factor may be the emotional state of learners during learning. Because different emotional states are associated with different styles of information processing, in turn, they may support learning with SGL activities. Consequently, this study addresses learning with a type of SGL activities, answering elaborative interrogations, and the impact of learners' emotional states. German students (N = 123) were assigned to one of four conditions, resulting from a 2 × 2 design with instructional material (elaborative interrogations vs. no elaborative interrogations) and emotional state (positive vs. negative) as independent variables. Results showed that learners learning with elaborative interrogations experienced the instructional material as more difficult than without elaborative interrogations. Learning with them led to a better transfer learning outcome of concepts that had to be generated by interrogations (not for concepts that were already readable in the text) and had no effect for retention. Unexpectedly, neither an influence of the learners' emotional state nor an interaction of both independent variables could be shown.