Electrochemical treatment of olive mill wastewater

Background Olive mill wastewater (OMW) constitutes a very strong agro‐industrial wastewater posing severe environmental threats in olive oil producing countries. The main objective of this study was to treat olive mill wastewater by electrochemical oxidation. The variables studied included the type and concentration of electrolyte solutions, voltage and time applied. Results: The electrolyte type and concentration significantly affected the degradation efficiency of the electrochemical oxidation. Optimal conditions for NaCl concentration were 3% (w/v) and 16 V. At these conditions chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal reached 70.8% after 8 h of electrochemical treatment, while color and turbidity were completely removed after short periods of treatment. However, bio‐assays indicated that the ecotoxicity of the treated wastewater remained unchanged, possibly due to the formation of chlorinated by‐products. Na₂SO₄ did not demonstrate sufficient efficiency. The simultaneous use of FeCl₃ and NaCl contributed to electro‐coagulation of OMW. After settlement, two separate phases were formed: the supernatant phase and the settled solids. Under optimal conditions (2% Na₂SO₄ + 1% FeCl₃; 24 V), the removal efficiency of COD reached 85.5% at the supernatant phase. Conclusion: NaCl was an effective electrolyte for OMW treatment. The electro‐coagulation process was also a successful process, but as in the case of NaCl the remaining acute toxicity of treated OMW was high. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry     

Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel EG5 inhibitors

Human Eg5 is a mitotic kinesin that is essential for bipolar spindle formation and maintenance during mitosis. Recently, the discovery of compounds that inhibit Eg5 and cause mitotic arrest has attracted great interest, due to their potential use as the next generation of antimitotics. Here, we present the synthesis and biological investigation of 3,4-dihydrophenylquinazoline-2(1H)-thiones as selective and potent Eg5 inhibitors.     

Synthesis and characterization of poly(methyl methacrylate) star polymers

Star-branched poly(methyl methacrylate)s (PMMA) were synthesized by linking ‘living’ arms (produced by anionic polymerzation) with ethylene glycol dimethacrylate. Stars having arm molecular weights of 10000 and 40000 and between 4.9 and 18.7 branches were produced. The polymers were characterized using light scattering, size exclusion chromatography, and viscometry. It was found that well-defined PMMA stars were obtained only at the higher (40000) arm molecular weight. The stars prepared using the lower molecular weight (c. 10000) arms contained very high molecular weight gel components.     

Hydrogen storage in carbon nanotubes: a multi-scale theoretical study

A Combination of quantum and classical calculations has been performed to investigate the hydrogen storage in single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). The ab-initio calculations at the Density Functional level of Theory (DFT) show the nature of hydrogen interaction in selected sites of a (5,5) tube walls. On top of this, Molecular Dynamics simulations model large scale nanotube systems and reproduce the storage capacity under variant temperature conditions. Our results indicate that the interaction of hydrogen with SWNTs is very weak and slightly increase of temperature, causes hydrogen diffusion from the tube walls.     

The AutoI approach for the orchestration of autonomic networks

Existing services require assurable end-to-end quality of service, security and reliability constraints. Therefore, the networks involved in the transport of the data must cooperate to satisfy those constraints. In a next generation Internet, each of those networks may be managed by different entities. Furthermore, their policies and service level agreements (SLAs) will differ, as well as the autonomic management systems controlling them. In this context, we in the Autonomic Internet (AutoI) consortium propose the Orchestration Plane (OP), which promotes the interaction among different Autonomic Management Systems (AMSs). The OP mediates the communication and negotiation among AMSs, ensuring that their SLAs and policies meet the requirements needed for the provisioning of the services. It also simplifies the federation of domains and the distribution of new services in virtualised network environments.