The costs of removing the unsanctioned import of marine plastic litter to small island states.

Small island states receive unprecedented amounts of the world's plastic waste. In March 2019, we removed as much plastic litter as possible from Aldabra Atoll, a remote UNESCO World Heritage Site, and estimated the money and effort required to remove the remaining debris. We removed 25 tonnes at a cost of $224,537, which equates to around $10,000 per day of clean-up operations or $8,900 per tonne of litter.

Rapid Sensing of Biological and Environmental Analytes Using Microwave-Accelerated Bioassays and a MATLAB Application.

We report a method for rapid detection and analysis of biological and environmental analytes by microwave-accelerated bioassays (MABs) and a novel MATLAB-based image processing of colorimetric signals. In this regard, colorimetric bioassays for histidine-rich protein 2 (HRP-2) and microcystin-leucine arginine (MC-LR) toxin were carried out using MABs and without microwave heating (i.e, gold standard bioassays).

Effect of Microwave Heating on the Crystallization of Glutathione Tripeptide on Silver Nanoparticle Films.

Effect of microwave heating on the crystallization of glutathione (GSH) tripeptide using the metal-assisted and microwave-accelerated evaporative crystallization (MA-MAEC) technique is reported. GSH crystals were grown from supersaturated solutions of GSH (300-500 mg/mL) on the iCrystal plates with silver nanoparticle films (SNFs) and without SNFs in three different microwave systems operating at 2.45 GHz: conventional (multimode, fixed power at 900W), industrial (monomode, variable power up to 1200 W), and the iCrystal system (monomode, variable power up to 100 W).

Ultra-Rapid Crystallization of L-alanine Using Monomode Microwaves, Indium Tin Oxide and Metal-Assisted and Microwave-Accelerated Evaporative Crystallization.

The use of indium tin oxide (ITO) and focused monomode microwave heating for the ultra-rapid crystallization of L-alanine (a model amino acid) is reported. Commercially available ITO dots (< 5 mm) attached to blank poly(methyl)methacrylate (PMMA, 5 cm in diameter with 21-well silicon isolators: referred to as the iCrystal plates) were found to withstand prolonged microwave heating during crystallization experiments. Crystallization of L-alanine was performed at room temperature (a control experiment), with the use of two microwave sources: a 2.