In vitro human oral bioaccessibility assessment of hazardous chemicals, including N, N'-substituted-p-phenylenediamines, coming from recycled tire crumb rubber.

Tires, apart from being formed by rubber and filling materials, contain organic compounds added to make them resistant and durable. The widely use of recycled tire crumb rubber (RTCR), main product of the shredding process of end-of-life tires, can cause human exposure to these chemicals due to its use in synthetic football fields and kid's playgrounds. In 2023, the European Commission banned the use of recycled tire crumb rubber in synthetic fields, giving eight years to replace the used material.

Beyond age: exploring ultimate attainment in heritage speakers and late L2 learners.

According to the Critical Period Hypothesis, successful language learning is optimal during early childhood, whereas language learning outside of this time window is unsuccessful. In this respect, early language acquisition is viewed as convergent and reliable but late acquisition is not. The present study revisits the idea of a critical period by investigating the grammatical attainment of early bilinguals/heritage speakers (HSs), late second/foreign language (L2) learners, and comparable groups of monolinguals by testing Greek-English bilinguals in the two languages they speak by means of a grammaticality judgment task.

Redundancy can hinder adult L2 grammar learning: evidence from case markers of varying salience levels.

Grammatical redundancy is a widespread feature across languages. Although redundant cues can be seen to increase the complexity and processing burden of structures, it has been suggested that they can assist language acquisition. Here, we explored if this learning benefit can be observed from the very initial stages of second language (L2) acquisition and whether the effect of redundancy is modulated by the perceptual salience of the redundant linguistic cues.

Recycled tire rubber materials in the spotlight. Determination of hazardous and lethal substances.

One way of recycling end-of-life tires is by shredding them to obtain crumb rubber, a microplastic material (<0.5 mm), used as infill in artificial turf sports fields or as playground flooring. There is emerging concern about the health and environmental consequences that this type of surfaces can cause.