CO Photoreduction Under Visible Light by TiO and Carbon Dots Derived from Pyrolized Bio-Oil.

Herein, we report a study on pyrolysis bio-oil upgrading from leather shaving waste to dope in situ titania (TiO) with carbon dots (cds). The cds doped TiO exhibits remarkable activity as photocatalyst under solar light for the direct conversion of carbon dioxide (CO) and water vapor (HO) to methane (CH). Morover, the catalytic activity also increased under uv radiation.

Effect of the Synthetic Parameters over ZnO in the CO Photoreduction.

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is an attractive semiconductor material for photocatalytic applications, owing to its opto-electronic properties. Its performances are, however, strongly affected by the surface and opto-electronic properties (i.e.

Selective Hydrogenation of 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural to 1-Hydroxy-2,5-hexanedione by Biochar-Supported Ru Catalysts.

The development of sustainable and efficient catalysts -namely Ru supported on activated biochars- is carried out for the selective hydrogenation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) to 1-hydroxy-2,5-hexanedione (HHD). Activated biochars obtained from pyrolysis and steam-based physical activation of two different biomasses from animal (leather tannery waste; A ) and vegetal (hazelnut shells; A ) origins show completely different chemical, textural, and morphological properties. Compared to A , after impregnation with 0.

TiO₂-Chitosan Hybrid Materials for Drug Delivery Applications: Conjugation Reaction with a Model Drug and Evaluation of the Functional Properties.

The combination of TiO₂ and chitosan is known to allow the achievement of implantable devices which combines the mechanical properties of TiO₂, with the presence of chitosan, which ensures antibacterial properties combined with an in-situ drug-delivery of biomolecules physisorbed and/or covalently linked to chitosan. In this study, 5-aminofluorescein (5-AF), a derivative of fluorescein containing a primary amino group, has been used as model molecule to simulate a drug. This dye is characterized by low cost and low toxicity, and due to its high molar absorptivity it can easily be detected by means of absorption and emission spectroscopies.

Multifunctional and Environmentally Friendly TiO-SiO Mesoporous Materials for Sustainable Green Buildings.

This work deals with the formulation of environmentally friendly, cheap, and readily-available materials for green building applications, providing the function of air purificator by improving the safety and the comfort of an indoor environment. High surface area TiO-SiO samples, prepared by a simple, cost effective, and scalable synthetic approach, proved to be effective in maximizing the properties of each component, i.e.

Titanium Dioxide-Based Nanocomposites for Enhanced Gas-Phase Photodehydrogenation.

Light-driven processes can be regarded as a promising technology for chemical production within the bio-refinery concept, due to the very mild operative conditions and high selectivity of some reactions. In this work, we report copper oxide (CuO)-titanium dioxide (TiO) nanocomposites to be efficient and selective photocatalysts for ethanol photodehydrogenation under gas phase conditions, affording 12-fold activity improvement compared to bare TiO. In particular, the insertion method of the CuO co-catalyst in different TiO materials and its effects on the photocatalytic activity were studied.

Catalytic Production of Levulinic Acid (LA) from Actual Biomass.

Catalytic conversion of actual biomass to valuable chemicals is a crucial issue in green chemistry. This review discusses on the recent approach in the levulinic acid (LA) formation from three prominent generations of biomasses. Our paper highlights the impact of the nature of different types of biomass and their complex structure and impurities, different groups of catalyst, solvents, and reaction system, and condition and all related pros and cons for this process.

Systematic study of TiO/ZnO mixed metal oxides for CO photoreduction.

A two component three degree simplex lattice experimental design was employed to evaluate the impact of different mixing fractions of TiO and ZnO on an ordered mesoporous SBA-15 support for CO photoreduction. It was anticipated that the combined advantages of TiO and ZnO: low cost, non-toxicity and combined electronic properties would facilitate CO photoreduction. The fraction of ZnO had a statistically dominant impact on maximum CO adsorption ( = 22.

5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) Production from Real Biomasses.

The present paper reviews recent advances on the direct synthesis of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from different kinds of raw biomasses. In particular, in the paper HMF production from: (i) edible biomasses; (ii) non-edible lignocellulosic biomasses; (iii) food wastes (FW) have been reviewed. The different processes and catalytic systems have been reviewed and their merits, demerits and requirements for commercialisation outlined.

Polymer waveguide couplers based on metal nanoparticle-polymer nanocomposites.

In this work Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) are incorporated into poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) waveguides to develop optical couplers that are compatible with planar organic polymer photonics. A method for growing AuNPs (of 10 to 100 nm in size) inside the commercially available Novolak resist is proposed with the intention of tuning the plasmon resonance and the absorption/scattering efficiencies inside the patterned structures. The refractive index of the MNP-Novolak nanocomposite (MNPs: noble metal nanoparticles) is carefully analysed both experimentally and numerically in order to find the appropriate fabrication conditions (filling factor and growth time) to optimize the scattering cross section at a desired wavelength.

Arrays of templated TiO2 nanofibres as improved photoanodes for water splitting under visible light.

Arrays of TiO2 nanofibres (NFs) were successfully prepared by template sol-gel synthesis, using track-etched polycarbonate membranes as structure directing agent. The control of the sol-gel kinetic was crucial in order to homogeneously fill the pores with a continuous framework. For this reason acetylacetone was added to the sol-gel mixture as chelating agent.

Motor Unit Tracking Using High Density Surface Electromyography (HDsEMG) . Automated Correction of Electrode Displacement Errors.

Introduction: This article is part of the Focus Theme of Methods of Information in Medicine on "Biosignal Interpretation: Ad-vanced Methods for Neural Signals and Images".

Objectives: The study discusses a technique to automatically correct for effects of electrode grid displacement across serial surface EMG measurements with high-density electrode arrays (HDsEMG). The goal is to match motor unit signatures from subsequent measurements and by this, achieve automated motor unit tracking.

Structure-directing agents for the synthesis of TiO(2) -based drug-delivery systems.

A series of titanium oxides was prepared by using a surfactant-template method (STM) and used as a carrier for the sustained release of ibuprofen, which was chosen as a model drug. This STM provides an efficient route to TiO(2) matrices with both high surface area (when compared with those that were obtained by using traditional synthetic approaches) and well-defined mesoporous textures. Some parameters of the synthetic procedure were varied: pH value, surfactant, and thermal treatment.

Incorporating structural information from the multichannel EEG improves patient-specific seizure detection.

Objective: A novel patient-specific seizure detection algorithm is presented. As the spatial distribution of the ictal pattern is characteristic for a patient's seizures, this work incorporates such information into the data representation and provides a learning algorithm exploiting it.

Methods: The proposed training algorithm uses nuclear norm regularization to convey structural information of the channel-feature matrices extracted from the EEG.

A kernel-based framework to tensorial data analysis.

Tensor-based techniques for learning allow one to exploit the structure of carefully chosen representations of data. This is a desirable feature in particular when the number of training patterns is small which is often the case in areas such as biosignal processing and chemometrics. However, the class of tensor-based models is somewhat restricted and might suffer from limited discriminative power.

Improved microarray-based decision support with graph encoded interactome data.

In the past, microarray studies have been criticized due to noise and the limited overlap between gene signatures. Prior biological knowledge should therefore be incorporated as side information in models based on gene expression data to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and prognosis in cancer. As prior knowledge, we investigated interaction and pathway information from the human interactome on different aspects of biological systems.

Hybrid organic-inorganic silica gel carriers with controlled drug-delivery properties.

Pure and modified silica materials were synthesised by a sol-gel process and used as carrier for the controlled release of ibuprofen, selected as model drug. A one-step synthesis was optimised for the preparation of various silica-drug composites by using tetraethoxysilane and 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane as precursors at different molar ratios. The presence of aminopropyl groups on the silica surface influences the drug-delivery rate leading to a high degree the desorption process controlled.

Highly dispersed gold on zirconia: characterization and activity in low-temperature water gas shift tests.

Gold-loaded zirconia and sulfated zirconia catalysts were tested in the low-temperature water gas shift reaction. The samples were characterized by N2 adsorption analysis, temperature-programmed reduction, X-ray diffraction, pulse-flow CO chemisorption, FTIR spectroscopy, and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. A reference catalyst, Au/TiO2, provided by the World Gold Council was investigated for comparison.