Electrochemical strategy for grown ZnO nanoparticles deposited onto HY zeolite with enhanced photodecolorization of methylene blue: Effect of the formation of Si O Zn bonds

Nanoparticles of electrogenerated zinc-supported HY zeolite (EGZnO/HY) catalyst were prepared by a simple electrochemical method. The interaction between zinc species and HY support during the electrolysis was found to affect the EGZnO/HY structure. In addition to the formation of EGZnO nanoparticles (<30 nm in size) that distributed on the surface of HY support, an isomorphous substitution of Al with Zn also occurred in the aluminosilicate framework to result in a Si O Zn bonds. The photoactivity of EGZnO/HY was tested on the decolorization of methylene blue (MB). An amount of 0.375 g L−1 of 1 wt% EGZnO/HY was found to be the optimum dosage for 10 mg L−1 MB, which resulted in 80% of maximum decolorization after 6 h of contact time at pH 3 under fluorescent light (420 nm). Increasing the EGZnO loading led to additional formation of Si O Zn bonds and lessened the number of EGZnO nanoparticles, which then reduced the photodecolorization percentage of MB.The photocatalytic reaction was follows the first-order Langmuir–Hinshelwood model, and gives partially mineralization. The photocatalyst was still stable after five cycling runs with no Zn leaching

Electrospun Thymosin Beta-4 Loaded PLGA/PLA Nanofiber/ Microfiber Hybrid Yarns for Tendon Tissue Engineering Application

Microfiber yarns (MY) have been widely employed to construct tendon tissue grafts. However, suboptimal ultrastructure and inappropriate environments for cell interactions limit their clinical application. Herein, we designed a modified electrospinning device to coat poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) PLGA nanofibers onto polylactic acid (PLA) MY to generate PLGA/PLA hybrid yarns (HY), which had a well-aligned nanofibrous structure, resembling the ultrastructure of native tendon tissues and showed enhanced failure load compared to PLA MY. PLGA/PLA HY significantly improved the growth, proliferation, and tendon-specific gene expressions of human adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells (HADMSC) compared to PLA MY. Moreover, thymosin beta-4 (Tβ4) loaded PLGA/PLA HY presented a sustained drug release manner for 28 days and showed an additive effect on promoting HADMSC migration, proliferation, and tenogenic differentiation. Collectively, the combination of Tβ4 with the nano-topography of PLGA/PLA HY might be an efficient strategy to promote tenogenesis of adult stem cells for tendon tissue engineering

Hard tick species of livestock and their bioecology in Golestan Province, North of Iran

Background: A survey on tick species composition was carried out in Golestan Province Iran during year 2010- 2011.The aim was to determine tick species parasitizing domestic ruminants and their seasonal population dynamics. Methods: A total of 124 sheep, 92 goats, 84 cattle, 74 camels and 12 horses in several villages were inspected for tick infestation. The collected ticks preserved in 70% alcohol and then were identified. Results: The overall 1059 ticks (453 female, 606 male) were collected. The ticks occur on sheep, goats, cattle, camels and horses as 72.1%, 77.3%, 75.8%, 69.3%, and 50% respectively. The frequency of ticks in spring was more than other seasons and the least was observed in winter. In the spring and summer, infestation rate in domestic ruminants were calculated as 100%. Six genus and fourteen hard and soft tick species were identified including Rhipicephalus sanguineus, R. bursa, Ixodes ricinus, Haemaphysalis punctata, H. sulcata, H. erinacei, H. inermis, Hyalomma marginatum, Hy. asiaticum, Hy. dromedarii, Hy. excavatum, Hy. anatolicum, Hy. detritum, Boophilus annulatus and Argas persicus. Rhipicephalus sanguineus was the most abundant species in the study area. The largest number of ticks was collected from animal ears and tails. Haemaphysalis, Hyalomma, Rhipicephalus and Boophilus occurred in mountainous, forest and plateau areas of Golestan Province but Ixodes occurred only in mountainous and forest areas, whereas Rhipicephalus and Hyalomma were present in coastal areas of Golestan Province. Conclusion: The result of this study is a survey on tick species from domestic animals in Iran and implication of possible prevention measures for diseases transmitted by ticks

Hy-wire and fast electric field change measurements near an isolated thunderstorm, appendix C

Electric field measurements near an isolated thunderstorm at 6.4 km distance are presented from both a tethered balloon experiment called Hy-wire and also from ground based fast and slow electric field change systems. Simultaneous measurements were made of the electric fields during several lightning flashes at the beginning of the storm which the data clearly indicate were cloud-to-ground flashes. In addition to providing a comparison between the Hy-wire technique for measuring electric fields and more traditional methods, these data are interesting because the lightning flashes occurred prior to changes in the dc electric field, although Hy-wire measured changes in the dc field of up to 750 V/m in the direction opposite to the fair weather field a short time later. Also, the dc electric field was observed to decay back to its preflash value after each flash. The data suggest that Hy-wire was at the field reversal distance from this storm and suggest the charge realignment was taking place in the cloud with a time constant on the order of 20 seconds

Astrophysical code migration into Exascale Era

The ExaNeSt and EuroExa H2020 EU-funded projects aim to design and develop an exascale ready computing platform prototype based on low-energy-consumption ARM64 cores and FPGA accelerators. We participate in the application-driven design of the hardware solutions and prototype validation. To carry on this work we are using, among others, Hy-Nbody, a state-of-the-art direct N-body code. Core algorithms of Hy-Nbody have been improved in such a way to increasingly fit them to the exascale target platform. Waiting for the ExaNest prototype release, we are performing tests and code tuning operations on an ARM64 SoC facility: a SLURM managed HPC cluster based on 64-bit ARMv8 Cortex-A72/Cortex-A53 core design and powered by a Mali-T864 embedded GPU. In parallel, we are porting a kernel of Hy-Nbody on FPGA aiming to test and compare the performance-per-watt of our algorithms on different platforms. In this paper we describe how we re-engineered the application and we show first results on ARM SoC.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, 1 table; proceedings of ADASS XXVIII, accepted by ASP Conference Serie

A computational study on the adsorption of the major ring-transformation products of methyloxirane in HY and HZSM-5 zeolites

The adsorption of dioxolane and dioxane derivatives in HY and HZSM-5 zeolites was studied computationally. The molecules are the main ring-transformation products of methyloxirane over these zeolites. Experimental work showed that the cyclic dimerisation reaction starts with the adsorption of the monomers over Brønsted acid sites through their ring oxygens. Computations revealed that these sites were close enough even in the high-silica HZSM-5 zeolite and the dimers comfortably fit even in the β-cage of HY as well as in the channel of the HZSM-5 zeolites. The stereochemical outcome of the dimerisation was also studied and the optimum conformations of the dimers were calculated as well