Assessment of electrophoresis and electroosmosis in construction materials: effect of enhancing electrolytes and heavy metals contamination

Electrokinetic effects are those that take place by application of an electric field to porous materials, with the zeta potential as the key parameter. Specifically, in the case of contaminated construction materials, the generation of an electroosmotic flux, with the corresponding dragging due to water transport, is a crucial mechanism to succeed in the treatment of decontamination. Therefore, it is of great interest trying to optimize the treatment by the addition of specific electrolytes enhancing the electrokinetic phenomena. Most of the data of zeta potential found in literature for construction materials are based in micro-electrophoresis measurements, which are quite far of the real conditions of application of the remediation treatments. In this paper, electrophoretic and electroosmotic experiments, with monolithic and powdered material respectively, have been carried out for mortar, brick and granite clean and contaminated with Cs, Sr, Co, Cd, Cu and Pb. The electrolytes tested have been distilled water (DW), Na2–EDTA, oxalic acid, acetic acid and citric acid. The zeta potential values have been determined through the two different techniques and the results compared and critically analysed

Knowledge sharing and value co-creation: designing a service system for fostering inter-generational cooperation

This paper highlight the necessity of knowledge transfer and sharing between young and old people, to avoid losing their skills and tacit knowledge and to co-create value. The paper indicates that a common place could facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience between these two generations, thus fostering value co-creation. Enterprises, in this era of unprecedented technolog- ical and scientific advance, need of knowledge to create a competitive ad- vantage and they mustn’t lose it. At this aim, paper finally introduces a case study, the “5020 project”, an intergenerational agreement for work and training, made through a platform of recruitment and work team creation. Based on this platform, the project fosters knowledge transfer, creating teams composed by young and old people, which working together in ICT field, share the knowledge acquired in the past (respectively at school and on the job), co-create value and offer it as a better service to enterprises

Knowledge sharing and value co-creation: Designing a service system for fostering inter-generational cooperation

This paper highlights the necessity of knowledge transfer and sharing between young and old people, to avoid skills and expertises loss by the organizations and for co-creating value. The paper depicts how the use of a digital platform providing a common place in which people act and interact could facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience between these two generations, thus fostering value co-creation. A case study describing the \u201c5020 project\u201d is presented in which this kind of a digital platform is developed. In this scenario, mixed work groups, composed by young and old people, are created, in which people, working together, share the knowledge acquired in the past (respectively at school and on the job by experiences), co-creating value and providing good solutions to requests of enterprise

Transcript, protein and metabolite temporal dynamics in the CAM plant Agave

Already a proven mechanism for drought resilience, crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) is a specialized type of photosynthesis that maximizes water-use efficiency by means of an inverse (compared to C3 and C4 photosynthesis) day/night pattern of stomatal closure/opening to shift CO2 uptake to the night, when evapotranspiration rates are low. A systems-level understanding of temporal molecular and metabolic controls is needed to define the cellular behaviour underpinning CAM. Here, we report high-resolution temporal behaviours of transcript, protein and metabolite abundances across a CAM diel cycle and, where applicable, compare the observations to the well-established C3 model plant Arabidopsis. A mechanistic finding that emerged is that CAM operates with a diel redox poise that is shifted relative to that in Arabidopsis. Moreover, we identify widespread rescheduled expression of genes associated with signal transduction mechanisms that regulate stomatal opening/closing. Controlled production and degradation of transcripts and proteins represents a timing mechanism by which to regulate cellular function, yet knowledge of how this molecular timekeeping regulates CAM is unknown. Here, we provide new insights into complex post-transcriptional and -translational hierarchies that govern CAM in Agave. These data sets provide a resource to inform efforts to engineer more efficient CAM traits into economically valuable C3 crops