313 research outputs found
Assessing risk of breast cancer in an ethnically South-East Asia population (results of a multiple ethnic groups study)
10.1186/1471-2407-12-529BMC Cancer12-BCMA
Biochar: pyrogenic carbon for agricultural use: a critical review.
O biocarvão (biomassa carbonizada para uso agrícola) tem sido usado como condicionador do solo em todo o mundo, e essa tecnologia é de especial interesse para o Brasil, uma vez que tanto a ?inspiração?, que veio das Terras Pretas de Índios da Amazônia, como o fato de o Brasil ser o maior produtor mundial de carvão vegetal, com a geração de importante quantidade de resíduos na forma de finos de carvão e diversas biomassas residuais, principalmente da agroindústria, como bagaço de cana, resíduos das indústrias de madeira, papel e celulose, biocombustíveis, lodo de esgoto etc. Na última década, diversos estudos com biocarvão têm sido realizados e atualmente uma vasta literatura e excelentes revisões estão disponíveis. Objetivou-se aqui não fazer uma revisão bibliográfica exaustiva, mas sim uma revisão crítica para apontar alguns destaques na pesquisa sobre biochar. Para isso, foram selecionados alguns temaschave considerados críticos e relevantes e fez-se um ?condensado? da literatura pertinente, mais para orientar as pesquisas e tendências do que um mero olhar para o passad
Electrical Control of Optical Emitter Relaxation Pathways enabled by Graphene
Controlling the energy flow processes and the associated energy relaxation
rates of a light emitter is of high fundamental interest, and has many
applications in the fields of quantum optics, photovoltaics, photodetection,
biosensing and light emission. While advanced dielectric and metallic systems
have been developed to tailor the interaction between an emitter and its
environment, active control of the energy flow has remained challenging. Here,
we demonstrate in-situ electrical control of the relaxation pathways of excited
erbium ions, which emit light at the technologically relevant telecommunication
wavelength of 1.5 m. By placing the erbium at a few nanometres distance
from graphene, we modify the relaxation rate by more than a factor of three,
and control whether the emitter decays into either electron-hole pairs, emitted
photons or graphene near-infrared plasmons, confined to 15 nm to the sheet.
These capabilities to dictate optical energy transfer processes through
electrical control of the local density of optical states constitute a new
paradigm for active (quantum) photonics.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Dramatic reduction of surface recombination by in-situ surface passivation of silicon nanowires
Nanowires have unique optical properties [1-4] and are considered as
important building blocks for energy harvesting applications such as solar
cells. [2, 5-8] However, due to their large surface-to-volume ratios, the
recombination of charge carriers through surface states reduces the carrier
diffusion lengths in nanowires a few orders of magnitude,[9] often resulting in
the low efficiency (a few percent or less) of nanowire-based solar cells. [7,
8, 10, 11] Reducing the recombination by surface passivation is crucial for the
realization of high performance nanosized optoelectronic devices, but remains
largely unexplored. [7, 12-14] Here we show that a thin layer of amorphous
silicon (a-Si) coated on a single-crystalline silicon nanowire (sc-SiNW),
forming a core-shell structure in-situ in the vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) process,
reduces the surface recombination nearly two orders of magnitude. Under
illumination of modulated light, we measure a greater than 90-fold improvement
in the photosensitivity of individual core-shell nanowires, compared to regular
nanowires without shell. Simulations of the optical absorption of the nanowires
indicate that the strong absorption of the a-Si shell contributes to this
effect, but we conclude that the effect is mainly due to the enhanced carrier
lifetime by surface passivation
Graphene on hexagonal boron nitride as a tunable hyperbolic metamaterial
Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is a natural hyperbolic material1, in which the dielectric constants are the same in the basal plane (ε[superscript t] ≡ ε[superscript x] = ε[superscript y]) but have opposite signs (ε[superscript t] ε[superscript z ]< 0) in the normal plane (ε[superscript z]). Owing to this property, finite-thickness slabs of h-BN act as multimode waveguides for the propagation of hyperbolic phonon polaritons—collective modes that originate from the coupling between photons and electric dipoles in phonons. However, control of these hyperbolic phonon polaritons modes has remained challenging, mostly because their electrodynamic properties are dictated by the crystal lattice of h-BN. Here we show, by direct nano-infrared imaging, that these hyperbolic polaritons can be effectively modulated in a van der Waals heterostructure composed of monolayer graphene on h-BN. Tunability originates from the hybridization of surface plasmon polaritons in graphene with hyperbolic phonon polaritons in h-BN so that the eigenmodes of the graphene/h-BN heterostructure are hyperbolic plasmon–phonon polaritons. The hyperbolic plasmon–phonon polaritons in graphene/h-BN suffer little from ohmic losses, making their propagation length 1.5–2.0 times greater than that of hyperbolic phonon polaritons in h-BN. The hyperbolic plasmon–phonon polaritons possess the combined virtues of surface plasmon polaritons in graphene and hyperbolic phonon polaritons in h-BN. Therefore, graphene/h-BN can be classified as an electromagnetic metamaterial as the resulting properties of these devices are not present in its constituent elements alone
Gate-tuning of graphene plasmons revealed by infrared nano-imaging
Surface plasmons are collective oscillations of electrons in metals or
semiconductors enabling confinement and control of electromagnetic energy at
subwavelength scales. Rapid progress in plasmonics has largely relied on
advances in device nano-fabrication, whereas less attention has been paid to
the tunable properties of plasmonic media. One such medium-graphene-is amenable
to convenient tuning of its electronic and optical properties with gate
voltage. Through infrared nano-imaging we explicitly show that common
graphene/SiO2/Si back-gated structures support propagating surface plasmons.
The wavelength of graphene plasmons is of the order of 200 nm at
technologically relevant infrared frequencies, and they can propagate several
times this distance. We have succeeded in altering both the amplitude and
wavelength of these plasmons by gate voltage. We investigated losses in
graphene using plasmon interferometry: by exploring real space profiles of
plasmon standing waves formed between the tip of our nano-probe and edges of
the samples. Plasmon dissipation quantified through this analysis is linked to
the exotic electrodynamics of graphene. Standard plasmonic figures of merits of
our tunable graphene devices surpass that of common metal-based structures.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure
Defining functional diversity for lignocellulose degradation in a microbial community using multi-omics studies
Abstract\ud
\ud
Background\ud
Lignocellulose is one of the most abundant forms of fixed carbon in the biosphere. Current industrial approaches to the degradation of lignocellulose employ enzyme mixtures, usually from a single fungal species, which are only effective in hydrolyzing polysaccharides following biomass pre-treatments. While the enzymatic mechanisms of lignocellulose degradation have been characterized in detail in individual microbial species, the microbial communities that efficiently breakdown plant materials in nature are species rich and secrete a myriad of enzymes to perform “community-level” metabolism of lignocellulose. Single-species approaches are, therefore, likely to miss important aspects of lignocellulose degradation that will be central to optimizing commercial processes.\ud
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\ud
Results\ud
Here, we investigated the microbial degradation of wheat straw in liquid cultures that had been inoculated with wheat straw compost. Samples taken at selected time points were subjected to multi-omics analysis with the aim of identifying new microbial mechanisms for lignocellulose degradation that could be applied in industrial pre-treatment of feedstocks. Phylogenetic composition of the community, based on sequenced bacterial and eukaryotic ribosomal genes, showed a gradual decrease in complexity and diversity over time due to microbial enrichment. Taxonomic affiliation of bacterial species showed dominance of Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria and high relative abundance of genera Asticcacaulis, Leadbetterella and Truepera. The eukaryotic members of the community were enriched in peritrich ciliates from genus Telotrochidium that thrived in the liquid cultures compared to fungal species that were present in low abundance. A targeted metasecretome approach combined with metatranscriptomics analysis, identified 1127 proteins and showed the presence of numerous carbohydrate-active enzymes extracted from the biomass-bound fractions and from the culture supernatant. This revealed a wide array of hydrolytic cellulases, hemicellulases and carbohydrate-binding modules involved in lignocellulose degradation. The expression of these activities correlated to the changes in the biomass composition observed by FTIR and ssNMR measurements.\ud
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Conclusions\ud
A combination of mass spectrometry-based proteomics coupled with metatranscriptomics has enabled the identification of a large number of lignocellulose degrading enzymes that can now be further explored for the development of improved enzyme cocktails for the treatment of plant-based feedstocks. In addition to the expected carbohydrate-active enzymes, our studies reveal a large number of unknown proteins, some of which may play a crucial role in community-based lignocellulose degradation.This work was funded by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research\ud
Council (BBSRC) Grants BB/1018492/1, BB/K020358/1 and BB/P027717/1, the\ud
BBSRC Network in Biotechnology and Bioenergy BIOCATNET and São Paulo\ud
Research Foundation (FAPESP) Grant 10/52362-5. ERdA thanks EMBRAPA\ud
Instrumentation São Carlos and Dr. Luiz Alberto Colnago for providing the\ud
NMR facility and CNPq Grant 312852/2014-2. The authors would like to thank\ud
Deborah Rathbone and Susan Heywood from the Biorenewables Develop‑\ud
ment Centre for technical assistance in rRNA amplicon sequencing
Protective versus pathogenic anti-CD4 immunity: insights from the study of natural resistance to HIV infection
HIV-1 exposure causes several dramatic unbalances in the immune system homeostasis. Here, we will focus on the paradox whereby CD4 specific autoimmune responses, which are expected to contribute to the catastrophic loss of most part of the T helper lymphocyte subset in infected patients, may display the characteristics of an unconventional protective immunity in individuals naturally resistant to HIV-1 infection. Reference to differences in fine epitope mapping of these two oppositely polarized outcomes will be presented, with particular reference to partially or totally CD4-gp120 complex-specific antibodies. The fine tuning of the anti-self immune response to the HIV-1 receptor may determine whether viral exposure will result in infection or, alternatively, protective immunity
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