Chestnut Wood Mud as a Source of Ellagic Acid for Dermo-Cosmetic Applications

Ellagic acid (EA) has long been recognized as a very active antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial agent. However, its low bioavailability has often hampered its applications in health-related fields. Here, we report a phospholipid vesicle-based controlled release system for EA, involving the exploitation of chestnut wood mud (CWM), an industrial by-product from chestnut tannin production, as a largely available and low-cost source of this compound. Two kinds of CWM with different particle size distributions, indicated as CWM-A and CWM-B (<100 and 32 µm, respectively), containing 5 ± 1% w/w EA, were incorporated into transfersomes. The latter were small in size (~100 nm), homogeneously dispersed, and negatively charged. 2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and ferric reducing/antioxidant power (FRAP) assays indicated up to three-fold improvement in the antioxidant properties of CWM upon incorporation into transfersomes. The kinetics of EA released under simulated physiological conditions were evaluated by UV-Vis spectroscopy and HPLC analysis. The best results were obtained with CWM-B (100% of EA gradually released after 37 days at pH 7.4). A stepwise increase in the antioxidant properties of the released material was also observed. Cell-based experiments confirmed the efficacy of CWM-B transfersomes as antioxidant agents in contrasting photodamage

TOWARDS A PAN-EU BUILDING FOOTPRINT MAP BASED ON THE HIERARCHICAL CONFLATION OF OPEN DATASETS: THE DIGITAL BUILDING STOCK MODEL - DBSM

This paper presents a hierarchical conflation process applied to open datasets for the creation of a seamless pan-European map of building footprints in vector format, named Digital Building Stock Model – DBSM. The objective is the sequential addition of input components (which currently include OpenStreetMap, Microsoft GlobalML Building Footprints, European Settlement Map), taking into account their limitations, and aiming at the highest level of completeness possible, for planning and evaluating energy transition scenarios at the EU level. The results indicate how DBSM compares robustly against cadastral data from Estonia, used as reference area. The comparison of DBSM with GHS-BUILT-S, a 10 metres resolution grid with worldwide coverage that encodes the built-up surface in each pixel as derived from Sentinel-2 imagery for the year 2018, reveals a relative overestimation of the latter, factored by 0.68 at the EU scale for a sound match

The Picture Pile Tool for Rapid Image Assessment: A Demonstration using Hurricane Matthew

In 2016, Hurricane Matthew devastated many parts of the Caribbean, in particular the country of Haiti. More than 500 people died and the damage was estimated at 1.9billionUSD. At the time, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) activated their network of volunteers to create base maps of areas affected by the hurricane, in particular coastal communities in the path of the storm. To help improve HOT’s information workflow for disaster response, one strand of the Crowd4Sat project, which was funded by the European Space Agency, focussed on examining where the Picture Pile Tool, an application for rapid image interpretation and classification, could potentially contribute. Satellite images obtained from the time that Hurricane Matthew occurred were used to simulate a situation post-event, where the aim was to demonstrate how Picture Pile could be used to create a map of building damage. The aim of this paper is to present the Picture Pile tool and show the results from this simulation, which produced a crowdsourced map of damaged buildings for a selected area of Haiti in 1 week (but with increased confidence in the results over a 3 week period). A quality assessment of the results showed that the volunteers agreed with experts and the majority of individual classifications around 92% of the time, indicating that the crowd performed well in this task. The next stage will involve optimizing the workflow for the use of Picture Pile in future natural disaster situations

Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization Time of Flight (MALDI-TOF) Mass Spectrometry of Phenol-Formaldehyde-Chestnut Tannin Resins

International audienceNatural hydrolysable chestnut tannin extracts used to partially substitute phenol in Phenol-Formaldehyde (PF) resins for phenolic rigid foams were analysed by matrix-assisted desorption ionization time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. PF only, chestnut only and PF-chestnut copolymerised oligomer types and distribution were determined. MALDI-TOF analyses of a PF control resin (with the same molar ratio) and of chestnut tannin extracts were performed in order to identify the peaks of molecular weights corresponding to copolymers of chestnut tannins with phenol and formaldehyde

Effect of different extraction and precipitation methods on yield and quality of pectin

An experimental study has been conducted to determine the combined effects of different extraction conditions and precipitation method on the yield and quality of high methoxyl pectin from lemon peels. Pectin was extracted using different mineral acids (HCl, HNO3 and H2SO4) at four concentration levels (0.025; 0.05; 0.1 and 0.2 m), at 70 °C for 4 h. The soluble pectin was precipitated by iso-propanol or by an aluminium sulphate, Al 2(SO 4) 3, solution at pH 4. The extraction with HCl and HNO 3, at the highest concentrations investigated, followed by aluminium precipitation led to the best results in terms of yield (22-25%), quality and gelling power of pectin with a remarkable decrease of alcohol consumption as compared to the alcoholic precipitation under the same extracting conditions

Green, Formaldehyde-Free, Foams For Thermal Insulation

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Phenolic resin adhesives based on chestnut (Castanea sativa) hydrolysable tannins

Chestnut hydrolysable tannins are phenolic materials that have been considered too unreactive to compete in the phenolic resin adhesives market for exterior boards for the building industry. However, an article in 1973 describing 3 years industrial application of chestnut hydrolysable tannins during the first oil crisis indicated that this was not the case. We have extended this old work by using superior phenolic resins formulations and producing phenol-formaldehyde-chestnut tannin adhesives where a substitution of up to 80% of the phenol is possible with remarkably good results. The reactions involved were clarified by 13C NMR and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry