Exploiting Tannery Sludge as Renewable Resource for Biogas and Short-chain Fatty (SCFAs) Acids Production

The tannery industry is a very lucrative and widespread sector in Italy, and it is yet one of the most polluting, mainly due to the tannery sludge’s disposal in landfills, as it is considered a special residue by Italian legislation. An evaluation of the performance of the anaerobic fermentation process to obtain biogas and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) has been performed in this paper in different conditions concerning temperature, total solids content, and oxidizing and/or thermal pretreatments. The batch test trials revealed that the hydrogen peroxide pretreatment proved to be effective in increasing the biogas production, already at low doses but reaching the highest amount of 204 mL with the dose of 0.6 g H2O2/gTS. Regarding the SCFAs production, the combined microwave and hydrogen peroxide (MW-H2O2) pretreatment followed by thermophilic conditions gave the best results, with maximal SCFA concentration above 24 g CODSCFA/L. In the tests conducted without pretreatment, the mesophilic temperature seem preferable since the acidification performances were comparable to or even better than their thermophilic counterparts while being less energy intensive. The obtained results proved that tannery sludge can be employed in different ways and provide a viable alternative to landfilling, to handle this waste in a greener way, in a circular economy approach

Palladium nanoparticles supported on Smopex®metal scavengers ascatalyst for carbonylative Sonogashira reactions: Synthesis of α,β-alkynyl ketones

Palladium nanoparticles supported on two Smopex®commercial metal scavengers (1% w/w) have beentested in the carbonylative Sonogashira reactions of aryl iodides with phenylacetylene. Their catalyticactivity has been compared with those of more common catalysts (Pd/C, Pd/-Al2O3). Pd/Smopex®-234resulted especially effective in the synthesis of alkynyl ketones even working with a low amount ofpalladium (0.2–0.5 mol%). Preliminary heterogeneity tests (i.e. hot filtration test, Pd leaching and recycleof the catalyst) have been performed in order to evaluate the catalytic behaviour of this system. Theobtained results seem to indicate that Pd/Smopex®-234 could act as a truly heterogeneous catalyst

Multimodal hybrid 2D networks via the thiol-epoxide reaction on 1T/2H MoS2 polytypes

The study adds a fundamental tile to the still incomplete puzzle of covalent functionalization tools of 2D inorganic networks and describes a protocol where organic moieties are covalently grafted at both phases (1T and 2H) of a CE-MoS2 sample

graphene oxide and simple molecules at high pressure new perspectives for 2d nanoconfined chemistry of carbon based materials

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A nitrogen-doped carbon-coated silicon carbide as a robust and highly efficient metal-free catalyst for sour gas desulfurization in the presence of aromatics as contaminants

A mesoporous N-doped carbon coating for SiC extrudates shows excellent H2S desulfurization performance along with remarkably high resistance towards deactivation/fouling in the presence of aromatics as contaminant

A new iron free treatment with oral fi sh cartilage polysaccharide for iron defi ciency chronic anemia in infl ammatory bowel diseases: A pilot study

Abstract AIM: To investigate the effect of a new oral preparation, highly concentrated in fish cartilage, in a group of infl ammatory bowel diseases (IBD) patients with chronic iron defi cient anemia. METHODS: In an open label pilot study, we supplemented a group of 25 patients (11 with Crohn's disease and 14 with ulcerative colitis) in stable clinical conditions and chronic anemia with a food supplement which does not contain iron but contains a standardized fraction of fish cartilage glycosaminoglycans and a mixture of antioxidants (Captafer Medestea, Turin, Italy). Patients received 500 mg, twice a day during meals, for at least 4 mo. Patients were suggested to maintain their alimentary habit. At time 0 and after 2 and 4 mo, emocrome, sideremia and ferritin were examined. Paired data were analyzed with Student's t test. RESULTS: Three patients relapsed during the study (2 in the 3 rd mo, 1 in the 4 th mo), two patients were lost to follow up and two patients dropped out (1 for orticaria, 1 for gastric burning). Of the remaining 18 patients, levels of serum iron started to rapidly increase within the 2 nd mo of treatment, P < 0.05), whereas serum ferritin and hemoglobin needed a longer period to signifi cantly improve their serum levels (mo 4) P < 0.05). The product was safe, easy to administer and well tolerated by patients. CONCLUSION: These data suggest a potential new treatment for IBD patients with iron defi ciency chronic anemia and warrant further larger controlled studies

Demonstration of track reconstruction with FPGAs on live data at LHCb

The LHCb experiment is currently taking data with a completely renewed DAQ system, capable for the first time of performing a full real-time reconstruction of all collision events occurring at LHC point 8. The Collaboration is now pursuing a further upgrade (“LHCb Upgrade-II”), to enable the experiment to retain the same capability at luminosities an order of magnitude larger than the maximum planned for the current Run3. To this purpose, a vigorous R&D program is ongoing to boost the real-time processing capability of LHCb, needed to cope both with the luminosity increase and the adoption of correspondingly more granular and complex detectors. New heterogeneous computing solutions are being explored, with the aim of moving reconstruction and data reduction to the earliest possible stages of processing. In this talk, we describe the results obtained from a realistic demonstrator for a high-throughput reconstruction of tracking detectors, operating parasitically on real LHCb data from Run3 in a purposely-built testbed facility. This demonstrator is based on a extremely parallel, “Artificial Retina” architecture, implemented in commercial, PCIe-hosted FPGA cards interconnected by fast optical links, and encompasses a sizeable fraction of the LHCb VELO pixel detector. The implications of the results in view of potential applications in HEP are discussed

Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a $Z$ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 $< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100$ GeV and in the pseudorapidity range $2.5 < \eta < 4$. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb$^{-1}$. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages

Study of the B−→Λc+Λˉc−K−B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-} decay

The decay $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ is studied in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment. In the $\Lambda_{c}^+ K^{-}$ system, the $\Xi_{c}(2930)^{0}$ state observed at the BaBar and Belle experiments is resolved into two narrower states, $\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}$ and $\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}$, whose masses and widths are measured to be $$m(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = 2924.5 \pm 0.4 \pm 1.1 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ m(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = 2938.5 \pm 0.9 \pm 2.3 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = \phantom{000}4.8 \pm 0.9 \pm 1.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},\\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = \phantom{00}11.0 \pm 1.9 \pm 7.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},$$ where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. The results are consistent with a previous LHCb measurement using a prompt $\Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ sample. Evidence of a new $\Xi_{c}(2880)^{0}$ state is found with a local significance of $3.8\,\sigma$, whose mass and width are measured to be $2881.8 \pm 3.1 \pm 8.5\,\mathrm{MeV}$ and $12.4 \pm 5.3 \pm 5.8 \,\mathrm{MeV}$, respectively. In addition, evidence of a new decay mode $\Xi_{c}(2790)^{0} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ is found with a significance of $3.7\,\sigma$. The relative branching fraction of $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ with respect to the $B^{-} \to D^{+} D^{-} K^{-}$ decay is measured to be $2.36 \pm 0.11 \pm 0.22 \pm 0.25$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third originates from the branching fractions of charm hadron decays.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-028.html (LHCb public pages