Catalytic wet oxidation of lactose

A process for converting lactose into carbon dioxide and/or carbon monoxide using catalytic wet oxidation. Oxygen gas and an aqueous solution of lactose are fed to a reactor comprising a Pt/Al203 catalyst, a Mn/Ce catalyst or a Pt/Mn—Ce catalyst, and the lactose is oxidized in the reactor at elevated temperature and pressure to produce at least one of small organic acids, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water and combinations thereof. The small organic acids may be further degraded by feeding the small organic acids and oxygen gas into a reactor containing a Mn/Ce catalyst and oxidizing the small organic acids to water and at least one of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and combinations thereof.https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/patents/1032/thumbnail.jp

Faculty-Student Interaction and Impact On Well-Being in Higher Education

This educational criticism and action research study was conducted in the spring of 2020 to better understand the impact that faculty-student interaction has on the well-being of faculty and students. Classes moved to remote instruction halfway through the semester, prompting an additional research question on the impact of COVID-19 on faculty-student interaction and well-being. Data were collected at an engineering school from five faculty (4 participants and the researcher) and their students primarily through interviews, focus groups (with 16 student participants), and a student questionnaire (with 73 student respondents). Data analysis was structured with Uhrmacher, McConnell, and Flinders’ (2017) instructional arc, expanded to include student intentions and faculty perceptions. Faculty and students described what interactions are supportive and unsupportive of their well-being and indicated that there are different ways to give and receive care. The findings call for both a language and a system for expressing care needs in higher education, through better valuing of relationships and teaching. In higher education, and particularly in STEM programs, we can mitigate overwhelm by implementing new policies and practices to better support well-being of faculty and students through financial and structural support and via the evolution of curriculum, including analyses of hidden, shadow, and complementary curricula. It is also critical to consider how care work is defined and gendered within an institution, especially in regard to contingent or non-tenured faculty. The flow of care model expresses the ways in which supportive care can either be blocked or allowed to flow throughout the hierarchy of higher education. Future studies should examine interaction among different types of faculty or levels of students and explore the impact of interaction on the well-being of people of color, underrepresented groups, and marginalized populations

Measuring sustainability with unweighted topsis: an application to sustainable tourism in Spain

The measurement of sustainability is complex due to its multiple dimensions of different relative importance and different natures. From the perspective of sustainability, three types of tourism can be established: traditional tourism, sustainable tourism, and sustainable impact tourism. In the context of multiple-criteria decision analysis, this paper presents a flexible method for assess and rank decision alternatives based on their sustainability. The proposal does not require the relative importance of each criterion to be precisely assigned beforehand, which reduces the subjectivity of the decision making and yields results that can be of interest for decision makers. To show the difference between these three sustainability options in tourism and the benefits of the method, the proposal is applied to public and private tourism management in Spain—in particular, to hotel booking and the evaluation and management of sustainability in the autonomous regions

Michigan Technological Center for Nanostructured and Lightweight Materials in the Department of Chemical Engineering (Phase II)

Summaries of the followings tasks are given in this report: Task 1 - Lightweight, Thermally Conductive Bipolar Plates for Improved Thermal Management in Fuel Cells; Task 2 - Exploration of pseudomorphic nanoscale overlayer bimetallic catalysts; Task 3 - Hybrid inorganic/organic polymer nanocomposites; Task 4 - Carbonaceous Monolithic Electrodes for Fuel Cells and Rechargeable Batteries; and Task 5 - Movement and Freeze of Water in Fuel Cell Electrodes