The Reactivity of Dissolved Organic Matter for Disinfection By-Product Formation

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) in 6 water samples collected from 4 surface waters were fractionated using some or all of 5 physicochemical separation processes (activated carbon and XAD-8 batch adsorption, alum coagulation, ultrafiltration (UF), and XAD-8 column fractionation). Activated carbon, XAD-8 batch adsorption and alum coagulation processes fractionated DOM by preferentially removing high-SUVA components from solution. The XAD-8 column method fractionated DOM into hydrophobic and hydrophilic components while UF separated DOM into different size fractions. Over 40 DOM fractions, characterized using carbon-normalized (specific) ultraviolet absorbance (SUVA), were obtained for each water. Trihalomethane (THM) and haloacetic acid (HAA_9) formation after chlorination was quantified for each fraction. For each natural water, a strong correlation was observed between the SUVA values of DOM fractions and their THM and HAA_9 formations, independent of the separation processes used to obtain the fractions. Therefore, the correlation obtained for each water appears to represent its natural disinfection by-product (DBP) reactivity profile. However, SUVA is not a universal predictor of DOM reactivity because a unique DBP reactivity profile was obtained for each water tested. The distribution of SUVA within a source water and its relationship to reactivity were found to be more informative than the source water aggregate SUVA value. Individual DBP species also correlated well with the SUVA of DOM fractions in a single water. Formation of trichloroacetic acid (TCAA) was dominant over dichloroacetic acid (DCAA) for high-SUVA fractions, whereas the formation of TCAA and DCAA was comparable for low-SUVA fractions

How neoliberalism led to the rise of the new farright in Europe

Abstract: The building pressure from the far-right may force establishment parties to act, or lead to future progressive coalitions in the European Parliament and political alliances between member states that will challenge the neoliberal consensus within Europe

The topography of masculine normativities in South Africa

This work was supported by the British Academy under Grant SCHQ02

Photodegradation of Phenol over a Hybrid Organo-Inorganic Material: Iron(II) Hydroxyphosphonoacetate

Water treatment is a hot topic, and it will become much more important in the decades ahead. Advanced oxidation processes are being increasingly used for organic contaminant removal, for example using photo-Fenton reactions. Here we report the use of an organo-inorganic hybrid, Fe[HO3PCH(OH)COO]·2H2O, as Fenton photocatalyst for phenol oxidation with H2O2 under UVA radiation. Preactivation, catalyst content, and particle size parameters have been studied/optimized for increasing phenol mineralization. Upon reaction, iron species are leached from the catalyst making a homogeneous catalysis contribution to the overall phenol photo-oxidation. Under optimized conditions, the mineralization degree was slightly larger than 90% after 80 min of irradiation. Analysis by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy revealed important chemical modifications occurring on the surface of the catalyst after activation and phenol photodegradation. The sustained slow delivery of iron species upon phenol photoreaction is advantageous as the mixed heterogeneous−homogeneous catalytic processes result in very high phenol mineralization.Proyecto nacional MAT2010-1517

'Black diamonds', 'clever blacks' and other metaphors: Constructing the black middle class in contemporary South African print media

South Africa (SA) has been undergoing a process of transformation since the end of White minority rule (apartheid) in 1994. During this period, various employment and lifestyle opportunities have given rise to a growing Black middle class (BMC). Against this backdrop, the article draws upon an intersectional approach to corpus-assisted discourse studies in order to examine the construction of the BMC in a 1.4 million-word corpus composed of 20 mainstream Anglophone South African newspaper titles published between 2008 and 2014. With the help of the corpus tool AntConc, the article investigates the collocates of ‘black middle class’, ‘black diamonds’, ‘clever blacks’ and ‘coconuts’, classifying results according to semantic categories in order to provide an idea of the multiple but nuanced representations of the BMC in contemporary SA. The analysis finds several lexically rich moralizing and paternalistic discourses that, in accordance with an intersectional perspective, enact a complex pattern of strategies that are simultaneously exclusionary and inclusionary