Impact of different alginate lyases on combined cellulase–lyase saccharification of brown seaweed

Alginate attack characteristics and impact on cellulase–lyase catalyzed saccharification of brown seaweed were compared for three microbial PL7 alginate lyases (EC 4.2.2.-) two of them heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli as part of the work.</p

Quantitative imaging of concentrated suspensions under flow

We review recent advances in imaging the flow of concentrated suspensions, focussing on the use of confocal microscopy to obtain time-resolved information on the single-particle level in these systems. After motivating the need for quantitative (confocal) imaging in suspension rheology, we briefly describe the particles, sample environments, microscopy tools and analysis algorithms needed to perform this kind of experiments. The second part of the review focusses on microscopic aspects of the flow of concentrated model hard-sphere-like suspensions, and the relation to non-linear rheological phenomena such as yielding, shear localization, wall slip and shear-induced ordering. Both Brownian and non-Brownian systems will be described. We show how quantitative imaging can improve our understanding of the connection between microscopic dynamics and bulk flow.Comment: Review on imaging hard-sphere suspensions, incl summary of methodology. Submitted for special volume 'High Solid Dispersions' ed. M. Cloitre, Vol. xx of 'Advances and Polymer Science' (Springer, Berlin, 2009); 22 pages, 16 fig

Surface Modifications by Field Induced Diffusion

By applying a voltage pulse to a scanning tunneling microscope tip the surface under the tip will be modified. We have in this paper taken a closer look at the model of electric field induced surface diffusion of adatoms including the van der Waals force as a contribution in formations of a mound on a surface. The dipole moment of an adatom is the sum of the surface induced dipole moment (which is constant) and the dipole moment due to electric field polarisation which depends on the strength and polarity of the electric field. The electric field is analytically modelled by a point charge over an infinite conducting flat surface. From this we calculate the force that cause adatoms to migrate. The calculated force is small for voltage used, typical 1 pN, but due to thermal vibration adatoms are hopping on the surface and even a small net force can be significant in the drift of adatoms. In this way we obtain a novel formula for a polarity dependent threshold voltage for mound formation on the surface for positive tip. Knowing the voltage of the pulse we then can calculate the radius of the formed mound. A threshold electric field for mound formation of about 2 V/nm is calculated. In addition, we found that van der Waals force is of importance for shorter distances and its contribution to the radial force on the adatoms has to be considered for distances smaller than 1.5 nm for commonly used voltages

A comparative study of non-covalent encapsulation methods for organic dyes into silica nanoparticles

Numerous luminophores may be encapsulated into silica nanoparticles (< 100 nm) using the reverse microemulsion process. Nevertheless, the behaviour and effect of such luminescent molecules appear to have been much less studied and may possibly prevent the encapsulation process from occurring. Such nanospheres represent attractive nanoplatforms for the development of biotargeted biocompatible luminescent tracers. Physical and chemical properties of the encapsulated molecules may be affected by the nanomatrix. This study examines the synthesis of different types of dispersed silica nanoparticles, the ability of the selected luminophores towards incorporation into the silica matrix of those nanoobjects as well as the photophysical properties of the produced dye-doped silica nanoparticles. The nanoparticles present mean diameters between 40 and 60 nm as shown by TEM analysis. Mainly, the photophysical characteristics of the dyes are retained upon their encapsulation into the silica matrix, leading to fluorescent silica nanoparticles. This feature article surveys recent research progress on the fabrication strategies of these dye-doped silica nanoparticles

HELIOS CJ app: The decentralization of the citizen journalism

The decentralization of Social Media applications has gained importance in the last years. In this direction, the HELIOS project has been proposed in order to provide a decentralized platform for social applications. Among these several social applications, the Journalism field is considered an important use case. The main problem which needs to be addressed is preventing the spread of fake news and ensuring the authenticity of the literature for end readers. Furthermore, with the rise of Citizen Journalism, the way of how people can participate to share information is changed. In this paper, we present the HELIOS Citizen Journalism App (CJ) developed in the context of the HELIOS project. The CJ App allows users to contribute content anonymously, based on blockchain technology. After publishing the content via the app, the content is available to publishers for further distribution, on a decentralized P2P and IPFS-based network storage. Furthermore, by making a donation for particular content, the CJ also receives remuneration. In this paper, we show the architecture of the App by describing its components and how it works

Numerical study of an ion-exchanged glass waveguide using both two-dimensional and three-dimensional models

A numerical study is carried out to compare the two-dimensional (2-D) case and three-dimensional (3-D) case for the modelling of an ion-exchanged glass waveguide. It is shown that different waveguide widths on the photomask correspond to different ion concentration distributions after an annealing process. A numerical example is presented of two waveguide sections with different widths indicates that due to the abrupt change of the waveguide width, a 3-D theoretical model is required for an accurate prediction of the parameters of ion-exchanged glass waveguides. The good agreement between the modelled and measured results proves that the developed 3-D numerical model can be beneficially utilized in the generalized design of optical devices based on ion-exchange waveguides