Microbiological and chemical monitoring of Marsala base wine obtained by spontaneous fermentation during large-scale production

The present work was undertaken to evaluate the effect of the natural winemaking on the microbial and chemical composition of Marsala base wine. To this purpose, a large-scale vinification process of Grillo grape cultivar was monitored from harvesting to the final product. Total yeasts (TY) showed a rapid increase after must pressing and reached values almost superimposable to those registered during the conventional winemakings. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were registered at the highest levels simultaneously to yeast growth at the beginning of the process. Saccharomyces cerevisiae was the species found at the highest concentrations in all samples analysed. Several strains (n= 16) was registered at high levels during the alcoholic fermentation and/or aging of wine; only two of them were detected on the grape surface. Lactobacillus plantarum was the LAB species most frequently isolated during the entire vinification process. Ethanol content was approximately 14% (v/v) at the end of vinification. The value of pH did not greatly vary during the process and the volatile acidity (VA) was detected at low concentrations during the entire transformation. The concentration of malic acid rapidly decreased during the AF; on the other hand, lactic acid showed an irregular trend during the entire process. trans-caffeil tartaric acid was the most abundant hydroxycinnamoyl tartaric acid and volatile organic compounds (VOC) were mainly represented by isoamylic alcohol and isobutanol

Chemical vapour deposition synthetic diamond: materials, technology and applications

Substantial developments have been achieved in the synthesis of chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond in recent years, providing engineers and designers with access to a large range of new diamond materials. CVD diamond has a number of outstanding material properties that can enable exceptional performance in applications as diverse as medical diagnostics, water treatment, radiation detection, high power electronics, consumer audio, magnetometry and novel lasers. Often the material is synthesized in planar form, however non-planar geometries are also possible and enable a number of key applications. This article reviews the material properties and characteristics of single crystal and polycrystalline CVD diamond, and how these can be utilized, focusing particularly on optics, electronics and electrochemistry. It also summarizes how CVD diamond can be tailored for specific applications, based on the ability to synthesize a consistent and engineered high performance product.Comment: 51 pages, 16 figure

Patterned 2D and 3D assemblies of nanoparticles on molecular printboards

Functionalized nanoparticles have powerful applications as intermediates between solution and surface chemistry and as tools for nanofabrication. Two main examples of these have been shown. The functionalization of 3 nm gold and 55 nm silica nanoparticles with cyclodextrin (CD) host sites has been achieved, which allows: (i) the controlled aggregation with guestfunctionalized dendrimers in solution, (ii) the specific adsorption onto dendrimer-patterned substrates, and (iii) the fabrication of larger architectures using the layer-by-layer methodology. Aggregation in solution was shown to proceed through specific host-guest recognition. The adsorption onto surfaces employed so-called “molecular printboards”, which are self-assembled monolayers with the same cyclodextrin host recognition sites which allow the stable assembly of molecules and nanoparticles through multivalent host-guest interactions. CD silica nanoparticles were shown to adsorb specifically onto areas of such molecular printboards which were patterned with adamantyl-functionalized dendrimers. The layer-by-layer (LBL) assembly of such dendrimers and CD gold nanoparticles led to a controllable multilayer architecture with a thickness increase of about 2 nm per bilayer. The combination of the (bottom-up) particle LBL assembly and top-down surface structuring, in particular nanoimprint lithography, was shown to result in the formation of 3D objects down to sub-100 nm in all three dimensions