66 research outputs found
Preventing the development of antibiotic resistance in wastewater matrices by high energy irradiation
Our project aimed at investigating the applicability of high energy irradiation methods to eradicate any impact that
antibiotics have on microbial population in wastewater matrices. Over the course of our study, the effect of solutions
containing synthetic wastewater matrix along with antibiotics on a resistant -sensitive mixed bacterial population is
taken under scrutiny after electron beam irradiation. As a result, we show that by appropriately optimizing the dose
requirement, electron beam treatment appears to be a promising method to eliminate the biological activity of
antibiotics and thereby achieve similar microbial population dynamics as it is found without the presence of antibiotics.
Our results take us closer to our ultimate goal, developing technologies to tackle the evolution of antibiotic resistant
bacteria in water reservoirs contaminated with antibiotics
Experimental study of pedestrian flow through a bottleneck
In this work the results of a bottleneck experiment with pedestrians are
presented in the form of total times, fluxes, specific fluxes, and time gaps. A
main aim was to find the dependence of these values from the bottleneck width.
The results show a linear decline of the specific flux with increasing width as
long as only one person at a time can pass, and a constant value for larger
bottleneck widths. Differences between small (one person at a time) and wide
bottlenecks (two persons at a time) were also found in the distribution of time
gaps.Comment: accepted for publication in J. Stat. Mec
Martensite-to-austenite reversion and recrystallization in cryogenically-rolled type 321 metastable austenitic steel
The annealing behavior of cryogenically-rolled type 321 metastable austenitic steel was established. Cryogenic deformation gave rise to martensitic transformation which developed preferentially within deformation bands. Subsequent annealing in the range of 600 C to 700 C resulted in reversion of the strain-induced martensite to austenite. At 800 C, the reversion was followed by static recrystallization. At relatively-low temperatures, the reversion was characterized by a very strong variant selection, which led to the restoration of the crystallographic orientation of the coarse parent austenite grains. An increase in the annealing temperature relaxed the variant-selection tendency and provided subsequent recrystallization thus leading to significant grain refinement. Nevertheless, a significant portion of the original coarse grains was found to be untransformed and therefore the fine-grain structure was fairly heterogeneous
Copper and copper oxide nanoparticles in a cellulose support studied using anomalous small-angle X-ray scattering
Microcrystalline cellulose is a porous natural material which
can be used both as a support for nanoparticles and as a reducer of metal ions.
Cellulose supported nanoparticles can act as catalysts in many reactions.
Cu, CuO, and Cu2O particles were prepared in microcrystalline cellulose
by adding a solution of copper salt
to the insoluble cellulose matrix and by reducing the copper ions
with several reducers.
The porous nanocomposites were studied using anomalous small angle X-ray
scattering (ASAXS), X-ray absorption spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction.
Reduction of Cu2+ with cellulose in ammonium hydrate medium
yielded crystalline CuO nanoparticles and
the crystallite size was about 6–20 nm irrespective of
the copper concentration. The size distribution of the CuO particles
was determined with ASAXS measurements and
coincided with the crystallite sizes.
Using sodium borohydrate or hydrazine sulfate as a reducer
both metallic Cu and Cu2O nanoparticles
were obtained and the crystallite size and the oxidation state
depended on the amount of reducer
Diffraction analysis of highly ordered smectic supramolecules of conjugated rodlike polymers.
A small/wide-angle X-ray scattering and grazing incidence diffraction study of comb-shaped supramolecules of conjugated poly(2,5-pyridinediyl), acid dopant and hydrogen bonded amphiphilic side chains is reported. In solution, polymers are dissolved rodlike particles. When the side-chains are introduced, polymers self-assemble in hierarchic liquid crystals (LC). Diffraction patterns of aligned LC show h00, 020, and 004 reflections, and additional small-angle reflections along the polymer axis. A triangular correlation function indicating a very large correlation length is seen along the smectic axis. An aligned solid structure can be formed by cleaving side chains from the aligned LC
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