Impact of atomic layer deposited TiO2 on the photocatalytic efficiency of TiO2/w-VA-CNT nanocomposite materials

Titanium oxide (TiO2) has been widely investigated as a photocatalytic material, and the fact that its performance depends on its crystalline structure motivates further research on the relationship between preparation methods and material properties. In this work, TiO2 thin films were grown on non- functionalized wave-like patterned vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (w-VA-CNTs) via the atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) analysis revealed that the structure of the TiO2/VA-CNT nanocomposites varied from amorphous to a crystalline phase with increasing deposition temperature, suggesting a “critical deposition temperature” for the anatase crystalline phase formation. On the other hand, scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) studies revealed that the non-functionalized carbon nanotubes were conformally and homogeneously coated with TiO2, forming a nanocomposite while preserving the morphology of the nanotubes. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) provided information about the surface chemistry and stoichiometry of TiO2. The photodegradation experiments under ultraviolet (UV) light on a model pollutant (Rhodamine B, RhB) revealed that the nanocomposite comprised of anatase crystalline TiO2 grown at 200 ?C (11.2 nm thickness) presented the highest degradation efficiency viz 55% with an illumination time of 240 min. Furthermore, its recyclability was also demonstrated for multiple cycles, showing good recovery and potential for practical applications.publishe

Distance education courses: Impacts on Teacher Training and Practice

As políticas públicas em pról da Educação Inclusiva no Brasil, demandaram desde 2008, que os professores tivessem novos conhecimentos e práticas com metodologias diferenciadas para atender aos alunos com deficiência no ensino regular. Assim, as instituições públicas de ensino passaram a ofertar Cursos, na modalidade a distância, para formação de professores para atuar no Atendimento Educacional Especializado-AEE. Nesse sentido, este estudo tem por objetivo verificar o impacto da oferta do Curso de AEE, modalidade a distância, na formação e prática dos alunos egressos. A metodologia consiste em uma pesquisa descritiva exploratória, de caráter qualitativa, do tipo estudo de caso, sendo os sujeitos os professores egressos da 10ª Edição do Curso de AEE, ofertado pela Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, RS/BRASIL. Como instrumento de pesquisa foi utilizado um questionário, semiestruturado com perguntas abertas e fechadas. Para a análise dos dados, foi utilizada a análise de conteúdo, com três categorias iniciais: perfil do egresso, situação profissional e prática no AEE. Os resultados apontam que os egressos percebem os impactos da formação e prática, por meio dos conteúdos abordados, da qualidade das interações e materiais, utilizados no Curso e das modificações que foram realizadas nas escolas.The public policies in favor of Inclusive Education in Brazil, implemented with more effectiveness from 2008, demanded that teachers have new knowledge and practices with differentiated methodologies to attend students with disabilities in regular education. Thus, public educational institutions started to offer Courses, in the distance education, for the training of teachers to work in the Educational Service Specialist (AEE). In this sense, this study aims to verify the impact of this course offered the distance, in the training and practice of the graduating students. The methodology consists of an exploratory descriptive exploration, of a qualitative nature, of the type of case study, being the subjects the teachers of the 10th Edition of the AEE Course, offered by the Federal University of Santa Maria, RS / BRAZIL. As a research instrument, a questionnaire was used, semi-structured with open and closed questions. For the analysis of the data, the content analysis was used, with three initial categories: egress profile, professional situation and practice in AEE. The results show that graduates perceive the impacts of training and practice, through the content covered, the quality of the interactions and materials used in the Course and the changes that were made in schools.Facultad de Informátic

Distance education courses: Impacts on Teacher Training and Practice

As políticas públicas em pról da Educação Inclusiva no Brasil, demandaram desde 2008, que os professores tivessem novos conhecimentos e práticas com metodologias diferenciadas para atender aos alunos com deficiência no ensino regular. Assim, as instituições públicas de ensino passaram a ofertar Cursos, na modalidade a distância, para formação de professores para atuar no Atendimento Educacional Especializado-AEE. Nesse sentido, este estudo tem por objetivo verificar o impacto da oferta do Curso de AEE, modalidade a distância, na formação e prática dos alunos egressos. A metodologia consiste em uma pesquisa descritiva exploratória, de caráter qualitativa, do tipo estudo de caso, sendo os sujeitos os professores egressos da 10ª Edição do Curso de AEE, ofertado pela Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, RS/BRASIL. Como instrumento de pesquisa foi utilizado um questionário, semiestruturado com perguntas abertas e fechadas. Para a análise dos dados, foi utilizada a análise de conteúdo, com três categorias iniciais: perfil do egresso, situação profissional e prática no AEE. Os resultados apontam que os egressos percebem os impactos da formação e prática, por meio dos conteúdos abordados, da qualidade das interações e materiais, utilizados no Curso e das modificações que foram realizadas nas escolas.The public policies in favor of Inclusive Education in Brazil, implemented with more effectiveness from 2008, demanded that teachers have new knowledge and practices with differentiated methodologies to attend students with disabilities in regular education. Thus, public educational institutions started to offer Courses, in the distance education, for the training of teachers to work in the Educational Service Specialist (AEE). In this sense, this study aims to verify the impact of this course offered the distance, in the training and practice of the graduating students. The methodology consists of an exploratory descriptive exploration, of a qualitative nature, of the type of case study, being the subjects the teachers of the 10th Edition of the AEE Course, offered by the Federal University of Santa Maria, RS / BRAZIL. As a research instrument, a questionnaire was used, semi-structured with open and closed questions. For the analysis of the data, the content analysis was used, with three initial categories: egress profile, professional situation and practice in AEE. The results show that graduates perceive the impacts of training and practice, through the content covered, the quality of the interactions and materials used in the Course and the changes that were made in schools.Facultad de Informátic

Distance education courses: Impacts on Teacher Training and Practice

As políticas públicas em pról da Educação Inclusiva no Brasil, demandaram desde 2008, que os professores tivessem novos conhecimentos e práticas com metodologias diferenciadas para atender aos alunos com deficiência no ensino regular. Assim, as instituições públicas de ensino passaram a ofertar Cursos, na modalidade a distância, para formação de professores para atuar no Atendimento Educacional Especializado-AEE. Nesse sentido, este estudo tem por objetivo verificar o impacto da oferta do Curso de AEE, modalidade a distância, na formação e prática dos alunos egressos. A metodologia consiste em uma pesquisa descritiva exploratória, de caráter qualitativa, do tipo estudo de caso, sendo os sujeitos os professores egressos da 10ª Edição do Curso de AEE, ofertado pela Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, RS/BRASIL. Como instrumento de pesquisa foi utilizado um questionário, semiestruturado com perguntas abertas e fechadas. Para a análise dos dados, foi utilizada a análise de conteúdo, com três categorias iniciais: perfil do egresso, situação profissional e prática no AEE. Os resultados apontam que os egressos percebem os impactos da formação e prática, por meio dos conteúdos abordados, da qualidade das interações e materiais, utilizados no Curso e das modificações que foram realizadas nas escolas.The public policies in favor of Inclusive Education in Brazil, implemented with more effectiveness from 2008, demanded that teachers have new knowledge and practices with differentiated methodologies to attend students with disabilities in regular education. Thus, public educational institutions started to offer Courses, in the distance education, for the training of teachers to work in the Educational Service Specialist (AEE). In this sense, this study aims to verify the impact of this course offered the distance, in the training and practice of the graduating students. The methodology consists of an exploratory descriptive exploration, of a qualitative nature, of the type of case study, being the subjects the teachers of the 10th Edition of the AEE Course, offered by the Federal University of Santa Maria, RS / BRAZIL. As a research instrument, a questionnaire was used, semi-structured with open and closed questions. For the analysis of the data, the content analysis was used, with three initial categories: egress profile, professional situation and practice in AEE. The results show that graduates perceive the impacts of training and practice, through the content covered, the quality of the interactions and materials used in the Course and the changes that were made in schools.Facultad de Informátic

The accuracy of Hestia and simplified PESI to predict the prognosis in pulmonary embolism: systematic review with meta-analysis

© 2022. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Introduction Pulmonary embolism (PE) patients at low risk of early complications may be considered for early discharge or home treatment. Last decades evidence has been growing about the safety of several clinical prediction rules for selecting those patients, such as simplified Pulmonary Embolism Severity Index (sPESI) and Hestia Criteria. The aim of this review was to compare the safety of both strategies regarding 30-days mortality, venous thromboembolism recurrence and major bleeding. Methods A systematic literature search was conducted using MEDLINE, CENTRAL and Web of Science on 6 th January 2022. We searched for studies that applied both Hestia Criteria and sPESI to the same population. Sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic odds ratio were calculated for both stratification rules. Both Hestia and sPESI criteria of low risk were evaluated to set the number of patients that could be misclassified for each 1000 patients with PE. The estimates were reported with their 95% confidence intervals (95%CI). Results This systematic review included 3 studies. Only mortality data was able to be pooled. Regarding mortality, the sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic odds ratio was 0.923 (95%CI: 0.843-0.964), 0.338 (95%CI: 0.262-0.423) and 6.120 (95%CI: 2.905-12.890) for Hestia Criteria; and 0.972 (95%CI: 0.917-0.991), 0.269 (95%CI: 0.209-0.338) and 12.738 (95%CI: 3.979-40.774) for sPESI score. The negative predictive values were higher than 0.977. The risk of misclassification of high-risk patients in low risk was 5 (95%CI: 3-11) with Hestia and 2 (95%CI: 1-6) with sPESI, for each 1000 patients with PE in terms of mortality. Conclusion The risk of misclassification of patients presenting with low-risk pulmonary embolism with the intent of early discharge or home treatment with both Hestia Criteria and sPESI score is low and these data supports methods for this purpose.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Tuning graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) electrocatalysts for efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER)

Nowadays, energy conversion and storage technologies are essential research topics due to the necessity of more sustainable processes. Specifically, water splitting is highly affected by slow kinetics and limited knowledge of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). This work envisages the preparation of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) electrocatalysts for efficient OER by a facile one-pot method. The impact of the preparation temperature (450–650 ◦C) of g-C3N4 was assessed for the first time on water splitting processes and explained by different characterisation techniques. The unique crystal structure, surface chemistry, and electronic properties of the material prepared at 550 ◦C lead to a remarkable OER efficiency, with an overpotential of 355 mV at 10 mA cm− 2 and a Tafel slope of 46.8 mV dec− 1. Interestingly, three major differences were observed when comparing the material prepared at 550 ◦C with those obtained at other temperatures: the reduced structural distortion, the superior composition in oxygen and the presence of terminal functional groups. Also, compared to other metalfree g-C3N4 electrocatalysts reported in the literature, we achieved lower Tafel slope values without additional post-treatments or co-catalysts. Hence, for the first time a metal-free catalyst defeats benchmark IrO2. The prepared electrodes were stable for up to 45 h, even when increasing the applied current density to 100 mA cm− 2 for 15 h. Thus, this work provides a simple route for the fabrication of highly-efficient and long-lasting electrocatalysts for a remarkable OER performance.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2020-113667 GB-I00Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | Ref. UIDB/50020/2020Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | Ref. UIDP/50020/2020Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED481D-2023/015Universidade de Vigo/CISU

Monitoring the ex-vivo expansion of human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells in xeno-free microcarrier-based reactor systems by MIR spectroscopy

Human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) have received considerable attention in the field of cell-based therapies due to their high differentiation potential and ability to modulate immune responses. However, since these cells can only be isolated in very low quantities, successful realization of these therapies requires MSCs ex-vivo expansion to achieve relevant cell doses. The metabolic activity is one of the parameters often monitored during MSCs cultivation by using expensive multi-analytical methods, some of them time-consuming. The present work evaluates the use of mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy, through rapid and economic high-throughput analyses associated to multivariate data analysis, to monitor three different MSCs cultivation runs conducted in spinner flasks, under xeno-free culture conditions, which differ in the type of microcarriers used and the culture feeding strategy applied. After evaluating diverse spectral preprocessing techniques, the optimized partial least square (PLS) regression models based on the MIR spectra to estimate the glucose, lactate and ammonia concentrations yielded high coefficients of determination (R2 ≥ 0.98, ≥0.98, and ≥0.94, respectively) and low prediction errors (RMSECV ≤ 4.7%, ≤4.4% and ≤5.7%, respectively). Besides PLS models valid for specific expansion protocols, a robust model simultaneously valid for the three processes was also built for predicting glucose, lactate and ammonia, yielding a R2 of 0.95, 0.97 and 0.86, and a RMSECV of 0.33, 0.57, and 0.09 mM, respectively. Therefore, MIR spectroscopy combined with multivariate data analysis represents a promising tool for both optimization and control of MSCs expansion processes

Tailoring carbon nanotubes surface chemistry for the purification of antileukemic drugs

Biopharmaceuticals have been used to overcome fatal diseases related with aging. L-aspariginase (LA), in particular, has shown evidences of being efficient for leukemia therapy. The LA production and purification require several steps increasing the cost of the process. In this work, functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were studied as a cost-effective support to purify LA. It was shown that CNTs have strong affinity for the target biopharmaceutical, meaning that can be a promising alternative for the adsorption and purification of LA.publishe

Overview on protein extraction and purification using ionic-liquid-based processes

Proteins are one the most widely studied biomolecules with diverse functions and applications. Aiming at overcoming the current drawbacks of purification processes of proteins, the introduction of ionic liquids (ILs) has been a hot topic of research. ILs have been applied in the creation of aqueous biphasic systems (IL-based ABS), solid-phase extractions through poly(ionic liquid)s (PILs) and supported ionic-liquid phases (SILPs), and in the crystallization of proteins. In this sense, ILs have emerged as solvents, electrolytes or adjuvants, or as supported materials to tune the adsorption/affinity capacity aiming at developing an efficient, cost-effective, sustainable and green IL-based process for protein extraction. This review discusses different IL-based processes in the extraction and purification of proteins in the past years, namely IL-based aqueous biphasic systems (IL-based ABS), solid-phase extractions through PILs and SILPs, and protein crystallization. The type and structure of ILs applied and their influence in the different processes performance are also discussed.publishe