Search results for "propertie"
showing 10 items of 2065 documents
Angular Trapping of Anisometric Nano-Objects in a Fluid
2012
We demonstrate the ability to trap, levitate, and orient single anisometric nanoscale objects with high angular precision in a fluid. An electrostatic fluidic trap confines a spherical object at a spatial location defined by the minimum of the electrostatic system free energy. For an anisometric object and a potential well lacking angular symmetry, the system free energy can further strongly depend on the object's orientation in the trap. Engineering the morphology of the trap thus enables precise spatial and angular confinement of a single levitating nano-object, and the process can be massively parallelized. Since the physics of the trap depends strongly on the surface charge of the objec…
Microwear textures associated with experimental near-natural diets suggest that seeds and hard insect body parts cause high enamel surface complexity…
2022
In mammals, complex dental microwear textures (DMT) representing differently sized and shaped enamel lesions overlaying each other have traditionally been associated with the seeds and kernels in frugivorous diets, as well as with sclerotized insect cuticles. Recently, this notion has been challenged by field observations as well as in vitro experimental data. It remains unclear to what extent each food item contributes to the complexity level and is reflected by the surface texture of the respective tooth position along the molar tooth row. To clarify the potential of seeds and other abrasive dietary items to cause complex microwear textures, we conducted a controlled feeding experiment wi…
Past, Present and Future Perspectives on Halloysite Clay Minerals
2020
Halloysite nanotubes (HNTs), clay minerals belonging to the kaolin groups, are emerging nanomaterials which have attracted the attention of the scientific community due to their interesting features, such as low-cost, availability and biocompatibility. In addition, their large surface area and tubular structure have led to HNTs’ application in different industrial purposes. This review reports a comprehensive overview of the historical background of HNT utilization in the last 20 years. In particular it will focus on the functionalization of the surfaces, both supramolecular and covalent, following applications in several fields, including biomedicine, environmental science and catalysis.
Double Flow Bioreactor for In Vitro Test of Drug Delivery.
2015
In this work, double-structured polymeric scaffolds were produced, and a double flow bioreactor was designed and set up in order to create a novel system to carry out advanced in vitro drug delivery tests. The scaffolds, consisting of a cylindrical porous matrix, are able to host cells, thus mimicking a three-dimensional tumor mass: moreover, a âpseudo-vascularâ structure was embedded into the matrix, with the aim of allowing a flow circulation. The structure that emulates a blood vessel is a porous tubular-shaped scaffold prepared by Diffusion Induced Phase Separation (DIPS), with an internal lumen of 2 mm and a wall thickness of 200 micrometers. The as-prepared vessel was incorporated…
Green Composites Based on PLA and Agricultural or Marine Waste Prepared by FDM
2021
Three dimensional-printability of green composites is recently growing in importance and interest, especially in the view of feasibility to valorize agricultural and marine waste to attain green fillers capable of reducing bioplastic costs, without compromising their processability and performance from an environmental and mechanical standpoint. In this work, two lignocellulosic fillers, obtained from Opuntia ficus indica and Posidonia oceanica, were added to PLA and processed by FDM. Among the 3D printed biocomposites investigated, slight differences could be found in terms of PLA molecular weight and filler aspect ratio. It was shown that it is possible to replace up to 20% of bioplastic …
Characterization of the Solid State Properties of Anodic Oxides on Magnetron Sputtered Ta, Nb and Ta-Nb Alloys
2012
Tantalum oxide, niobium oxide and Ta-Nb containing mixed oxides were grown by anodizing sputter-deposited Ta, Nb and Ta-Nb alloys of different compositions. A photoelectrochemical investigation was performed in order to estimate the band gap and the flat band potential of the oxides as a function of their composition. The band gap of the investigated Ta-Nb containing mixed oxides changed monotonically between those estimated for Ta2O5 (4.1 eV) and Nb2O5 (3.4 eV) and in agreement with a proposed correlation between the Band gap of an oxide and the difference of electronegativity of the oxide constituents. From the differential capacitance curves recorded in a wide range of electrode potentia…
Mossbauer spectroscopic study of the thermal spin crossover in [Fe(II)(isoxazole)(6)](ClO(4))(2)
2008
The (57)Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy of mononuclear [Fe(II)(isoxazole)(6)](ClO(4))(2) has been studied to reveal the thermal spin crossover of Fe(II) between low-spin (S = 0) and high-spin (S = 2) states.Temperature-dependent spin transition curves have been constructed with the least-square fitted data obtained from the Mossbauer spectra measured at various temperatures between 84 and 270 K during a cooling and heating cycle. This compound exhibits an unusual temperature-dependent spin transition behaviour with T(C)(down arrow) = 223 and T(C)(up arrow) = 213 K occurring in the reverse order in comparison to those observed in SQUID observation and many other spin transition compounds. The comp…
What do we mean by diversity? : the path towards quantification
2018
The concept of biological diversity has evolved from a simple count of species to more sophisticated measures that are sensitive to relative abundances and even to evolutionary divergence times between species. In the course of this evolution, diversity measures have often been borrowed from other disciplines. Biological reasoning about diversity often implicitly assumed that measures of diversity had certain mathematical properties, but most of biologys traditional diversity measures did not actually possess these properties, a situation which often led to mathematically and biologically invalid inferences. Biologists now usually transform the traditional measures to the «effective number …
Tunable Superstructures of Dendronized Graphene Nanoribbons in Liquid Phase
2019
In this Communication, we report the first synthesis of structurally well-defined graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) functionalized with dendritic polymers. The resultant GNRs possess grafting ratios of 0.59-0.68 for the dendrons of different generations. Remarkably, the precise 3D branched conformation of the grafted dendrons affords the GNRs unprecedented 1D supramolecular self-assembly behavior in tetrahydrofuran (THF), yielding nanowires, helices and nanofibers depending on the dimension of the dendrons. The GNR superstructures in THF exhibit near-infrared absorption with maxima between 650 and 700 nm, yielding an optical bandgap of 1.2-1.3 eV. Ultrafast photoconductivity analyses unveil that …
Polyester microplastic fibers affect soil physical properties and erosion as a function of soil type
2021
Microplastics are recognized as a factor of global change contaminating many environmental compartments. Agricultural soils are very likely to receive microplastic contamination and are of particular concern due to their role in food production. Microplastic fibers have already been shown to be able to affect soil properties, but their effect on different soil types is poorly understood. Moreover, limited information is available on how the presence of this pollutant can affect soil water erosion processes, which are extremely important issues in many environments. In the light of this, we performed two experiments (carried out on a microscale) to investigate how the presence of polyester m…