Heavy Metal Depuration Steps for Gracilaria chilensis in Outdoor Culture Systems

Seaweed aquaculture is affected by natural and anthropogenic stressors, which put the biomass productivity of the cultures at risk. Seaweed biomass for commercial purposes, principally in pharmaceutical and/or nutraceutical applications, needs to be free of pollutants; therefore, controlled cultures have relevance in regulating the quality of biomass. The aim of this work was to demonstrate the successful utilization of controlled outdoor cultures to remove excess heavy metal accumulation in Gracilaria chilensis, an important commercial seaweed farming model. Specifically, we designed a simple and operational heavy metal depuration protocol, utilizing seawater and tap water removal, which permitted the concentration reduction of 10 heavy metals, including As, Cu, and Cd but not Zn, from the biomass at 7 days of culture. The percentage of depuration of the heavy metals ranged from 32 to 92% at 7 days, which was maintained throughout 21 days of culture. During the culture period, the monitored physicochemical parameters (temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen, among others) remained stable, with an increase in the daily growth rate (DGR% d⁻¹) of the biomass recorded after 14 days of culture. Consequently, the experimental setup was successful for heavy metal depuration, which highlights the importance of controlled outdoor cultures as important tools of sustainability.     

Rhenium and molybdenum poorly crystalline disulfides and their mesophases with hexadecylamine

Sulfides of molybdenum and rhenium poorly crystalline were prepared by solvothermal oxidative decarbonylation of the respective metal carbonyls with sulfur using p-xylene as solvent. The same reaction, but in presence of hexadecylamine (HDA), was used for preparing the nanocomposites MoS₂/HDA and ReS₂/HDA. The products were analyzed by X-ray diffraction analysis, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. The products, MoS₂ and ReS₂, are structurally similar but morphologically different: small undefined particles (150–300 nm) and well-defined, almost perfect microspheres (0.4–2.8 μm), respectively. Preparations containing HDA lead to the corresponding layered nanocomposites. MoS₂/HDA is a dark solid easily separable from the reaction mixture, while ReS₂/HDA remains as a suspension in p-xylene, from which it is obtained by evaporating the solvent under vacuum. Both are layered species with basal spacing of 33.8?Å (Mo) and 30.4?Å (Re), respectively. The preparation of thin films of ReS₂/HDA from its suspension by evaporating the solvent in the air produces small cylindrical particles of about 0.4 × 1.0 μm in size. Differences in the behavior of Mo and Re derivatives are discussed considering the coordination of the metal and the electronic structures of both metal disulfides.     

Rhodium‐Catalyzed Intramolecular [3+2+2] Cycloadditions between Alkylidenecyclopropanes,Alkynes, and Alkenes

A Rh‐catalyzed intramolecular [3+2+2] cycloaddition is reported. The cycloaddition affords synthetically relevant 5,7,5‐fused tricyclic systems of type 2 from readily available dienyne precursors. The transformation takes place with moderate or good yields, high diastereoselectivity, and total chemoselectivity.     

Reaction of 4-Nitrobenzenesulfenamide with Liquid Ammonia

Abstract

Although numerous investigations on the chemistry of organic sulfenamides, for example, studies on the S–N torsional barrier,¹ the electronic nature of the S–N bond² and some nucleophilic substitutions on sulfur or nitrogen atom³ have been known, no example of nucleophilic substitution on arylcarbon of aromatic sulfenamides has been reported.     

A generalization of a theorem of Foxby

In this paper, it is proved that a commutative noetherian local ring admitting a finitely generated module of finite projective and injective dimensions with respect to a semidualizing module is Gorenstein. This result recovers a celebrated theorem of Foxby.      

Photoluminescence in silicon/silicon oxide films produced by the Pulsed Electron Beam Ablation technique

In this work we report studies of the photoluminescence emission in samples based on Si/SiO_x films deposited by the Pulsed Electron Beam Ablation (PEBA) technique. The samples were prepared at room temperature using targets with different Si/SiO₂ concentrations. The samples were characterized using X-ray Absorption Edge Spectroscopy (XANES) at the Si―K edge, Raman spectroscopy, Photoluminescence (PL) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The concentration of a-Si and nc-Si in the film was dependent on the silicon concentration in the target. It was also observed that the PL is strongly dependent on the structural amorphous/crystalline arrangement.     

Some Hadamard matrices of order 32 and their binary codes

It is known that all doubly‐even self‐dual codes of lengths 8 or 16, and the extended Golay code, can be constructed from some binary Hadamard matrix of orders 8, 16, and 24, respectively. In this note, we demonstrate that every extremal doubly‐even self‐dual [32,16,8] code can be constructed from some binary Hadamard matrix of order 32. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.