The first quantitative rating system of the antioxidant capacity of beauty creams via the Briggs-Rauscher reaction: a crucial step towards evidence-based cosmetics

Oxidative damage is the primary cause of skin aging. Skin care products are numerous and overwhelming, yet there is certain similarity among different formulations. Moisturizers are ubiquitous and the presence of particular added ingredients supports specific marketing claims. The antioxidant effects of botanical polyphenols possess tremendous marketing appeal, because oxidative stress is caused by an imbalance between the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the skin ability to neutralize them. The concept of evidence-based cosmetics lacks a widely accepted method to estimate the antioxidant capacity of the beauty cream. This was the motive force of the present study: for the first time we put forth a quantitative rating system of skin care products. The overall antioxidant power of 75 widely used and advertised beauty creams was comparatively measured via the oscillating Briggs-Rauscher (BR) reaction. Many dermocosmetic products confirmed their ability to ensure protection against free radicals, even if differences among various creams are striking and often not correlated with the their price. The method we developed is simple and cheap and it can allow dermatologists and consumers to compare and choose effectively; on the other hand, producers can used this method to select the most active antioxidant cosmetic agent to optimise the product performance.     

Green chemical synthesis for well-defined and sharply distributed SiO2@FexOy particles

Journal of Sol-Gel Science and Technology - Using a non-toxic precursor, we created a green chemical synthesis for colloidal spheres with a core@shell structure having a silica core and an iron...     

A Parallel Shallow Water Finite Element Solver for the Venice Lagoon

The aim of this paper is to investigate the concurrent implementation on Multiple Instruction, Multiple Data (MIMD) distributed memory multiprocessors of a shallow water finite element model built to simulate the tidal motion in the Venice lagoon. A recursive technique is used to partition the meshed computational domain into subdomains of (almost) equal number of elements, a requisite for balance the workload on parallel computers.     

A preliminary investigation on the distribution of heavy metals in surface sediments of the Cona tidal marsh (Venice Lagoon)

Summary Data are from the two series of surface sediment samplings in an interface area between the Venice Lagoon and the mainland. The distribution of heavy metals gives a correlation with polluted source-sites—identified in the channel systems with a highly polluted input—and allows us to identify the localities of accumulation. Restricted to the estuary of the river tributary transporting a high concentration of pollutants into a tidal marsh area of the lagoon, the study shows the effect of the fresh water forcing to distribute heavy metals on surface sediments. Within the scope of this preliminary investigation, indications from sampling identify a sector of the ?Palude di Cona? in this estuary, which is highly suitable for detailed studies on processes affecting heavy-metal distributions in bottom surface sediments of shallow-water areas. Paper presented at the IV Congresso del Gruppo Nazionale per la Fisica dell'Atmosfera e dell'Oceano, June 22–24, 1987, Rome.     

Initial results utilizing optical pumping with a laser to produce spin-polarized hydrogen

Spin-polarized hydrogen was produced by laser optical pumping of rubidium and subsequent spin exchange with hydrogen atoms created by an rf discharge. Initial experiments produced approximately 10¹⁴ hydrogen atoms with a polarization of about 64%. Utilization of a suitable wall coating will allow significant improvement in these results.     

Linear boundary value problems for systems of ordinary differential equations on non compact intervals

Sunto In guesta nota si esaminano la completa continuità e il rango dell'operatore integrale associate al sistema x – A(t)x=f(t, x Tx=r al variare del tipo di stabilità della parte lineare.     

Optical heterodyne measurement of small shift differences between two stimulated Brillouin lines

The beats between two stimulated Brillouin scattering beams issued either from one single crystal or from two differently oriented crystals were observed and this allowed the shift differences to be measured in the range 60 MHz to 1 GHz.     

Extended thermodynamic approach to ion interaction chromatography: a thorough comparison with the electrostatic approach,and further quantitative validation

Based on a simple, chromatography-based analogy, a quantitatively exact explanation for the strong additional band broadening induced by the presence of the side-walls in flow channels with a large aspect-ratio rectangular cross-section is given and validated for two different flow types: pressure-driven and shear-driven flow.