Photocatalysis of β-blockers – An overview

Photocatalysis is one of the most effective advanced oxidation processes to remove residual pharmaceuticals from the aquatic environment. β-Blockers are the group of pharmaceuticals commonly found in the environment and are showing potential risk to the aquatic and terrestrial organisms. This paper provides an overview of different photocatalytic procedures found in the literature for the abatement of β-blockers.     

Potential of oil palm frond cellulose nanocrystals-activated carbon hydrogel beads for the removal of paracetamol from aqueous media

Cellulose - Water pollution via pharmaceutical drugs such as paracetamol has been a highly concerning issue, and effective measures must be taken to treat these aquatic contaminants. Hence, the...     

Inter- and intramolecular mechanisms for chlorine rearrangements in trimethyl-substituted N-chlorohydantoins

The antimicrobial compounds 1-chloro-3,5,5-trimethylhydantoin and 3-chloro-1,5,5-trimethylhydantoin (1 and 2, respectively) have been synthesized and examined via a joint experimental and computational study. The measured rate of loss of oxidative chlorine in the absence and presence of exposure to UVA irradiation determined 2 to be less stable than 1. An interesting migration reaction was observed during UVA irradiation that featured the production of chlorine rearrangement and dechlorinated compounds. Two novel hydrogen atom transfer reaction (HATR) mechanisms have been proposed: (1) an intramolecular process in which a hydrogen atom undergoes a series of sigmatropic shifts, and (2) an intermolecular pathway in which a radical abstracts a hydrogen atom from a neighboring molecule. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations at the UB3LYP/6-311G++(2d,p) theory level have been employed to elucidate the preferred reaction pathway. Both proposed HATR mechanisms predicted 2 to possess a lower free energy of activation, ΔG(?), relative to 1 in accordance with the experimental stability measurements. However, the intermolecular route had an overall lower absolute ΔG(?) and was more consistent with measured product ratios in solution. The intermolecular reaction pathway, unlike the intramolecular route, also predicted the lack of formation of a migration product featuring a Cl covalently bonded to a methylene group at the 5-position of the hydantoin moiety, which was verified by NMR experiments.     

The usage of computer-aided cooling curve thermal analysis to optimise eutectic refiner and modifier in Al–Si alloys

Bismuth, antimony and strontium concentrations were optimised to alter the eutectic Al?CSi phase in a commercial Al?CSi?CCu?CMg alloy by way of computer-aided cooling curve thermal analysis. The results show that the eutectic growth temperature shifted to lower temperatures for all three inoculants. However, addition of Sr resulted in more depression of growth temperature compared with Bi and Sb. No further significant changes were observed with increasing the concentrations to more than 1, 0.5 and 0.04?wt% of Bi, Sb and Sr, respectively. The recalescence of these concentrations, meanwhile, showed a significant increase of magnitude. A good correlation was found between the results of thermal and microstructural analysis. For Bi and Sb, the eutectic depression temperature can be used as an individual criterion to gauge optimal levels of content in the refinement of Si, whereas for Sr, both depression temperature and recalescence magnitude must be considered. Based on the observed depression in eutectic growth temperature and recalescence, it can be concluded that the optimal concentrations to refine the eutectic Al?CSi phase with Bi and Sb and to modify it with Sr at the given solidification conditions were 1, 0.5 and 0.04?wt%, respectively.     

Hybrid erbium-doped fiber laser-pressure sensor utilizing ring cavity

This paper presents a hybrid erbium-doped fiber laser-pressure sensor system (HEDFL-PS) in a ring cavity configuration. The fiber laser sensor utilized an intracavity Bragg grating as pressure transducer and reflector. The HEDFL-PS can be used as a single wavelength high power laser or a high pressure sensor. The HEDFL-PS was tested using a shock tube facility and was able to measure up to 10 bar of static pressure. The sensor system shows solid linear response with sensitivity of 0.125 nm/bar and is stable over 30 min with negligible variation in output power and wavelength.     

Assessment of gross alpha and beta activity levels and element concentrations in spa waters from Siirt and Şırnak,Turkey

Gross α and β activity contents and element concentrations in well-known spa waters from the Siirt and the ??rnak cities were determined and assessed by MPC-9604 multi-detector α/β counting system and by wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The 0.05–5.64 gross α and 0.06–2.76 Bq L^?1 gross β activity levels and element concentrations found in samples were compared with recommended values given by the World Health Organization, the US Environmental Protection Agency, Turkish Standards and literature results. Principal component and cluster analysis were also used to classify the spa waters due to element concentrations and three principal components calculated were about 91 % of the total variance in the data.     

Computer-aided cooling curve thermal analysis of near eutectic Al–Si–Cu–Fe alloy

The effects of bismuth (Bi), antimony (Sb) and strontium (Sr) additions on the characteristic parameters of the evolution of aluminium dendrites in a near eutectic Al–11.3Si–2Cu–0.4Fe alloy during solidification at different cooling rates (0.6–2 °C) were investigated by computer-aided cooling curve thermal analysis (CA-CCTA). Nucleation temperature ( $ T_{\text{N}}^{{\alpha {\text{ - Al}}}} $ ) is defined with a new approach based on second derivative cooling curve. The results showed that $ T_{\text{N}}^{{\alpha {\text{ - Al}}}} $ increased with increasing cooling rate but both the growth temperature ( $ T_{\text{G}}^{{\alpha {\text{ - Al}}}} $ ) and the coherency temperature (T _DCP) decreased. Increase in the temperature difference for dendrite coherency ( $ T_{\text{N}}^{{\alpha {\text{ - Al}}}} - T_{\text{DCP}} $ ) with increasing cooling rate indicate a wider range of temperature before the dendrite can impinge on each other and higher fraction solid ( $ f_{\text{S}}^{\text{DCP}} $ ). Additions of Bi, Sb and Sr to the base alloy produced only a minor effect on $ T_{\text{N}}^{{\alpha {\text{ - Al}}}} $ . Additions of Bi and Sb resulted in an increase in fraction solid and an increase of 30 % in the value of $ T_{\text{N}}^{{\alpha {\text{ - Al}}}} \, - \,T_{\text{G}}^{{\alpha {\text{ - Al}}}} $ to almost 13 °C.     

Comparison theorem for Brownian multidimensional BSDEs via jump processes

In this Note, we provide an original proof of the comparison theorem for multidimensional Brownian BSDEs in the case where at each line k the generator depends on the matrix variable Z only through its row k.