Polypyrrole/hexagonally ordered silica nanocomposite as a novel fiber coating for solid-phase microextraction

A highly porous fiber coated polypyrrole/hexagonally ordered silica (PPy/SBA15) materials were prepared for solid-phase microextraction (SPME). The PPy/SBA15 nanocomposite was synthesized by an in situ polymerization technique. The resulting material was characterized by the scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and differential thermal analysis. The prepared nanomaterial was immobilized onto a stainless steel wire for fabrication of the SPME fiber. The fiber was evaluated for the extraction of some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from aqueous sample solutions in combination with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). A one at-the-time optimization strategy was applied for optimizing the important extraction parameters such as extraction temperature, extraction time, ionic strength, stirring rate, desorption time and desorption temperature. In optimum conditions (extraction temperature 70°C, extraction time 20 min, ionic strength 20% (WV(-1)), stirring rate 500 rpm, desorption temperature 270°C, desorption time 5 min) the repeatability for one fiber (n=3), expressed as relative standard deviation (R.S.D. %), was between 5.0% and 9.3% for the tested compounds. The quantitation limit for the studied compounds were between 13.3 and 66.6 pg mL(-1). The life span and stability of the PPy/SBA15 fiber are good, and it can be used more than 50 times at 260°C without any significant change in sorption properties. The developed method offers the advantage of being simple to use, with shorter analysis times, lower cost of equipment, thermal stability of fiber and high relative recovery in comparison to conventional methods of analysis.     

Paired and Unpaired Deep Learning Methods for Physically Accurate Super-Resolution Carbonate Rock Images

Transport in Porous Media - X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) has been widely leveraged to characterise the pore-scale geometry of subsurface porous rocks. Recent developments in...     

Silica Sulfuric Acid: An Efficient and Versatile Acidic Catalyst for the Rapid and Ecofriendly Synthesis of 1,3,4‐Oxadiazoles at Ambient Temperature

A rapid and green synthesis of 2,5‐disubstituted 1,3,4‐oxadiazoles is reported. The title compounds were prepared by the reaction of different acyl hydrazides and orthoesters in the presence of silica sulfuric acid under solvent‐free conditions. In this new process, reactions were run at ambient temperature and completed in a short period of time with high yields.     

Novel,Efficient, and Green Procedure for the Knoevenagel Condensation Catalyzed by Diammonium Hydrogen Phosphate in Water

Knoevenagel condensation of various aromatic and heteroaromatic aldehydes with active methylene compounds like methyl and ethyl cyanoacetate, malononitrile, and cyanoacetamide proceeds smoothly with stirring in water in the presence of 4 mol% of diammonium hydrogen phosphate. The reactions were carried out at room temperature in short periods with very simple workup procedure and good to high yields.     

Alum (KAl(SO4)2 · 12H2O): An Efficient and Inexpensive Catalyst for the One-pot Synthesis of 1,3,4-Oxadiazoles under Solvent-Free Conditions

Summary. Alum (KAl(SO₄)₂ · 12H₂O) catalyzed the efficient synthesis of mono- and disubstituted 1,3,4-oxadiazoles by the condensation of acyl hydrazides with orthoesters under solvent-free conditions at 100°C. This methodology offers significant improvements for the synthesis of oxadiazoles with regard to the yield of products, simplicity in operation, inexpensive reagents, and green aspects by avoiding toxic catalysts and solvents.     

Discrete ordinates method for propagation of light in highly scattering vascular tissues

This work considers the propagation of light in a semitransparent layer of vascular tissue, submitted to radiative boundary conditions. The solution procedure must provide accurate light distribution in the layer, so a discrete ordinates method based on the exact transport theory is carried out. An advantage of this method is its ability to account easily for various boundary conditions as well as optical heterogeneity. The influences of anisotropic scattering, optical discontinuity, optical parameters of tissue and refractive index on radiant fluence rate are investigated carefully. It is shown that reflections tend to produce more uniform profiles within the tissue.     

Ionic Liquid Promoted Eco-friendly and Efficient Synthesis of 2,3-Dihydroquinazolin-4(1<Emphasis Type="Italic">H</Emphasis>)-ones

Summary. 2,3-Dihydroquinazolin-4(1H)-ones were efficiently synthesised by the reaction of isatoic anhydride, a primary amine or ammonium acetate, and different aromatic aldehydes in 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([bmim]BF₄) without using any acidic catalyst. Also a bis-derivative of the title compound as a polyheterocyclic system was synthesised successfully in high yield.     

Cache-Oblivious Range Reporting with Optimal Queries Requires Superlinear Space

We consider a number of range reporting problems in two and three dimensions and prove lower bounds on the amount of space used by any cache-oblivious data structure for these problems that achieves the optimal query bound of O(log  _B N+K/B) block transfers, where K is the size of the query output.