Production of metakaolin from industrial cellulose waste

Research focused on the transformation and utilization of industrial wastes into products of commercial interest plays an increasingly important role. Residual pulp can become useful in the manufacture of different materials, providing high value to this waste and reducing its environmental impact when disposed of improperly in the environment. The main constituents of this waste are kaolin and calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). Starting from kaolin, metakaolin can be produced by calcination of the residue at 630?°C for 2?h in a rotary reactor with air flow, followed by solubilization with hydrochloric acid to remove the CaCO₃. The development of technological alternatives aimed at the reuse of certain wastes can result in applications of real economic interest to the chemical industry and ceramics and glass, which is the case in this study. The raw material and metakaolin obtained were analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis and derivative thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy with promising results. This is because metakaolin was obtained free of contamination by other materials.     

Extensions of automorphisms and gauge symmetries

We characterize the automorphisms of aC ^*-algebra which extend to automorphisms of the crossed product by a compact group dual. The case where the inclusion is equipped with a group of automorphisms commuting with the dual action is also treated. These results are applied to the analysis of broken gauge symmetries in Quantum Field Theory to draw conclusions on the structure of the degenerate vacua on the field algebra.Dedicated to Huzihiro ArakiResearch supported by MURST and CNR, GNAFA     

The frequency-domain method reveals the dimeric structure of Na,K-ATPase

Lucifer yellow and lissamine rhodamine sulfonyl hydrazine were used as the donor and the receptor, respectively, for Förster energy transfer measurements to determine the location of the subunit in the native Na,K-ATPase from pig kidney. It was found that (1) the subunits are located in one functional complex, i.e., the dimer ()₂ appears to be the functional complex of Na,K-ATPase, and (2) the subunits in the functional enzyme complex in the membrane are not located next to each other but are rather well separated. The distance between fluorophores covalently attached to the subunits was found to be 5.3 nm.     

Stability of benzoporphyrin photosensitizers in water/ethanol mixtures: pKa determination and self‐aggregation processes

Benzoporphyrin monoacid derivatives, here named B3A and B3B, are promising new drugs for photodynamic therapy. Although both isomers show interesting characteristics as photosensitizing compounds, they have some distinct physicochemical properties such as the tendency to self‐aggregate in water‐rich media. Because pH drives the presence of each species, the pK_a of these compounds assumes strategic importance. However, traditional micro‐titration methods and UV–Vis absorption techniques fail to give reliable pK_a values due to the characteristics of this highly complex system, such as the precipitation of hydrophobic species, close pK_a values, and high absorption band superposition. In the present work, chemometric tools are employed to evaluate pK_a, and the kinetic tendency of monomers to undergo self‐aggregation is investigated. In solvent mixtures at low water percentage in ethanol, both B3A and B3B are stabilized in a monomeric state. However, in mixtures with a high water content, self‐aggregation takes place, mainly under a mild pH acid condition (3 < pH < 6), in which the prevalent protolytic species of both isomers is the neutral charged form, compounds with carboxylic and porphyrin free‐base groups. It is demonstrated that both isomers can undergo aggregation following a self‐catalytic mechanism, which is 2000 times slower to B3A than B3B. For B3A, the aggregation is manifested by a decrease in the monomer band with the aggregation band probably superposed to that of the monomer. For B3B, together with the decrease in the monomer band, a new band related to self‐aggregates is observed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A One-Pot Entry to a Novel 3-H-benzo[d]pyrazolo[1,5-b]isothiazole Ring System

Summary The phosphorus ylide obtained from the reaction between 2-aminobenzo[d]isothiazol-3-one and dimethyl acetylenedicarboxylate in the presence of triphenylphosphine undergoes a smooth intramolecular Wittig-type reaction to produce, in a one-pot reaction, 3-H-benzo[d]pyrazolo[1,5-b]isothiazole-2,3a-dicarboxylic acid dimethyl ester, a novel functionalized heterocyclic compound.     

Automorphisms of the q-oscillator algebra and basic orthogonal polynomials

Certain automorphisms of the quantum oscillator algebra are shown to provide an algebraic interpretation for q-generalizations of the Charlier polynomials.     

Transient dynamics of an adiabatic NEMS

This paper is focused on the transient dynamics of an adiabatic nano‐electromechanical system (NEMS), consisting of a nano‐mechanical oscillator coupled to a quantum dot. By numerically solving the nonlinear stochastic differential equation governing the oscillator, the time evolution of the oscillator position, of the dot occupation number and of the current are studied. Different parameter settings are studied where the system exhibits bi‐stable, tri‐stable or mono‐stable behavior on a finite‐time horizon. It is shown that, after a typically long transient, the system under investigation exhibits no hysteretic behavior and that a unique steady state is reached, independently of the initial conditions. The transient dynamics is marked out by one or two well separated characteristic times, depending on the considered case (i.e., mono‐ or multi‐stable). These times are evaluated for a dot on‐resonance or off‐resonance. It turns out that the characteristic time scales are long in comparison to the period of the uncoupled oscillator, particularly at low bias, suggesting that the predicted transient dynamics may be observed in state‐of‐the‐art experimental setups.

     

Ecological interaction and phylogeny, studying functionality on composed networks

We study a class of composed networks that are formed by two tree networks, T_P and T_A, whose end points touch each other through a bipartite network B_PA. We explore this network using a functional approach. We are interested in how much the topology, or the structure, of T_X (X=A or P) determines the links of B_PA. This composed structure is a useful model in evolutionary biology, where T_P and T_A are the phylogenetic trees of plants and animals that interact in an ecological community. We make use of ecological networks of dispersion of fruits, which are formed by frugivorous animals and plants with fruits; the animals, usually birds, eat fruits and disperse their seeds. We analyse how the phylogeny of T_X determines or is correlated with B_PA using a Monte Carlo approach. We use the phylogenetic distance among elements that interact with a given species to construct an index κ that quantifies the influence of T_X over B_PA. The algorithm is based on the assumption that interaction matrices that follows a phylogeny of T_X have a total phylogenetic distance smaller than the average distance of an ensemble of Monte Carlo realisations. We find that the effect of phylogeny of animal species is more pronounced in the ecological matrix than plant phylogeny.     

Temperature dependence of the Ho L2‐edge XMCD spectra of Ho6Fe23

An X‐ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) study performed at the Ho L_2,3‐edges in Ho₆Fe₂₃ as a function of temperature is presented. It is demonstrated that the anomalous temperature dependence of the Ho L₂‐edge XMCD signal is due to the magnetic contribution of Fe atoms. By contrast, the Ho L₃‐edge XMCD directly reflects the temperature dependence of the Ho magnetic moment. By combining the XMCD at both Ho L₂‐ and L₃‐edges, the possibility of determining the temperature dependence of the Fe magnetic moment is demonstrated. Then, both μ_Ho(T) and μ_Fe(T) have been determined by tuning only the absorption L‐edges of Ho. This result opens new possibilities of applying XMCD at these absorption edges to obtain quantitative element‐specific magnetic information that is not directly obtained by other experimental tools.