Electrochemical water splitting using nano-zeolite Y supported tungsten oxide electrocatalysts

Zeolites are often used as supports for metals and metal oxides because of their well-defined microporous structure and high surface area. In this study, nano-zeolite Y (50–150 nm range) and micro-zeolite Y (500–800 nm range) were loaded with WO₃, by impregnating the zeolite support with ammonium metatungstate and thermally decomposing the salt thereafter. Two different loadings of WO₃ were studied, 3 wt.% and 5 wt.% with respect to the overall catalyst. The prepared catalysts were characterized for their morphology, structure, and surface areas through scanning electron microscope (SEM), XRD, and BET. They were further compared for their electrocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in 0.5 M H₂SO₄. On comparing the bare micro-zeolite particles with the nano-form, the nano-zeolite Y showed higher currents with comparable overpotentials and lower Tafel slope of 62.36 mV/dec. WO₃ loading brought about a change in the electrocatalytic properties of the catalyst. The overpotentials and Tafel slopes were observed to decrease with zeolite-3 wt.% WO₃. The smallest overpotential of 60 mV and Tafel slope of 31.9 mV/dec was registered for nano-zeolite with 3 wt.% WO₃, while the micro-zeolite gave an overpotential of 370 mV and a Tafel slope of 98.1 mV/dec. It was concluded that even with the same metal oxide loading, nano-zeolite showed superior performance, which is attributed to its size and hence easier escape of hydrogen bubbles from the catalyst.     

CGAM: A community and geography aware mobility model

The advances of localization‐enabled technologies have led to huge volumes of large‐scale human mobility data collected from Call Data Records (CDR), Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking systems, and Location Based Social networks (LBSN). These location data that encompass mobility patterns could generate an important value for building accurate and realistic mobility models and hence important value for fields of application including context‐aware advertising, city‐wide sensing applications, urban planning, and more. In this paper, we investigate the underlying spatio‐temporal and structural properties for human mobility patterns, and propose the Community and Geography Aware Mobility (CGAM) model, which characterizes user mobility knowledge through several properties such as home location distribution, community members' distribution, and radius of gyration. We validate the CGAM synthetic traces against real‐world GPS traces and against the traces generated by the baseline mobility model SMOOTH and assess that CGAM is accurate in predicting the performance of flooding‐based and community‐based routing protocols.     

Coupling of enzymatic and immunoassay steps to detect E. coli: a new, highly sensitive tandem technique for the analysis of low levels of bacteria

A tandem technique for the detection of very low levels E. coli within about 2 h is demonstrated. The technique couples the widely employed microbial enzymatic detection methods with an immunoassay step. The bacterial marker enzyme, E. coli β-D-galactosidase, was used in conjunction with synthetic enzyme substrates to produce products that could be measured with a highly sensitive enzyme-labelled immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The commercially available 4-methylumbelliferyl-β-D-galactoside and a newly prepared substrate, 4-methylcoumarin-3-propionate-7-O-β-D-galactoside, were used with an ELISA for 7-hydroxy-4-methylcoumarin to demonstrate the detection of low levels of E. coli. The 2 h test indicates that a few viable bacteria cells could be detected by the tandem procedure. The end point of the test is an ELISA with colorimetric measurement step. The novel approach retains the essential features of the microbial enzymatic detection procedures and provides a highly sensitive detection system that can be used for rapid screening or quantification of viable microbial cells in water samples. The tandem test is generic for commonly employed glycosidases and other marker enzymes for which 4-methylumbillerone substrates are available.     

Bulk weak ferromagnet in ferrimagnetic chains of organic-inorganic hybrid materials based on BDH-TTP and paramagnetic thiocyanato complex anions: (BDH-TTP)[M(isoq)(2)(NCS)(4)], M = Cr(III), Fe(III)

The preparation, X-ray crystal structures, and magnetic properties of two new isostructural charge transfer salts, (BDH-TTP)M(isoq)(2)(NCS)(4) (M = Cr(III) (1), Fe(III) (2), BDH-TTP = 2,5-bis(1,3-dithiolan-2-ylidene)-1,3,4,6-tetrathiapentalene, isoq = isoquinoline), are reported. Crystal data for 1: monoclinic, space group C2/c (#15), a = 16.1363(9) A, b = 19.0874(12) A, c = 12.5075(6) A, beta = 95.70(4) degrees, V = 3833.2(4) A(3), Z = 4, R = 0.0516 for 2844 reflections with I > 2 sigma(I); for 2: monoclinic, C2/c (#15), a = 16.1938(8) A, b = 19.1117(11) A, c = 12.5100(10) A, beta = 94.265(3) degrees, V = 3861.0(4) A(3), Z = 4, R = 0.0479 for 2969 reflections with I > 2 sigma(I). The crystal structure consists of zigzag mixed organic and inorganic layers, and each layer is formed by mixed columns of BDH-TTP radical cations and paramagnetic metal complex anions. Short intermolecular atomic contacts between donor and anion are observed within the column in the c-direction. The two compounds have weak room-temperature electrical conductivities. ESR measurements show a single signal without separating the donor and anion spins, suggesting a pi interaction between the d and pi electrons. For both compounds ferrimagnetic interactions are observed between the nonequivalent donor and anion spins. These materials exhibit bulk canted weak ferromagnetism below 7.6 K for both 1 and 2.     

Courbe des trisécantes à une courbe elliptique lisse de ℙ3

Sans résumé     

Green chemistry approaches to the synthesis of 5-alkoxycarbonyl-4-aryl-3,4- dihydropyrimidin-2(1H)-ones by a three-component coupling of one-pot condensation reaction: comparison of ethanol,water, and solvent-free conditions

A general and practical green chemistry route to the Biginelli cyclocondensation reaction using cerium(III) chloride as the catalyst (25% mol) is described under three different sets of reaction conditions. This method provides an efficient and much improved modification of original Biginelli reaction reported in 1893, in terms of high yields, short reaction times, and simple work-up procedure, and it has the ability to tolerate a wide variety of substitutions in all three components, which is lacking in existing procedures.     

A Study of Risk-exposed Cotton Trading

The international spot-market, risk-exposed, trading of a cotton merchant was studied. A price model for estimating a market price for cotton with varying characteristics was constructed. This formed the input for a trading decision model which predicted the outcome of the merchant taking risky positions.