•Energy cane has high energy density and can be used as the feedstock of bioeconomy.•Ethanol is a commercial and economically attractive biofuel for decarbonization.•Public policies are mandatory for ...biofuels competitiveness face to oil market.
Brazil was the first country to use bioethanol in large volumes, still in the 70′s, to cope with the oil crisis. The development of vehicles powered by ethanol included the biofuel definitively in the Brazilian energy matrix, ensuring its demand. To increase the ethanol production, a new cane variety has been developed, the energy cane, which can potentially triple the productivity of biomass per hectare and reduce the production costs. Since most of the sugar produced by energy cane is insoluble, second-generation mills have been installed in Brazil, and nowadays the technology is in a consolidation phase. To increase the stability of the biofuels market and to attend the Nationally Determined Contribution at COP21, Brazil has created the RenovaBio, a program by which the biofuels producers receive financial titles, the CBIOs, in the proportion of the biofuel production volume and efficiency, and under the condition of respecting the environmental legislation. Fuels distributors will have an obligation to buy CBIOs to compensate emissions beyond their mandates, but CBIOs will also be available to any interested investor, with significant potential for a strong appreciation. As a result, the expectation is to have a substantial increase in sustainable biofuels production, mainly ethanol, which could become a world commodity to supply international markets in the bioeconomy world.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The shear modulus G of the sputum obtained by expectoration from cystic fibrosis patients is fundamental to determine the mesh size of the polymeric network pervading the sputum, a parameter related ...to lung functionality. The Akaike criterion revealed that in 55.2% of the examined samples, the best approach (among those considered) to determine G relied on the mechanical spectrum fitting by the generalised Maxwell model with relaxation times scaled by a factor 10. Thus, this approach was adopted to evaluate the mesh size distribution combining G knowledge with the determination of the average magnetic relaxation time (T.sub.2m) of sputum. As G and T.sub.2m determination can be negatively affected by sputum contamination by saliva, whose presence increases T.sub.2m and depresses G, we developed a proper "decontamination" procedure to obtain more reliable T.sub.2m and G estimations (necessary in 21% of the samples). This procedure allowed to strengthen the T.sub.2m correlation with lung functionality evaluated by FEV.sub.1 (normalised air volume emitted in the first second during a spirometry test). Keywords: rheology, low field NMR, cystic fibrosis, shear modulus, mesh size, saliva contamination
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Abstract Astronomy is a discipline primarily reliant on visual data. However, alternative data representation techniques are being explored, in particular “sonification,” namely, the representation ...of data into sound. While there is increasing interest in the astronomical community in using sonification in research and educational contexts, its full potential is still to be explored. This study measured the performance of astronomers and nonastronomers to detect a transit-like feature in time-series data (i.e., light curves), which were represented visually or auditorily, adopting different data-to-sound mappings. We also assessed the bias that participants exhibited in the different conditions. We simulated the data of 160 light curves with different signal-to-noise ratios. We represented them as visual plots or auditory streams with different sound parameters to represent brightness: pitch, duration, or the redundant duration and pitch. We asked the participants to identify the presence of transit-like features in these four conditions in a session that included an equal number of stimuli with and without transit-like features. With auditory stimuli, participants detected transits with performances above the chance level. However, visual stimuli led to overall better performances compared to auditory stimuli and astronomers outperformed nonastronomers. Visualisations led to a conservative response bias (reluctance to answer “yes, there is a transit”), whereas sonifications led to more liberal responses (proneness to respond “yes, there is a transit”). Overall, this study contributes to understanding how different representations (visual or auditory) and sound mappings (pitch, duration, and duration and pitch) of time-series data affect detection accuracy and biases.
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•Rheology and LF-NMR allowed describing the gelation kinetics of CS/β-GP.•T = 30 °C represents a threshold for the gelation process.•It was possible evaluating the time evolution of ...the gel mesh size upon gelation.
This work deals with the effect of temperature on the thermal-gelation process of water solutions containing chitosan β-glycerolphosphate disodium salt hydrate. In particular, the attention is focused on the role played by temperature on the gel final properties, a very important aspect in the frame of drug delivery systems. The study was performed by combining rheology and low field nuclear magnetic resonance, two approaches that revealed to be highly synergic as they can detect different aspects of the developing polymeric network. This study indicates that 30 °C represent a sort of threshold for both the gelation kinetics and the gel final properties. Indeed, above this temperature, gelation kinetics was rapid and yielded to a strong gel. On the contrary, a slow kinetics and a final weak gel occurred below 30 °C. Finally, rheology and low field NMR allowed, independently, evaluating the time evolution of the network mesh size upon gelation.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Personalized medicine (PM) aims to establish a new approach in clinical decision-making, based upon a patient's individual profile in order to tailor treatment to each patient's characteristics. ...Although this has become a focus of the discussion also in the psychiatric field, with evidence of its high potential coming from several proof-of-concept studies, nearly no tools have been developed by now that are ready to be applied in clinical practice. In this paper, we discuss recent technological advances that can make a shift toward a clinical application of the PM paradigm. We focus specifically on those technologies that allow both the collection of massive as much as real-time data, i.e., electronic medical records and smart wearable devices, and to achieve relevant predictions using these data, i.e. the application of machine learning techniques.
This paper deals with the physical and mathematical modelling description of drug release from matrix systems. In the introduction, matrix systems are considered in the wide frame of the controlled ...release systems and the concept of mathematical model is briefly discussed. Then, matrix structure and topology are matched, analysing the characteristics of the three-dimensional network constituting them. In this context, drug release mechanisms are considered with particular emphasis on the key factors ruling the release kinetics, such as matrix swelling, erosion, drug dissolution (re-crystallisation), drug diffusion, drug - polymer interaction, initial drug distribution and particle size distribution (for powdered matrix systems). The mathematical modelling section firstly considers the empirical and semi-empirical models that have the great advantage of showing analytical solutions. Then, the attention is focused on theoretical approaches regarding matrix swelling equilibrium and kinetics, drug dissolution, drug diffusion, drug - polymer interaction, initial drug distribution and matrix erosion. Finally, release kinetics from polydispersed spherical particles is studied. This review points out the fact that the comprehension of the phenomena ruling drug release from matrix systems is appropriate from both the physical and modelling point of view, although further improvements are always possible and desirable.
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The prediction of drug dissolution profiles is crucial for elucidating the pharmacokinetic behaviour of drugs and the bioavailability of dosage forms. In this work, we develop a ...mathematical model to describe the dissolution process of irregularly shaped particles. We use a complete dissolution model that accounts for both surface kinetics and convective diffusion. The mechanistic relationship between the mass transfer coefficient and the local curvature is derived from the fundamental physical laws governing these processes. Our model theoretically shows that the dissolution rate depends nonlinearly on the surface curvature. The subsequent recrystallization process in the bulk fluid is also considered. The main result of this work is its simplicity, since only two coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations are needed to describe the dissolution process. Another remarkable advantage is the possibility to determine the model parameters using common independent techniques, so that the importance of the wettability of solids on the dissolution process can be evaluated. Finally, the proposed model demonstrated the importance of particle shape in describing the experimental dissolution data of theophylline monohydrate.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
9.
The design of the MEG II experiment Baldini, A. M; Baracchini, E; Bemporad, C ...
European physical journal. C, Particles and fields,
05/2018, Volume:
78, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The MEG experiment, designed to search for the Formula omitted decay, completed data-taking in 2013 reaching a sensitivity level of Formula omitted for the branching ratio. In order to increase the ...sensitivity reach of the experiment by an order of magnitude to the level of Formula omitted, a total upgrade, involving substantial changes to the experiment, has been undertaken, known as MEG II. We present both the motivation for the upgrade and a detailed overview of the design of the experiment and of the expected detector performance.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
•Aqueous concentrated Laponite-scleroglucan systems are studied under shear conditions.•Flow and oscillatory tests show synergistic effects of clay-polymer blending.•RBC model provides a satisfactory ...correlation of viscosity vs shear stress data.•RBC parameters and viscoelastic moduli offer a good description of shear thinning.•Significant aging effects are observed in Laponite system and Laponite rich blends.
Both Laponite and scleroglucan can find several applications in various fields (from industrial to biomedical one) in virtue of their peculiar features and rheological properties displayed in aqueous phases. Structural states of Laponite dispersions strongly depend on concentration and ionic strength. When attractive and repulsive interparticle interactions are so effective that they lead to arrested states (attractive gel or repulsive glass), the rheological behavior of the dispersion undergoes a sharp transition, from quasi-Newtonian to markedly shear thinning and viscoelastic. Conversely, scleroglucan solutions gradually change to weak gels with increasing polymer concentration. The present work is concerned with aqueous Laponite-scleroglucan mixed systems, obtained according to different preparation modes, and is aimed at examining how much the content and proportion of both components affect the viscoelastic and flow properties of the mixed system.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
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