592 research outputs found
Waste-to-Energy as a Method of Refuse Disposal: An Analysis of Sustainable Technologies and Their Environmental Impact
No full textNowadays, waste-to-energy (WtE) is considered the most effective disposal system for nonrecyclable materials. There is general concern with regard to potential environmental and health risks connected with WtE plants. Data from epidemiological studies, conducted since the 1980s, had shown that old-generation plants have a negative environmental impact. Owing to innovations in both technology and methodology involved in waste processing, new-generation WtE plants have considerably mitigated such negative impact.
The aim of the study is to assess how legislation, technological innovation, and mitigation strategies can help and reduce the repercussions that waste-to-energy might have on both the environment and people’s health.
The first step in this study consisted in investigating the current European and Italian legislation, as well as the operating mechanisms and technologies available to mitigate environmental impacts. Successively, the second step consisted in verifying their actual effectiveness when applied to the most recent plants. In particular, ten modern incinerations, new or restored in the last decade, were examined in detail.
The case studies’ analysis and their comparison showed that, when adequately submitted to a health impact assessment (HIA) and in presence of valid monitoring plans, the most advanced facilities are able to keep emissions way below the limits prescribed by the law, mitigating environmental and health impacts. In addition, the study highlighted some areas of possible future interventions and actions.
Finally, the outcome of the research is to propose a set of guidelines, legal tools, and appropriate technologies, as exportable and scalable healthy strategies in several contexts
sj-docx-1-eae-10.1177_0958305X231199242 - Supplemental material for Biodiesel production by transesterification of low-cost feedstock (waste cooking oil) using mesoporous cubic-MgO nanocatalyst: Optimization using response surface methodology
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-1-eae-10.1177_0958305X231199242 for Biodiesel production by transesterification of low-cost feedstock (waste cooking oil) using mesoporous cubic-MgO nanocatalyst: Optimization using response surface methodology by Amirthavalli Velmurugan, Anita R. Warrier, and Baskar Gurunathan in Energy & Environment</p
sj-docx-2-eae-10.1177_0958305X231199242 - Supplemental material for Biodiesel production by transesterification of low-cost feedstock (waste cooking oil) using mesoporous cubic-MgO nanocatalyst: Optimization using response surface methodology
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-2-eae-10.1177_0958305X231199242 for Biodiesel production by transesterification of low-cost feedstock (waste cooking oil) using mesoporous cubic-MgO nanocatalyst: Optimization using response surface methodology by Amirthavalli Velmurugan, Anita R. Warrier, and Baskar Gurunathan in Energy & Environment</p
Effect of S-diclofenac, a novel hydrogen sulfide releasing derivative inhibit rat vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation
No full textS-diclofenac (2-[(2,6-dichlorophenyl) amino] benzene acetic acid 4-(3H-1,2,dithiol-3-thione-5-yl) phenyl ester) is a novel molecule comprising a hydrogen sulfide (H2S)-releasing dithiol-thione moiety attached by an ester linkage to diclofenac. Effect of S-diclofenac (H2S donor) on cell proliferation was investigated on the primary and immortalized rat aortic vascular smooth muscle cells (SMC). Smooth muscle cell proliferation has been considered as a key event in vascular injury in diseases such as atherosclerosis and restenosis after invasive intervention. Clonogenic cell survival assay showed a dose dependent (10-100 microM) decrease in cell survival. Flow cytometric analysis showed that the asynchronized cells are more sensitive than the cells that are synchronized and revealed that the cells in G1 phase are not affected by the treatment of the S-diclofenac. Asynchronized smooth muscle cells treated with the S-diclofenac showed an increase in apoptotic cell death. S-diclofenac treatment also resulted in stabilization of p53 coupled with the induction of downstream proteins such as p21, p53AIP1 and Bax. S-diclofenac did not up-regulate cell levels of the antiapoptotic protein Bcl-2. However, when the cells are synchronized a stimulatory effect of cell growth with the decrease in apoptosis, p53 and p21 was evident. S-diclofenac inhibits smooth muscle cell growth and may play a role in the lesion formation at sites of the vascular injury. The present results suggest that S-diclofenac may be useful for the prevention of smooth muscle cell proliferation in diseases such as vascular obstructive and restenosis
sj-docx-1-pie-10.1177_09544089231223035 - Supplemental material for Optimization of fused deposition modeling parameters to fabricate morphogenesis light weight structure with high tensile and compression strength
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-1-pie-10.1177_09544089231223035 for Optimization of fused deposition
modeling parameters to fabricate morphogenesis light weight structure
with high tensile and compression strength by R Baskar, V Muthukumaran, S Nandhakumar and S Arivazhagan in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part E: Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering</p
Primal Infon Logic: Derivability in Polynomial Time
No full textPrimal infon logic (PIL), introduced by Gurevich and Neeman in 2009, is a logic for authorization in distributed systems. It is a variant of the (and, implies)-fragment of intuitionistic modal logic. It presents many interesting technical challenges -- one of them is to determine the complexity of the derivability problem. Previously, some restrictions of propositional PIL were proved to have a linear time algorithm, and some extensions have been proved to be PSPACE-complete. In this paper, we provide an O(N^3) algorithm for derivability in propositional PIL. The solution involves an interesting interplay between the sequent calculus formulation (to prove the subformula property) and the natural deduction formulation of the logic (based on which we provide an algorithm for the derivability problem)
GraSPI: Extensible software for the graph-based quantification of morphology in organic electronics
No full textWe describe GraSPI - extensible graph-based software implemented as a C/C++ package. GraSPI computes a large set of descriptors relevant to organic electronics given a segmented 2D or 3D microstructure. The package represents a microstructure as an equivalent graph and harnesses algorithms from graph theory to compute those descriptors efficiently. It also includes a suite of tools for converting data between various formats and post-processing the raw results from the graph analysis. Herein, we provide illustrative examples of GraSPI’s capabilities in extracting microstructure descriptors and demonstrate the advantages that a graph-based approach affords via computational complexity analysis.This article is published asJivani, Devyani, Jaroslaw Zola, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, and Olga Wodo. "GraSPI: Extensible software for the graph-based quantification of morphology in organic electronics." SoftwareX 17 (2022): 100969. DOI: 10.1016/j.softx.2021.100969. Copyright 2021 The Author(s).Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Posted with permission
Feature engineering for microstructure-property mapping in organic photovoltaics
No full textLinking the highly complex morphology of organic photovoltaic (OPV) thin films to their charge transport properties is critical for achieving high performance material system that serves as a cost-efficient approach for energy harvesting. In this paper, a novel unsupervised feature engineering framework is developed and used to establish reduced-order structure-property linkages for OPV films. This framework takes advantage of digital image processing algorithms to identify the salient material features of OPVs undergoing the charge transport phenomenon. These material states are then used to obtain a low-dimensional representation of OPV microstructures via 2-point spatial correlations and principal component analysis. It is found that in addition to the material PC scores, two distance-based metrics are required to complete the microstructure quantification of complex OPVs. A localized version of the Gaussian process (laGP) is then used to link the material PC scores as well as the two distance-based metrics to the short-circuit current of OPVs. It is demonstrated that the unsupervised feature engineering framework presented in this paper in conjunction with the laGP can lead to high-fidelity and accurate data-driven structure-property linkages for OPV films.This is a pre-print of the article Hashemi, Sepideh, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, Stephen Casey, Ji Su, and Surya R. Kalidindi. "Feature engineering for microstructure-property mapping in organic photovoltaics." arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.01897v1. (2021). Copyright 2021 The Author(s). CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Posted with permission
From Petri Dishes to Model Ecosystems
No full textModel ecosystems could provide significant insight on the evolution and behavior of real ecosystems. We discuss the advantages and limitations of common approaches like mesocosms. In this context, we highlight recent breakthroughs that allow for the creation of networks of organisms with independently controlled environments and rates of chemical exchange.This is a manuscript of an article published as Siemianowski, Oskar, Kara R. Lind, Xinchun Tian, Matt Cain, Songzhe Xu, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, and Ludovico Cademartiri. "From Petri Dishes to Model Ecosystems." Trends in Plant Science (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2018.03.006. Posted with permission.</p
Solventless Reactions for the Synthesis of Organotin Clusters and Cages
No full textOrganotin clusters and cages have been synthesized in quantitative yields by using a benign solventless synthetic methodology. Using this method a variety of structural forms, which include the drum, O-capped cluster, tetranuclear oxo cage, discrete, and polymeric compounds, have been synthesized. All these compounds (1-11) have been characterized by spectroscopic and analytical techniques. The new compounds, which include the hexameric drum [n-BuSn(O)OCOAd]6 (Ad = adamantyl) 9, a triorganotin-based discrete structure Ph3SnO2C-C6-H 22,4,6-Me3 (10), and a polymer Ph3SnOSO 2-C6H3-2,5-Me2 (11), have been characterized by single-crystal X-ray crystallography
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