In-situ cadmium phytoremediation using solanum nigrum L. : the bio-accumulation characteristics trail

In this study, Solanum nigrum L. was used in-situ for Cd phytoremediation in Cd polluted soil on Shenyang Zhangshi Irrigation area (SZIA) in 2008. The performance of the plant over the whole growth stage was assessed. Results showed, during the whole experimental stage, the aboveground biomass of single Solanum nigrum L. grew by a factor of 190, from 1.6 ± 0.4 g to 300.3 ± 30.2 g with 141.2 times extracted Cd increase from 0.025 ± 0.001 to 3.53 ± 0.16 mg. Both the distribution of biomass and amount of extracted Cd in the aboveground part of the plant changed according to the growth of the plant. Particularly, the percentage of biomass and extracted Cd in the stem increased from 20% to 80% and from 11% to 69%, respectively. The bioconcentration factor and transfer factor both varied significantly during the growth of the plant and the lowest values were measured at the flowering stage (0.94 ± 0.31 and 3.48 ± 1.14 respectively). The results in this paper provide reference values for the future research on the application of Solanum nigrum L. in phytoremediation and on chemical or/and agricultural strategies for phytoextraction efficiency enhancement.

Diatoms : self assembled silica nanostructures, and templates for bio/chemical sensors and biomimetic membranes

In this review we highlight recent advances in the understanding of biosilica production, biomodification of diatom frustules and their subsequent applications in bio/chemical sensors, and as a model membrane for filtration and separation.

Investigation on localized surface plasmon resonance of different nano-particles for bio-sensor applications

This paper proposes a novel sinusoidal shape nano-particle employed in localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) devices. Numerical modeling demonstrates advantages offered by the proposed nano-sinusoid on LSPR enhancement against other nano-particles including noble nano-triangles and nano-diamonds. Although nano-triangles exhibit high concentration of the electric field near their tips, when illuminated with a light polarized along the tip axis, they present only one hot spot at the vertex along the polarization direction. To create a structure with two hot spots, which is desired in bio-sensing applications, two nano-triangles can be put back-to-back. Therefore, a nano-diamond particle is obtained which exhibits two hot spots and presents higher enhancements than nano-triangles for the same resonant wavelength. The main drawback of the nano-diamonds is the fluctuation in their physical size-plasmon spectrum relationships, due to a high level of singularity as the result for their four sharp tip points. The proposed nano-sinusoid overcomes this disadvantage while maintaining the benefits of having two hot spots and high enhancements.

Performance of reverse osmosis (RO) for water recovery from permeates of membrane bio-reactor (MBR)

In this study, permeate from a hollow fiber polyethylene (PE) membrane bio-reactor (MBR) system treating synthetic agricultural wastewater was fed into a cellulose acetate brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO30 2540) membrane system; three different trans-membranes pressures (TMPs) of 1000, 2500, and 4000 kPa were selected to evaluate the system performance in terms of general operating parameters as well as the removal of chosen important potential fouling water quality parameters. The results showed that highest corrected permeate flux rate was at a TMP of 2500 kPa, whereas lowest recorded at a TMP of 4000 kPa. Similar situation prevailed in water recovery rate. But temperature corrected specific fluxes decreased as the applied TMPs increased. In all selected TMPs, more than 96% of salinity was removed. Permeate from MBR as feed to reverse osmosis required frequent chemical cleaning than the microfiltration/ultrafiltration (MF/UF) permeates and granular media filter (GMF) filtered in order to maintain the required rate of product water. One of the reasons for this frequent chemical cleaning is due to higher total organic carbon as well as total nitrogen (TN) in the MBR permeate. This result needs to be further evaluated through field trials.

Tri-component bio-composite materials prepared using an eco-friendly processing route

We report on the blending of three natural polymers, raw cotton, silk and wool, using ionic liquids as the dissolving media. We find that with increased content of wool and silk the thermal degradation temperature of the new bio films increases. This is due to an increase in the hydrogen bond network between the blended polymers. We also investigated the role of the coagulating solvent by coagulating the bio films using water, methanol or isopropanol. Again, we find the coagulating solvent impacts the final properties of the bio films with water shown to coagulated films with the best material properties.

A novel bio-kinematic encoder for human exercise representation and decomposition - Part 1 : Indexing and modelling

Current bio-kinematic encoders use velocity, acceleration and angular information to encode human exercises. However, in exercise physiology there is a need to distinguish between the shape of the trajectory and its execution dynamics. In this paper we propose such a two-component model and explore how best to compute these components of an action. In particular, we show how a new spatial indexing scheme, derived directly from the underlying differential geometry of curves, provides robust estimates of the shape and dynamics compared to standard temporal indexing schemes.

A novel bio-kinematic encoder for human exercise representation and decomposition - Part 2 : Robustness and Optimisation

Bio-kinematic characterisations of human exercises constitute dealing with parameters such as velocity, acceleration, joint angles, etc. A majority of these are measured directly from various sensors ranging from RGB cameras to inertial sensors. However, due to certain limitations associated with these sensors, such as inherent noise, filters are required to be implemented to subjugate the effect from the noise. When the two-component (trajectory shape and dynamics) bio-kinematic encoding model is being established to represent an exercise, reducing the effect from noise embedded in raw data will be important since the underlying model can be quite sensitive to noise. In this paper, we examine and compare some commonly used filters, namely least-square Gaussian filter, Savitzky-Golay filter and optimal Kalman filter, with four groups of real data collected from Microsoft Kinectc , and assert that Savitzky- Golay filter is the best one when establishing an underlying model for human exercise representation.