Reclaiming spent liquor from cotton reactive dyebaths using nanofiltration membrane for possible reuse of water and salt

During dyeing, salts are placed in a dyebath to aid the fixation of various dyes on to the fabric while bases are added to raise the pH from around neutral to pH 11. Afterwards, the used dyebath solution, called dyebath spent liquor, is discharged with almost all the salts and bases added as well as unfixed dyes. Consequently, a lot of raw materials are lost in the waste stream ending up in the environment as pollutants. In this study, possibilities of reusing water and salts of dyebathes were investigated, using a nanofiltration membrane. When the salt concentration in the spent liquor was increased from 10 to 80 g/L, the salt rejection by membrane was found to decrease initially; however, the salt rejection increased over the time, which was not expected. The aggregation of dye was also studied and found to decrease in the concentrate when the salt concentration was increased. This may be due to the aggregation of salt in the concentrate, which explains the increase in salt rejection. This information is useful for the textile industry in evaluating the treated water quality for the purpose of reuse.

Growing up : risky business?

Young people today increasingly cause adults anxiety. This anxiety translates into a raft of interventions and strategies and programs that target young people. These imaginings reflect and constitute a range of anxieties about the dangers posed by some young people, or to some young people, and how these risks might be economically and prudently managed. These processes can have a range of often negative consequences (intended or otherwise) for individuals and populations of young people. I argue that Foucault's work on disciplinary, sovereign and governmental forms of power provides a generative framework for analysing why growing up is often seen to be a risky business for contemporary populations of young people.

Growing community : the impact of the Stephanie Alexander kitchen garden program on the social and learning environment in primary schools

This article presents results from a mixed-method evaluation of a structured cooking and gardening program in Australian primary schools, focusing on program impacts on the social and learning environment of the school. In particular, we address the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program objective of providing a pleasurable experience that has a positive impact on student engagement, social connections, and confidence within and beyond the school gates. Primary evidence for the research question came from qualitative data collected from students, parents, teachers, volunteers, school principals, and specialist staff through interviews, focus groups, and participant observations. This was supported by analyses of quantitative data on child quality of life, cooperative behaviors, teacher perceptions of the school environment, and school-level educational outcome and absenteeism data. Results showed that some of the program attributes valued most highly by study participants included increased student engagement and confidence, opportunities for experiential and integrated learning, teamwork, building social skills, and connections and links between schools and their communities. In this analysis, quantitative findings failed to support findings from the primary analysis. Limitations as well as benefits of a mixed-methods approach to evaluation of complex community interventions are discussed.

Photoreactive azido-containing silica nanoparticle/polycation multilayers : durable superhydrophobic coating on cotton fabrics

In this study, we report the functionalization of silica nanoparticles with highly photoreactive phenyl azido groups and their utility as a negatively charged building block for layer-by-layer (LbL) electrostatic assembly to produce a stable silica nanoparticle coating. Azido-terminated silica nanoparticles were prepared by the functionalization of bare silica nanoparticles with 3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane followed by the reaction with 4-azidobenzoic acid. The azido functionalization was confirmed by FTIR and XPS. Poly(allylamine hydrochloride) was also grafted with phenyl azido groups and used as photoreactive polycations for LbL assembly. For the photoreactive silica nanoparticle/polycation multilayers, UV irradiation can induce the covalent cross-linking within the multilayers as well as the anchoring of the multilayer film onto the organic substrate, through azido photochemical reactions including C–H insertion/abstraction reactions with surrounding molecules and dimerization of azido groups. Our results show that the stability of the silica nanoparticle/polycation multilayer film was greatly improved after UV irradiation. Combined with a fluoroalkylsilane post-treatment, the photoreactive LbL multilayers were used as a coating for superhydrophobic modification of cotton fabrics. Herein the LbL assembly method enables us to tailor the number of the coated silica nanoparticles through the assembly cycles. The superhydrophobicity of cotton fabrics was durable against acids, bases, and organic solvents, as well as repeated machine wash. Because of the unique azido photochemistry, the approach used here to anchor silica nanoparticles is applicable to almost any organic substrate.

Improving fiber trapping with a contact surface during the ring twisting of two cotton yarns

In this study, a geometrical model was introduced to improve the hair trapping via a surface contacting the yarn-twisting triangle during ring twisting of two single yarns. The fiber-trapping improvement with the contact surface was analyzed theoretically. Then, single Ne 80 ring cotton yarns were used to produce two-ply yarns under different ring-twisting conditions, namely conventional twisting, dry twisting of yarns with a plane surface, wet twisting of yarns with a plane surface, dry twisting of yarns with a grooved surface, and wet twisting of yarns with a grooved surface. Plied yarn properties, including yarn hairiness, strength, and irregularity, were tested. The Student Newman Keuls (SNK) test and variation analysis were also carried out in the SPSS program to study the effect of different contact surfaces on related yarn properties; the significance level was 0.05 for the SNK test and variation analysis. The hairiness of plied yarns was significantly reduced when twisting with the plane or grooved surface, especially for the wet twisting cases. This corresponds well with our model on improving fiber trapping.

Making Connections in Geelong : migrants, social capital and growing regional cities

Migration has been increasingly used to compensate for demographic trends and skill shortages in developed countries. This has resulted in policies to encourage migration to regional areas in order to relieve pressures on liveability and infrastructure in big cities. Like many other regional cities in Victoria, Geelong actively encourages migrants from overseas, from Melbourne and from other parts of rural and regional Australia, by promoting workforce participation, and enhancing lifestyles to attract and retain a growing population. A number of countries including Australia, Canada, Italy and Spain have policies to encourage immigration to locations other than large urban centres to stimulate regional economic development and to ensure immigrants fill skill shortages in regional areas. However, migrants do not always stay long in the regional locations where they initially settle, and new migrants are needed to replace their skills. Given the Australian and Victorian government policy imperatives of encouraging regional migration there is a need to understand how migrants and their families make the social connections that contribute to wellbeing and their retention in regional areas such as Geelong. This paper emerges from a research project on this challenge at Deakin University, in Geelong It discusses some of the issues associated with regional migration and describes how a sound, theoretically informed understanding of social capital can assist employers, governments and community groups (formal and informal) to effectively assist migrants to make social connections and therefore remain in regional cities.

Coloration of cotton fibers with anisotropic silver nanoparticles

Anisotropic silver nanoparticles were assembled on cotton fibers to realize the coloration of cotton. The assembly of silver nanoparticles on fibers was achieved by linking of poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDDA) at room temperature. The silver nanoparticle treated cotton showed different colors because of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) property of silver nanoparticles. The coloration was completed through electrostatic interaction between the PDDA treated cotton surface and the anisotropic silver nanoparticles in the reaction system. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) characterization demonstrated that the morphologies of silver nanoparticles remained unchanged during the coloration process, so the treated cotton inherited the LSPR optical features of silver nanoparticles. Moreover, the cotton colorated with silver nanoparticles showed reasonably good color fastness to washing, which will facilitate the practical application of this coloration process.

Application of growing self-organizing map to distinguish between finger tapping and non tapping from brain images

Growing self-organizing map (GSOM) has been characterized as a knowledge discovery visualization application which outshines the traditional self-organizing map (SOM) due to its dynamic structure in which nodes can grow based on the input data. GSOM is utilized as a visualization tool in this paper to cluster fMRI finger tapping and non- tapping data, demonstrating the visualization capability to distinguish between tapping or non-tapping. A unique feature of GSOM is a parameter called the spread factor whose functionality is to control the spread of the GSOM map. By setting different levels of spread factor, different granularities of region of interests within tapping or non-tapping images can be visualized and analyzed. Euclidean distance based similarity calculation is used to quantify the visualized difference between tapping and non tapping images. Once the differences are identified, the spread factor is used to generate a more detailed view of those regions to provide a better visualization of the brain regions.