Bioremediation of direct dyes in simulated textile effluents by a paramorphogenic form of Aspergillus oryzae

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Bioremediation of direct dyes in simulated textile effluents by paramorphogenic form of Aspergillus oryzae

Azo dyes are extensively used for coloring textiles, paper, food, leather, drink, pharmaceutical products, cosmetics and inks. The textile industry consumes the largest amount of azo dyes, and it is estimated that approximately 10 - 15% of dyes used for coloring textiles might be lost in waste streams. Almost all azo dyes are synthetic and resist biodegradation, however, they can be readly reduced by a number of chemical and biological reducing systems. Biological treatment is advantageous over physical and chemical method as result of its low cost and little disturbance to the environment. This research focuses on the utilization of Aspergillus oryzae, to remove some kinds of azo dyes from aqueous solutions. The fungi, physically induced in its paramorphogenic form (called, pellets), were used in the dyes biosorption studies with both non autoclave and autoclaved hyphas, at differents pH values. Thus the goals are the removal of dyes by biosorption and the decrease of its toxicity.

Bioremediation of Dyes in Textile Effluents by Aspergillus oryzae

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Studies of adsorptive interaction between Aspergillus niger and the reactive azo dye Procion Blue MX-G

Aspergillus niger on paramorphogenic form showed to be efficient adsorbent to reactive azo dye Procion Blue MX-G, where it has obtained rates of colour removal above 99% in acid pH, at 120 minutes of equilibrium time. Temperature did not exert expressive influence in the process, and the applicability of Freundlich's, isotherm suggest the occurrence of various molecules layers of adsorbed dye on the substratum surface.

Studies of absorptive interaction between Aspergillus niger and the reactive azo dye Procion Blue MX-G

Aspergillus niger on paramorphogenic form showed to be efficient adsorbent to reactive azo dye Procion Blue MX-G, where it has obtained rates of colour removal above 99% in acid pH, at 120 minutes of equilibrium time. Temperature did not exert expressive influence in the process, and the applicability of Freundlich's, isotherm suggest the occurrence of various molecules layers of adsorbed dye on the substratum surface.

Aplicação de Neurospora crassa para avaliação da biosorção e biodegradação de corantes ácido, xanteno, diretos e reativo

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Comparative Analysis of Azo Dye Biodegradation by Aspergillus oryzae and Phanerochaete chrysosporium

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Promoting the use of cycling as an environmentally and socially sustainable form of transport.

Solar Cities Congress 2008 “Energising Sustainable Communities – Options for Our Future” THEME 3: Climate Change. Impact on Society and Culture. Sub Theme: planning and implementing holistic strategies for sustainable transport Abstract Promoting the use of cycling as an environmentally and socially sustainable form of transport. We need to reduce carbon emissions. We need to reduce fuel consumption. We need to reduce pollution. We need to reduce traffic congestion. As obesity levels and associated health problems in the developed nations continue to increase we need to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Few if any would argue with these statements. In fact many would consider these problems to be amongst the most urgent that our society faces. What if we had a vehicle that uses no fossil fuel to power it, creates no pollution, takes up far less space on the roads and promotes an active, healthy lifestyle. What if this machine would have energy efficiency levels 50 times greater than the car? This is a solution that is here, now and ready to go and many of us already own one. It is the humble bicycle. Although bicycle sales in Australia now outnumber car sales, bicycle use as a form of transport (as opposed to recreation) only constitutes around 3% to 4% of all trips. So, why are bicycles the forgotten form of transport if they promise to deliver the benefits that I have just outlined? This paper examines the underlying reasons for the relatively low use of bicycles as a means of transport. It identifies the areas of greatest potential for encouraging the use of the world’s most efficient form of transport. Tim Williams - May 2007

Estimating total cross sections from neutron-nucleus collisions using a simple functional form

Total cross sections for neutron scattering from nuclei, with energies ranging from 10 to 600 MeV and from many nuclei spanning the mass range 6Li to 238U, have been analyzed using a simple, three-parameter, functional form. The calculated cross sections are compared with results obtained by using microscopic (g-folding) optical potentials as well as with experimental data. The functional form reproduces those total cross sections very well. When allowance is made for Ramsauer-like effects in the scattering, the parameters of the functional form required vary smoothly with energy and target mass. They too can be represented by functions of energy and mass.

Consonance in urban form : morphogenetic analysis of architectural elements within urban forms

"By understanding how places have evolved, we are better able to guide development and change in the urban fabric and avoid the incongruity created by so much of the modern environment" (MacCormac, R (1996), An anatomy of London, Built Environment, Dec 1996 This paper proposes a theory on the relevance of mapping the evolutionary aspects of historical urban form in order to develop a measure of evaluating architectural elements within urban forms, through to deriving parameters for new buildings. By adopting Conzen's identification of the tripartite division of urban form; the consonance inurban form of a particular palce resides in the elements and measurable values tha makeup the fine grain aggregates of urban form. The paper will demonstrate throughthe case study of Brisbane in Australia, a method of conveying these essential components that constitute a cities continuity of form and active usage. By presenting the past as a repository of urban form characteristics, it is argued that concise architectural responses that stem from such knowledge should result in an engaged urban landscape. The essential proposition is that urban morphology is a missing constituent in the process of urban design, and that the approach of the geographical discipline to the study of urban morphology holds the key to providing the evidence of urban growth characteristics, and this methodology suggests possibilities for an architectural approach that can comprehensively determine qualitative aspects of urban buildings. The relevance of this research lies in a potential to breach the limitations of current urban analysis whilst continuing the evolving currency of urban morphology as an integral practice in the design of our cities.

Structuring free-form tagging in online news

Tagging has become one of the key activities in next generation websites which allow users selecting short labels to annotate, manage, and share multimedia information such as photos, videos and bookmarks. Tagging does not require users any prior training before participating in the annotation activities as they can freely choose any terms which best represent the semantic of contents without worrying about any formal structure or ontology. However, the practice of free-form tagging can lead to several problems, such as synonymy, polysemy and ambiguity, which potentially increase the complexity of managing the tags and retrieving information. To solve these problems, this research aims to construct a lightweight indexing scheme to structure tags by identifying and disambiguating the meaning of terms and construct a knowledge base or dictionary. News has been chosen as the primary domain of application to demonstrate the benefits of using structured tags for managing the rapidly changing and dynamic nature of news information. One of the main outcomes of this work is an automatically constructed vocabulary that defines the meaning of each named entity tag, which can be extracted from a news article (including person, location and organisation), based on experts suggestions from major search engines and the knowledge from public database such as Wikipedia. To demonstrate the potential applications of the vocabulary, we have used it to provide more functionalities in an online news website, including topic-based news reading, intuitive tagging, clipping and sharing of interesting news, as well as news filtering or searching based on named entity tags. The evaluation results on the impact of disambiguating tags have shown that the vocabulary can help to significantly improve news searching performance. The preliminary results from our user study have demonstrated that users can benefit from the additional functionalities on the news websites as they are able to retrieve more relevant news, clip and share news with friends and families effectively.