The effect of the conformational state of the polymer coil on the properties of protein-polymer conjugates has been studied for the conjugates of antibody (monoclonal antibody from 6C5 clone against inactivated rabbit muscle glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase; Ab) with poly(methacrylic acid) (PMAA) or poly-(acrylic acid) (PAA). The pH-dependencies of molecular properties and structural param

In this study, novel asymmetric integral cation exchange membranes were prepared by the wet phase inversion of sulfonated polysulfone (SPSf) solutions. SPSf with different degrees of sulfonation (DS) was synthesized by variation in the amount of chlorosulfonic acid utilized as a sulfonating agent. The characterization of SPSf samples was performed using FTIR and1H-NMR techniques. SPSf with a DS of

Ion exchange membranes (IEMs) have consolidated applications in energy conversion and storage systems, like fuel cells and battery separators. Moreover, in the perspective to address the global need for non-carbon-based and renewable energies, salinity-gradient power (SGP) harvesting by reverse electrodialysis (RED) is attracting significant interest in recent years. In particular, brine solutions

Salinity Gradient Power - Reverse Electrodialysis (SGP-RED) is a promising membrane-based technology to harvest the energy of mixing from solutions of different ionic concentration. Unfortunately, currently available commercial ion exchange membranes – being not specifically designed for RED – are far from satisfying the requirements of this operation, especially when operated with hyper-concentra

Integration of emerging membrane processes [i.e., forward osmosis (FO), membrane distillation (MD), reverse electrodialysis (RED)] and mature membrane processes [i.e., reverse osmosis (RO)] can address the need for efficient desalination solutions. Utilization of different membrane units in pre- and post-treatment stages allows lowering the energy requirements and environmental impacts of the proc

The effectiveness of Salinity Gradient Power - Reverse Electrodialysis (SGP-RE) in real practice is still not clearly defined due to the lack of specific studies in literature, being investigations in large part limited to pure NaCl solutions or aqueous mixtures of two salts. In this work, we experimentally assessed the impact of natural feed streams (collected from Licetto river and Tyrrenian sea

This paper documents the development of a sustainable greenhouse system which incorporates a greenhouse, reverse electrodialysis (RED), reverse osmosis, and a dehumidification desalination system aiming to support water and energy self-sufficient agriculture in arid regions with a saline groundwater feed. The system is referred to as the sustainable greenhouse (SGH). The aim is to generate enough

Reverse Electrodialysis is today recognized as one of the most promising technology to harvest Salinity Gradient Power (SGP-RE). However, the effectiveness of SGP-RE in real practice is still not clearly defined due to the lack of specific studies in literature, being in large part limited to investigations on pure NaCl solutions. In this work we experimentally investigated the effect of Mg2+, the

Background and aims – Agricultural intensification and loss of farmland heterogeneity have contributed to population declines of wild bees and other pollinators, which may have caused subsequent declines in insect-pollinated wild plants. Material and methods – Using data from 37 studies on 22 pollinator-dependent wild plant species across Europe, we investigated whether flower visitation and seed

The spread of invasive pests is increasing due to greater global transportation and climate change-mediated range shifts. In a new community, these invasive species provide a novel resource that native predators or parasitoids can evolve to utilise. For invasive agricultural pests, this could provide top-down control; however, initial attack rates on invasive species in the wild are generally low.

Multi-carrier technique is a backbone for modern commercial networks. However, the performances of multi-carrier systems in general depend greatly on the qualities of acquired channel state information (CSI). In this paper, we propose a novel deep-learning based processing pipeline to estimate CSI for payload time-frequency resource elements. The proposed pipeline contains two cascaded subblocks,

An improved understanding of past interactions between terrestrial vegetation and various forcings, such as climate change, human impact, and paleofire, is crucial for assessing impacts of future global change on terrestrial ecosystems. This study seeks to find the key factor or factors that have driven Holocene vegetation change along the East Asian monsoon margin. Several high-resolution pollen