The saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks ) is a key characteristic of porous media, describing the rate of water flow through saturated porous media. It is an indispensable parameter in a broad range of simulation models that quantify saturated and/or unsaturated water flow. The constant-head permeameter test is a common laboratory method to determine Ks on undisturbed soil samples collected fr...

Sucrose hydrolysis reaction, catalysed by invertase under microwave irradiation was carried out in aqueous, isopropanol + water and polyethylene glycol + water system. The effect of conventional and microwave heating on the rate of hydrolysis was studied under a range of physical exposure conditions. The catalytic activity of invertase in aqueous and organic solvents were measured at different ...

Random distortions naturally affect images taken through atmospheric turbulence or wavy water. They pose new 3D recovery problems. Distortions are caused by the volumetric field of turbulent air or the 3D shape of water waves. We show methods that recover these 3D distorting media. Moreover, it is possible to triangulate objects beyond the refracting medium. Applications include sensing and stu...

Biological specimens contain up to 80% or more water which must be substituted in fixed cells (with the exception of special cryo-techniques) by some kind of embedding media to allow mechanical support for the sectioning process. Usually, embedding media cannot directly replace water, and fixation is followed by a sequence of dehydrating solutions from which the last must be miscible with the e...

Janus nanoparticles were prepared by interfacial ligand-exchange reactions of hexanethiolate-protected gold (AuC6) nanoparticles with 3-mercapto-1,2-propanediol (MPD) at the air|water interface. As nanoscale analogues to conventional amphiphilic molecules, the resulting Janus nanoparticles were found to form oil-in-water micelle-like or water-in-oil reverse micelle-like superparticulate structu...

AIM To select carbazole-degrading bacteria able to survive and metabolize carbazole in biphasic organic-water media and to study the factors affecting carbazole degradation in such conditions. METHODS AND RESULTS In this research a new carbazole-degrading strain was isolated from hot springs in Mexico. This bacterium was preliminary identified as Burkholderia sp. IMP5GC and was able to grow u...

The simultaneous flow of oil and water in porous media is described by relative permeability curves, mainly derived from laboratory experiments. Relative permeability is of paramount importance in predicting reservoir production performance and drive mechanisms and its value depends largely on the volume fraction of fluids present in the test samples. Nowadays X-ray scanners are one of the most...