The mineral-dust induced activation of pulmonary phagocytes is thought to be involved in the induction of severe lung diseases. The activation of bovine alveolar macrophages (BAM) by silica was investigated by flow cytometry. Short-term incubation (< 10 min) of BAM with silica gel and quartz dust particles induced increases in the cytosolic free calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i), decreases in int...

Low-refractive index silica aerogel is the most convenient radiator for threshold-type Cherenkov counters, which is used for particle identification in high-energy physics experiments. For the BELLE detector at the KEK B-Factory, we have produced about 2 m of hydrophobic silica aerogels of n = 1.01 1.03 using a new production method. The particle identification capability of the aerogel Cherenk...

In this paper, the Diffusion Limited Cluster Aggregation (DLCA) method is employed to reconstruct the three-dimensional network of silica aerogel. Then, simulation of nitrogen adsorption at 77 K in silica aerogel is conducted by the Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) method. To reduce the computational cost and guarantee accuracy, a continuous-discrete hybrid potential model, as well as an adso...

Biosorption of heavy metals can be an effective process for the removal and recovery of heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions. In this study, the batch removal of nickel (II) ions from aqueous solution under different experimental conditions using activated carbon prepared of red alga Gracilaria was investigated in this study. The nickel (II) uptake was dependent on initial pH and initial nic...

A high-resolution calorimetric study has been made on the smectic-A to nematic phase transition in liquid crystals perturbed by the dispersion of 70-Å-diam silica spheres ~aerosils!. The specific heat peak of this transition decreases in amplitude and shifts to lower temperatures with increasing silica density. However, it remains sharp in comparison to the effects of aerogel confinement at the...

the long term effects of sewage water irrigation on soil properties and heavy metal concentrations at rohtak city, haryana (india) was investigated. at each location, soil samples were collected from the upper layer (0-10cm) for determination of various physico-chemical parameters. heavy metals (pb, cu, mn, zn, cd, ni, and fe) were also determined. the chemical analysis of sewage effluent showe...

The longitudinal acoustic velocity in silica aerogel is presented as a function of the interstitial gas type and pressure. This was measured using air-coupled ultrasonic transducers configured for differential pulse transit time measurements. The results are interpreted in terms of the thermal relaxation of the acoustic pulse. The microscale temperature oscillations of the gas and solid phases ...

Due to climate change and anthropogenic activities such as agriculture, mining, urbanization, water contamination has become a very real modern problem. Modern solutions activated carbon, reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, among others, have been employed in the decontamination of water. These methods are, however, expensive set up maintain therefore proved challenge implement developing countri...