Clay minerals have been used in medicinal applications since Aboriginal times (Carretaro, 2002; Wilson, 2003). Clay poultices are used to heal wounds; people eat clays to coat stomach linings and soothe indigestion; animals eat clay containing trace elements (e.g., As) that can kill worms. The reasons that various clay minerals are effective as medicines may be as variable as the ailment, but b...

Composites based on high density polyethylene (HDPE), pine flour, and organic clay were made by melt compounding and then injection molding. The influence of clay on crystallization behavior, mechanical properties, water absorption, and thermal stability of HDPE/pine composites was investigated. The HDPE/pine composites containing exfoliated clay were made by a two-step melt compounding procedu...

We conduct an analysis of the shapes of molecular cloud cores using recently compiled catalogs of observed axis ratios of individual cores mapped in ammonia or through optical selection. We apply both analytical and statistical techniques to de-project the observed axis ratios in order to determine the true distribution of cloud core shapes. We nd that neither pure oblate nor pure prolate cores...

We conduct an analysis of the shapes of molecular cloud cores using recently compiled catalogs of observed axis ratios of individual cores mapped in ammonia or through optical selection. We apply both analytical and statistical techniques to de-project the observed axis ratios in order to determine the true distribution of cloud core shapes. We find that neither pure oblate nor pure prolate cor...

Airborne mineral dust particles serve as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), thereby influencing the formation and properties of warm clouds. It is therefore of atmospheric interest how dust aerosols with different mineralogy behave when exposed to high relative humidity (RH) or supersaturation (SS) with respect to liquid water. In this study the subsaturated hygroscopic growth and the supersatura...

Clay from deposit Bilalovac, Central Bosnia, was characterized by chemical, IR, XRD and DTA/TG analysis. The major mineral components are kaolinite, illite, muscovite and quartz. Raw clay may be used for pottery products and terracotta. Clay was beneficiated by wet method removing fraction over 20 μm. Beneficiation process increased content of kaolinite and decreased content of quartz. Benefici...

High resolution (<10 nm) transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy-®ltering TEM (EFTEM), and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) have been used for the direct microstructural imaging and analysis of clay-organic matter aggregates in ®ne-grained aquatic sediments from Jourdan River Estuary, MS, USA. EFTEM and EELS allow rapid, high-resolution spatial mapping and analysis of light eleme...

Some organisms disperse energy, associated with the transportation of resource, which is not necessarily food. Stingless bees of Central Amazonia (Melipona flavolineata and M. lateralis) collect clay in banks along streams for nest building. The moisture of the clay varies along the bank, and bees collect clay from specific location, indicating that there is some sort of preference regarding th...

Sodium montmorillonite (Na-MMT) clay was modified with three different unnatural amino acids in order to design intercalated clay structures that may be used for bone biomaterials applications. Prior work on polymer-clay nanocomposites (PCNs) has indicated the effect of the appropriate choice of modifiers on enhancing properties of PCNs. Our X-ray diffraction results indicate an increase in the...

Define a mixture with volume V containing a certain amount of clay (Vc) and sand (Vs), i.e. V = Vc + Vs. The intrinsic porosity of the clay is φc, defined as the ratio of pore volume in the clay V c p to the volume of clay, i.e. φc = V c p /Vc, and the intrinsic porosity of sand is φs = V s p /Vs. The surface areas of the pores in the clay and in the sand are noted S p and S s p respectively. S...