The influence of ammonium peroxodisulphate on the functional state of human hemoglobin was studied. The investigation techniques included: laser photolysis, spectrophotometry and pH measurements. Two different actions of the peroxodisulphate ions upon hemoglobin seem to occur; a) a proton consuming process and an increase of the 4th CO-binding rate constant, l'4, but not yet oxidation of the he...

Water oxidation catalysis constitutes the bottleneck for the development of energy-conversion schemes based on sunlight. To date, state-of-the-art homogeneous water oxidation catalysis is performed efficiently with expensive, toxic and earth-scarce transition metals, but 3d metal-based catalysts are much less established. Here we show that readily available, environmentally benign iron coordina...

The Baltic Sea is one of the most eutrophic marine areas in the world. The role of nitrogen as a eutrophicating nutrient in the Baltic Sea has remained controversial owing to a lack of understanding of nitrogen cycling in the area. We investigated the seasonal variation in sediment nitrification, denitrification, anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox), and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to amm...

[1] Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) has been recognized as an important process converting fixed nitrogen to N2 in many marine environments, thereby having a major impact on the present-day marine nitrogen cycle. However, essentially nothing is known about the importance of anammox in past marine nitrogen cycles. In this study, we analyzed the distribution of fossil ladderane lipids, der...

The effect of hydrodynamic shear force on the nitrogen removal performance of anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) granules was studied in four batch-type Expanded Granular Sludge Bed (EGSB) reactors. The reactors were operated under different hydrodynamic shear force (0.021, 0.024, 0.026 and 0.029 N m, respectively) by control the circulation flow rate. The results showed that nitrite and am...

The oceanic crust forms two thirds of the Earth's surface and hosts a large phylogenetic and functional diversity of microorganisms. While advances have been made in the sedimentary realm, our understanding of the igneous rock portion as a microbial habitat has remained limited. We present the first comparative metagenomic microbial community analysis from ocean floor basalt environments at the...

An acceptorless dehydrogenation of heterocycles catalyzed by frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) was developed. Oxidation with concomitant liberation of molecular hydrogen proceeded in high to excellent yields for N-protected indolines as well as four other substrate classes. The mechanism of this unprecedented FLP-catalyzed reaction was investigated by mechanistic studies, characterization of reacti...

In experiments carried out in greenhouses, some authors have shown that ammonium sulphate induces greater soil acidity and salinity than other sources of N. Moreover, nitrif ication inhibitors (NI) tend to cause ammonium to accumulate in soil by retarding its oxidation to nitrate. This accumulated ammonium would also have an effect on soil salinity. Consequently, the aim of this paper was to ev...

The biotransformation of some micropollutants has previously been observed to be positively associated with ammonia oxidation activities and the transcript abundance of the archaeal ammonia monooxygenase gene (amoA) in nitrifying activated sludge. Given the increasing interest in and potential importance of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA), we investigated the capabilities of an AOA pure culture...

The antioxidant activity of five new compounds from a group of quaternary ammonium salts with antioxidant function has been investigated. The effect of the compounds on the degree of lipid oxidation in the erythrocyte membrane subjected to UV radiation was studied. It was found that all the salts used decreased oxidation of the lipids in the erythrocyte membrane. The antioxidant activity of the...