Porous nanostructured materials are demonstrated to be very promising in catalysis due to their well accessible active sites. Thermally stable metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as hard templates are successfully utilized to afford porous metal oxides and subsequently metal sulfides by a nanocasting method. The resultant metal oxides/sulfides show considerable Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface ...

Pore water and solid phase samples were collected from the upper 50 cm of a peat profile at four sites within a 10 m area in Kleinstuck Marsh, a minerotropic fen located in Kalamazoo, MI. Although the chosen sites are in close proximity to each other, they differ with respect to vegetation species and density. Pore water analyses for a suite of redox sensitive species (pH, alkalinity, dissolved...

A copper mesogenic side-chain polymer (P-C(15)CuC(18)) was cross-linked onto the capillary wall as a stationary film for gas chromatography (GC) separation of alkyl sulfides. These organic sulfides are of interest for their large health impact because of their wide range of volatiles and high reactivities toward metals. Different GC parameters for optimal separation efficiency are discussed for...

With an average concentration of 35 nM, vanadium (essentially present in the form of ion pairs NaH2VO4 -) is the second-to-most abundant transition metal in sea water, outclassed only by molybdenum (present as molybdate MoO4 2−, ca. 100 nM). Vanadate-dependent haloperoxidases (VHPOs) can be present in marine brown, green and red algae, in (symbiotic) marine cyanobacteria, in Streptomyces bacter...

Evaluating the degree of metal exposure and bioaccumulation in estuarine organisms is important for understanding the fate of metals in estuarine food webs. We investigated the bioaccumulation of Hg, methylmercury (MeHg), Cd, Se, Pb, and As in common intertidal organisms across a watershed urbanization gradient of coastal marsh sites in New England to relate metal exposure and bioaccumulation i...

A gastropod from a deep-sea hydrothermal field at the Rodriguez triple junction, Indian Ocean, has scale-shaped structures, called sclerites, mineralized with iron sulfides on its foot. No other organisms are known to produce a skeleton consisting of iron sulfides. To investigate whether iron sulfide mineralization is mediated by the gastropod for the function of the sclerites, we performed a d...

In sediments that contain iron monosulfide, cadmium, nickel, lead, zinc, and silver(I) form insoluble metal sulfides that lower the metal ion activity in the sediment-pore water system, thereby reducing toxicity. However, metal sulfides are susceptible to oxidation by molecular oxygen resulting in metal solubilization. To better understand the sources and sinks of metal sulfides in sediments, i...

The Paleoproterozoic Lomagundi Event is an interval of 130-250 million years, ca. 2.3-2.1 billion years ago, in which extraordinarily (13)C enriched (>10‰) limestones and dolostones occur globally. The high levels of organic carbon burial implied by the positive δ(13)C values suggest the production of vast quantities of O2 as well as an alkalinity imbalance demanding extremely low levels of wea...

Photocatalytic water splitting and organic reforming based on nano-sized composites are gaining increasing interest due to the possibility of generating hydrogen by employing solar energy with low environmental impact. Although great efforts in developing materials ensuring high specific photoactivity have been recently recorded in the literature survey, the solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion ...