Peat moss is the most widely used source of organic matter for growing horticultural crops in the United States. The demand for peat as a substrate constituent for bedding and pot plants has remarkably increased in recent years, thus reducing the availability and increasing cost (Nappi and Barberis, 1993). Composts may serve as qualitatively and economically as competitive alternative sources o...

Graphene has exceptional electronic, optical, mechanical and thermal properties, which provide it with great potential for use in electronic, optoelectronic and sensing applications. The chemical functionalization of graphene has been investigated with a view to controlling its electronic properties and interactions with other materials. Covalent modification of graphene by organic diazonium sa...

Knowledge of chemical reaction mechanisms can facilitate catalyst optimization, but extracting that knowledge from a complex system is often challenging. Here, we present a data-intensive method for deriving and then predictively applying a mechanistic model of an enantioselective organic reaction. As a validating case study, we selected an intramolecular dehydrogenative C-N coupling reaction, ...

In this work, we report a novel method for selective oxidation of benzyl alcohols to benzaldehydes. Neither solvent nor promoters are needed: a polymeric microporous membrane acts as a barrier to “keep in contact” the two phases: the organic phase containing the substrate, benzyl alcohols and the products, benzaldehydes and the aqueous phase with the catalyst and the oxidant, hydrogen peroxide....

In contrast to the majority of O2-activating enzymes, which depend on an organic cofactor or a metal ion for catalysis, a particular group of structurally unrelated oxygenases is functional without any cofactor. In this study, we characterized the mechanism of O2 activation in the reaction pathway of a cofactor-independent dioxygenase with an α/β-hydrolase fold, which catalyzes the oxygenolytic...

Sustainable production of bioplastics by heterotrophic microbes has been restricted by the limited resources of organic substrates and the energy required for biomass harvest. Here, the easy-to-harvest cyanobacterium (Chlorogloea fritschii TISTR 8527), from which the biomass instantaneously settled to the bottom of liquid culture, was utilized to produce poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) using a two...

By applying the femtosecond laser ablation technique, we have simultaneously atomized and ionized large organic molecules on a solid substrate. This observation is in contrast with the photoionization of cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by femtosecond laser in the gas phase where little fragmentation has been observed. Our result will promote the development of single-shot chemical analyses of isot...

Thermal and electrical transport in a new class of nanocomposites composed of random isotropic two-dimensional ensembles of nanotubes or nanowires in a substrate (host matrix) is considered for use in the channel region of thin-film transistors (TFTs). The random ensemble of nanotubes is generated numerically and each nanotube is discretized using a finite volume scheme. To simulate transport i...

ZnO nanorods inorganic-organic heterostructured light-emitting diodes have been demonstrated on a cheap/disposable paper substrate and applied in multiplexed photoelectrochemical immunoassay.

The influent type of organic matter (dissolved or particulate) on the characteristics of two subsurface wastewater infiltration systems (SWISs) was investigated. One of the SWISs was fed with dissolved organic matter (glucose, assumed to be readily biodegradable) and the other with particulate organic matter (starch, assumed to be slowly biodegradable). Results showed that both biofilm growth a...