In this study, we use the bacterium Escherichia coli to examine evolutionary responses to environmental acidity fluctuating temporally among pH 5.3, 6.3, 7.0, and 7.8 (5,000-15 nM [H(+)]). Two experimental protocols of temporal variation were used. One group (six replicate lines) of populations evolved for 2,000 generations during exposure to a cycled regime fluctuating daily between pH 5.3 and...

Vapor adsorption is an important process influencing the migration and the fate of many organic pollutants in the environment. In this study, vibrational sum frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy was used to study the adsorption of two surface acidity probe molecules, 4-picoline (pKa = 5.94) and piperidine (pKa = 11.24), onto the amorphous SiO2 surface. The adsorption of 4-picoline onto the s...

Hydrogen peroxide is not only an important oxidant in itself; it also serves as both sink and temporary reservoir for other important oxidants including HOx (OH and HO2) radicals and O3 in the atmosphere. Its partitioning between gas and aqueous phases in the atmosphere, usually described by its Henry's law constant (K(H)), significantly influences its role in atmospheric processes. Large discr...

The first acidity scale to be established in a pure solvent other than water was the result of the pioneering work of Conant, Wheland, and McEwen in ether or ben~ene .~ During the past 20 years an ion-pair acidity scale covering an "effective pKa rangefrom about 15 to 40 has been developed in cyclohexylamine (CHA),6 and similar studies in other low-dielectric-constant solvents including 1,2-dim...

Acidity of water from abandoned underground mines decreases over time, and the rate of decrease can help formulate remediation approaches and treatment system designs. The objective of this study was to determine an overall acidity decay rate for above-drainage underground mines in northern West Virginia from a large data set of mines that were closed 50 to 70 yr ago. Water quality data were ob...