VANADIUM COMPOUNDS are used in dye, ink, and glass manufacture, as an alloy component in the steel industry, and as a catalyst in the production of sulfuric acid. Toxic exposures have been reported in the extraction of vanadium from ores and residues (1-5) and in the cleaning of burners fired with vanadium-bearing oil (6-8). The outstanding symptom associated with excessive inhalation of vanadi...

Some of the component metals of the alloys used for total joint prostheses are toxic and dissolve in the body fluids. It is important to establish how toxic these metals are and to assess the risk of localised tissue necrosis around the prostheses. This has been investigated by incubating primary monolayer cultures of human synovial fibroblasts with various preparations of metals for periods up...

2014 Measurements of magnetic susceptibility and spontaneous magnetization on face centred cubic platinum-iron alloys having compositions around Pt3Fe and also on alloys with lower iron contents, are reported. In the Pt3Fe superlattice region the alloys appear to be antiferromagnetic when ordered and ferromagnetic when disordered. The more dilute alloys are ferromagnetic, even down to 2 at. % o...

Introduction Direct methanol fuel cells are very important as a clean, low cost and portable power source because of several environmental problems in traditional energy producing systems. Compared to the hydrogen fueled PEMFCs, direct methanol PEMFCs are more compact and can be used in power portable electric devices. Platinum is the most active electro-catalyst for the electro-oxidation of me...

The present contribution reports on the features of platinum-based systems supported on vanadium oxide nanotubes. The synthesis of nanotubes was carried out using a commercial vanadium pentoxide via hydrothermal route. The nanostructured hybrid materials were prepared by wet impregnation using two different platinum precursors. The formation of platinum nanoparticles was evaluated by applying d...

This study describes a new simple, sensitive and selective catalytic kinetic spectrophotometricmethod for the determination of vanadium (V). The method is based upon the catalytic effect ofvanadium (V) on the oxidation of Carminic acid by bromate in sulfuric acid media. The reaction wasfollowed spectrophotometrically by measuring the decrease in absorbance at 490 nm and thedependence of sensiti...

An alternative interface for flow injection-capillary electrophoresis based on electrokinetic injection is described. The interface basically consists of tubular platinum and a commercially available standard tee connector. The tubular platinum works as not only an electrode, but also a waste outlet of a split sample solution. The availability of the proposed interface is evaluated by the separ...

Metals and metal compounds have been used in medicine for several thousands of years. In this review we summarized the anti-cancer activities of the ten most active metals: arsenic, antimony, bismuth, gold, vanadium, iron, rhodium, titanium, gallium and platinum. The first reviewed metal, arsenic, presents the anomaly of displaying anti-cancer and oncogenic properties simultaneously. Some antim...

Low-temperature fuel cells are limited by the oxygen reduction reaction, and their widespread implementation in automotive vehicles is hindered by the cost of platinum, currently the best-known catalyst for reducing oxygen in terms of both activity and stability. One solution is to decrease the amount of platinum required, for example by alloying, but without detrimentally affecting its propert...