Properties of CNCs obtained from cellulose with various polymorphs were investigated and compared.

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Conductive hydrogels have emerged as promising material candidates for multifunctional strain sensors attributing to their similarity to biological tissues, good wearability, and high accuracy of information acquisition. However, it is...

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Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been applied for the multi-elemental analysis of fertilizer. With a set of 11 fertilizer samples containing different levels of phosphorus and potassium, it was identified that the line intensity of the analyte does not follow a straightforward correlation with the element concentration with the presence of matrix effects. Instead, the line intensity of a given analyte element is not only related to that analyte, but also to other elements present in the samples. Further analysis reveals the correlations among the line intensities of the main components. Based on the correlation analysis, a set of calibration models were generated for phosphorus and potassium with the method of partial least squares (PLS) analysis, which is known as a multivariate calibration method. The prediction accuracy and reproducibility of these PLS models were then validated using independent LIBS measurements. The results show that the predicted concentrations with these models provided by LIBS measurements are in good agreement with the reference concentrations, which confirms that the LIBS technique has good potential for the in situ rapid determination of the main elements present in fertilizer.

This paper reports on an approach for separating vanillin and syringaldehyde (VSA) from oxygen delignification spent liquor using non-polar macroporous resin. The effects of temperature and pH on the adsorption isotherms were studied. The adsorption capacity and adsorption equilibrium constant were obtained using the Langmuir adsorption model at pH<4.5, where the ionization of the VSA to ionic forms was negligible. The standard enthalpy change was calculated using the van't Hoff equation and clearly showed that the adsorption is an exothermic process. The effect of pH on the adsorption isotherm is well-described by a modified Langmuir model and shows that the adsorption equilibrium constant decreases significantly with the increasing pH. The VSA adsorbed on macroporous resin was eluted by ethyl ether. The separated VSA contained 37.51% vanillin, 31.88% syringaldehyde. The recoveries of VSA were 96.2 and 94.7%, respectively.

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A fluorescent logic gate probe has been constructed for sensing two biologically interactive signaling molecules, H2S and NO. This probe showed distinct fluorescence signals towards H2S and NO in aqueous media and in live cells. The strategy may provide new evidence that the logic gate can serve as an ideal approach for sensing multiple targets.