Search Results (157)

Spray cosmetics couple formulation composition with actuator design and biological targets, so their performance is governed by rapid, nonequilibrium interfacial processes that cannot be predicted from in-bottle stability or equilibrium surface tension alone. This targeted narrative review integrates evidence across storage stability, atomization, droplet flight and evaporation, deposition, film formation, active delivery, inhalation safety and environmental fate. It examines how surfactant molecular structure, micellar replenishment, dynamic surface tension, interfacial viscoelasticity and extensional rheology influence droplet-size distributions, wetting, spreading and deposition. Particular attention is given to competing effects: enhanced breakup may increase airborne fine fractions; stronger interfacial films may impair sprayability; enhanced penetration may reduce barrier tolerance; and bio-based origin does not necessarily imply a lower life-cycle burden. Across moisturizing, sunscreen, hair- and scalp-care, makeup-setting, cleansing-foam and emerging functional sprays, this review develops an interface-to-outcome framework and a multiobjective operating-window concept linking formulation and device variables to efficacy, manufacturability, safety and sustainability. The available evidence supports product-specific, whole-process validation rather than optimization against any single equilibrium property, while highlighting the need for spray-relevant dynamic measurements, realistic exposure assessment and validated formulation–device co-design. Full article

Micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) are increasingly recognized as emerging contaminants in drinking water, yet quantitative data remain limited due to analytical challenges. In this study, the occurrence, morphology, and polymer composition of MNPs were investigated in commercial drinking water from Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, including ultrapure water, tap water, and five bottled mineral waters. A dual-stage cascade filtration system combining silicon filters (5 µm pore size) and aluminum oxide membranes (90 nm pore size) was employed for size-selective particle separation. Retained particles were characterized using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Raman spectroscopy. Tap water exhibited the highest concentration of microparticles, whereas ultrapure water showed minimal microparticle contamination. Nanoparticles were detected in all samples, including ultrapure water, with mean particle sizes below 1 µm, highlighting the pervasive nature of nanoscale plastic contamination. Raman analysis identified polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as the most frequently detected synthetic polymer, together with polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). The results demonstrate that no drinking water source tested in this study was free of detectable MNPs and underline the need for standardized analytical approaches capable of reliably detecting MNPs in drinking water. Full article

MP contamination in drinking water is an emerging public health concern, yet standardized analytical workflows and exposure assessments remain limited and fragmented. This study provides an exploratory assessment of MP exposure through drinking water, combining particle-resolved analysis with consumption-based estimates. Laser Direct Infrared (LDIR) spectroscopy was applied within the analytical workflow to characterize MPs across different drinking water supply types. Ten drinking-water samples (five bottled, two tap, two public dispensers, and one office dispenser) were analyzed within a 10–500 µm size window, and particle-resolved results were combined with a consumption survey to support preliminary exposure estimates. MPs in the 10–150 µm range were detected in six of ten samples, while tap waters and all blanks were particle-free, supporting analytical robustness. Bottled waters showed the highest MP abundances (6–148 particles L⁻¹) and mass concentrations (0.03–22.4 µg L⁻¹). Particle-size distributions were right-skewed and dominated by particles ≤ 30 µm. PET, PU, PA, and ABS predominated, consistent with packaging and dispensing origins. EDI estimates for bottled-water consumers ranged from 0.1008 to 0.3023 µg kg-bw⁻¹ day⁻¹ across three consumption scenarios (1–3 L day⁻¹). Despite the limited sample size, the results support LDIR for source discrimination and exposure screening, providing a basis for future research. Full article

Background: The intake of mineral water for therapeutic purposes (crenotherapy) in digestive system disorders is a long-established practice, but there are still few controlled clinical studies confirming the effects of natural mineral water rich in bicarbonate. Objective: To verify whether the daily intake of Aqua 3 bicarbonate natural mineral water is able to improve digestion in a population of patients with functional dyspepsia and gastroesophageal reflux disease symptoms. Methods: Patients with a diagnosis of functional dyspepsia, formulated in accordance with the Rome IV criteria, were subjected to three 2-week intake periods: a tap water period (wash-out), a bicarbonate natural mineral water period, and an oligomineral water period. The mineral water bottles were anonymized by removing the identifying labels. The primary efficacy endpoint was the change in the Patient Assessment of Upper Gastrointestinal Disorders–Symptom Severity Index (PAGI-SYM) total score. The secondary endpoints were: improvements in the PAGI-SYM subscale scores, the use of antacids, and the self-assessment of efficacy of digestion. Power analysis indicated that a minimum of 48 pairs were required and, to ensure adequate sample size, 50 subjects were enrolled. Results: The PAGI-SYM total score and the six subscale scores significantly decreased after bicarbonate mineral water intake and significantly increased after oligomineral water supplementation. During the bicarbonate mineral water period, antacid use decreased significantly, with nine patients discontinuing antacid medication (p = 0.004). During the subsequent oligomineral water period, antacid use increased, with seven patients requiring new antacid administration, although this increase did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.070). The comparison between changes observed during the bicarbonate and oligomineral water periods was significant (p = 0.005). In addition, the scores of the patients’ subjective assessments of the effectiveness of their digestion were significantly better after the intake of bicarbonate water than after intake of oligomineral water. Conclusions: In line with the evidence reported in the literature, the preliminary findings suggest that the intake of Aqua 3 bicarbonate mineral water may alleviate dyspeptic and reflux-related symptoms and improve digestive effectiveness in patients with functional dyspepsia. Given the exploratory design, small sample size, and fixed treatment sequence, these results should be interpreted as hypothesis-generating and require confirmation in adequately powered randomized controlled trials. The intake of Aqua 3 bicarbonate mineral water proved to be a simple, safe, and natural intervention capable of improving digestive symptoms in patients with functional dyspepsia and reflux-related disorders while promoting the digestive process. Full article

Designing sustainable closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) networks requires jointly assessing node-level operational attributes (recovery efficiency, processing capacity, unit cost) and inter-node spatial structure. Existing methods, including mixed-integer programming, multi-objective metaheuristics, and graph-matching, typically optimize a single cost dimension and do not decompose structural connectivity from attribute-level inefficiency. We propose a Fused Gromov–Wasserstein (FGW) diagnostic framework that combines the Wasserstein distance (attribute similarity) and the Gromov–Wasserstein distance (structural alignment) via a convex trade-off parameter α, solved using the conditional gradient algorithm. Supply–capacity imbalances are resolved by marginal rescaling, with residual unabsorbed mass reported as a diagnostic indicator of infrastructure shortfall. The framework is applied to an eight-echelon PET bottle recovery and filament manufacturing network across 24 synthetic benchmark instances at three scale classes. The FGW cost decomposes exactly into feature and structural components, allowing bottleneck arcs to be diagnosed as attribute-driven or structure-driven. Under this benchmark, bottleneck cost decreases with network size, the most frequent bottleneck arc shifts from the collection interface in small networks to the mid-chain processing handoff in large networks, and attribute heterogeneity accounts for the majority of FGW cost (57.9%, conditional on the normalization and weighting scheme used) across all 144 arc–instance combinations. These results position FGW as a tractable, interpretable diagnostic layer for circular supply chain analysis, complementing rather than replacing classical CLSC design models. Full article

Drinking behavior is an important parameter in laboratory animal experiments. Traditionally, the amount of fluid consumed is recorded manually by the experimenter, who weighs the bottle at predetermined timepoints to calculate the intake. This approach is labor-intensive and involves human intervention, which can disturb the animals and affect their natural drinking patterns. Automated drinkometer systems have been developed to enable continuous and automated recording of fluid consumption. One advantage of these devices is that they allow researchers not only to measure total fluid intake but also to analyze the microstructure of drinking behavior (e.g., number of licks, bouts, and inter-bout intervals). However, these systems typically require dedicated cages equipped with proprietary drinkometers, making them highly expensive and often unsuitable for monitoring fluid consumption under standard home cage conditions. Here, we describe the development of a new cost-effective microcontroller-based device for continuous monitoring of liquid consumption and analysis of licking microstructure, which can be integrated with existing cages. The system is based on capacitive sensing technology for the assessment of liquid consumption. A customized bottle handler and capacitive sensor have been designed, which can be mounted on a standard 250 mL sized bottle for data acquisition. The device has been tested both in mice and in rats. The results demonstrated that for both animal species the system reproducibly and reliably recorded fluid consumption, also allowing for licking analysis. The data are acquired autonomously through custom devices and directly transferred to a computer for storage and analysis. Full article

While various disturbances in organisms have been reported following long-term oral exposure to small plastic particles (microplastic particles, MPs), the effects of acute, short-term encounters remain underrepresented in scientific research. In this study, adult male Wistar rats were orally gavaged with MPs of three different sizes (~41 µm, 70 µm, or 106 µm; dose: 35 mg/kg), originating from poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) bottles. Twenty-four hours post-exposure, the impact on overall health indicators, including food and water intake, sensorimotor function and clinical signs of toxicity, in addition to serum biochemical markers related to organ function and oxidative stress, were assessed. Although no overt sensorimotor impairments or visible toxicity signs were observed in all MPs-treated groups, several investigated biochemical parameters were significantly altered. Water intake was also modified, whereas reduced food intake occurred only in the group treated with median-sized MPs, suggesting that acute exposure to MPs can lead to early physiological and biochemical responses. The obtained results, compared to the data extracted by using machine-learning (ML) tools and GPT-5 model within the available literature, highlighted the importance of investigating the acute effects of MPs, which may precede or contribute to long-term health consequences. Full article

Microplastics spread through the environment in various ways. Inland waters are an ideal medium for their dispersal, as they collect pollutants from various sources and transport them over long distances. From there, microplastics can enter the marine environment, break down into smaller particles or end up in drinking water treatment plants. However, the fate, transport and potential health effects of microplastics after ingestion of drinking water and water in food are not yet fully understood. It is therefore necessary to evaluate the quantification and identification of microplastics in drinking water by analysing real samples in order to assess the potential impact on human health. To this end, microplastic contamination in 32 treated drinking water samples from a surface water treatment plant in north-eastern Italy were analysed using micro-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (µ-FT-IR). The results indicated low levels of contamination, with all the samples containing less than 170 microplastics per litre, which is in line with European drinking water levels. Polyolefins with size 50–500 µm, such as polypropylene and polyethylene, were the predominant polymers detected (50.2%), while surprisingly polyethylene terephthalate was scarcely present (0.1%, size range 10–50 µm). Statistical analysis revealed a significant negative correlation between microplastic concentration and sampling volume, with larger volumes yielding fewer particles. This inconsistency likely results from the lack of bottle rinsing when only a fraction of the sampling volume is filtered. It was also found that rinsing the sampling bottles with ethanol alone prior to analysis was sufficient to ensure accurate quantification. These results highlight the challenges in standardising the detection of microplastics in drinking water and underline the need for optimised sampling protocols. Full article

DeepVariant has revolutionized the field of genetic variant identification by reframing variant detection as an image classification problem. However, despite its wide adoption in bioinformatics workflows, the tool continues to evolve mainly through the expansion of training datasets, while its core neural network architecture—Inception V3—has remained unchanged. In this study, we revisited the DeepVariant design and presented a prototype of a modernized version that supports alternative neural network backbones. As a proof of concept, we replaced the legacy Inception V3 model with a mid-sized EfficientNet model and evaluated its performance using the benchmark dataset from the Genome in a Bottle (GIAB) project. Alternative architecture demonstrated faster convergence, a twofold reduction in the number of parameters, and improved accuracy in variant identification. On the test dataset, updated workflow achieved consistent improvements of +0.1% in SNP F1-score, enabling the detection of up to several hundred additional true variants per genome. These results show that optimizing the neural architecture alone can enhance the accuracy, robustness, and efficiency of variant calling, thereby improving the overall quality of sequencing data analysis. Full article

Molar incisor hypomineralisation (MIH) is a developmental defect affecting permanent first molars and often the incisors too. Hypomineralised second primary molars (HSPM) have been proposed as potential early indicators of MIH. Aim: The aim was to identify potential aetiological factors associated with MIH and assess their relationship with HSPM in a pilot study. Methods: A cross-sectional case–control study was conducted with 120 patients (60 cases and 60 controls), aged 7–15 years, from the Paediatric Dentistry Postgraduate Programme. MIH was diagnosed following European Academy of Paediatric Dentistry (EAPD) guidelines. Parents completed a structured questionnaire on potential aetiological factors. Results: MIH was significantly associated with maternal smoking during pregnancy (p = 0.013), birth hypoxia (p = 0.013) and the use of amoxicillin and inhalation therapy during infancy (p < 0.001). It was also associated with tonsillitis (p = 0.022), bronchiolitis (p = 0.005) and other respiratory disorders (p = 0.049). HSPM was associated with anaemia and hypotension during pregnancy (p = 0.001), bottle-feeding (p = 0.044) and urinary tract infections (p = 0.003). No statistically significant association was found between MIH and HSPM. Conclusions: This pilot study has identified specific prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal factors associated with MIH and HSPM. The findings emphasise the clinical relevance for early diagnosis and management and highlight the need for studies with larger sample sizes to validate these associations. Full article

Solid waste presents a very large problem in the developed world. Waste plastics, which make up a large part of solid waste, have high energy value, which is discarded if they are not treated properly. Most of the plastic found in solid waste is produced from petrochemical material, so it can be used in resource recovery processes to produce various materials. One promising resource recovery process is the pyrolysis process, from which pyrolytic oil, gas, and solid residue are obtained. Pyrolytic oils have properties that are similar to conventional fossil fuels, and are promising fuels for use in heat engines or heating applications. In the present work, HDPE plastic in the form of plastic bottles caps was collected from solid waste and used in a thermal pyrolysis process for the production of pyrolytic oil. The obtained oil was characterised, and the obtained results were compared to conventional fuels. The obtained oil was used further in an oil burner fuel injection application, in which the spray breakup characteristics were monitored and analysed using VisiSize particle characterisation systems. The obtained results were compared to those of conventional fuel. The results indicate that the difference in fuel properties influences the spray breakup process slightly, but the differences are rather small. This indicates that from a spray development perspective, pyrolytic oil can be used as a substitute for conventional fuels in oil burners. Full article

Mesoporous silica materials with well-organized architectures were synthesized using a series of Pluronic PE-type triblock copolymers (PE6800, PE9200, PE9400, PE10500) as structure-directing agents under acidic conditions. The study aimed to elucidate the impact of synthesis parameters—copolymer type, presence of a swelling agent, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene, aging temperature, and silica precursor—on the structural, textural, and functional properties of the resulting mesocellular foam materials. Characterization by Nitrogen Adsorption/Desorption, Transmission Electron Microscopy, X-ray Diffraction, and Small-angle X-ray Scattering revealed that structural ordering and pore morphology are significantly influenced by the EO/PO ratio of the copolymers and the use of the expander. Materials synthesized with PE9400 and PE10500 in the presence of a swelling agent exhibited highly uniform bottle-shaped mesopores with increased surface area and pore volume. Thermal behavior studied via Differential Scanning Calorimetry indicated a correlation between pore size and melting point depression of confined water, consistent with the Gibbs–Thomson effect. Adsorption capacity and kinetics for methylene blue varied significantly with pore structure, with materials possessing narrow mesopores showing superior dye uptake, and materials with larger mesopores and open-pore architecture exhibiting faster adsorption rates. This work demonstrates the tunability of mesoporous silica structure through precise control of synthesis conditions and highlights its potential in applications involving adsorption and phase phenomena in confined pore systems. Full article

Microplastic and nanoplastic (MNP) particles have been observed in various human organs. However, polypropylene (PP), one of the top three most commonly detected types of MNPs in terms of quantity, is also present in injections given for the infusion treatment of diseases, and there is a considerable knowledge gap concerning its adverse effects on the human cardiovascular system. In this study, we used commercial PP particles (500 nm), similar in size to nanoplastics (NPs) present in injections and greater than or equal in concentration to NPs in the blood of healthy individuals, as the experimental dose to study their toxicological effects on human umbilical vein endothelial cells. The results revealed that PP particles at 35 μg/mL, equivalent to 20 times the concentration of blood, reduced cell viability, induced oxidative stress, caused cytomembrane damage, increased the inflammatory response, promoted apoptosis, and inhibited cell migration and wound tissue healing. In addition, a NP concentration of up to 210 μg/mL decreased the level of zonula occludens-1. In conclusion, since we used spherical particles, a type of nanoplastic present in plastic-bottle injections in clinical treatment that induces toxicological effects, this study provides cellular-level insights into the ecological risks of NP exposure in the human body. Full article

This study explores the potential use of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles as void makers in short reinforced concrete columns under pure axial compression. Such a scheme promotes sustainability by decreasing the consumption of concrete and reducing the pollution that comes with the disposal of PET bottles. The experimental component of this study consisted of testing 16 reinforced concrete columns divided into two groups, based on the cross-section dimensions. One group contained eight columns of a length of 900 mm with a net cross-sectional area of about 40,000 mm², while the second group contained eight columns of a length of 1100 mm with a net cross-sectional area of about 62,500 mm². The diameter of the void within the small cross-section group was 100 mm and within the large cross-section group was 265 mm. The experimental program includes pairs of solid and corresponding void specimens with consideration of the size of the longitudinal steel reinforcement, lateral tie spacing, and concrete compressive strength. The tests are conducted using a universal test machine under displacement-controlled loading conditions with the help of strain gauges and Linear Variable differential transformers (LVDTs). The analysis of the test results showed that the columns that were embedded with a small void that occupied about 30% of the core area exhibited reductions of 9% in the ultimate capacity, 14% in initial stiffness, 20% in ductility, and 1% in residual strength. On the other hand, the columns that contained a large void occupying about 60% of the core area demonstrated reductions of 24% in the ultimate capacity, 34% in initial stiffness, and 26% in ductility, although the residual strength was slightly increased by 5%. The reason for the deficiency in the structural response in the latter case is because the void occupied a significant fraction of the concrete core. The theoretical part of this study showed that the ACI 318 code provisions can reasonably predict the uniaxial compressive strength of columns embedded with PET bottles if the void does not occupy more than 30% of the concrete core. This study confirmed that short columns embedded with relatively small voids made from PET bottles and subjected to pure axial compression create a balance between sustainability benefits and a structural performance tradeoff. Full article

The manufacture of Portland cement (PC) emits a significant amount of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Therefore, the partial replacement of PC by supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) possessing pozzolanic properties is considered a viable strategy to reduce its environmental impact. Recently, waste glass (WG) has been explored as a potential SCM. However, due to the wide variety of glass types and their differing physical and chemical properties, not all WG can be universally considered suitable for this purpose; therefore, this study investigates the use of recycled WG as an SCM for the partial replacement of PC. Two types of WG were evaluated: green waste glass from wide bottles (GWG) and laboratory waste glass (LWG), and their performance was compared to that of fly ash (FA). The physical, mechanical, and pozzolanic properties of the materials were assessed. Results show that both types of WG exhibit particle size distributions comparable to PC and have contents of SiO₂, Al₂O₃, and Fe₂O₃ exceeding 70%. Chemical, mineralogical, and pozzolanic analyses revealed that both GWG and LWG presented higher pozzolanic activity than FA, particularly at later ages. Notably, LWG demonstrated the most significant contribution to mechanical strength development. These findings suggest that recycled waste glass, especially LWG, can serve as a viable and sustainable SCM, contributing to the reduction of the environmental footprint associated with Portland cement production. Full article