Thermogravimetric and Kinetic Analysis of High-Temperature Thermal Conversion of Pine Wood Sawdust under CO2/Ar

The gasification behavior of pine wood sawdust was investigated in CO2 with different heating rates of 5, 10, 15, and 20 °C/min from room temperature to 1400 °C by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and mass spectrometry (MS). It was also examined under Ar to compare the differences observed under CO2 at heating rate of 10 °C/min. Kinetics of pine wood sawdust thermal decomposition was determined by the models of FWO, KAS and master plot method. TGA results revealed different reaction sections from pyrolysis to char gasification under CO2. The pyrolysis behavior was similar under CO2 and Ar and had a similar energy required value about 590 kJ/kg from 250 °C to 420 °C. CO, CH4, and H2 were the primary gases obtained from thermal decomposition, and the amounts of which in CO2 atmosphere were higher than those obtained in Ar. The average activation energy for pyrolysis under CO2 was 184.72 kJ/mol.

A Qualitative Study of Illness Narratives that Demonstrate the Master Plot of Overcoming the Monster and Support Stroke Survivors in Utilising it

(1) Background; limited research exists which considers master plots expressed by individuals with Stroke. The literature so far has focused on identified pre-established illness narrative types; (2). Methods: A narrative method was selected and a purposive sample of individuals with Stroke are identified. A categorical-form analysis was undertaken; (3) Results: A narrative master plot named overcoming the monster is identified and explored for its components and located temporally for each participant; (4) Conclusions: Health care professionals need to understand the importance of understanding the master plot overcoming the monster. This research supports the need for health care professionals to recognise and support narratives by listening in a non-directive way.

Lifetime predictions of non-ionic and ionic biopolymers: kinetic studies by non-isothermal thermogravimetric analysis

In this paper, films based on sustainable polymers with variable charge have been investigated by non-isothermal thermogravimetry in order to predict their lifetime, which is a key parameter for their potential use in numerous technological and biomedical applications. Specifically, chitosan has been selected as positively charged biopolymer, while alginate has been chosen as negatively charged biopolymer. Among non-ionic polymers, methylcellulose has been investigated. Thermogravimetric measurements at variable heating rates (5, 10, 15 and 20 °C min−1) have been performed for all the polymers to study their degradation kinetics by using isoconversional procedures combined with ‘Master plot’ analyses. Both integral (KAS and Starink methods) and differential (Friedman method) isoconversional procedures have shown that chitosan possesses the highest energetic barrier to decomposition. Based on the Master plot analysis, the decomposition of ionic polymers can be described by the R2 kinetic model (contracted cylindrical geometry), while the degradation of methylcellulose reflects the D2 mechanism (two-dimensional diffusion). The determination of both the decomposition mechanism and the kinetic parameters (activation energy and pre-exponential factor) has been used to determine the decay time functions of the several biopolymers. The obtained insights can be helpful for the development of durable films based on sustainable polymers with variable electrostatic characteristics. Graphical abstract

Screening and supporting the mental health of student physiotherapists during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background/Aims The purpose of this study was to use the Model of Emotions, Adaptation and Hope as a way to screen and support physiotherapy students and understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their health by focusing on the stories (narrative) they tell. Methods This pilot mixed methods study included a convenience sample of BSc and MSc level student physiotherapists. A single screening online interview was conducted via Zoom or Skype. Students' narratives underwent qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis using the Model of Emotions, Adaptation and Hope. Results A total of 19 students took part in this study. Students identified four master plot narratives as a response to the interview: future control; lost productivity; isolation; and opportunity. Significant pre-interview to follow-up change was found in acceptance, pleasantness and energy. Conclusions It is possible to support the mental health of physiotherapy students by screening for difficulties and listening to and exploring their responses.

Pyrolysis of Mixed Plastic Waste: I. Kinetic Study

Plastic wastes have become one of the biggest global environmental issues and thus recycling such massive quantities is targeted. Low-density polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene (PS) are considered among the main types of plastic wastes. Since pyrolysis is one of the most promising recycling techniques, this work aims to build knowledge on the co-pyrolysis of mixed polymers using two model-fitting (Criado and Coats–Redfern) methods. Seventeen co-pyrolysis tests using a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) at 60 K/min for different mixed compositions of LDPE, HDPE, PP, and PS were conducted. It was observed that the pyrolysis of the pure polymer samples occurs at different temperature ranges in the following order: PS < PP < LDPE < HDPE. However, compared to pure polymer samples, the co-pyrolysis of all-polymer mixtures was delayed. In addition, the synergistic effect on the co-pyrolysis of polymer blends was reported. The Master plot of the Criado model was used to determine the most suitable reaction mechanism. Then, the Coats–Redfern model was used to efficiently obtain the kinetic parameters (R2 ≥ 97.83%) and the obtained values of the activation energy of different polymer blends were ranging from 104 to 260 kJ/mol. Furthermore, the most controlling reaction mechanisms were in the following orders: First order reaction (F1), Contracting sphere (R3), and then Contracting cylinder (R2).

The 1916 Rising in the Story of Ireland

This chapter examines a range of fiction that takes as its subject the 1916 Easter Rising, an event that occupies a privileged place within Ireland’s storied past. It contextualizes such fiction in relation to ‘the Story of Ireland,’ a term adopted by historian Roy Foster to describe a familiar master-plot of Irish historiography, which is woven around the narrative trajectory of an oppressed yet unvanquished nation throwing off the colonial yoke. The chapter traces the way in which both the cultural memory of the Rising and ‘the Story of Ireland’ master-plot have been shaped and reshaped in a continuous dialogue with fictional and factual approaches. Chapter coverage extends from fiction written in the immediate aftermath of the Rising to works published prior to its centenary in 2016, including recent novels that treat the marginalization of First World War combatants, children, and gay people.

Growth and Decay of a Planktonic Microbial Culture

The paper shows that the phenomenological trends of both growth and decay of a microbial population in a given medium are easily reproducible with simple equations that allow gathering the experimental data (plate counts) related to different microbial species, in different mediums and even at different temperatures, in a single master plot. The guideline of the proposed approach is that microbes and surrounding medium form a system where they affect each other and that the so-called “growth curve” is just the phenomenological appearance of such interaction. The whole system (cells and medium) changes following a definite pathway described as the evolution of a “virtual” microbial population in planktonic conditions. The proposed equations come from the assumption of a duplication mechanism with a variable generation time for the growth and of an exponential-like decline with a linear increase of the rate for the decay. The intermediate phase between growth and decay is a time span during which growth and death counterbalance each other and age differences within the virtual cell population tend to level off. The proposed approach does not provide an a priori description of this phase but allows the fit of the whole evolution trend of a microbial culture whenever the experimental data are available. Deviations of such a trend concern microbes able to form spores, modify their metabolism, or express phenotypic heterogeneity, to counterbalance adverse medium conditions.

Thresholds of the Novel: Realism, the Inhuman, the Ethical in J. M. Coetzee's Foe

The end of a novel is the site of particular epistemic privilege. If the form is governed by a biographical master plot, the “meaning of the life,” as Benjamin has it, is “revealed only in [the] death” that is the plot's narrative limit—and beyond this limit “the novelist . . . cannot hope to take the smallest step.” Such a limit is seemingly crossed in one of the most difficult and quite possibly the strangest of passages in J. M. Coetzee's fiction: the ending of Foe. This book's self-conscious re-presentation of the origins of the English novel (and of Defoe's inauguration of the genre's biographical pattern) culminates in a surreal encounter that Coetzee's readers have claimed limns a restorative justice or a utopic futurity. But these interpretations ignore the text's insistence on a silence that overwhelms language, the specter of mass death, and a summative darkness that attend upon this place. What might it mean, in fact, for Foe's ending to cross the Novel's thresholds only to stage a total “blackout” of the realist novel's meaning-producing mechanism and the story of individual experience the genre has valorized? This article draws on Coetzee's unpublished notebooks and the Foe ur-text to argue that the novel proposes an impossible crossing, whereby key strategies we have used to value the genre—its capacity to summon countervoices or to invoke an ethical response to alterity—are shadowed by a radical question about the limits of our readerly attention.