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Nanotechnology is growing up in importance due to its application in several industrial sectors. Developed countries have defined research agendas in this area to develop new products and processes to meet future demands. Some of these countries are carrying out prospective studies, roadmaps and technology forecasting to orient their investments. As it regards to investments and ongoing research projects, the USA, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are the leading countries nowadays. Europe, Germany, England, and France are also running nanotechnology projects, most of them in universities and research institutions. China and India are the developing countries that have invested the most in this area. Based on both research and development (R&D) initiatives and funding worldwide, ROCO (5) developed a conceptual model that can be used to orient prospective studies to help developing countries to define their investment strategies in nanotechnologies. The objective of this study is to use the ROCO model to set up guidelines to be followed by some R&D institutions to optimize their efforts, capabilities and investments in nanotechnology. It is expected that some research institutions and universities can take advantage of its results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The selection process of remediation technology for a contaminated area can be highly improved by the ability to learn from previous remediation efforts in similar areas. The key factor in this learning is the identification of similar cases based on past experiences. This paper reports a procedure developed to identify similar cases to the Capua Street site, Santo Andre, Brazil, taking the EPAs Cost and Performance Case Studies as a reference. This site is contaminated with hexaclorocyclohexan (HCH) and just a few similar cases were found in the EPAs database. The research question is: Can we learn from other remediation cases with similar contaminants and site profile? The definition of similarity in this procedure is based on an analogy with medical treatment: patients (contamination sites characteristics) and pathologies (types of contaminants and process of contamination). The adopted procedure identified more than ten contaminants similar to HCH present at Capua Street site. A search in EPAs database revealed around ten remediation cases in which only two technologies (thermal and biological treatments) were used. Remediation costs and technologies performance reported for these cases are also important inputs for the present selection process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aim is to analyze the state of the art of the use of remediation technologies for areas contaminated with organochlorine based on a detailed literature review. The remediation technologies considered in this study are bioremediation, phytoremediation, nanotechnology, chemical oxidation, and thermal desorption. This survey has been undertaken as part of an ongoing project entitled Development and Validation of Technologies for Remediation of Soil and Groundwater Contaminated with Organochlorines that has been carried out by Institute for Technological Research of Sao Paulo State, Brazil. Its purpose is to identify “key problems” for each of the five technologies and also to set up a referential for comparison among them. Remediation of sites contaminated with chemical products in general is a challenge for several countries since these sites are environmental derelict areas inherited from past industrial activities. Four databases were used in the preliminary literature review: Scopus, SciELO, Web of Science, and Science Direct. The major focus of the review was concentrated on USA, China and European countries were most of both field and lab research has taken place. As part of the methodology, a survey questionnaire was designed to guide the preliminary search of information for all the five technologies. For each technology it was asked questions about publication of recent scientific papers, patents, companies that have been using a specific technology or a combination of them, and cases of application, in a way that the compilation of all these information and data could provide the research team with a state of the art of the studied technologies. After the systematization of the results obtained from this questionnaire application, since the quality of the information and data were not satisfactory, a new approach for complementing them was undertaken. For this purpose, the Web of Science was selected by the research team to be the most adequate database to carry out the survey. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 232Th(n,γ)233Th thermal neutron-capture reaction cross section was measured using targets of ∼ 1.5 mg of high-purity metallic thorium irradiated in the IPEN IEA-R1m 5 MW pool research reactor. The 197Au(n,γ)198Au reaction was used to monitor the thermal and epithermal neutron fluxes in the irradiation position, which was found using the Westcott formalism. The residual gamma-ray activity was followed with an HPGe detector. The detector efficiency curve was fitted by the least-squares method applying covariance analysis to all uncertainties involved. The experimental result is σ0 =7.20±0.20 b, in agreement with previous published values. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]