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Detoxification of aflatoxin M1 from solution and milk using layered double hydroxides was investigated. The Aluminum-Magnesium layered double hydroxide (Al-Mg LDH) and Iron-Magnesium layered double hydroxide (Fe-Mg LDH) were selected in their calcined and non-calcined forms to evaluate the effect of the calcination on detoxification. These materials were produced using the co-precipitation method. Preliminary adsorption tests confirmed use of Al-Mg LDH as the selected adsorbent. Characteristics of the adopted adsorbent were studied and confirmed by XRD, FTIR, SEM, and BET methods. Effects of the initial content of aflatoxin, amount of the adsorbents and detoxification time were investigated. Influence of the adsorbents on the nutritional aspects of milk were also studied. The study showed that while the non-calcined forms of LDH were not able to adsorb aflatoxin M1 more than 23%, the calcined form of Al-Mg LDH exhibited 100% adsorption in the solutions and about 70-100% in the contaminated milk samples. The reason is pointed to the fact that calcination of Al-Mg LDH considerably increased the surface area, the total pore volume, and the pore size of the material. Multivariate regression analysis and calculation of the Pearson correlation factor showed that the remained aflatoxin at each time was more strongly correlated with the initial amount of aflatoxin and the elapsed time and less strongly with the amount of the adsorbent. It was found that the adsorption isotherms fitted to the Freundlich equation with a high adsorption capacity of 555.5 mg g-1. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: This study is focused on examining ability of layered double hydroxides (LDH) for adsorbing AFM1 . LDHs are promising layered materials due to some of their interesting characteristics, such as ease of synthesis and uniqueness of structure. In practice, results of this study can be used for detoxification of aflatoxin, especially in milk, at high efficiency in shorter time durations.

Considerable efforts have been devoted toward the development of electrospun scaffolds based on poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL) for bone tissue engineering. However, most of previous scaffolds have lacked the structural and mechanical strength to engineer bone tissue constructs with suitable biological functions. Here, we developed bioactive and relatively robust hybrid scaffolds composed of diopside nanopowder embedded PCL electrospun nanofibers. Incorporation of various concentrations of diopside nanopowder from 0 to 3 wt % within the PCL scaffolds notably improved tensile strength (eight-fold) and elastic modulus (two-fold). Moreover, the addition of diopside nanopowder significantly improved bioactivity and degradation rate compared to pure PCL scaffold which might be due to their superior hydrophilicity. We investigated the proliferation and spreading of SAOS-II cells on electrospun scaffolds. Notably, electrospun PCL-diopside scaffolds induced significantly enhanced cell proliferation and spreading. Overall, we concluded that PCL-diopside scaffold could potentially be used to develop clinically relevant constructs for bone tissue engineering. However, the extended in vivo studies are essential to evaluate the role of PCL-diopside fibrous scaffolds on the new bone growth and regeneration. Therefore, in vivo studies will be the subject of our future work. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 44433.

Many attempts have been focused on preparing highly porous scaffolds with appropriate mechanical strength. This paper has developed a new route to enhance the compressive strength of porous hydroxyapatite (HA) scaffold (porosity: ~83%, mean pore size: ~740 μm). Briefly, this route included a nanostructure coating of forsterite (Mg 2 SiO 4 ) on struts of porous HA. The coating microstructure consisted of the grains with the range between 35 and 80 nm and nanosize pores that could be detected by scanning electron microscopy observation. This simple method improved the compressive strength of highly porous HA from 0.12 to 1.61 MPa. The scaffolds obtained provided a good mechanical support while maintaining bioactivity, and hence they could be used as tissue engineering scaffolds for low-load-bearing applications.

The aim of present study is to investigate the influence of heat treatment schedule on the microstructure, tensile properties, and wear behavior of dual phase (DP) steels. In this regard, a cold-rolled low carbon steel (0.18% C, 1.25% Mn) is subjected to intercritical annealing (IA), step quenching (SQ), and intermediate quenching (IQ) heat treatment cycles to produce DP steels with different microstructures. The results show that the tensile strength, strength-elongation balance, and wear resistance of DP steels change in the order of SQ