Showing papers by "Lúcia Santos published in 2014"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors applied the Real Option Approach (ROA) to evaluate investment in energy production and found that the value of ROA is higher than NPV because the investor can get better information and uncertainty is reduced when he has the option to defer the investment.
93 citations
TL;DR: The enantioselective validated method was able to monitor chiral pharmaceuticals in WWTP effluents and has potential to assess the enantiOSElective biodegradation in bioreactors.
52 citations
TL;DR: Levels and trends of the chemical families and target of the pesticides were obtained regarding the type of land occupation of the selected sites, including the use of advanced statistics (principal component analysis, PCA).
33 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a simple and rapid method based on direct injection and high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC�MS/MS) was developed and optimized for the determination of amoxicillin in river water.
Abstract: A laboratory application with a strong component in analytical chemistry was designed for undergraduate students, in order to introduce a current problem in the environmental science field, the water contamination by antibiotics. Therefore, a simple and rapid method based on direct injection and high performance liquid chromatography�tandem mass spectrometry (LC�MS/MS) was developed and optimized for the determination of amoxicillin in river water. Students learned the main optimization steps for the improvement of the LC�MS/MS methodology and the correct procedure to validate an analytical method (draw a calibration curve, determine detection and quantification limits, precision, and accuracy). This laboratory experiment was successfully applied by students and enables the analysis of a large number of samples in a short period of time because of the short run time (3 min).
20 citations
TL;DR: The ecotoxicity of five medicines containing the same active substance (fluoxetine hydrochloride) was tested on the alga Chlorella vulgaris, in order to evaluate if excipients can influence their ecology.
Abstract: Fluoxetine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) widely used in the treatment of major depression. It has been detected in surface and wastewaters, being able to negatively affect aquatic organisms. Most of the ecotoxicity studies focused only in pharmaceuticals, though excipients can also pose a risk to non-target organisms. In this work the ecotoxicity of five medicines (three generic formulations and two brand labels) containing the same active substance (fluoxetine hydrochloride) was tested on the alga Chlorella vulgaris, in order to evaluate if excipients can influence their ecotoxicity. Effective concentrations that cause 50% of inhibition (EC50) ranging from 0.25 to 15 mg L−1 were obtained in the growth inhibition test performed for the different medicines. The corresponding values for fluoxetine concentration are 10 times lower. Higher EC50 values had been published for the same alga considering only the toxicity of fluoxetine. Therefore, this increase in toxicity may be attributed to...
12 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an easy and selective molecularly imprinted dispersive extraction method (MIDE) coupled with HPLC-DAD was developed for melamine analysis in commercial milk samples.
Abstract: An easy and selective molecularly imprinted dispersive extraction method (MIDE) coupled with HPLC-DAD was developed for melamine´s analysis in commercial milk samples. The molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) was synthetized by suspension polymerisation with melamine as template, while methacrylic acid, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate and chloroform were used as monomer, cross-linker and porogenic solvent, respectively. The analytical methodology was validated presenting a limit of detection of 0.6 mg/kg. The recovery percentage in spiked milk samples ranged from 92.9% to 102.0% with an intermediate precision of 5.0%. The analysis of real samples with MIDE revealed melamine´s presence in 20% of the cases with a maximum concentration of 9.3 ± 0.3 mg/kg, which exceeds the maximum recommended level of 2.5 mg/kg.