Dublin City University

About: Dublin City University is a education organization based out in Dublin, Ireland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Machine translation. The organization has 5904 authors who have published 17178 publications receiving 389376 citations. The organization is also known as: National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin & DCU.

Stimuli responsive synthetic polypeptides derived from N-carboxyanhydride (NCA) polymerisation

Abstract: The progress in NCA polymerisation combined with advanced orthogonal functionalization techniques as well as the integration with other controlled polymerisation techniques significantly widened the scope of polypeptide building blocks in a variety of material designs. Well-defined synthetic stimuli-responsive polypeptides (“smart” polypeptides) with incorporated different functionalities have been extensively explored over the past decades. Their significant potential lies in the fact that they combine natural and synthetic elements both contributing to their properties. These novel materials have potential applications in biomedicine and biotechnology including tissue engineering, drug delivery and biodiagnostics. Responsive polypeptides are capable of undergoing conformational changes and phase transition accompanied by variations in the chemical and physical changes of the polypeptides in response to an external stimulus such as biologically relevant species (i.e. biomolecules), the environment (i.e. temperature, pH), irradiation with light or exposure to a magnetic field. In this review, the recent developments including synthetic strategies and applications of synthetic stimuli-responsive homo- and block polypeptides are reviewed.

Discourse representation theory

Abstract: Discourse Representation Theory, or DRT, is one of a number of theories of dynamic semantics, which have come upon the scene in the course of the past twenty years. The central concern of these theories is to account for the context dependence of meaning. It is a ubiquitous feature of natural languages that utterances are interpretable only when the interpreter takes account of the contexts in which they are made – utterance meaning depends on context. Moreover, the interaction between context and utterance is reciprocal.

Treatment options for wastewater effluents from pharmaceutical companies

Abstract: In recent years, concerns about the occurrence and fate of active pharmaceutical ingredients, solvents, intermediates and raw materials that could be present in water and wastewater including pharmaceutical industry wastewater has gained increasing attention. Traditional wastewater treatment methods, such as activated sludge, are not sufficient for the complete removal of active pharmaceutical ingredients and other wastewater constituents from these waters. As a result, complementary treatment methods such as membrane filtration, reverse osmosis and activated carbon are often used in conjunction with the traditional methods for treatment of industrial wastewater. Most of the literature published to date has been on the treatment of municipal wastewater. However, there is a growing body of research that looks at the presence of active pharmaceutical ingredients in industrial wastewater, the treatment of these wastewaters and the removal rates. This article, reviews these treatment methods and includes both traditional methods and advanced oxidation processes. The paper concludes by showing that the problem of pharmaceuticals in wastewaters cannot be solved merely by adopting end of pipe measures. At source measures, such as replacement of critical chemicals, reduction in raw material consumption should continue to be pursued as the top priority.