Catalysing sustainable fuel and chemical synthesis

Concerns over the economics of proven fossil fuel reserves, in concert with government and public acceptance of the anthropogenic origin of rising CO2 emissions and associated climate change from such combustible carbon, are driving academic and commercial research into new sustainable routes to fuel and chemicals. The quest for such sustainable resources to meet the demands of a rapidly rising global population represents one of this century’s grand challenges. Here, we discuss catalytic solutions to the clean synthesis of biodiesel, the most readily implemented and low cost, alternative source of transportation fuels, and oxygenated organic molecules for the manufacture of fine and speciality chemicals to meet future societal demands

Reflections on the Methodological Approach of Systematic Reviews

The concept of systematic reviewing of research literatures became influential in the second half of the 20th century, in the context of the longstanding, and challenging, issue of how to ‘translate’ research findings into reliable guidance for practical decision-making—to determine which policies, programs, and strategies should (and should not) be adopted (Hammersley 2014; Nisbet and Broadfoot 1980)

Curriculum issues and benefits in supportive co-taught classes for students with intellectual disabilities

Objectives: The aim of this qualitative study is to identify and evaluate the benefits of supportive co-teaching with regard to the access of students with intellectual disabilities (ID) to the general education curriculum according to co-teachers' and parents' opinions, and researchers' observations. Methods: Seven co-taught teams in seven Greek general schools were investigated under a multiple case study research design. Data were collected through 35 semi-structured interviews and 28 class observations. Results: Teachers and parents provided several academic and social benefits of supportive co-teaching to students with ID. However, observation findings revealed that these students did not always receive education according to their needs due to lack of suitable teaching materials and poorly modified instructional strategies. Conclusions: The study provides preliminary evidence that the benefits of supportive co-teaching for students with ID are hindered when co-teachers work under traditional teaching roles using undifferentiated teaching materials and poorly modified instructional practices. © 2015 The British Society for Developmental Disabilities

A Drosophila model of Alzheimer's disease

In this paper we aim at carrying out and describing some issues for real eigenvalue computation via iterative methods. More specifically we work out new techniques for iteratively developing specific tridiagonalizations of a {\em symmetric} and {\em indefinite} matrix A \in \re^{n \times n}, by means of suitable Krylov subspace algorithms defined in \cite{13}, \cite{21}. These schemes represent extensions of the well known Conjugate Gradient (CG) method to the indefinite case. We briefly recall these algorithms and we suggest a comparison with the method in \cite{18}, along with a discussion on the practical application of the proposed results for eigenvalue computation. Furthermore, we focus on motivating the fruitful use of these tridiagonalizations for ensuring the convergence to second order points, within an optimization framework