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Hi everyone! This is my last day of the takeover and also my last day at AAU. I spent great time here. Time flies when you are super busy.
Special thanks to Alvise Vianello, Laura Simon Sanchez and Claudia Lorenz for the last weeks of intense work and for the results we achieved. Many thanks also to the group of Urban Pollution, Division of Civil and Environmental Engineering of AAU BUILD for the amazing hospitality and to COST Action PRIORITY for this experience.
Hi! Let's see if we have microplastics. It’s time to scan with FPA-µFTIR Imaging to quantify and characterize polymers with automatic MP detection (siMPle).
We deposited sample aliquots on many windows and let the machine do the job. In 4 hours, we can get more than 3.2 millions of spectra combined in the IR image.
It’s a lot of data to process…likely we can use siMPle, a freeware software for automatic MP analysis. After hard work, we see some results.
Hi! It's time to clean the samples from organic material. After preoxidation with H2O2 and degradation with SDS, the Fenton reaction was the most exciting and interactive step. We couldn't leave the reaction alone for the first few hours to avoid losing control.
The Fenton reaction is an oxidation (H2O2) catalyzed by iron(II) and it cleaned so well the samples that we skipped other degradation steps. It saved us a lot of time.
Almost ready to scan the samples to see if there are any microplastics!
Hi everyone! One of the first step of the sample prep is the density separation with ZnCl2 to separate microplastic particles from the sediment. These types of samples have a very fine and light component that remained in suspension for a long time after bubbling. Luckily we did a second density at the end of the sample prep.
Next step will be the digestion of the organic material. Stay tuned.
Hi everyone! I am Andrea Paluselli and I am a postDoc at the Italian National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) in Lerici (Italy). I am working with a very interesting batch of samples at the Department of the Built Environment, Aalborg University (Denmark) thanks to the STSM grant of COST Action PRIORITY.
We collected those samples through sediment traps moored in the Arctic region for over a year and we aim to estimate the vertical fluxes of small microplastics along the water column and their temporal variability.
I've been working together with the colleagues from AAU-BUILD for a few weeks and in the next days I will share few steps of the sample prep and µFTIR analysis.
📣Today we go to a different part of the city to determine the short chain fatty acids in our samples by GC/MS method and prepared our samples. We were informed about the GC/MS technique, sample preparation and learned the working principle of the device. I was very pleased to cooperate with Prof. Amedei and his team thanks to the opportunities that COST has given us. We have completed the experiments we aimed for, now we are eagerly awaiting our results.
Hello! I'm @nyunuu, Assistant Professor from Maltepe University, Faculty of Medicine 🎓 (@maltepeedutr , Istanbul, Turkey). I am currently at University of Florence, via COST Action PRIORITY STSM grant. We are working with Prof. Amedei and his team, whom I had the opportunity to meet through the PRIORITY. This team is expert on microbiota.🧬
I am working on the "Investigating Sub-Chronic Toxicity of Polyethylene Terephthalate Nanoplastics on Mice" project in my Instituton. And during this STSM, we will be investigating the possible effects of PET nanoplastics on the microbiota. Now I am sharing some photos from the lab work and the powerful-girls part of the team 💪🏻👩🏼🔬. I hope to share the whole team and the details of the study in the next days. Everything will be easier when we are together! 💐
I'll takeover the Instagram account for a few days. You can ask your questions about the study without any hesitation. 🧫🔬🔭👩🏼🔬🧑🔬👨🔬🧑🏫🧐
And the last picture from me:
Today presenting at the University of Turku, presentation topic:
Microplastics – a tricky indicator for the onset of the Anthropocene due to downward migration
Today we opened sediment cores from lakes to take subsamples for microplastic, dating, dry weight and grain size analysis!
I am Inta, a senior researcher from Latvian Institute of Aquatic Ecology. Just left my lab to go to University of Turku in Finland to work with several hundred years old sediment cores material from lakes. Let’s see how far microplastic particles can migrate down throughout the core and is there a geological explanation for that?!
It's the final countdown!
I am so grateful to have been working with all these amazing people at the University of La Laguna on Tenerife Island.
Many thanks to Dr. Javier Hernández Borges and all the members of the Analytical Chemistry Research Group, who hosted me, broadened my knowledge and made my experience well worth the long journey.
Heads to the next grantee's experience!
Day number 4
Here we go!
Today I took a glance at this instrument, called a micro-FTIR, which is broadly preferred and used for polymer identification.
You can see how smart it is. By scanning the sample area and targeting specific points, you get spectra, which compared to those on online databases, can give you valuable information about microplastic consistency.
Isn't it amazing? 🧑🔬
Hi everyone!
It's me (@areti_ko ) again.
Today was my third day in the lab and we did a lot of microscopy examination in search of microplastics.
This process comes along with a lot of patience, it is time consuming and requires experience for the best possible estimation of the solid particles observed.
In this photo you can see the stereomicroscope we used, which is coupled with a camera and a computer.
Update!
Today I came across this amazing vintage spot in the university and decided to use it as an intro photo of today's post.
The second day of my stay I met two wonderful ladies who were doing the visual sorting of microplastics as you can see in the second photo.
I myself started to process some wastewater samples, by firstly digesting them with oxygen peroxide and then filtering them through 50μm meshes. The whole procedure was carried out in a specially designed space, in protected glove boxes to avoid contamination.
Tomorrow I will be able to observe them microscopically!
Hi everybody! I am Areti Kokkinomagoula, an MSc student from University of Crete, Greece and I will be enjoying these days at University of La Laguna at Tenerife Island within an STSM!
My research interests include the isolation, morphological characterisation and identification of microplastics found in wastewater. Wastewater is really complex, hard to handle sample, but one of the major routes that lead microplastics into the environment.
In the next few days I will be sharing my journey with you! 🌴🧪🔬
#cost #costactions #priority #microplastics #science
Good morning friends! This us the final picture of my takeover. Today, a new colleague (Areti Kokkinonagoula) will be in charge of this account 😊 I couldn’t finish without a picture with my supervisor here at DTU, Nanna Hartmann 😄. Thank you for everything! And thank you all who engaged last week. Be nice to the next one 🤓
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#dtu #priority #costpriority #costaction
Hi, Olga here😊 Today I put the science a bit to the side and I show you one of the wonderful things these opportunities offer: the chance to know different places. Here, I let you navigate through the places I’ve been, pictures speak better than words. On a funny note, I found a note somebody left me with lots of love in the last picture 😂❤️
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#costaction #priority #dtusustain #dtu #europe
Hello again folks! Today I show you another method testing. One of the challenges in MP analyses is extracting them from complex organic samples. As you might imagine, is like searching for a needle in a haystack 😩🔬
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What we do to solve this is to digest the organic matter with chemicals, but some of them work, some not. Here, we test hydrogen peroxide and KOH, which one will be the winner? 😏🥊
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For now, it looks like the peroxide is being good to us. On the other side, KOH destroyed the samples (including plastics 😂) in 24h. What a great idea I had 🫠 Pray for Sevil’s samples (the PhD student who’s working on this).
Hi folks! This is the machine we’re using for microplastics identification, an LDIR🔬
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We put the samples in and gent an infrared (IR) spectrum we have to identify and compare to a known database. 📈🤔
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So yeah, in the process of some method development here! I’ve answered some quedtions in stories, let me know if you have more doubts lefr 😊
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#costaction #science #microplastics #dtu #dtusustain
Hei there! I’m @olga_novillo, a PhD student from the @universitatvalencia (Spain) and I’m lucky to be enjoying an STSMs at @dtudk Sustain in Denmark within the PRIORITY project ☺️
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During this week, I’ll be taking over this account, telling you what I’m doing and why 🧪🔬
Basically, I’m searching for reliable ways for identifying microplastics in environmental samples and, eventually, to help out a bit to take care of our lovely planet 🌎🌿🌊⛰️
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Please, ask whatever you’re curious about and I’ll be answering along this week! 🤓
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#priority #costactions #dtusustain #microplastics #sustainability #thereisnoplanetb #science #scientistlife
