Effect of Co-Inoculation of Candida zemplinina, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Lactobacillus plantarum for the Industrial Production of Negroamaro Wine in Apulia (Southern Italy).

The employment of multi-species starter cultures has growing importance in modern winemaking for improving the complexity and wine attributes. The assessment of compatibility for selected species/strains at the industrial-scale is crucial to assure the quality and the safety associated with fermentations. An aspect particularly relevant when the species belong to non-Saccharomyces, Saccharomyces spp. and malolactic bacteria, three categories with different biological characteristics and oenological significance. To the best of our knowledge, the present report is the first study regarding the utilization of a combined starter culture composed of three strains of non-Saccharomyces, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Lactobacillus plantarum for production of wine at the industrial scale. More in-depth, this work investigated the oenological potential of the autochthonous characterized strains from the Apulian region (Southern Italy), Candida zemplinina (syn. Starmerella bacillaris) 35NC1, S. cerevisiae (NP103), and L. plantarum (LP44), in co-inoculation following a complete scale-up scheme. Microbial dynamics, fermentative profiles and production of volatile secondary compounds were assessed in lab-scale micro-vinification tests and then the performances of the mixed starter formulation were further evaluated by pilot-scale wine production. The above results were finally validated by performing an industrial-scale vinification on 100HL of Negroamaro cultivar grape must. The multi-starter formulation was able to rule the different stages of the fermentation processes effectively, and the different microbial combinations enhanced the organoleptic wine features to different extents. The findings indicated that the simultaneous inoculation of the three species affect the quality and quantity of several volatile compounds, confirming that the complexity of the wine can reflect the complexity of the starter cultures. Moreover, the results underlined that the same mixed culture could differently influence wine quality when tested at the lab-, pilot- and industrial-scale. Finally, we highlighted the significance of employment non-Saccharomyces and L. plantarum, together with S. cerevisiae, autochthonous strains in the design of custom-made starter culture formulation for typical regional wine production with pronounced unique quality.

Real-space grid representation of momentum and kinetic energy operators for electronic structure calculations.

We show that the central finite difference formula for the first and the second derivative of a function can be derived, in the context of quantum mechanics, as matrix elements of the momentum and kinetic energy operators on discrete coordinate eigenkets |xn〉 defined on a uniform grid. Starting from the discretization of integrals involving canonical commutations, simple closed-form expressions of the matrix elements are obtained. A detailed analysis of the convergence toward the continuum limit with respect to both the grid spacing and the derivative approximation order is presented. It is shown that the convergence from below of the eigenvalues in electronic structure calculations is an intrinsic feature of the finite difference method. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Carbon nanotube electrodes in organic transistors.

The scope of this Minireview is to provide an overview of the recent progress on carbon nanotube electrodes applied to organic thin film transistors. After an introduction on the general aspects of the charge injection processes at various electrode-semiconductor interfaces, we discuss the great potential of carbon nanotube electrodes for organic thin film transistors and the recent achievements in the field.

Graphene nanoribbon electrical decoupling from metallic substrates.

We address the structural and electronic properties of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) covalently immobilized on a metallic substrate by means of an organic layer. The GNR-organic layer and organic layer-metal interfaces can be thought of as constituents of a nanodevice and have been accurately studied using large-scale density functional theory calculations. Our results demonstrate the possibility of combining nanopatterned metal-organic layer substrates with selected GNRs to obtain well ordered and stable structures while preserving the GNR energy band gap, an essential requirement for any switching nanodevice.

Spin channels in functionalized graphene nanoribbons.

We characterize the transport properties of functionalized graphene nanoribbons using extensive first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) that encompass both monovalent and divalent ligands, hydrogenated defects, and vacancies. We find that the edge metallic states are preserved under a variety of chemical environments, while bulk conducting channels can be easily destroyed by either hydrogenation or ion or electron beams, resulting in devices that can exhibit spin conductance polarization close to unity.

A first-principle study of the adsorption of 1-amino-3-cyclopentene on the (100) silicon surface.

The adsorption of 1-amino-3-cyclopentene on the (100) silicon surface has been studied by methods rooted in the density-functional theory using both delocalized (plane waves, PWs) and localized (Gaussian-type orbitals, GTOs) basis functions. The results obtained by modeling the surface by silicon clusters of different sizes are quite similar, thus confirming that the reaction is quite localized. Furthermore, PW and GTO computations give comparable results, provided that the same density functional and carefully chosen computational parameters (contraction of GTO, pseudopotentials, etc.) are used. Slab computations performed in the PW framework show that the cluster results are retrieved when low-coverage adsorption on the surface is considered. On these grounds, we are quite confident that reaction parameters obtained by the more reliable hybrid density functional (PBE0) are essentially converged, our best estimates of reaction and activation free energies are thus -40 and 6 kcal/mol, respectively.