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BIOSURFACES: A NONSCALE OVERVIEW
Citation:
Bailey, G W. AND P. Sawunyama. BIOSURFACES: A NONSCALE OVERVIEW. Presented at Soil Science Society of America Annual Meeting, Charlotte, NC, October 22-25, 2001.
Impact/Purpose:
Elucidate and model the underlying processes (physical, chemical, enzymatic, biological, and geochemical) that describe the species-specific transformation and transport of organic contaminants and nutrients in environmental and biological systems. Develop and integrate chemical behavior parameterization models (e.g., SPARC), chemical-process models, and ecosystem-characterization models into reactive-transport models.
Description:
Biosurfaces: A Nanoscale Overview.
Environmental surfaces (mineral, organic, biological, and composite) determine the physicochemical and biological properties of soils and control the chemical reactivity, fate, transport and transformation of nutrients and chemical contaminants in soil ecosystems. In this paper we will examine the nature and character of biosurfaces --lignin, humics, polysaccharides, proteins, and cell walls of bacteria, fungi and algae. This will be done by scrutinizing the structure, morphology, chemical composition, chemical functionality, electronic properties, and hydrophobic/hydrophilic character of each biosurface type . Such scrutiny will be done through the "eyes" of scanning probe microscopy, spectroscopy, computational chemistry and virtual reality. Interpretation of such an examination will be couched in terms of a 3-dimensional, holistic, and dynamic perception of soil.