This work describes, for the first time, the preparation of palladium nanoparticles supported in thermally-treated human hair. Human hair showed to be an efficient adsorbent of Pd2+ in aqueous media, reaching nearly 100% of adsorption from a 100 ppm solution. The thermal treatment of hair containing Pd2+ at 200 ºC under nitrogen atmosphere led to the formation of an N, S-containing material presenting 0.5 wt.% of palladium. The material was extensively characterized by elemental analysis (CHN and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP OES)), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopies, and by thermogravimetry (TG), thermogravimetry coupled to mass spectrometry (TG-MS), scanning electron miscroscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analyses. It was possible to observe that the surface structure of hair was preserved during thermal treatment, presenting palladium nanoparticles with particle sizes of approximately 4 nm. This material was used as heterogeneous catalyst in a preliminary application in nitrobenzene reduction to aniline in aqueous medium using sodium borohydride.

Abstract Malignant Catarrhal Fever (MCF) was investigated in the central nervous system of cattle with neurological syndrome. Two-hundred-ninety samples were analyzed by histology, and molecular methods to detect ovine herpesvirus type 2 (OvHV-2) were optimized and validated. The qualitative polymerase chain reaction (qualitative PCR) analytical sensitivity was 101 DNA copies/µL and found 4.8% (14/290) positive for OvHV-2. The quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analytical sensitivity was 100 DNA copy/µL and 5.9% (17/290) positivity, with 47.1% (8/17) of the positive samples presenting histological evidence of non-purulent meningo-encephalitis. The qualitative PCR products (422 bp of the ORF75 region) were sequenced and submitted to phylogenetic analysis. Identity matrices showed 100% similarity in OvHV-2 samples obtained in this study and those recovered from GenBank, corroborating other studies.