In internal combustion engines, various toxic substances - such as $ \rm CO$, $\rm NO_2 $ - are produced due to the incomplete breakdown of fuels. By decreasing the activation energy required for complete combustion to occur, catalysts aid in transforming these products into less toxic gases - such as carbon dioxide ($\rm CO_2 $), methane ($\rm CH_4 $).

Though initially described as a mild version of dengue fever, the Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreak in the Americas unexpectedly revealed major neurological impacts as fetal microcephaly or other congenital brain injuries when women are infected during pregnancy and Guillain-Barre´ syndrome (a disorder in which the body's immune system damages the nerves) in adults. It can be transmitted both by the insect vector and sexual contact. Its outbreak became a global health threat of complex epidemiology and devastating neurological impacts, therefore requiring urgent efforts towards the development of novel efficacious and safe antiviral drugs.

Everything we know about the organisms that lived thousands of years ago comes from the fossils they left behind. The formation of fossils is an extremely rare phenomenon. It depends on the burial of the organism, the chemical processes responsible for its conservation and the non-destruction of the resulting fossil by later geological processes.

In 2016, the concentration of carbon dioxide ($\rm CO_2$) in the atmosphere has exceeded 400 ppm (parts per million), and has increased year by year since the beginning of the industrial revolution, when human activity began to inject more carbon into the atmosphere than the what the environment is capable of absorbing. The increase in the concentration of both $\rm CO_2$ and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is currently considered the main cause of the rise in the average temperature of the planet, which leads to the intensification of extreme climatic events.

The study of the embryonic development of the human brain and the distribution of nutrients during this phase was for a long time limited to animal models and dead human tissues. Much has changed with the so-called organoids: mini-organs created in vitro in the laboratory, from a few cells of the organ themselves, from embryonic stem cells or from pluripotent cells. These organoids present a three-dimensional micro-anatomy similar to the real organ but more simplified.

In the water gas shift (WGS) reaction, CO reacts with steam producing $ \rm CO_2 $ and $ \rm H_2 $. It is an important reaction to decrease the CO level in the syngas, deriving from the process of steam reforming of natural gas or other sources. In addition, WGS is one of the main reactions to produce $ \mathbf{H_2} $ at industrial scale. In that case, it is performed in two steps: the first one at high temperature, with iron-based catalysts, and the second one at low temperature, with copper-based catalysts.

It is well known that for many metal-catalyzed reactions the support influences the catalytic properties of the metal particles. The strong metal−support interaction (SMSI) effect may be due to: (i) geometrical effects: for example, the metallic nanoparticles (MNPs) are capped by functional groups from the support that migrate to the surface of the nanoparticles during the reaction; (ii) electronic effects: charge transfer between support and nanoparticle.

Growth in the use of high quality colored ceramics has stimulated research into the development of new classes of pigments with superior durability and color reproducibility, which can be produced using inexpensive, straightforward, and eco-friendly synthesis procedures.

Nanowires belong to a new class of quasi-unidimensional materials that have been attracting great interest due to their numerous potential applications, such as functional materials in biomedical sciences, electronics, optics, magnetic devices and energy storage. Among the several ways to produce nanowires, one can mention template-assisted fabrication, vapor-liquid-solid mechanism, molecular beam epitaxy and electrochemical nanolithography.

High-temperature electrochemical devices exhibiting the preferential transfer of protons have the potential to produce a shift to a sustainable energy economy in which hydrogen replaces hydrocarbon sources as the principal fuel for stationary power and transportation. Protonic ceramic fuel cells (PCFCs), with a proton-conducting ceramic electrolyte membrane, cleanly convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to electrical energy in an intermediate temperature range (773−1023 K).