Marine biofouling generally refers to the undesirable accumulation of biological organisms on surfaces in contact with seawater. This natural phenomenon represents a major economic concern for marine industries, e.g. for ships and vessels, oil and wind-turbine sea-platforms, pipelines, water valves and filters, as it limits the performance of devices, materials and underwater structures and increases the costs related to transport delays, hull maintenance and repair, cleaning and desalination units, corrosion and structure break-down. In the last few decades, many efforts have been spent into developing efficient antifouling (AF) surfaces (coatings) combining advances in materials science and recent knowledge of marine chemistry and biology. However, the extensive use of toxic and harmful compounds in the formulations raised increasing health and environmental concerns leading to stricter regulations which pushed marine industries to search for new AF strategies. This review presents the recent research progress made in green strategies for AF coatings using non-toxic, non-biocide-release based principles for marine applications. The two main approaches, detachment of biofoulants or preventing biofoulants attachment, are reviewed in detail and new promising routes based on amphiphilic, (super)hydrophilic, and topographic (structured) surfaces are highlighted. The chemical and physical aspects of the AF mechanisms behind the AF strategies reviewed are emphasized, with special attention to the early stages of biofoulant adhesion, keeping the focus on the materials' molecular structure and properties which allow obtaining the final desired antifouling behaviour.

A Monte Carlo method to sample the classical configurational canonical ensemble is introduced. In contrast to the Metropolis algorithm, where trial moves can be rejected, in this approach collisions take place. The implementation is event-driven; i.e., at scheduled times the collisions occur. A unique feature of the new method is that smooth potentials (instead of only step-wise changing ones) can be used. In addition to an event-driven approach, where all particles move simultaneously, we introduce a straight event-chain implementation. As proof of principle, a system of Lennard-Jones particles is simulated.

Collagen mineralization is a biological process in many skeletal elements in the animal kingdom. Examples of these collagen‐based skeletons are the siliceous spicules of glass sponges or the intrafibrillar hydroxyapatite platelets in vertebrates. The mineralization of collagen in vitro has gained interest for two reasons: understanding the processes behind bone formation and the synthesis of scaffolds for tissue engineering. In this paper, the efforts toward collagen mineralization in vitro are reviewed. First, general introduction toward collagen type I, the main component of the extracellular matrix in animals, is provided, followed by a brief overview of collagenous skeletons. Then, the in vitro mineralization of collagen is critically reviewed. Due to their biological abundance, hydroxyapatite and silica are the focus of this review. To a much lesser extent, also some efforts with other minerals are outlined. Combining all minerals and the suggested mechanisms for each mineral, a general mechanism for the intrafibrillar mineralization of collagen is proposed. This review concludes with an outlook for further improvement of collagen‐based tissue engineering scaffolds.