An investigation on polymeric blend mixed matrix membranes of polyethersulfone/polyvinyl acetate/carbon molecular sieve for CO2/Ch4 separation

Polymeric membranes have been vastly used for gas separation purposes however they have an upper-bound trade off problem which is the reason why this research work is focusing on inorganic filler added to polymer blend membranes to enhance the selectivity and permeability of the resulted membranes. Different percentages (5, 10 and 15 wt.%) of carbon molecular sieve (CMS) were added to a blend of polyethersulfone/polyvinyl acetate (PES/PVAc) (90/10) to produce polymeric blend mixed matrix membranes (PB3M) by solvent evaporation method. These membranes were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) to find out the membrane morphology and then their gas separation performance was assessed using high purity CO2 and CH4 gases. Addition of CMS to the blend of this glassy and rubbery polymer, increased the CO2/CH4 selectivity and CO2 permeability of the resulted PB3Ms. The highest selectivity which was 43.26 was achieved at 10 bar and at room temperature by adding 15% CMS to the polymer blend membrane.Keywords: Mixed Matrix membrane; polyvinyl acetate; polyethersulfone; carbon molecularsiev

Coping With Stress in Iranian School-Age Children

Background: Methods learnt by children to cope with stress will be used in their adolescence. Failure to learn adaptive coping strategies causes some mental, physical and behavioral problems which continue until adulthood. Objectives: The current study was conducted to investigate the methods of coping with stress among Iranian school-age children. Patients and Methods: A descriptive study was conducted in which a randomly selected sample of 839 students of third to fifth grade of primary school in Tabriz, Iran participated. The data were collected using the Schoolagers` Coping Strategies Inventory questionnaire. SPSS software was employed to analyze the data by percentage, absolute frequency, and linear regression test. Results: All coping methods inserted in the questionnaire were used by students. More than 70% of students mentioned “pray”, “say I’m sorry or tell the truth”, and “try to relax, stay calm” out of 26 cases of coping strategies. According to more than 60% of children, “pray”, “say I’m sorry or tell the truth”, and “draw, write, or read something” were the most useful coping methods and “pick on someone” and “yell or scream” were not mostly used by the children under study. Conclusions: Children use variable methods to cope with their stress. Therefore, parents, health trainers and school authorities should distinguish non-adaptive methods of children and teach them the adaptive coping strategies

Evaluation of Sealers and Waterproofers for Extending the Life Cycle of Concrete

Concrete pavements represent a large portion of the transportation infrastructure. While the vast majority of concrete pavements provide excellent long-term performance, a portion of these pavements have recently shown premature joint deterioration. Substantial interest has developed in understanding why premature joint deterioration is being observed in jointed portland cement concrete pavements (PCCP). While some have attributed this damage to insufficient air void systems, poor mixture design, or chemical reaction between the salt and the paste, it is the hypothesis of this work that a component of this damage can be attributed to fluid absorption at the joints and chemical reactions between the salt and chemistry of the matrix. This paper discusses the role of soy methyl ester - polystyrene blends (SME-PS) as a potential method to extend the service life of concrete pavements by limiting the ingress of salt solutions. The report discusses field application of the SME-PS blends for field investigation in Lafayette and Fishers. Low temperature-differential scanning calorimetry (LT-DSC) techniques identified noticeable differences between plain mortar samples and mortar treated with SME-PS. The report also discusses the development of a test to assess chloride solution ingress during temperature cycling. The aim of this work is to provide background on some aspects that can lead to joint deterioration and provide early documentation showing that sealers may help to reduce the impact of deicers on joint damage, thereby extending the life of the concrete pavement. It should be noted that these sites as well as others are still ongoing and should be monitored for long term performance. Application procedure for SME-PS should follow manufacturer’s recommendation

A qualitative study of primary health care access, barriers and satisfaction among people with mental illness

Research has found that a substantial proportion of individuals with mental illness have high morbidity and mortality rates, and high under-diagnosis of major physical illnesses. Furthermore, people with a mental illness tend not to seek out or utilise health care services. The reasons for the negative attitudes and behaviour towards health care services among this population have not been investigated. This paper presents findings from a study that investigated the health care service needs of people with mental illness (n = 20), and views from health care providers (n = 16) regarding access to these services by people with a mental illness. Results indicated that psychiatric patients identified a range of barriers to their health care usage and low levels of health care satisfaction. These views were shared with health care professionals. Reasons for these findings and strategies to address these problems so that there is better access to health care services for people with mental illness are discussed. <br /

iPSCORE: A Resource of 222 iPSC Lines Enabling Functional Characterization of Genetic Variation across a Variety of Cell Types.

Large-scale collections of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) could serve as powerful model systems for examining how genetic variation affects biology and disease. Here we describe the iPSCORE resource: a collection of systematically derived and characterized iPSC lines from 222 ethnically diverse individuals that allows for both familial and association-based genetic studies. iPSCORE lines are pluripotent with high genomic integrity (no or low numbers of somatic copy-number variants) as determined using high-throughput RNA-sequencing and genotyping arrays, respectively. Using iPSCs from a family of individuals, we show that iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes demonstrate gene expression patterns that cluster by genetic background, and can be used to examine variants associated with physiological and disease phenotypes. The iPSCORE collection contains representative individuals for risk and non-risk alleles for&nbsp;95% of SNPs associated with human phenotypes through genome-wide association studies. Our study demonstrates the utility of iPSCORE for examining how genetic variants influence molecular and physiological traits in iPSCs and derived cell lines

Preparation and thermal properties of mineral-supported polyethylene glycol as form-stable composite phase change materials (CPCMs) used in asphalt pavements

Tis work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51704040, 51778071, 51608058), the Scientifc Research Project of Hunan Provincial Department of Education for Excellent Young Scholars (16B007), Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Special Environment Road Engineering of Hunan Province (Changsha University of Science & Technology, kf160501), and Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Biohydrometallurgy, Ministry of Education (Central South University, MOEKLB1708)

ARMADA Middleware and Communication Services

Real-time embedded systems have evolved during the past several decades from small custom-designed digital hardware to large distributed processing systems. As these systems become more complex, their interoperability, evolvability and cost-effectiveness requirements motivate the use of commercial-off-the-shelf components. This raises the challenge of constructing dependable and predictable real-time services for application developers on top of the inexpensive hardware and software components which has minimal support for timeliness and dependability guarantees. We are addressing this challenge in the ARMADA project.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/48061/1/11241_2004_Article_204024.pd

The late Katian Elkhorn event: precursor to the Late Ordovician mass extinction

The late Katian Elkhorn event is a biogeochemical perturbation preceding the Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME) with an exceptional record in the United States (U.S.). Results of our recent studies in this interval allow revised temporal ordering to strata across multiple basins providing insights into the magnitude of environmental disturbance and associated processes and feedbacks. The record of the Elkhorn event spans portions of the Appalachian and Midcontinent basins in the eastern U.S. and the Williston Basin and Cordilleran margin in the west. Our work focuses heavily on the Midcontinent Basin in particular, as it shares many characteristics of size, tectonic setting, and lithofacies with the Baltic Basin, providing the potential for resolving global signatures of the event. In its type-area, the Cincinnatian Series ends with the Elkhorn event. The succession is marked by shallowing from subtidal to marginal marine facies, capped by a karstic sequence boundary. Our new conodont data demonstrate that an overlying white to pink crinoidal grainstone package, previously assigned to the basal Silurian âwhiteâ Brassfield Formation near the Ohio-Indiana state line, is in fact Upper Ordovician. Further, δ13Ccarb values in this unit are elevated, in line with later phases of the Elkhorn event (2â° more positive than reported Rhuddanian values). These findings support a correlation of the grainstone interval with the Fernvale Formation of central Tennessee. To the east, much of the northern Appalachian Basin was overfilled with widespread marginal marine to terrestrial red beds by the onset of the Elkhorn event, while the Midcontinent Basin to the west remained relatively sediment starved. In the southern Midcontinent, the mid-Elkhorn event sequence boundary was onlapped by ironstone deposition (lower Fernvale Formation). The ironstones are overlain by sparry and hematitic grainstones with localized bioherms. In Arkansas, where the Fernvale is thickest (>30 m), the sparry phase gives way upward to manganese carbonates and bioherms. Across the region, the Fernvale is, in turn, cut by a sequence boundary, suggesting a yet higher Katian sequence, and is perforated by paleokarst pockets that are filled and overlain by upper Katian (Ka4) sediments. This sequence boundary is onlapped by black shales and the thickest (>10 m) phosphorite of the Ordovician at the end of the Elkhorn event. Previous studies have suggested age equivalence of the Elkhorn and Paroveja δ13Ccarb excursions in Laurentia and Baltica. Despite the attraction of aligning the latest Richmondian and Pirgu regional stages, our data sets demonstrate that this is a miscorrelation. Critical to this revision are new integrated biostratigraphic and chemostratigraphic data sets in a transect from the margin of the Appalachian Basin into the Midcontinent Basin. The new data reveal that the Elkhorn Shale and Fernvale Formation are overlain by the Brainard and laterally equivalent Sylvan, and Mannie shales. These shale successions contain graptolites of the complanatusand pacificus zones. Thus, the Elkhorn event occurred in the latest manitoulinensis Zone, suggesting correlation with the Baltic Moe δ13Ccarb excursion. Our extensive new data sets provide regional chronostratigraphic correlation of strata deposited during the Elkhorn event. When temporally ordered, these records provide evidence for high amplitude sea level oscillations, major redox fluctuations, and reef pulses that demonstrate the waxing and waning of continental ice sheets on Gondwana and the spread of oceanic anoxia only a few million years before the LOME. These findings further call into question traditional models of rapid glaciation during a long-lived greenhouse state as the sole driver of the LOME and emphasize the need for new integrated Upper Ordovician research initiatives to better characterize Katian events

Public health utility of cause of death data : applying empirical algorithms to improve data quality

Background: Accurate, comprehensive, cause-specific mortality estimates are crucial for informing public health decision making worldwide. Incorrectly or vaguely assigned deaths, defined as garbage-coded deaths, mask the true cause distribution. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study has developed methods to create comparable, timely, cause-specific mortality estimates; an impactful data processing method is the reallocation of garbage-coded deaths to a plausible underlying cause of death. We identify the pattern of garbage-coded deaths in the world and present the methods used to determine their redistribution to generate more plausible cause of death assignments. Methods: We describe the methods developed for the GBD 2019 study and subsequent iterations to redistribute garbage-coded deaths in vital registration data to plausible underlying causes. These methods include analysis of multiple cause data, negative correlation, impairment, and proportional redistribution. We classify garbage codes into classes according to the level of specificity of the reported cause of death (CoD) and capture trends in the global pattern of proportion of garbage-coded deaths, disaggregated by these classes, and the relationship between this proportion and the Socio-Demographic Index. We examine the relative importance of the top four garbage codes by age and sex and demonstrate the impact of redistribution on the annual GBD CoD rankings. Results: The proportion of least-specific (class 1 and 2) garbage-coded deaths ranged from 3.7% of all vital registration deaths to 67.3% in 2015, and the age-standardized proportion had an overall negative association with the Socio Demographic Index. When broken down by age and sex, the category for unspecified lower respiratory infections was responsible for nearly 30% of garbage-coded deaths in those under 1 year of age for both sexes, representing the largest proportion of garbage codes for that age group. We show how the cause distribution by number of deaths changes before and after redistribution for four countries: Brazil, the United States, Japan, and France, highlighting the necessity of accounting for garbage-coded deaths in the GBD

The global, regional, and national burden of stomach cancer in 195 countries, 1990-2017 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease study 2017

Background: Stomach cancer is a major health problem in many countries. Understanding the current burden of stomach cancer and the differential trends across various locations is essential for formulating effective preventive strategies. We report on the incidence, mortality, and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to stomach cancer in 195 countries and territories from 21 regions between 1990 and 2017. Methods: Estimates from GBD 2017 were used to analyse the incidence, mortality, and DALYs due to stomach cancer at the global, regional, and national levels. The rates were standardised to the GBD world population and reported per 100 000 population as age-standardised incidence rates, age-standardised death rates, and age-standardised DALY rates. All estimates were generated with 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs). Findings: In 2017, more than 1·22 million (95% UI 1·19–1·25) incident cases of stomach cancer occurred worldwide, and nearly 865 000 people (848 000–885 000) died of stomach cancer, contributing to 19·1 million (18·7–19·6) DALYs. The highest age-standardised incidence rates in 2017 were seen in the high-income Asia Pacific (29·5, 28·2–31·0 per 100 000 population) and east Asia (28·6, 27·3–30·0 per 100 000 population) regions, with nearly half of the global incident cases occurring in China. Compared with 1990, in 2017 more than 356 000 more incident cases of stomach cancer were estimated, leading to nearly 96 000 more deaths. Despite the increase in absolute numbers, the worldwide age-standardised rates of stomach cancer (incidence, deaths, and DALYs) have declined since 1990. The drop in the disease burden was associated with improved Socio-demographic Index. Globally, 38·2% (21·1–57·8) of the age-standardised DALYs were attributable to high-sodium diet in both sexes combined, and 24·5% (20·0–28·9) of the age-standardised DALYs were attributable to smoking in males. Interpretation: Our findings provide insight into the changing burden of stomach cancer, which is useful in planning local strategies and monitoring their progress. To this end, specific local strategies should be tailored to each country's risk factor profile. Beyond the current decline in age-standardised incidence and death rates, a decrease in the absolute number of cases and deaths will be possible if the burden in east Asia, where currently almost half of the incident cases and deaths occur, is further reduced. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation