Flexible batch electrodialysis for low-cost solar-powered brackish water desalination

Globally, 1.6 billion people in rural regions face water scarcity. Expanding freshwater access via brackish groundwater desalination can provide additional resources to address this challenge. In this study, we have developed a time-variant electrodialysis reversal (EDR) technology that flexibly uses available solar energy for desalination. Our proposed photovoltaic-powered desalination system can vary pumping and EDR power to match the availability of intermittent solar power, maximizing the desalination rate. Our results show improved system performance with the direct use of 77% of available solar energy—91% more than in conventional systems—and a 92% reduction in battery reliance. In a village-scale desalination case study in India, these system improvements lead to a 22% reduction in water cost, making the technology competitive with the currently used on-grid, village-scale reverse osmosis systems that are mainly powered by fossil fuels. Future advances could further reduce costs, providing an improved, sustainable solution to water scarcity in remote areas

The SWISS-PROT protein knowledgebase and its supplement TrEMBL in 2003

The SWISS-PROT protein knowledgebase (http://www.expasy.org/sprot/ and http://www.ebi.ac.uk/swissprot/) connects amino acid sequences with the current knowledge in the Life Sciences. Each protein entry provides an interdisciplinary overview of relevant information by bringing together experimental results, computed features and sometimes even contradictory conclusions. Detailed expertise that goes beyond the scope of SWISS-PROT is made available via direct links to specialised databases. SWISS-PROT provides annotated entries for all species, but concentrates on the annotation of entries from human (the HPI project) and other model organisms to ensure the presence of high quality annotation for representative members of all protein families. Part of the annotation can be transferred to other family members, as is already done for microbes by the High-quality Automated and Manual Annotation of microbial Proteomes (HAMAP) project. Protein families and groups of proteins are regularly reviewed to keep up with current scientific findings. Complementarily, TrEMBL strives to comprise all protein sequences that are not yet represented in SWISS-PROT, by incorporating a perpetually increasing level of mostly automated annotation. Researchers are welcome to contribute their knowledge to the scientific community by submitting relevant findings to SWISS-PROT at [email protected]

Voltage- and flow-controlled electrodialysis batch operation : flexible and optimized brackish water desalination

Electrodialysis (ED) desalination has been demonstrated to be more energy-efficient, provide higher-recovery, and be lower-cost for producing drinking water from saline groundwater compared to reverse osmosis. These benefits of ED could translate into cost-effective, renewable-powered desalination solutions. However, the challenge of using a variable power source (e.g. solar) with traditional steady-state ED operation requires batteries to reshape the power source to match the desalination load; these batteries often contribute to a large fraction of the produced water cost. In this study, we propose a time-variant voltage- and flow-controlled ED operation that can enable highly flexible desalination from variable power sources, including renewables, with negligible batteries, potentially leading to reduced water costs compared to what existing technology can provide. A model-based controller is presented which varies applied ED stack voltage and pumping flow rate to match power consumption to a variable source while maximizing desalination rate throughout an ED batch. The utility of the controller was demonstrated with a pilot-scale system tested with brackish groundwater, which operated as expected under varying fixed power levels and a real solar irradiance profile. The pilot system achieved a production rate up to 45% higher than that of an equivalently sized traditional steady-state ED system

UniProt: the Universal Protein knowledgebase

To provide the scientific community with a single, centralized, authoritative resource for protein sequences and functional information, the Swiss‐Prot, TrEMBL and PIR protein database activities have united to form the Universal Protein Knowledgebase (UniProt) consortium. Our mission is to provide a comprehensive, fully classified, richly and accurately annotated protein sequence knowledgebase, with extensive cross‐references and query interfaces. The central database will have two sections, corresponding to the familiar Swiss‐Prot (fully manually curated entries) and TrEMBL (enriched with automated classification, annotation and extensive cross‐references). For convenient sequence searches, UniProt also provides several non‐redundant sequence databases. The UniProt NREF (UniRef) databases provide representative subsets of the knowledgebase suitable for efficient searching. The comprehensive UniProt Archive (UniParc) is updated daily from many public source databases. The UniProt databases can be accessed online (http://www.uniprot.org) or downloaded in several formats (ftp://ftp.uniprot.org/pub). The scientific community is encouraged to submit data for inclusion in UniPro

The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt)

The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) provides the scientific community with a single, centralized, authoritative resource for protein sequences and functional information. Formed by uniting the Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL and PIR protein database activities, the UniProt consortium produces three layers of protein sequence databases: the UniProt Archive (UniParc), the UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProt) and the UniProt Reference (UniRef) databases. The UniProt Knowledgebase is a comprehensive, fully classified, richly and accurately annotated protein sequence knowledgebase with extensive cross-references. This centrepiece consists of two sections: UniProt/Swiss-Prot, with fully, manually curated entries; and UniProt/TrEMBL, enriched with automated classification and annotation. During 2004, tens of thousands of Knowledgebase records got manually annotated or updated; we introduced a new comment line topic: TOXIC DOSE to store information on the acute toxicity of a toxin; the UniProt keyword list got augmented by additional keywords; we improved the documentation of the keywords and are continuously overhauling and standardizing the annotation of post-translational modifications. Furthermore, we introduced a new documentation file of the strains and their synonyms. Many new database cross-references were introduced and we started to make use of Digital Object Identifiers. We also achieved in collaboration with the Macromolecular Structure Database group at EBI an improved integration with structural databases by residue level mapping of sequences from the Protein Data Bank entries onto corresponding UniProt entries. For convenient sequence searches we provide the UniRef non-redundant sequence databases. The comprehensive UniParc database stores the complete body of publicly available protein sequence data. The UniProt databases can be accessed online (http://www.uniprot.org) or downloaded in several formats (ftp://ftp.uniprot.org/pub). New releases are published every two week

The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt): an expanding universe of protein information

The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) provides a central resource on protein sequences and functional annotation with three database components, each addressing a key need in protein bioinformatics. The UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProtKB), comprising the manually annotated UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot section and the automatically annotated UniProtKB/TrEMBL section, is the preeminent storehouse of protein annotation. The extensive cross-references, functional and feature annotations and literature-based evidence attribution enable scientists to analyse proteins and query across databases. The UniProt Reference Clusters (UniRef) speed similarity searches via sequence space compression by merging sequences that are 100% (UniRef100), 90% (UniRef90) or 50% (UniRef50) identical. Finally, the UniProt Archive (UniParc) stores all publicly available protein sequences, containing the history of sequence data with links to the source databases. UniProt databases continue to grow in size and in availability of information. Recent and upcoming changes to database contents, formats, controlled vocabularies and services are described. New download availability includes all major releases of UniProtKB, sequence collections by taxonomic division and complete proteomes. A bibliography mapping service has been added, and an ID mapping service will be available soon. UniProt databases can be accessed online at http://www.uniprot.org or downloaded at ftp://ftp.uniprot.org/pub/database

The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt)

The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) provides the scientific community with a single, centralized, authoritative resource for protein sequences and functional information. Formed by uniting the Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL and PIR protein database activities, the UniProt consortium produces three layers of protein sequence databases: the UniProt Archive (UniParc), the UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProt) and the UniProt Reference (UniRef) databases. The UniProt Knowledgebase is a comprehensive, fully classified, richly and accurately annotated protein sequence knowledgebase with extensive cross-references. This centrepiece consists of two sections: UniProt/Swiss-Prot, with fully, manually curated entries; and UniProt/TrEMBL, enriched with automated classification and annotation. During 2004, tens of thousands of Knowledgebase records got manually annotated or updated; we introduced a new comment line topic: TOXIC DOSE to store information on the acute toxicity of a toxin; the UniProt keyword list got augmented by additional keywords; we improved the documentation of the keywords and are continuously overhauling and standardizing the annotation of post-translational modifications. Furthermore, we introduced a new documentation file of the strains and their synonyms. Many new database cross-references were introduced and we started to make use of Digital Object Identifiers. We also achieved in collaboration with the Macromolecular Structure Database group at EBI an improved integration with structural databases by residue level mapping of sequences from the Protein Data Bank entries onto corresponding UniProt entries. For convenient sequence searches we provide the UniRef non-redundant sequence databases. The comprehensive UniParc database stores the complete body of publicly available protein sequence data. The UniProt databases can be accessed online (http://www.uniprot.org) or downloaded in several formats (ftp://ftp.uniprot.org/pub). New releases are published every two weeks

Flexible trial design in practice – dropping and adding arms in STAMPEDE: a multi-arm multi-stage randomised controlled trial

The trial recruits men with locally advanced or metastatic prostate cancer starting standard long-term hormone therapy. There are 5 research arms and 1 control arm. The trial has a pilot stage assessing safety and feasibility, 3 intermediate “activity” stages (I-III) where the outcome measure is failure-free survival (FFS) and one final “efficacy” stage (IV) with overall survival as primary outcome measure. At the end of each stage, each research arm is formally compared pairwise to the control arm. Accrual of further patients is discontinued early for any research arm either not showing sufficient evidence of activity or with adverse safety considerations; accrual continues to arms showing activity with acceptable safety. The stopping guideline compares the treatment effect against a pre-defined cut-off value using the hazard ratio when the hazards are proportional and restricted-mean survival time otherwise. This interim hurdle becomes increasingly stringent stage-by-stage. The addition of new research arm(s) can be actively considered when sufficiently interesting agents emerge. New research arms are compared only to contemporaneously-recruited control arm patients using the same intermediate guidelines in a time-delayed manner. The addition of new research arms is independent of any of the original research arms stopping accrual early subject to adequate recruitment to support the overall trial aims