Permeability is the critical factor governing the life cycle environmental performance of drinking water treatment using living filtration membranes.

Living Filtration Membranes (LFMs) are a water filtration technology that was recently developed in the lab (Technology Readiness Level 4). LFMs have shown filtration performance comparable with that of ultrafiltration, far better fouling resistance than conventional polymer membranes, and good healing capabilities. These properties give LFMs promise to address two significant issues in conventional membrane filtration: fouling and membrane damage. To integrate environmental considerations into future technology development (i.e., Ecodesign), this study assesses the life cycle environmental performance of drinking water treatment using LFMs under likely design and operation conditions. It also quantitatively ranks the engineering design and operation factors governing the further optimization of LFM environmental performance using a global sensitivity analysis. The results suggest that LFMs' superior fouling resistance will reduce the life cycle environmental impacts of ultrafiltration by 25% compared to those of a conventional polymer membrane in most impact categories (e.g., acidification, global warming potential, and carcinogenics). The only exception is the eutrophication impact, where the need for growth medium and membrane regeneration offsets the benefits of LFMs' fouling resistance. Permeability is the most important factor that should be prioritized in future R&D to further improve the life cycle environmental performance of LFMs. A 1% improvement in the permeability will lead to a ∼0.7% improvement in LFMs' environmental performance in all the impact categories, whereas the same change in the other parameters investigated (e.g., LFM lifespan and regeneration frequency) typically only leads to a <0.2% improvement

Long-Term Potentiation: One Kind or Many?

Do neurobiologists aim to discover natural kinds? I address this question in this chapter via a critical analysis of classification practices operative across the 43-year history of research on long-term potentiation (LTP). I argue that this 43-year history supports the idea that the structure of scientific practice surrounding LTP research has remained an obstacle to the discovery of natural kinds

Anisotropic infrared response of vanadium dioxide microcrystals

Vanadium dioxide (VO2) undergoes a phase transition at a temperature of 340 K between an insulating monoclinic M-1 phase and a conducting rutile phase. Accurate measurements of possible anisotropy of the electronic properties and phonon features of VO2 in the insulating monoclinic M-1 and metallic rutile phases are a prerequisite for understanding the phase transition in this correlated system. Recently, it has become possible to grow single domain untwinned VO2 microcrystals, which makes it possible to investigate the true anisotropy of VO2. We performed polarized transmission infrared micro-spectroscopy on these untwinned microcrystals in the spectral range between 200 cm(-1) and 6000 cm(-1) and have obtained the anisotropic phonon parameters and low frequency electronic properties in the insulating monoclinic M-1 and metallic rutile phases. We have also performed ab initio GGA+U total energy calculations of phonon frequencies for both phases. We find our measurements and calculations to be in good agreement. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.11512

Repowering Flexibility of Coal-Based Advanced Power Systems

The Department of Energy`s (DOE`s) Morgantown Energy Technology Center (METC) helps enhance the economic competitiveness, environmental quality, and national well-being of the U.S. by developing advanced power-generation systems. The potential market for advanced power-generation systems is large. In the U.S., electric demand is estimated to grow at about 1 percent per year through the year 2010. The total power generation market also includes new-capacity as well as replacement of existing power plants as they age. Thus, the market for power systems over the next 15 years is estimated to be about 279,000 megawatts (MW), but could range from as much as 484,000 MW to as little as 153,000 MW. These predictions are summarized. Over the next 15 years, the replacement market is potentially much larger than the expansion market because of the large base of aging power plants in the U.S

Potentiality in Biology

We take the potentialities that are studied in the biological sciences (e.g., totipotency) to be an important subtype of biological dispositions. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we want to provide a detailed understanding of what biological dispositions are. We claim that two features are essential for dispositions in biology: the importance of the manifestation process and the diversity of conditions that need to be satisfied for the disposition to be manifest. Second, we demonstrate that the concept of a disposition (or potentiality) is a very useful tool for the analysis of the explanatory practice in the biological sciences. On the one hand it allows an in-depth analysis of the nature and diversity of the conditions under which biological systems display specific behaviors. On the other hand the concept of a disposition may serve a unificatory role in the philosophy of the natural sciences since it captures not only the explanatory practice of biology, but of all natural sciences. Towards the end we will briefly come back to the notion of a potentiality in biology

Associations of Starch Gel Hardness, Granule Size, Waxy Allelic Expression, Thermal Pasting, Milling Quality, and Kernel Texture of 12 Soft Wheat Cultivars

Starches were isolated from 12 soft wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars and were characterized for waxy (Wx) allelic expression, thermal pasting characteristics, and starch granule size. Gels were produced from the thermally degraded starches and were evaluated using large deformation rheological measurements. Data were compared with cultivar kernel texture, milling characteristics, starch chemical analyses, and flour pasting characteristics. Larger flour yields were produced from cultivars that had larger starch granules. Flour yield also was correlated with lower amylose content and greater starch content. Harder starch gels were correlated with higher levels of amylose content and softer kernel texture. The cultivar Fillmore, which had a partial waxy mutation at the B locus, produced the highest peak pasting viscosity and the lowest gel hardness. Softer textured wheats had greater lipid‐complexed amylose and starch phosphorus contents and had less total starch content. Among these wheats of the soft market class, softer textured wheats had larger starch granules and harder textured wheats had smaller starch granules. In part, this may explain why soft wheats vary in texture. The smaller granules have larger surface area available for noncovalent bonding with the endosperm protein matrix and they also may pack more efficiently, producing harder endosperm.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141588/1/cche0163.pd