Cosmic dust

Master's Project (M.F.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015My thesis is a body of work collectively entitled Cosmic Dust. It consists of different series of paintings that I've produced as a Master of Fine Arts student here at University of Alaska Fairbanks. These series are the Drip Paintings, Celestial Objects, and Ellipsoids. Elements from different series sometimes combine to form hybrid paintings. Although I have categorized my paintings into these three series, they have many elements in common. They are all related to natural phenomena involving continuous cycles and the effects of gravitational force

Jet-loop reactor with cross-flow ultrafiltration membrane system for treatment of olive mill wastewater

ABSTRACT: Olive oil extraction is one of the ancient agricultural industries all over the Mediterranean area and even today it is of fundamental economic importance for many industries found over the whole Mediterranean. However, this industry generates large amounts of olive mill wastewater (OMW) and due to its physicochemical characteristics it causes severe environmental concerns and management problems in the Mediterranean area, which is facing water scarcity. Technologies to reuse this wastewater will have a high impact at the economic and environmental level. The work presented aims to improve the use of jet-loop reactors technology for the aerobic biotreatment of OMW. A jet-loop reactor (100 L) coupled with an ultrafiltration (UF) membrane (MBR) system (JACTO.MBR_100 L) were tested for the influence of hydraulic parameters on OMW degradation and scale-up to 1,000 L. Chemical oxygen demand and total phenols (TP) decreased notably (up to 85% and 80% removal efficiency, respectively) after the biological treatment. The treated OMW (UF permeate) was evaluated as a source for irrigation and its impact on the soil and plant growth and their quality parameters.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Exploring different pretreatment methodologies for allowing microalgae growth in undiluted piggery wastewater

The overapplication of manure on agricultural soils leads to nitrogen and phosphorus discharge into the aquatic environment, resulting in serious eutrophication problems and decreased water quality. Piggery wastewater (PWW) can be treated by microalgae to recycle nutrients, but the toxic levels of ammonia and organic matter hinder their growth. Fresh water is usually used to dilute PWW, but it is a scarce resource. The implementation of a pretreatment step before microalgae-based treatment could make PWW suitable for microalgae growth. Electrocoagulation, ammonia stripping, photo-Fenton, and constructed wetlands were evaluated as pretreatment methods to reduce ammonia, chemical oxygen demand (COD), color, and total suspended solids. Moreover, the pretreated PWWs were tested to grow the microalga Tetradesmus obliquus. Photo-Fenton showed the best results among the other pretreatments, achieving removal efficiencies above 90%, except for ammonia. This resulted in T. obliquus being capable of growing on undiluted PWW, even at higher ammonia levels, achieving similar biomass productivity to synthetic medium (66.4 ± 17.8 mg·L−1·day−1 and 60.1 ± 10.4 mg·L−1·day−1, respectively) almost doubling with pH control (116.5 mg·L−1·day−1). Thus, this pretreatment seems to be the most promising one to incorporate into microalgae-based treatment systems and must be further explored.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Appreciation Workshop on Climate-Resilient Agriculture for the Local Government Officials of Quezon Province (4th District): A Workshop Report

The two-day appreciation workshop on climate-resilient agriculture (CRA) was a collaborative activity among the Department of Agriculture Regional Field Office IVA (DA-RFO-IVA), the Municipal Government of Guinayangan Quezon, the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The workshop was designed for key local government officials – local chief executives, municipal agriculturists and municipal planning and development coordinators. The delivery involved presentations of concepts, activities, learning; field visits; and participatory action planning. This was an effort to bring the learning from the implementation of CRA-related interventions in the municipalities of Guinayangan and San Francisco to scale. This used the horizontal scaling approach to widen the spatial or geographic extent of the “product”. In this particular case, adaptation strategies were the ‘products’ that were promoted

Recent Advances in the Synthesis and Application of SF5-Containing Organic Compounds

It is well known that fluorinated molecules play an important role in daily life. For example, organic molecules bearing either a fluorine atom itself or a short polyfluorinated substituent such as mono-, difluoro-, and trifluoromethyl groups, or pentafluoroethyl and perfluoropropyl groups are already widely used in medicinal and agricultural chemistry. In contrast, molecules with long perfluorinated chains have found vast application in materials science. Among the fluorine-containing moieties, the pentafluorosulfanyl (SF5) substituent occupies a special place.1 The pentafluorosulfanyl group brings unique properties to organic compounds and often improves their biological activities due to the group’s high chemical and metabolic stability, significant lipophilicity, substantial steric effect, unique geometry, and low surface energy. Here we present new routes towards SF5-substituted aliphatic and heterocyclic compounds

A Temporal Logic Based Theory of Test Coverage and Generation

This paper presents a theory of test coverage and generation from specifications written in extended finite state machines (EFSMs). We investigate a family of coverage criteria based on the information of control flow and data flow in EFSMs and characterize them using the temporal logic CTL. We discuss the complexity of minimal cost test generation and describe a simple heuristic which uses the capability of model checkers to construct counterexamples. Our approach extends the range of applications of model checking from automatic verification of finite state systems to automatic test generation from finite state systems

Bringing onco‐innovation to Europe’s healthcare systems. The potential of biomarker testing, real world evidence, tumour agnostic therapies to empower personalised medicine

Rapid and continuing advances in biomarker testing are not being matched by uptake in health systems, and this is hampering both patient care and innovation. It also risks costing health systems the opportunity to make their services more efficient and, over time, more economical. The potential that genomics has brought to biomarker testing in diagnosis, prediction and research is being realised, pre‐eminently in many cancers, but also in an ever‐wider range of conditions— notably BRCA1/2 testing in ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers. Nevertheless, the implementation of genetic testing in clinical routine setting is still challenging. Development is impeded by country‐related heterogeneity, data deficiencies, and lack of policy alignment on standards, approval—and the role of real‐world evidence in the process—and reimbursement. The acute nature of the problem is compellingly illustrated by the particular challenges facing the development and use of tumour agnostic therapies, where the gaps in preparedness for taking advantage of this innovative approach to cancer therapy are sharply exposed. Europe should already have in place a guarantee of universal access to a minimum suite of biomarker tests and should be planning for an optimum testing scenario with a wider range of biomarker tests integrated into a more sophisticated health system articulated around personalised medicine. Improving healthcare and winning advantages for Europe’s industrial competitiveness and innovation require an appropriate policy framework—starting with an update to outdated recommendations. We show herein the main issues and proposals that emerged during the previous advisory boards organised by the European Alliance for Personalized Medicine which mainly focus on possible scenarios of harmonisation of both oncogenetic testing and management of cancer patients

Bringing onco-innovation to Europe’s healthcare systems: the potential of biomarker testing, real world evidence, tumour agnostic therapies to empower personalised medicine

International audienceRapid and continuing advances in biomarker testing are not being matched by uptake in health systems, and this is hampering both patient care and innovation. It also risks costing health systems the opportunity to make their services more efficient and, over time, more economical. The potential that genomics has brought to biomarker testing in diagnosis, prediction and research is being realised, pre-eminently in many cancers, but also in an ever-wider range of conditions—notably BRCA1/2 testing in ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers. Nevertheless, the implementation of genetic testing in clinical routine setting is still challenging. Development is impeded by country-related heterogeneity, data deficiencies, and lack of policy alignment on standards, approval—and the role of real-world evidence in the process—and reimbursement. The acute nature of the problem is compellingly illustrated by the particular challenges facing the development and use of tumour agnostic therapies, where the gaps in preparedness for taking advantage of this innovative approach to cancer therapy are sharply exposed. Europe should already have in place a guarantee of universal access to a minimum suite of biomarker tests and should be planning for an optimum testing scenario with a wider range of biomarker tests integrated into a more sophisticated health system articulated around personalised medicine. Improving healthcare and winning advantages for Europe’s industrial competitiveness and innovation require an appropriate policy framework—starting with an update to outdated recommendations. We show herein the main issues and proposals that emerged during the previous advisory boards organised by the European Alliance for Personalized Medicine which mainly focus on possible scenarios of harmonisation of both oncogenetic testing and management of cancer patients

Dark sectors 2016 Workshop: community report

This report, based on the Dark Sectors workshop at SLAC in April 2016, summarizes the scientific importance of searches for dark sector dark matter and forces at masses beneath the weak-scale, the status of this broad international field, the important milestones motivating future exploration, and promising experimental opportunities to reach these milestones over the next 5-10 years