Precipitation of copper (II) in a two-stage continuous treatment system using sulfate reducing bacteria

Biologically driven precipitation of dissolved copper and other trace metals has been used to treat contaminated aqueous streams. However, high dissolved trace metal concentrations can lead to toxicity, and their bioremediation difficult. Furthermore sorption of trace metals onto biomass might result in large amounts of contaminated byproducts. The aim of this work was to develop and test a two-stage reactor to bypass the toxic effects on the bacteria and chemically precipitate copper without contaminating the bulk of the biomass. Hence, copper removal using a sulfate reducing bacteria culture was investigated in a two-stage continuous treatment system. The first reactor was a sand-filled biological reactor in which the sulfate is reduced, followed by a second reactor/clarifier where the chemical precipitation and sedimentation of a CuS phase occurs. The influent Cu2+ concentration was varied systematically between 15 and 600 mg/L, and the precipitation of Cu2+ metal as CuS was achieved in the second reactor, resulting in complete (within detection limits) Cu2+ removal. EDS analysis on the solid phase collected from the second reactor confirmed the presence of Cu and S in the precipitate. EDS analysis on the solid phase collected from the second reactor confirmed the presence of Cu and S in the precipitate, and a CuS phase with minimal biomass was obtained. This configuration avoids toxicity effects of heavy metals in the biological reactor, as well as the contamination of biomass with the trace metal. Furthermore, the biomass free CuS precipitates can be easily disposed or even used to recover the trace metal

Modelling Word Associations with Word Embeddings for a Guesser Agent in the Taboo City Challenge Competition

In the Taboo City Challenge, artificial agents should guess the names of cities from simple textual hints and are evaluated with games played by humans. Thus, playing the games successfully requires mimicking associations that humans have with geographical locations. In this paper, an architecture is proposed that calculates the associative similarity between a city and a hint from a semantic vector space. The semantic vector space is created using the Skip-gram hierarchical softmax model, from a tailored corpus about travel destinations. We investigate the effect of varying training parameters and introduce a targeted corpus annotation method that significantly improves performance. The results on a dataset of 149 games indicate that the proposed architecture can guess the target city with up to 22.45% accuracy — a substantial improvement over the 4.11% accuracy achieved by the baseline architecture

Mitochondrial DNA signatures at different spatial scales: from the effects of the Straits of Gibraltar to population structure in the meridional serotine bat (Eptesicus isabellinus)

The meridional serotine bat Eptesicus isabellinus is found in North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. We analyzed the genetic structure of E. isabellinus at two different geographic scales to reveal the historical and ecological patterns that have shaped its populations. The role of the Straits of Gibraltar as an isolating barrier between African and Iberian populations is evaluated and the degree of genetic structure and female-mediated gene flow was assessed at a local scale between neighboring colonies. Populations of E. isabellinus from Iberia and northern Morocco show little genetic divergence and share mtDNA haplotypes, indicating that the Straits of Gibraltar are neither an impediment to dispersal nor a cause of genetic differentiation. Our results also suggest that E. isabellinus may have dispersed from western Andalusia into northern Morocco after the last glacial period. At a smaller geographic scale, the colonies studied showed high variation in genetic variability and structure, indicating that no female-mediated gene flow is present. This pattern is consistent with a described pattern of independent endemic viral circulation of the bat rabies virus EBLV-1, which was found when studying rabies dynamics in the same serotine bat coloniesPeer reviewe

Belief propagation algorithm for computing correlation functions in finite-temperature quantum many-body systems on loopy graphs

Belief propagation -- a powerful heuristic method to solve inference problems involving a large number of random variables -- was recently generalized to quantum theory. Like its classical counterpart, this algorithm is exact on trees when the appropriate independence conditions are met and is expected to provide reliable approximations when operated on loopy graphs. In this paper, we benchmark the performances of loopy quantum belief propagation (QBP) in the context of finite-tempereture quantum many-body physics. Our results indicate that QBP provides reliable estimates of the high-temperature correlation function when the typical loop size in the graph is large. As such, it is suitable e.g. for the study of quantum spin glasses on Bethe lattices and the decoding of sparse quantum error correction codes.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

A combined anatomical variation of inferior epigastric vessels

During the routine anatomical dissection of a male cadaver, a variation was observed both in the inferior epigastric artery (IEA) and inferior epiastric vein (IEV). Although the origin of the IEA from the right femoral artery (FA) is common variation in this case, the right IEA originated from the RFA, 13 mm inferior to inguinal ligament. The artery didn’t course anterior to the femoral vein (FV) as described in the variations of this vessel; instead, coursed on the lateral side of the variant IEV. Additionally, in this cadaver, the single right IEV drained to RFV 8 mm inferior to inguinal ligament. Both the variant artery and vein passed posterior to spermatic cord and their course in the rectus sheath were normal in every aspect. Due to its clinical importance, this combined anatomical variation must be remembered by the surgeons

Reclaiming the political : emancipation and critique in security studies

The critical security studies literature has been marked by a shared commitment towards the politicization of security – that is, the analysis of its assumptions, implications and the practices through which it is (re)produced. In recent years, however, politicization has been accompanied by a tendency to conceive security as connected with a logic of exclusion, totalization and even violence. This has resulted in an imbalanced politicization that weakens critique. Seeking to tackle this situation, the present article engages with contributions that have advanced emancipatory versions of security. Starting with, but going beyond, the so-called Aberystwyth School of security studies, the argument reconsiders the meaning of security as emancipation by making the case for a systematic engagement with the notions of reality and power. This revised version of security as emancipation strengthens critique by addressing political dimensions that have been underplayed in the critical security literature

Epiploic appendagitis

Background: A 8-year-old girl was admitted to our hospital because of abdominal pain of 1 day duration. The pain was localized in the left lower quadrant, constant, non-radiating and did not exacerbate by movement. The laboratory tests were normal, except mildly elevated white blood cell count of 11200/ml. Emergency multi-detector contrast-enhanced abdominopelvic CT examination without oral or rectal contrast material and coronal maximum intensity projection (MIP) image obtained during the arterial phase of the abdominopelvic were performed