Applications of Biological Flocculants (BFs) for Coagulation Treatment in Water Purification: Turbidity Elimination

In this study, coagulation performance by using biological flocculants (BFs; produced from strain Bacillus sp. F6) for turbidity removal was investigated. The results demonstrated that BFs were able to eliminate turbidity from kaolin clay solution over a wide dosage range (γDR = 6-20 mg L-1). The removal efficiency with BFs reached 86 % on average, lower than 95 % with Al2(SO4)3 (γAl = 6.5 mg L-1) and 96 % with Fe2(SO4)3 (γFe = 10 mg L-1), respectively. For bioflocculants, bridging flocculation other than charge neutralization should be responsible for turbidity removal. The combined applications of BFs with Al2(SO4)3 (ζAl/BF = 0.33) and Fe2(SO4)3 (ζFe/BF = 0.05) increased overall turbidity removal up to 97 %. It was also shown that combination of BFs and Fe2(SO4)3 was effective for removing turbidity from raw water. This study provides a proof-in-concept demonstration of BFs for water purification, which can in part reduce operational costs in coagulation treatment, as well, effectively reduce the concentration of residual metallic elements (e.g. aluminum) in coagulated solution

Applications of Biological Flocculants (BFs) for Coagulation Treatment in Water Purification: Turbidity Elimination

In this study, coagulation performance by using biological flocculants (BFs; produced from strain Bacillus sp. F6) for turbidity removal was investigated. The results demonstrated that BFs were able to eliminate turbidity from kaolin clay solution over a wide dosage range (γDR = 6-20 mg L-1). The removal efficiency with BFs reached 86 % on average, lower than 95 % with Al2(SO4)3 (γAl = 6.5 mg L-1) and 96 % with Fe2(SO4)3 (γFe = 10 mg L-1), respectively. For bioflocculants, bridging flocculation other than charge neutralization should be responsible for turbidity removal. The combined applications of BFs with Al2(SO4)3 (ζAl/BF = 0.33) and Fe2(SO4)3 (ζFe/BF = 0.05) increased overall turbidity removal up to 97 %. It was also shown that combination of BFs and Fe2(SO4)3 was effective for removing turbidity from raw water. This study provides a proof-in-concept demonstration of BFs for water purification, which can in part reduce operational costs in coagulation treatment, as well, effectively reduce the concentration of residual metallic elements (e.g. aluminum) in coagulated solution

Pairing Symmetry in the Anisotropic Fermi Superfluid under p-wave Feshbach Resonance

The anisotropic Fermi superfluid of ultra-cold Fermi atoms under the p-wave Feshbach resonance is studied theoretically. The pairing symmetry of the ground state is determined by the strength of the atom-atom magnetic dipole interaction. It is $k_z$ for a strong dipole interaction; while it becomes $k_z - i \beta k_y$, up to a rotation about z, for a weak one (Here $\beta$ < 1 is a numerical coefficient). By changing the external magnetic field or the atomic gas density, a phase transition between these two states can be driven. We discuss how the pairing symmetry of the ground state can be determined in the time-of-flight experiments.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Achieving the Pareto Frontier of Regret Minimization and Best Arm Identification in Multi-Armed Bandits

We study the Pareto frontier of two archetypal objectives in multi-armed bandits, namely, regret minimization (RM) and best arm identification (BAI) with a fixed horizon. It is folklore that the balance between exploitation and exploration is crucial for both RM and BAI, but exploration is more critical in achieving the optimal performance for the latter objective. To this end, we design and analyze the BoBW-lil'UCB$(\gamma)$ algorithm. Complementarily, by establishing lower bounds on the regret achievable by any algorithm with a given BAI failure probability, we show that (i) no algorithm can simultaneously perform optimally for both the RM and BAI objectives, and (ii) BoBW-lil'UCB$(\gamma)$ achieves order-wise optimal performance for RM or BAI under different values of $\gamma$. Our work elucidates the trade-off more precisely by showing how the constants in previous works depend on certain hardness parameters. Finally, we show that BoBW-lil'UCB outperforms a close competitor UCB$_\alpha$ (Degenne et al., 2019) in terms of the time complexity and the regret on diverse datasets such as MovieLens and Published Kinase Inhibitor Set.Comment: 43 pages, 10 figure

Screening of patients with tuberculosis for diabetes mellitus in China.

Objective  There is a high burden of both diabetes (DM) and tuberculosis (TB) in China, and this study aimed to assess feasibility and results of screening patients with TB for DM within the routine healthcare setting of six health facilities. Method  Agreement on how to screen, monitor and record was reached in May 2011 at a stakeholders' meeting, and training was carried out for staff in the six facilities in July 2011. Implementation started in September 2011, and we report on 7 months of activities up to 31 March 2012. Results  There were 8886 registered patients with TB. They were first asked whether they had DM. If the answer was no, they were screened with a random blood glucose (RBG) followed by fasting blood glucose (FBG) in those with RBG ≥ 6.1 mm (one facility) or with an initial FBG (five facilities). Those with FBG ≥ 7.0 mm were referred to DM clinics for diagnostic confirmation with a second FBG. Altogether, 1090 (12.4%) patients with DM were identified, of whom 863 (9.7%) had a known diagnosis of DM. Of 8023 patients who needed screening for DM, 7947 (99%) were screened. This resulted in a new diagnosis of DM in 227 patients (2.9% of screened patients), and of these, 226 were enrolled to DM care. In addition, 575 (7.8%) persons had impaired fasting glucose (FBG 6.1 to <7.0 mm). Prevalence of DM was significantly higher in patients in health facilities serving urban populations (14.0%) than rural populations (10.6%) and higher in hospital patients (13.5%) than those attending TB clinics (8.5%). Conclusion  This pilot project shows that it is feasible to screen patients with TB for DM in the routine setting, resulting in a high yield of patients with known and newly diagnosed disease. Free blood tests for glucose measurement and integration of TB and DM services may improve the diagnosis and management of dually affected patients