Cell immobilized fog-trap system for fat, oil, and grease removal from restaurant wastewater

Cell immobilized lipase-producing bacteria on three different matrices were incorporated in a fat-, oil-, and grease (FOG) trap system for restaurant wastewater treatment. During a 16-day laboratory-scale experiment for the treatment of synthetic FOG wastewater containing soybean oil, no significant difference (two-tailed t test at 95% confidence interval) in the FOG removal between two systems was observed at FOG influent≤1,000 mg/L. However, the typical trap showed lower FOG removal efficiency than the matrix-based system when the influent FOG concentration was increased to ≥5,000 mg/L. In addition, the matrix-based trap system was able to sustain a stable high FOG removal, with <100 mg/L effluent, even at 10,000 mg/L influent FOG. Based on FOG heights measured and mass balance calculations, 97.4 and 99.5% of the total FOG load for 16 days were removed in a typical trap and matrix-based system, respectively. About 93.6% of the removal in the matrix-based was accounted to biodegradation. The 30-day full-scale operations demonstrated a distinguishably better performance in the matrix-based system (92.7±9.06% of 1,044.8±537.27 mg FOG/L) than in the typical trap system (74.6±27.13% of 463.4±296.87 mg FOG/L) for the treatment of barbeque restaurant wastewater. Similarly, matrix-based system revealed higher chemical oxygen demand removal (85.9±11.99%) than the typical trap system (60.4±31.26%). Characterizations of the influent, emulsified, adsorbed and effluent FOG indicated that straight saturated fatty acids constituted the cause of clogging problems in the FOG-trap and piping system. © 2009 ASCE

Intercultural New Media Studies: The Next Frontier in intercultural Communication

New media (ICT\u27s) are transforming communication across cultures. Despite this revolution in cross cultural contact, communication researchers have largely ignored the impact of new media on intercultural communication. This groundbreaking article defines the parameters of a new field of inquiry called Intercultural New Media Studies (INMS), which explores the intersection between ICT\u27s and intercultural communication. Composed of two research areas—(1) new media and intercultural communication theory and (2) culture and new media—INMS investigates new digital theories of intercultural contact as well as refines and expands twentieth-century intercultural communication theories, examining their salience in a digital world. INMS promises to increase our understanding of intercultural communication in a new media age and is the next frontier in intercultural communication

Temporal perception deficits in schizophrenia: integration is the problem, not deployment of attentions

Patients with schizophrenia are known to have impairments in sensory processing. In order to understand the specific temporal perception deficits of schizophrenia, we investigated and determined to what extent impairments in temporal integration can be dissociated from attention deployment using Attentional Blink (AB). Our findings showed that there was no evident deficit in the deployment of attention in patients with schizophrenia. However, patients showed an increased temporal integration deficit within a hundred-millisecond timescale. The degree of such integration dysfunction was correlated with the clinical manifestations of schizophrenia. There was no difference between individuals with/without schizotypal personality disorder in temporal integration. Differently from previous studies using the AB, we did not find a significant impairment in deployment of attention in schizophrenia. Instead, we used both theoretical and empirical approaches to show that previous findings (using the suppression ratio to correct for the baseline difference) produced a systematic exaggeration of the attention deficits. Instead, we modulated the perceptual difficulty of the task to bring the baseline levels of target detection between the groups into closer alignment. We found that the integration dysfunction rather than deployment of attention is clinically relevant, and thus should be an additional focus of research in schizophrenia

PCA-based population structure inference with generic clustering algorithms

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Handling genotype data typed at hundreds of thousands of loci is very time-consuming and it is no exception for population structure inference. Therefore, we propose to apply PCA to the genotype data of a population, select the significant principal components using the Tracy-Widom distribution, and assign the individuals to one or more subpopulations using generic clustering algorithms.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We investigated K-means, soft K-means and spectral clustering and made comparison to STRUCTURE, a model-based algorithm specifically designed for population structure inference. Moreover, we investigated methods for predicting the number of subpopulations in a population. The results on four simulated datasets and two real datasets indicate that our approach performs comparably well to STRUCTURE. For the simulated datasets, STRUCTURE and soft K-means with BIC produced identical predictions on the number of subpopulations. We also showed that, for real dataset, BIC is a better index than likelihood in predicting the number of subpopulations.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our approach has the advantage of being fast and scalable, while STRUCTURE is very time-consuming because of the nature of MCMC in parameter estimation. Therefore, we suggest choosing the proper algorithm based on the application of population structure inference.</p

Efficacy and tolerability of vardenafil in Asian men with erectile dysfunction

10.1111/j.1745-7262.2008.00388.xAsian Journal of Andrology103495-50

Grand Rounds: An Outbreak of Toxic Hepatitis among Industrial Waste Disposal Workers

CONTEXT: Industrial waste (which is composed of various toxic chemicals), changes to the disposal process, and addition of chemicals should all be monitored and controlled carefully in the industrial waste industry to reduce the health hazard to workers. CASE PRESENTATION: Five workers in an industrial waste plant developed acute toxic hepatitis, one of whom died after 3 months due to fulminant hepatitis. In the plant, we detected several chemicals with hepatotoxic potential, including pyridine, dimethylformamide, dimethylacetamide, and methylenedianiline. The workers had been working in the high-vapor-generating area of the plant, and the findings of pathologic examination showed typical features of acute toxic hepatitis. DISCUSSION: Infectious hepatitis and drug-induced hepatitis were excluded by laboratory findings, as well as the clinical course of hepatitis. All cases of toxic hepatitis in this plant developed after the change of the disposal process to thermochemical reaction–type treatment using unslaked lime reacted with industrial wastes. During this chemical reaction, vapor containing several toxic materials was generated. Although we could not confirm the definitive causative chemical, we suspect that these cases of hepatitis were caused by one of the hepatotoxic agents or by a synergistic interaction among several of them. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL OR PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: In the industrial waste treatment process, the danger of developing toxic hepatitis should be kept in mind, because any subtle change of the treatment process can generate various toxic materials and threaten the workers’ health. A mixture of hepatotoxic chemicals can induce clinical manifestations that are quite different from those predicted by the toxic property of a single agent

Neutralino versus axion/axino cold dark matter in the 19 parameter SUGRA model

We calculate the relic abundance of thermally produced neutralino cold dark matter in the general 19 parameter supergravity (SUGRA-19) model. A scan over GUT scale parameters reveals that models with a bino-like neutralino typically give rise to a dark matter density \Omega_{\tz_1}h^2\sim 1-1000, i.e. between 1 and 4 orders of magnitude higher than the measured value. Models with higgsino or wino cold dark matter can yield the correct relic density, but mainly for neutralino masses around 700-1300 GeV. Models with mixed bino-wino or bino-higgsino CDM, or models with dominant co-annihilation or A-resonance annihilation can yield the correct abundance, but such cases are extremely hard to generate using a general scan over GUT scale parameters; this is indicative of high fine-tuning of the relic abundance in these cases. Requiring that m_{\tz_1}\alt 500 GeV (as a rough naturalness requirement) gives rise to a minimal probably dip in parameter space at the measured CDM abundance. For comparison, we also scan over mSUGRA space with four free parameters. Finally, we investigate the Peccei-Quinn augmented MSSM with mixed axion/axino cold dark matter. In this case, the relic abundance agrees more naturally with the measured value. In light of our cumulative results, we conclude that future axion searches should probe much more broadly in axion mass, and deeper into the axion coupling.Comment: 23 pages including 17 .eps figure

Visual Information Alone Changes Behavior and Physiology during Social Interactions in a Cichlid Fish (Astatotilapia burtoni)

Social behavior can influence physiological systems dramatically yet the sensory cues responsible are not well understood. Behavior of male African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, in their natural habitat suggests that visual cues from conspecifics contribute significantly to regulation of social behavior. Using a novel paradigm, we asked whether visual cues alone from a larger conspecific male could influence behavior, reproductive physiology and the physiological stress response of a smaller male. Here we show that just seeing a larger, threatening male through a clear barrier can suppress dominant behavior of a smaller male for up to 7 days. Smaller dominant males being “attacked” visually by larger dominant males through a clear barrier also showed physiological changes for up to 3 days, including up-regulation of reproductive- and stress-related gene expression levels and lowered plasma 11-ketotestesterone concentrations as compared to control animals. The smaller males modified their appearance to match that of non-dominant males when exposed to a larger male but they maintained a physiological phenotype similar to that of a dominant male. After 7 days, reproductive- and stress- related gene expression, circulating hormone levels, and gonad size in the smaller males showed no difference from the control group suggesting that the smaller male habituated to the visual intruder. However, the smaller male continued to display subordinate behaviors and assumed the appearance of a subordinate male for a full week despite his dominant male physiology. These data suggest that seeing a larger male alone can regulate the behavior of a smaller male but that ongoing reproductive inhibition depends on additional sensory cues. Perhaps, while experiencing visual social stressors, the smaller male uses an opportunistic strategy, acting like a subordinate male while maintaining the physiology of a dominant male