F-shaped Shorted Patch Antenna with Dual-frequency Characteristics

This paper presents a compact shorted patch antenna. The antenna is based on an F-shaped printed conductor coaxially fed with an electromagnetically coupled shorted inverted F-shaped antenna interleaved with each other. The overall antenna is then coupled with a rectangular ring. The antenna has dual characteristic features and its resonance frequency is at 1.85 GHz and 2.42 GHz. The measured return loss bandwidth and its far field radiation patterns are presented. The gain of the antenna is 1.6 dBiDepartment of Electronic and Information EngineeringRefereed conference pape

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

A prospective interventional study to examine the effect of a silver alloy and hydrogel--coated catheter on the incidence of catheter-associated urinary tract infection

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Chronic benign neutropenia among Chinese children

Objective. To delineate the clinical behaviour of chronic benign neutropenia in Chinese children in Hong Kong. Design. Retrospective study. Setting. University teaching hospital, Hong Kong. Patients. All infants and children with absolute neutrophil count of 1.5 × 109 /L or lower for more than 3 months. Main outcome measures. Development of significant infection, and achievement of remission. Results. Twenty-four children with chronic benign neutropenia were identified between 1992 and 2001. Their median age of diagnosis was 9 months. The mean (standard deviation) initial absolute neutrophil count was 0.28 × 109 /L (0.24 × 109 /L). Twenty-three patients presented with infection. Of the 19 patients tested, four (21%) were positive for anti-neutrophil antibodies. Bone marrow examination was performed in 17 patients: nine had normal results, but six showed evidence of peripheral consumption, one showed late maturation arrest at band stage, and one showed phagocytosis of myeloid cells by histiocytes. The overall hospitalised infection rate was 51.6 episodes per 1000 patient-months. Ten percent of cases were considered 'significant' infections and required hospital admission with either surgical intervention or intravenous therapy (antibiotics or fluid replacement). In the first year of diagnosis, more than 80% of patients had their lowest absolute neutrophil count (mean, 0.16 × 109 /L; standard deviation, 0.11 × 109 /L). Granulocyte-colony stimulating factor was used to treat three patients and induced transient elevation of absolute neutrophil count in all three. The projected remission rate was 55.4% at 3 years. Even for those with persistent disease, there was significant recovery in absolute neutrophil count to a mean of 0.5 × 109 /L (P<0.01). Conclusions. Patients with chronic benign neutropenia experienced a relatively benign clinical course regardless of their remission status. Only a small proportion of patients developed significant infections. A multi-centre prospective study may help identify predictive factors of remission.published_or_final_versio

Soil-Structure Interaction on the Response of Jacket Type Offshore Wind Turbine

Jacket structures are still at the early stage of their development for use in the offshore wind industry. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of the soil-structure interaction on the response of an offshore wind turbine with a jacket-type foundation. For this purpose, two different models of flexible foundation-the p-y model and the p-y model considering pile groups effect-are employed to compare the dynamic responses with the fixed-base model. The modal analysis and the coupled dynamic analysis are carried out under deterministic and stochastic conditions. The influence of the soil-structure interaction on the response of the jacket foundation predicts that the flexible foundation model is necessary to estimate the loads of the offshore wind turbine structure well. It is suggested that during fatigue analysis the pile group effect should be considered for the jacket foundation.None1174Ysciescopu

Balance control, agility, eye-hand coordination, and sport performance of amateur badminton players: A cross-sectional study

© 2019 the Author(s). In this study, balance performance, agility, eye-hand coordination, and sports performance were compared between amateur badminton players and active controls. Thirty young adult badminton players and 33 active controls participated in the study. Static single-leg standing balance (with eyes closed) was measured using a force platform, and dynamic balance was measured using the Y Balance Test (lower quarter). Agility was measured using a hexagon agility test, and eye-hand coordination was measured using a computerized finger-pointing task. Sports performance was quantified by the number of times a shuttlecock fell in a designated area following a badminton serve. The badminton players had superior accuracy in badminton serving (P.05). Amateur badminton players had more favorable sports performance, but not balance performance, agility, or eye-hand coordination, than controls

Graphene oxide incorporated polysulfone substrate for the fabrication of flat-sheet thin-film composite forward osmosis membranes

© 2015 Elsevier B.V. The preparation and performances of the newly synthesized thin film composite (TFC) forward osmosis (FO) membranes with graphene oxide (GO)-modified support layer are presented in this study. GO nanosheets were incorporated in the polysulfone (PSf) to obtain PSf/GO composite membrane support layer. Polyamide (PA) active layer was subsequently formed on the PSf/GO by interfacial polymerization to obtain the TFC-FO membranes. Results reveal that at an optimal amount of GO addition (0.25wt%), a PSf/GO composite support layer with favorable structural property measured in terms of thickness, porosity and pore size can be achieved. The optimum incorporation of GO in the PSF support layer not only significantly improved water permeability but also allowed effective PA layer formation, in comparison to that of pure PSf support layer which had much lower water permeability. Thus, a TFC-FO membrane with high water flux (19.77Lm-2h-1 against 6.08Lm-2h-1 for pure PSf) and reverse flux selectivity (5.75Lg-1 against 3.36Lg-1 for pure PSf) was obtained under the active layer facing the feed solution or AL-FS membrane orientation. Besides the improved structural properties (reduced structural parameter, S) of the support layer, enhanced support hydrophilicity also contributed to the improved water permeability of the membrane. Beyond a certain point of GO addition (≥0.5wt%), the poor dispersion of GO in dope solution and significant structure change resulted in lower water permeation and weaker mechanical properties in support as well as FO flux/selectivity of consequent TFC membrane. Overall, this study suggests that GO modification of membrane supports could be a promising technique to improve the performances of TFC-FO membranes

Chemically Cross-Linked Graphene Oxide as a Selective Layer on Electrospun Polyvinyl Alcohol Nanofiber Membrane for Nanofiltration Application.

Graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets were utilized as a selective layer on a highly porous polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofiber support via a pressure-assisted self-assembly technique to synthesize composite nanofiltration membranes. The GO layer was rendered stable by cross-linking the nanosheets (GO-to-GO) and by linking them onto the support surface (GO-to-PVA) using glutaraldehyde (GA). The amounts of GO and GA deposited on the PVA substrate were varied to determine the optimum nanofiltration membrane both in terms of water flux and salt rejection performances. The successful GA cross-linking of GO interlayers and GO-PVA via acetalization was confirmed by FTIR and XPS analyses, which corroborated with other characterization results from contact angle and zeta potential measurements. Morphologies of the most effective membrane (CGOPVA-50) featured a defect-free GA cross-linked GO layer with a thickness of ~67 nm. The best solute rejections of the CGOPVA-50 membrane were 91.01% for Na2SO4 (20 mM), 98.12% for Eosin Y (10 mg/L), 76.92% for Methylene blue (10 mg/L), and 49.62% for NaCl (20 mM). These findings may provide one of the promising approaches in synthesizing mechanically stable GO-based thin-film composite membranes that are effective for solute separation via nanofiltration

Induced Self-Assembly of Alkynylplatinum(II) Complexes by Variations of Solvent Compositions and Addition of Polyelectrolytes

Poster Presentation: S9- Supramolecular Chemistry and Self-Assembly: no. S9.P6published_or_final_versio

Klebsiella infection in patients with thalassemia

Klebsiella infection has previously been reported in a few patients with transfusion-dependent thalassemia. The incidence and clinical spectrum of this infection in our cohort of patients were reviewed retrospectively. Among 160 patients observed for 12 years, there were 15 episodes of Klebsiella infection that occurred in 12 patients (7.5%), resulting in an incidence of 0.78 infections per 100 patient-years. The clinical spectrum included sinusitis (4 cases), intracranial infection (5 cases), septicemia (4 cases), and abscesses of the liver, lung, kidney, and parotid gland (1 case each). Three patients had recurrent infections involving different sites, 2 (16%) died of fulminant septicemia, and 3 (25%) had significant permanent neurological deficits. The antibiotic susceptibility pattern for the isolates was similar to the pattern for isolates recovered in the community. With regard to predisposing factors, iron overload and liver function derangement were found to be significant on univariate analysis (P = .046 and P = .049, respectively) but insignificant on multivariate analysis. Klebsiella infection was a serious and frequently encountered complication in our patients with transfusion-dependent thalassemia, resulting in high mortality and morbidity rates.published_or_final_versio