A comparison between ultraviolet disinfection and copper alginate beads within a vortex bioreactor for the deactivation of bacteria in simulated waste streams with high levels of colour, humic acid and suspended solids.

We show in this study that the combination of a swirl flow reactor and an antimicrobial agent (in this case copper alginate beads) is a promising technique for the remediation of contaminated water in waste streams recalcitrant to UV-C treatment. This is demonstrated by comparing the viability of both common and UV-C resistant organisms in operating conditions where UV-C proves ineffective - notably high levels of solids and compounds which deflect UV-C. The swirl flow reactor is easy to construct from commonly available plumbing parts and may prove a versatile and powerful tool in waste water treatment in developing countries

Deletion of methylglyoxal synthase gene (mgsA) increased sugar co-metabolism in ethanol-producing Escherichia coli

The use of lignocellulose as a source of sugars for bioproducts requires the development of biocatalysts that maximize product yields by fermenting mixtures of hexose and pentose sugars to completion. In this study, we implicate mgsA encoding methylglyoxal synthase (and methylglyoxal) in the modulation of sugar metabolism. Deletion of this gene (strain LY168) resulted in the co-metabolism of glucose and xylose, and accelerated the metabolism of a 5-sugar mixture (mannose, glucose, arabinose, xylose and galactose) to ethanol

Association of follow-up infarct volume with functional outcome in acute ischemic stroke: a pooled analysis of seven randomized trials.

BACKGROUND: Follow-up infarct volume (FIV) has been recommended as an early indicator of treatment efficacy in patients with acute ischemic stroke. Questions remain about the optimal imaging approach for FIV measurement. OBJECTIVE: To examine the association of FIV with 90-day modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score and investigate its dependency on acquisition time and modality. METHODS: Data of seven trials were pooled. FIV was assessed on follow-up (12 hours to 2 weeks) CT or MRI. Infarct location was defined as laterality and involvement of the Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score regions. Relative quality and strength of multivariable regression models of the association between FIV and functional outcome were assessed. Dependency of imaging modality and acquisition time (≤48 hours vs >48 hours) was evaluated. RESULTS: Of 1665 included patients, 83% were imaged with CT. Median FIV was 41 mL (IQR 14-120). A large FIV was associated with worse functional outcome (OR=0.88(95% CI 0.87 to 0.89) per 10 mL) in adjusted analysis. A model including FIV, location, and hemorrhage type best predicted mRS score. FIV of ≥133 mL was highly specific for unfavorable outcome. FIV was equally strongly associated with mRS score for assessment on CT and MRI, even though large differences in volume were present (48 mL (IQR 15-131) vs 22 mL (IQR 8-71), respectively). Associations of both early and late FIV assessments with outcome were similar in strength (ρ=0.60(95% CI 0.56 to 0.64) and ρ=0.55(95% CI 0.50 to 0.60), respectively). CONCLUSIONS: In patients with an acute ischemic stroke due to a proximal intracranial occlusion of the anterior circulation, FIV is a strong independent predictor of functional outcome and can be assessed before 48 hours, oneither CT or MRI

Recovery of aroma compounds from orange essential oil

The objective of this work was to study the recovery of aroma compounds present in the orange essential oil using experimental data from CUTRALE (a Brazilian Industry of Concentrated Orange Juice). The intention was to reproduce the industrial unit and afterwards to optimize the recovery of aroma compounds from orange essential oil by liquid-liquid extraction. The orange oil deterpenation was simulated using the commercial software PRO/II 4.0 version 1.0. The UNIFAC model was chosen for the calculation of the activity coefficients.174182470571

An evolutionary framework for microstructure-sensitive generalized diffusion gradient waveforms

International audienceIn diffusion-weighted MRI, general gradient waveforms became of interest for their sensitivity to microstructure features of the brain white matter. However, the design of such waveforms remains an open problem. In this work, we propose a framework for generalized gradient waveform design with optimized sensitivity to selected microstruc-ture features. In particular, we present a rotation-invariant method based on a genetic algorithm to maximize the sensitivity of the signal to the intra-axonal volume fraction. The sensitivity is evaluated by computing a score based on the Fisher information matrix from Monte-Carlo simulations , which offer greater flexibility and realism than conventional analytical models. As proof of concept, we show that the optimized waveforms have higher scores than the conventional pulsed-field gradients experiments. Finally, the proposed framework can be generalized to optimize the waveforms for to any microstructure feature of interest