Comparative study of EVA-Cloisite® 20A and heat-treated EVA-Cloisite® 20A on heavy-metal adsorption properties

Ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA)/ Cloisite® 20A (C20A) composite fabricated via the melt-blending method was used for the development of a heavy-metal adsorbent through acid and heat treatment. Heat-treated composites were produced at 400°C to 1 000°C in air and N2 atmospheres. The materials were characterised through TGA, FT-IR, contact angle and Zetasizer. Treating EVA/C20A composites with H2SO4 at 130°C reduced the contact angle from 99.73° to 30.40°. The acid-functionalised composite was tested for the removal of Pb2+ and an adsorption capacity of 49 mg·g-1 was recorded while the heat-treated composite exhibited an adsorption capacity of 153 mg·g-1

Surveillance for Malaria Elimination in Swaziland: A National Cross-Sectional Study Using Pooled PCR and Serology

BACKGROUND: To guide malaria elimination efforts in Swaziland and other countries, accurate assessments of transmission are critical. Pooled-PCR has potential to efficiently improve sensitivity to detect infections; serology may clarify temporal and spatial trends in exposure. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using a stratified two-stage cluster, cross-sectional design, subjects were recruited from the malaria endemic region of Swaziland. Blood was collected for rapid diagnostic testing (RDT), pooled PCR, and ELISA detecting antibodies to Plasmodium falciparum surface antigens. Of 4330 participants tested, three were RDT-positive yet false positives by PCR. Pooled PCR led to the identification of one P. falciparum and one P. malariae infection among RDT-negative participants. The P. falciparum-infected participant reported recent travel to Mozambique. Compared to performing individual testing on thousands of samples, PCR pooling reduced labor and consumable costs by 95.5%. Seropositivity was associated with age ≥20 years (11·7% vs 1·9%, P<0.001), recent travel to Mozambique (OR 4.4 [95% CI 1.0-19.0]) and residence in southeast Swaziland (RR 3.78, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of malaria infection and recent exposure in Swaziland are extremely low, suggesting elimination is feasible. Future efforts should address imported malaria and target remaining foci of transmission. Pooled PCR and ELISA are valuable surveillance tools for guiding elimination efforts

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Congo red dye removal by direct membrane distillation using PVDF/PTFE membrane

The ability to use the membrane distillation (MD) technique is envisaged as a promising approach to attain sustainable and reliable clean water supply. In this work, polytetrafluoroethylene/polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF/PTFE) flat sheet membranes were fabricated via the thermally induced solvent evaporation process. The PVDF/PTFE membrane surface was modified by incorporating methyl functionalized mesoporous silica nano particles (MfSNPs). Prior to application, the membranes were characterized with respect to surface and structural morphology, hydrophobicity and overall porosity. Clean water flux measurements were conducted using a direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) lab-scale experimental setup with deionized water as the feed solution (50 degrees C) and permeate solution (20 degrees C). The highest stable pure water flux for the MfSNPS/PVDF/PTFE membranes was 0.0041 L/h m(2). The incorporation of the MfNPS did not only improve the fluxes but also induced low wetting properties as shown by the contact angle and LEPw values. The MfSNPs/PVDF/PTFE membranes were highly efficient in removing Congo red dye from water with 99% removal efficiency achieved