Professor Vasyl Ivanovich Albitsky – leading scientist of the Kharkiv technological institute in the area of hydraulics (19.03.1850 – after 1916)

Показано науковий доробок провідного ученого у галузі гідравліки – Василя Івановича Альбіцького. Наведено відомості про родину, у якій народився майбутній вчений, та його дитинство. Представлені дані щодо перших викладацьких практик молодого науковця. Розглянуто стан вищої освіти у тогочасній Російській імперії, зокрема наведено дані про чинні університети. Разом з тим, подана інформація про відповідність навчальних ступенів і табелю про ранги. Розкрито новий етап багатогранної діяльності В.І. Альбіцького, а саме його служба у Харківському практичному технологічному інституті (з 1898 р. ХТІ). Тут учений не лише викладав фундаментальні дисципліни, але й розробляв власні нові курси, видав друком декілька монографій, сконструював пристрої, на які отримав патенти від іноземних урядів. Охарактеризована його робота як засновника та керівника гідравлічною лабораторією. Окреслено конфлікт ученого з Г.Ф. Проскурою. Показана робота В.І. Альбіцького як експерта за запрошенням суду та керівника спорудженням турбінних установок. Крім того, стверджується, що учений є автором першої гідроелектростанції на Дніпрі. З’ясована його роль у переговорах із Норвегією та щодо будівництва у Керченському проливі шлюзової дамби. Подано відомості про причини відставки В.І. Альбіцького з роботи у ХТІ та замовчування про його доробок за радянські часи.The scientific achievements of the leading scientist in the area of hydraulics – Vasil Ivanovich Albitsky are shown. Information about the family in which the future scientist was born and his childhood is provided. Details of the first teaching practices of a young scientist are presented. The state of higher education in Russian empire in that time is considered, in particular, data on the existing universities are given. At the same time, information about the correspondence between of the academic degrees and the Table of Ranks is provided. The new stage of the polymathic activity by V.I. Albitsky, namely, his service at the Kharkiv Practical Technological Institute (from 1898, KhTI) is analyzed. Here, the scientist not only taught basic disciplines but also developed his own new courses, published several monographs, designed devices and received patents from foreign governments. His work as the founder and head of the hydraulic laboratory is described. The conflict of V.I. Albitsky with G.F. Proskura is outlined. It is shown the work of V.I. Albitsky as an expert by the invitation of the court and as the head of the turbine devices construction. In addition, it is argued that the scientist is the author of the first hydroelectric power station at the Dnieper. His role in the negotiations with Norway and concerning the construction of a gateway dam in Kerch strait has been clarified. The information about the reasons for the V.I. Albitsky’s resignation and the silence about his work during the Soviet times are presented

Post-Quantum Signatures on RISC-V with Hardware Acceleration

CRYSTALS-Dilithium and Falcon are digital signature algorithms based on cryptographic lattices, that are considered secure even if large-scale quantum computers will be able to break conventional public-key cryptography. Both schemes have been selected for standardization in the NIST post-quantum competition. In this work, we present a RISC-V HW/SW odesign that aims to combine the advantages of software- and hardware implementations, i.e. flexibility and performance. It shows the use of lexible hardware accelerators, which have been previously used for Public-Key Encryption (PKE) and Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM), for post-quantum signatures. It is optimized for Dilithium as a generic signature cheme but also accelerates applications that require fast verification of Falcon’s compact signatures. We provide a comparison with previous works showing that for Dilithium and Falcon, cycle counts are significantly reduced, such that our design is faster than previous software implementations or other HW/SW codesigns. In addition to that, we present a compact Globalfoundries 22 nm ASIC design that runs at 800MHz. By using hardware acceleration, energy consumption for Dilithium is reduced by up to 92.2%, and up to 67.5% for Falcon’s signature verification

Признаки когнитивных нарушений на магнитно-резонансной томографии у больных сахарным диабетом

Выявление когнитивных нарушений и изменений в структуре головного мозга у больных сахарным диабетом 1-го типа по данным МРТ и МРС.Detection of cognitive impairments and changes in the structure of the brain in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus аccording to MRI and MRS

The Influence of LWE/RLWE Parameters on the Stochastic Dependence of Decryption Failures

Learning with Errors (LWE) and Ring-LWE (RLWE) problems allow the construction of efficient key exchange and public-key encryption schemes. However, while improving the security through the use of error distributions with large standard deviations, the decryption failure rate increases as well. Currently, the independence of individual coefficient failures is assumed to estimate the overall decryption failure rate of many LWE/RLWE schemes. However, previous work has shown that this assumption is not correct. This assumption leads to wrong estimates of the decryption failure probability and consequently of the security level of the LWE/RLWE cryptosystem. An exploration of the influence of the LWE/RLWE parameters on the stochastic dependence among the coefficients is still missing. In this paper, we propose a method to analyze the stochastic dependence between decryption failures in LWE/RLWE cryptosystems. We present two main contributions. First, we use statistical methods to analyze the influence of fixing the norm of the error distribution on the stochastic dependence among decryption failures. The results have shown that fixing the norm of the error distribution indeed reduces the stochastic dependence of decryption failures. Therefore, the independence assumption gives a very close approximation to the true behavior of the cryptosystem. Second, we analyze and explore the influence of the LWE/RLWE parameters on the stochastic dependence. This exploration gives designers of LWE/RLWE based schemes the opportunity to compare different schemes with respect to the inaccuracy made by using the independence assumption. This work shows that the stochastic dependence depends on three LWE/RLWE parameters in different ways: i) it increases with higher lattice dimensions ($n$) and higher standard deviations of the error distribution ($\sqrt{k/2}$); and ii) it decreases with higher modulus ($q$)

High salinity tolerance of the Red Sea coral Fungia granulosa under desalination concentrate discharge conditions: an in situ photophysiology experiment.

Seawater reverse osmosis desalination concentrate may have chronic and/or acute impacts on the marine ecosystems in the near-field area of the discharge. Environmental impact of the desalination plant discharge is supposedly site- and volumetric- specific, and also depends on the salinity tolerance of the organisms inhabiting the water column in and around a discharge environment. Scientific studies that aim to understand possible impacts of elevated salinity levels are important to assess detrimental effects to organisms, especially for species with no mechanism of osmoregulation, e.g., presumably corals. Previous studies on corals indicate sensitivity toward hypo- and hyper-saline environments with small changes in salinity already affecting coral physiology. In order to evaluate sensitivity of Red Sea corals to increased salinity levels, we conducted a long-term (29 days) in situ salinity tolerance transect study at an offshore seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) discharge on the coral Fungia granulosa. While we measured a pronounced increase in salinity and temperature at the direct outlet of the discharge structure, effects were indistinguishable from the surrounding environment at a distance of 5 m. Interestingly, corals were not affected by varying salinity levels as indicated by measurements of the photosynthetic efficiency. Similarly, cultured coral symbionts of the genus Symbiodinium displayed remarkable tolerance levels in regard to hypo- and hypersaline treatments. Our data suggest that increased salinity and temperature levels from discharge outlets wear off quickly in the surrounding environment. Furthermore, F. granulosa seem to tolerate levels of salinity that are distinctively higher than reported for other corals previously. It remains to be determined whether Red Sea corals in general display increased salinity tolerance, and whether this is related to prevailing levels of high(er) salinity in the Red Sea in comparison to other oceans.Research in this study was supported by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Desalination as a Negative Emissions Technology

To limit global warming, governments and industries are engaged in reducing emissions of CO2. There is increasing evidence, however, that it may be necessary to go a step further by removing CO2 already emitted. For the purpose of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), a number of Negative Emissions Technologies (NET) have been proposed. These generally make extensive usage of land, energy and water – if they are to be implemented at the large scales needed. It is therefore important to seek, investigate and compare alternative approaches to NET. Desalination plants, though normally seen as sources rather than sinks of CO2, could be modified to provide a new type of NET. In this study, we propose treating desalination reject brine by electrolysis to form Mg(OH)2 and thus absorb CO2 via the oceans. The energy and water penalties associated with the electrolysis are calculated as 1.8 GJ/tCO2 and 13.7 m3/tCO2 respectively, making it an interesting option in comparison with some other types of NET. However, NET-modification more than doubles the specific energy consumption of a reverse-osmosis desalination plant. It is concluded that NET-desalination has potential to contribute to CDR in arid countries (especially if solar energy is used) thus helping to meet Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) following the COP21 summit

Neutron Reflectivity and Performance of Polyamide Nanofilms for Water Desalination

The structure and hydration of polyamide (PA) membranes are investigated with a combination of neutron and X-ray reflectivity, and their performance is benchmarked in reverse osmosis water desalination. PA membranes are synthesized by the interfacial polymerization of m-phenylenediamine (MPD) and trimesoyl chloride (TMC), varying systematically reaction time, concentration, and stoichiometry, to yield large-area exceptionally planar films of ?10 nm thickness. Reflectivity is employed to precisely determine membrane thickness and roughness, as well as the (TMC/MPD) concentration profile, and response to hydration in the vapor phase. PA film thickness is found to increase linearly with reaction time, albeit with a nonzero intercept, and the composition cross-sectional profile is found to be uniform, at the conditions investigated. Vapor hydration with H2O and D2O from 0 to 100% relative humidity results in considerable swelling (up to 20%), but also yields uniform cross-sectional profiles. The resulting film thickness is found to be predominantly set by the MPD concentration, while TMC regulates water uptake. A favorable correlation is found between higher swelling and water uptake with permeance. The data provide quantitative insight into the film formation mechanisms and correlate reaction conditions, cross-sectional nanostructure, and performance of the PA active layer in RO membranes for desalination

Significant energy savings by optimising membrane design in multi-stage reverse osmosis wastewater treatment process

YesThe total energy consumption of many Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants has continuously improved as a result of manufacturing highly impermeable membranes in addition to implementing energy recovery devices. The total energy consumption of the RO process contributes significantly to the total cost of water treatment. Therefore any way of keeping the energy consumption to a minimum is highly desirable but continues to be a real challenge in practice. Potential areas to explore for achieving this include the possibility of optimising the module design parameters and/or the associated operating parameters. This research focuses on this precise aim by evaluating the impact of the design characteristics of membrane length, width, and feed channel height on the total energy consumption for two selected pilot-plant RO process configurations for the removal of chlorophenol from wastewater. The proposed two configurations, with and without an energy recovery device (ERD), consist of four cylindrical pressure vessels connected in series and stuffed with spiral wound membranes. A detailed steady-state model developed earlier by the authors is used here to study such impact via repetitive simulation. The results achieved confirm that the overall energy consumption can be reduced by actually increasing the membrane width with a simultaneous reduction of membrane length at constant membrane area and module volume. Energy savings of more than 60% and 54% have been achieved for the two configurations with and without ERD respectively using process optimization. The energy savings are significantly higher compared to other available similar studies from the literature

YAP and TAZ regulate adherens junction dynamics and endothelial cell distribution during vascular development

© Copyright Neto et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.Formation of blood vessel networks by sprouting angiogenesis is critical for tissue growth, homeostasis and regeneration. How endothelial cells arise in adequate numbers and arrange suitably to shape functional vascular networks is poorly understood. Here we show that YAP/TAZ promote stretch-induced proliferation and rearrangements of endothelial cells whilst preventing bleeding in developing vessels. Mechanistically, YAP/TAZ increase the turnover of VE-Cadherin and the formation of junction associated intermediate lamellipodia, promoting both cell migration and barrier function maintenance. This is achieved in part by lowering BMP signalling. Consequently, the loss of YAP/TAZ in the mouse leads to stunted sprouting with local aggregation as well as scarcity of endothelial cells, branching irregularities and junction defects. Forced nuclear activity of TAZ instead drives hypersprouting and vascular hyperplasia. We propose a new model in which YAP/TAZ integrate mechanical signals with BMP signaling to maintain junctional compliance and integrity whilst balancing endothelial cell rearrangements in angiogenic vessels.FN was financially supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), CRUK-CRICK and the MDC. ACV, AKB and EBK were supported by the DZHK (German Centre for Cardiovascular Research), AS was supported by the EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization), JRC was supported by the FCT. CAF is supported by the FCT, EC-ERC Starting Grant, Portugal2020 program. MP is supported by the Max Planck Society, the ERC Starting Grant ANGIOMET, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Excellence Cluster Cardiopulmonary System, the LOEWE grant Ub-Net, the DZHK, the Stiftung Charité and the EMBO Young Investigator Program. HG is supported by the DZHK and ERC Consolidator Grant Reshape 311719.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio