1,481 research outputs found
Bioreactor scalability: laboratory-scale bioreactor design influences performance, ecology, and community physiology in expanded granular sludge bed bioreactors
Studies investigating the feasibility of new, or improved, biotechnologies, such as wastewater treatment digesters, inevitably start with laboratory-scale trials. However, it is rarely determined whether laboratory-scale results reflect full-scale performance or microbial ecology. The Expanded Granular Sludge Bed (EGSB) bioreactor, which is a high-rate anaerobic digester configuration, was used as a model to address that knowledge gap in this study. Two laboratory-scale idealizations of the EGSBâa one-dimensional and a three- dimensional scale-down of a full-scale designâwere built and operated in triplicate under near-identical conditions to a full-scale EGSB. The laboratory-scale bioreactors were seeded using biomass obtained from the full-scale bioreactor, and, spent water from the distillation of whisky from maize was applied as substrate at both scales. Over 70 days, bioreactor performance, microbial ecology, and microbial community physiology were monitored at various depths in the sludge-beds using 16S rRNA gene sequencing (V4 region), specific methanogenic activity (SMA) assays, and a range of physical and chemical monitoring methods. SMA assays indicated dominance of the hydrogenotrophic pathway at full-scale whilst a more balanced activity profile developed during the laboratory-scale trials. At each scale, Methanobacterium was the dominant methanogenic genus present. Bioreactor performance overall was better at laboratory-scale than full-scale. We observed that bioreactor design at laboratory-scale significantly influenced spatial distribution of microbial community physiology and taxonomy in the bioreactor sludge-bed, with 1-D bioreactor types promoting stratification of each. In the 1-D laboratory bioreactors, increased abundance of Firmicutes was associated with both granule position in the sludge bed and increased activity against acetate and ethanol as substrates. We further observed that stratification in the sludge-bed in 1-D laboratory-scale bioreactors was associated with increased richness in the underlying microbial community at species (OTU) level and improved overall performance
From strategy, to accounting : accounting practice and strategic discourse in the telecommunications industry
Following Roberts (1990) and Dent (1990). this study investigates the
importance of complexifying the relationship between strategy and
accounting. The genealogical approach of Hoskin et al (1997) provides
inspiration as to the ways in which strategic discourse (itself promoted as
a subject of study by Knights and Morgan (1990,1991,1995)) is
historically contingent upon practices of accounting. I take up this task
of inaugurating the study of accounting practice and strategy discourse,
from strategy to accounting, to develop a new perspective of how their
interaction takes place. This gives birth to a re-reading of the strategy
(and accounting) literatures, from the direction of a constitutive notion of
accounting practices. In particular, the processual and critical schools of
strategy are found to promote conventional notions of accounting as
mirror, as secondary and passive practice, which circulate beneath the
usual level of visibility. Building on this emergent approach, a post-
Foucauldian theory of practices is outlined from a methodological
viewpoint. This approach does not begin from such general categories as
'the individual', 'the social' or 'the economic', and thereby does not follow
conventional understandings of 'doing ethnography'.
The inquiry is empirically situated within the context of a longitudinal
investigation (1997-2000) into the U. K. based part of a global
telecommunications company, Teleco. I discover complex interactions
between accounting practices and the workings of strategy, both as
presence and absence. There is a partial presence of strategy even within
the most 'strategic' parts of Teleco, in conjunction with a growing
absence within those parts most distant from 'the strategy'. Despite this,
or perhaps because of this, the spread of accounting and accounting
based-practices rolls on, albeit in a non-uniform way.
This brings forth the possibility of a strategic accounting, one whose
practices are perhaps most visibly internalised and effected on my very
self, thus adding weight to the rejection within this thesis of the
metaphysical categories of either 'strategy' or 'accounting
Prescription Opioid Abuse in Prison Settings: A Systematic Review of Prevalence, Practice and Treatment Responses
Background
To systematically review the quantitative and qualitative evidence base pertaining to
the prevalence, practice of, and treatment response to the diversion of prescribed
opiates in the prison setting.
Methods
Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, ASSIA and Science Direct
databases were searched for papers from 1995 to the present relevant to the abuse
of prescribed opiate medication. Identified journals and their reference lists were
hand searched for other relevant articles. Of the abstracts identified as relevant, full
text papers were retrieved and critiqued against the inclusion criteria for the review.
Results
Three hundred and fifty-five abstracts were identified, leading to 42 full-text articles
being retrieved. Of those, 10 papers were included in the review. Significant
differences in abuse behaviours between different countries were reported.
However, a key theme emerged from the data regarding a culture of nasal
administration of prescribed sublingual buprenorphine within some prisons due to
3
both reduced prevalence of injection within prison and reduced supplies of illicit
drugs within prison. The buprenorphine/naloxone preparation appears to be less
amenable to abuse. The review highlighted a paucity of empirical research pertaining
to both prevalence of the phenomenon and treatment responses.
Clinical and research implications
Healthcare providers within prisons need to prescribe opioids in the least abuseable
preparation since the risk of abuse is significant, despite widespread processes of
supervised dispensing. Prescription medication abuse is not limited to opioids and
the predominant drug of abuse in an individual prison can rapidly change according
to availability
Efficacy of daratumumab combination regimen in patients with multiple myeloma : A combined analysis of phase III randomized controlled trials
Open Access via the Jis Wiley AgreementPeer reviewedPublisher PD
Canonical Ensemble of Initial States Leading to Chiral Fluctuations
In energetic heavy ion collisions, if quark-gluon plasma is formed, its
hadronization may lead to observable critical fluctuations, i.e., DCC
formation. The strength and observability of these fluctuations depend on the
initial state. Here we study the canonical ensemble of initial states of chiral
fluctuations in heavy ion collisions and the probability to obtain observable
domains of chiral condensates.Comment: 13 pages (figures included) Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Semi-numerical resummation of event shapes
For many event-shape observables, the most difficult part of a resummation in
the Born limit is the analytical treatment of the observable's dependence on
multiple emissions, which is required at single logarithmic accuracy. We
present a general numerical method, suitable for a large class of event shapes,
which allows the resummation specifically of these single logarithms. It is
applied to the case of the thrust major and the oblateness, which have so far
defied analytical resummation and to the two-jet rate in the Durham algorithm,
for which only a subset of the single logs had up to now been calculated.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures. Version 2 adds some clarifications, a reference,
as well as corrections to the subleading fixed-order coefficients and to
figures 4 and
Disoriented Chiral Condensates, Pion Probability Distributions and Parallels with Disordered System
A general expression is discussed for pion probability distributions coming
from relativistic heavy ion collisions. The general expression contains as
limits: 1) The disoriented chiral condensate (DCC), 2) the negative binomial
distribution and Pearson type III distribution, 3) a binomial or Gaussian
result, 4) and a Poisson distribution. This general expression approximates
other distributions such as a signal to noise laser distribution. Similarities
and differences of the DCC distribution with these other distribution are
studied. A connection with the theory of disordered systems will be discussed
which include spin-glasses, randomly broken objects, random and chaotic maps.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure include
Dileptons from Disoriented Chiral Condensates
Disoriented chiral condensates or long wavelength pionic oscillations and
their interaction with the thermal environment can be a significant source of
dileptons. We calculate the yield of such dilepton production within the linear
sigma model, both in a quantal mean-field treatment and in a semi-classical
approximation. We then illustrate the basic features of the dilepton spectrum
in a schematic model. We find that dilepton yield with invariant mass near and
below due to the soft pion modes can be up to two orders of
magnitude larger than the corresponding equilibrium yield.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, uses epsf-styl
Pion Breather States in QCD
We describe a class of pionic breather solutions (PBS) which appear in the
chiral lagrangian description of low-energy QCD. These configurations are
long-lived, with lifetimes greater than fm/c, and could arise as
remnants of disoriented chiral condensate (DCC) formation at RHIC. We show that
the chiral lagrangian equations of motion for a uniformly isospin-polarized
domain reduce to those of the sine-gordon model. Consequently, our solutions
are directly related to the breather solutions of sine-gordon theory in 3+1
dimensions. We investigate the possibility of PBS formation from multiple
domains of DCC, and show that the probability of formation is non-negligible.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Void Analysis of Hadronic Density Fluctuations at Phase Transition
The event-to-event fluctuations of hadron multiplicities are studied for a
quark system undergoing second-order phase transition to hadrons. Emphasis is
placed on the search for an observable signature that is realistic for
heavy-ion collisions. It is suggested that in the 2-dimensional y-phi space the
produced particles selected in a very narrow p_T window may exhibit clustering
patterns even when integrated over the entire emission time. Using the Ising
model to simulate the critical phenomenon and taking into account a p_T
distribution that depends on the emission time, we study in the framework of
the void analysis proposed earlier and find scaling behavior. The scaling
exponents turn out to be larger than the ones found before for pure
configurations without mixing. The signature is robust in that it is
insensitive to the precise scheme of simulating time evolution. Thus it should
reveal whether or not the dense matter created in heavy-ion collisions is a
quark-gluon plasma before hadronization.Comment: 11 pages in LaTeX + 6 figures in p
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