Assessment of Groundwater Resources in Siwa Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt

One of the major challenges facing Egypt is limited water resources associated with rapid increase in population. In 1960s, Egyptian government started to use groundwater from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) in the Western Desert to expand agricultural sector. Siwa Oasis is the focus of this study to assess the efficiency of groundwater use and corresponding impacts from 1980 to 2012. Results show that from 1980 to 1998, withdrawal from poorly designed wells increased rapidly causing an increase in excess water about 336%. The increase of excess water with the usage of poor drainage produced lakes. Remote Sensing showed in 2000, there were 21,348 acres of lakes with an increase of 89% since 1987 due to unmanaged withdrawal. After management intervention, excess water decreased about 94.7% from 1998 to 2012 causing a decrease in lakes area by 24%. Groundwater electrical conductivity (EC) increased from 4.5 to 10.5 ds/m in 1996 and 2013, respectively. Yields of olives and date palms decreased about 46% and 55%, respectively from 2000 to 2011 resulting in net revenue decrease of more than 60%. Results show that salinity has a strong negative correlation with yield and net revenue. Findings showed the importance of developing a meaningful groundwater resources management plan for Siwa region

Discovery of ferromagnetism with large magnetic anisotropy in ZrMnP and HfMnP

ZrMnP and HfMnP single crystals are grown by a self-flux growth technique, and structural as well as temperature dependent magnetic and transport properties are studied. Both compounds have an orthorhombic crystal structure. ZrMnP and HfMnP are ferromagnetic with Curie temperatures around 370 K and 320 K, respectively. The spontaneous magnetizations of ZrMnP and HfMnP are determined to be 1.9 μB/f.u. and 2.1 μB/f.u., respectively, at 50 K. The magnetocaloric effect of ZrMnP in terms of entropy change (ΔS) is estimated to be −6.7 kJ m−3 K−1 around 369 K. The easy axis of magnetization is [100] for both compounds, with a small anisotropy relative to the [010] axis. At 50 K, the anisotropy field along the [001] axis is ∼4.6 T for ZrMnP and ∼10 T for HfMnP. Such large magnetic anisotropy is remarkable considering the absence of rare-earth elements in these compounds. The first principle calculation correctly predicts the magnetization and hard axis orientation for both compounds, and predicts the experimental HfMnP anisotropy field within 25%. More importantly, our calculations suggest that the large magnetic anisotropy comes primarily from the Mn atoms, suggesting that similarly large anisotropies may be found in other 3d transition metal compounds

Nodeless multiband superconductivity in stoichiometric single-crystalline CaKFe4As4

Measurements of the London penetration depth Δλ(T) and tunneling conductance in single crystals of the recently discovered stoichiometric iron-based superconductor CaKFe4As4 (CaK1144) show nodeless, two-effective-gap superconductivity with a larger gap of about 6-10 meV and a smaller gap of about 1-4 meV. Having a critical temperature Tc,onset≈35.8 K, this material behaves similar to slightly overdoped (Ba1-xKx)Fe2As2 (e.g., x=0.54,Tc≈34 K), a known multigap s± superconductor. We conclude that the superconducting behavior of stoichiometric CaK1144 demonstrates that two-gap s± superconductivity is an essential property of high-temperature superconductivity in iron-based superconductors, independent of the degree of substitutional disorderWe thank A. Gurevich, D. D. Johnson, A. Kaminski, V. G. Kogan, and Lin-Lin Wang for useful discussions. This work was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering Division. Ames Laboratory is operated for the US DOE by Iowa State University under Contract DE-AC02-07CH11358. The work in Madrid was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FIS2014-54498-R and MDM-2014-0377), by the Comunidad de Madrid through program Nanofrontmag-CM (S2013/MIT-2850) by Axa Research Fund, FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG 618321, and the European Research Council (Grant Agreement No. 679080). Madrid's group also acknowledges SEGAINVEX-UAM. W.R.M. was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's EPiQS Initiative through Grant GBMF441

Finding Correspondence between Metabolomic Features in Untargeted Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry Metabolomics Datasets

Integration of multiple datasets can greatly enhance bioanalytical studies, for example, by increasing power to discover and validate biomarkers. In liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) metabolomics, it is especially hard to combine untargeted datasets since the majority of metabolomic features are not annotated and thus cannot be matched by chemical identity. Typically, the information available for each feature is retention time (RT), mass-to-charge ratio (m/z), and feature intensity (FI). Pairs of features from the same metabolite in separate datasets can exhibit small but significant differences, making matching very challenging. Current methods to address this issue are too simple or rely on assumptions that cannot be met in all cases. We present a method to find feature correspondence between two similar LC-MS metabolomics experiments or batches using only the features' RT, m/z, and FI. We demonstrate the method on both real and synthetic datasets, using six orthogonal validation strategies to gauge the matching quality. In our main example, 4953 features were uniquely matched, of which 585 (96.8%) of 604 manually annotated features were correct. In a second example, 2324 features could be uniquely matched, with 79 (90.8%) out of 87 annotated features correctly matched. Most of the missed annotated matches are between features that behave very differently from modeled inter-dataset shifts of RT, MZ, and FI. In a third example with simulated data with 4755 features per dataset, 99.6% of the matches were correct. Finally, the results of matching three other dataset pairs using our method are compared with a published alternative method, metabCombiner, showing the advantages of our approach. The method can be applied using M2S (Match 2 Sets), a free, open-source MATLAB toolbox, available at https://github.com/rjdossan/M2S

Finding correspondence between metabolomic features in untargeted liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry metabolomics datasets.

Integration of multiple datasets can greatly enhance bioanalytical studies, for example, by increasing power to discover and validate biomarkers. In liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) metabolomics, it is especially hard to combine untargeted datasets since the majority of metabolomic features are not annotated and thus cannot be matched by chemical identity. Typically, the information available for each feature is retention time (RT), mass-to-charge ratio (m/z), and feature intensity (FI). Pairs of features from the same metabolite in separate datasets can exhibit small but significant differences, making matching very challenging. Current methods to address this issue are too simple or rely on assumptions that cannot be met in all cases. We present a method to find feature correspondence between two similar LC-MS metabolomics experiments or batches using only the features' RT, m/z, and FI. We demonstrate the method on both real and synthetic datasets, using six orthogonal validation strategies to gauge the matching quality. In our main example, 4953 features were uniquely matched, of which 585 (96.8%) of 604 manually annotated features were correct. In a second example, 2324 features could be uniquely matched, with 79 (90.8%) out of 87 annotated features correctly matched. Most of the missed annotated matches are between features that behave very differently from modeled inter-dataset shifts of RT, MZ, and FI. In a third example with simulated data with 4755 features per dataset, 99.6% of the matches were correct. Finally, the results of matching three other dataset pairs using our method are compared with a published alternative method, metabCombiner, showing the advantages of our approach. The method can be applied using M2S (Match 2 Sets), a free, open-source MATLAB toolbox, available at https://github.com/rjdossan/M2S

Effect of dry or wet substrate deposition on the organic volume fraction of core–shell aerosol particles

Understanding the impact of sea spray aerosol (SSA) on the climate and atmosphere requires quantitative knowledge of their chemical composition and mixing states. Furthermore, single-particle measurements are needed to accurately represent large particle-to-particle variability. To quantify the mixing state, the organic volume fraction (OVF), defined as the relative organic volume with respect to the total particle volume, is measured after generating and collecting aerosol particles, often using deposition impactors. In this process, the aerosol streams are either dried or kept wet prior to impacting on solid substrates. However, the atmospheric community has yet to establish how dry versus wet aerosol deposition influences the impacted particle morphologies and mixing states. Here, we apply complementary offline single-particle atomic force microscopy (AFM) and bulk ensemble high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) techniques to assess the effects of dry and wet deposition modes on the substrate-deposited aerosol particles' mixing states. Glucose and NaCl binary mixtures that form core–shell particle morphologies were studied as model systems, and the mixing states were quantified by measuring the OVF of individual particles using AFM and compared to the ensemble measured by HPLC. Dry-deposited single-particle OVF data positively deviated from the bulk HPLC data by up to 60&thinsp;%, which was attributed to significant spreading of the NaCl core upon impaction with the solid substrate. This led to underestimation of the core volume. This problem was circumvented by (a) performing wet deposition and thus bypassing the effects of the solid core spreading upon impaction and (b) performing a hydration–dehydration cycle on dry-deposited particles to restructure the deformed NaCl core. Both approaches produced single-particle OVF values that converge well with the bulk and expected OVF values, validating the methodology. These findings illustrate the importance of awareness in how conventional particle deposition methods may significantly alter the impacted particle morphologies and their mixing states.</p

Metabolic Deficiences Revealed in the Biotechnologically Important Model Bacterium Escherichia coli BL21(DE3)

The Escherichia coli B strain BL21(DE3) has had a profound impact on biotechnology through its use in the production of recombinant proteins. Little is understood, however, regarding the physiology of this important E. coli strain. We show here that BL21(DE3) totally lacks activity of the four [NiFe]-hydrogenases, the three molybdenum- and selenium-containing formate dehydrogenases and molybdenum-dependent nitrate reductase. Nevertheless, all of the structural genes necessary for the synthesis of the respective anaerobic metalloenzymes are present in the genome. However, the genes encoding the high-affinity molybdate transport system and the molybdenum-responsive transcriptional regulator ModE are absent from the genome. Moreover, BL21(DE3) has a nonsense mutation in the gene encoding the global oxygen-responsive transcriptional regulator FNR. The activities of the two hydrogen-oxidizing hydrogenases, therefore, could be restored to BL21(DE3) by supplementing the growth medium with high concentrations of Ni2+ (Ni2+-transport is FNR-dependent) or by introducing a wild-type copy of the fnr gene. Only combined addition of plasmid-encoded fnr and high concentrations of MoO42− ions could restore hydrogen production to BL21(DE3); however, to only 25–30% of a K-12 wildtype. We could show that limited hydrogen production from the enzyme complex responsible for formate-dependent hydrogen evolution was due solely to reduced activity of the formate dehydrogenase (FDH-H), not the hydrogenase component. The activity of the FNR-dependent formate dehydrogenase, FDH-N, could not be restored, even when the fnr gene and MoO42− were supplied; however, nitrate reductase activity could be recovered by combined addition of MoO42− and the fnr gene. This suggested that a further component specific for biosynthesis or activity of formate dehydrogenases H and N was missing. Re-introduction of the gene encoding ModE could only partially restore the activities of both enzymes. Taken together these results demonstrate that BL21(DE3) has major defects in anaerobic metabolism, metal ion transport and metalloprotein biosynthesis

Systematic Review of Medicine-Related Problems in Adult Patients with Atrial Fibrillation on Direct Oral Anticoagulants

New oral anticoagulant agents continue to emerge on the market and their safety requires assessment to provide evidence of their suitability for clinical use. There-fore, we searched standard databases to summarize the English language literature on medicine-related problems (MRPs) of direct oral anticoagulants DOACs (dabigtran, rivaroxban, apixban, and edoxban) in the treatment of adults with atri-al fibrillation. Electronic databases including Medline, Embase, International Pharmaceutical Abstract (IPA), Scopus, CINAHL, the Web of Science and Cochrane were searched from 2008 through 2016 for original articles. Studies pub-lished in English reporting MRPs of DOACs in adult patients with AF were in-cluded. Seventeen studies were identified using standardized protocols, and two reviewers serially abstracted data from each article. Most articles were inconclusive on major safety end points including major bleeding. Data on major safety end points were combined with efficacy. Most studies inconsistently reported adverse drug reactions and not adverse events or medication error, and no definitions were consistent across studies. Some harmful drug effects were not assessed in studies and may have been overlooked. Little evidence is provided on MRPs of DOACs in patients with AF and, therefore, further studies are needed to establish the safety of DOACs in real-life clinical practice

International nosocomial infection control consortium (INICC) report, data summary of 36 countries, for 2004-2009

The results of a surveillance study conducted by the International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) from January 2004 through December 2009 in 422 intensive care units (ICUs) of 36 countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe are reported. During the 6-year study period, using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN; formerly the National Nosocomial Infection Surveillance system [NNIS]) definitions for device-associated health care-associated infections, we gathered prospective data from 313,008 patients hospitalized in the consortium's ICUs for an aggregate of 2,194,897 ICU bed-days. Despite the fact that the use of devices in the developing countries' ICUs was remarkably similar to that reported in US ICUs in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were significantly higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals; the pooled rate of central line-associated bloodstream infection in the INICC ICUs of 6.8 per 1,000 central line-days was more than 3-fold higher than the 2.0 per 1,000 central line-days reported in comparable US ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia also was far higher (15.8 vs 3.3 per 1,000 ventilator-days), as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (6.3 vs. 3.3 per 1,000 catheter-days). Notably, the frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates to imipenem (47.2% vs 23.0%), Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (76.3% vs 27.1%), Escherichia coli isolates to ceftazidime (66.7% vs 8.1%), Staphylococcus aureus isolates to methicillin (84.4% vs 56.8%), were also higher in the consortium's ICUs, and the crude unadjusted excess mortalities of device-related infections ranged from 7.3% (for catheter-associated urinary tract infection) to 15.2% (for ventilator-associated pneumonia). Copyright © 2012 by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved