Behaviours of natural organic matter in membrane filtration for surface water treatment : a review

Membrane application in surface water treatment provides many advantages over conventional treatment. However, this effort is hampered by the fouling issue, which restricts its widespread application due to increases in hydraulic resistances, operational and maintenance costs, deterioration of productivity and frequency of membrane regeneration problems. This paper discusses natural organic matter (NOM) and its components as the major membrane foulants that occur during the water filtration process, possible fouling mechanisms relating to reversible and irreversible of NOM fouling, current techniques used to characterize fouling mechanisms and methods to control fouling. Feed properties, membrane characteristics, operational conditions and solution chemistry were also found to strongly influence the nature and extent of NOM fouling. Findings of such studies are highlighted. The understanding of the combined roles of controlling factors and the methods used is very important in order to choose and optimize the best technique and conditions during surface water treatment. The future potential of membrane application for NOM removal is also discussed

Leptonic Pion Decay And Physics Beyond The Electroweak Standard Model

The ratio of branching ratios in leptonic pion decay $R_{\pi} \equiv (\Gamma(\pi^- \to e \nu_e))/(\Gamma(\pi^- \to \mu \nu_\mu))$ is a powerfully sensitive probe of new interactions beyond the electroweak standard model. This is due to the chirality suppression of the standard model amplitude for the decay, which results in a precise prediction for the ratio, and suppressed amplitudes for new contributions to interfere with. We calculate, including QCD corrections, the contributions to $R_{\pi}$ arising from a broad selection of standard model extensions to which it is sensitive, including: R-parity violating interactions in supersymmetric theories, theories with light (electroweak scale) leptoquark degrees of freedom, non-minimal models of extra doublet Higgs bosons, models in which the quarks and leptons are composite both with and without supersymmetry, and models with strong TeV scale gravitational interactions. Comparing with existing measurements of $R_{\pi}$ we provide limits on each of these classes of models; our calculations also represent state of the art theoretical benchmarks against which the results from the upcoming round of leptonic pion decay experiments may be compared.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figure

New Algebraic Formulation of Density Functional Calculation

This article addresses a fundamental problem faced by the ab initio community: the lack of an effective formalism for the rapid exploration and exchange of new methods. To rectify this, we introduce a novel, basis-set independent, matrix-based formulation of generalized density functional theories which reduces the development, implementation, and dissemination of new ab initio techniques to the derivation and transcription of a few lines of algebra. This new framework enables us to concisely demystify the inner workings of fully functional, highly efficient modern ab initio codes and to give complete instructions for the construction of such for calculations employing arbitrary basis sets. Within this framework, we also discuss in full detail a variety of leading-edge ab initio techniques, minimization algorithms, and highly efficient computational kernels for use with scalar as well as shared and distributed-memory supercomputer architectures