14,022 research outputs found
On the origin of <i>Halipeurus heraldicus</i> on Round Island petrels: cophylogenetic relationships between petrels and their chewing lice
Lice phylogenetic relationships have often been used to elucidate host relationships and vice versa. In this study, we investigate the louse genus Halipeurus which parasitizes bird hosts in the families Procellariidae, Hydrobatidae and Pelecanoididae. The presence of two lice species on Pterodroma arminjoniana in different breeding grounds (Halipeurus heraldicus on Round Island, off Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and Halipeurus kermadecensis on Trindade Island in the Atlantic Ocean) has led to some confusion in the distribution of Pt. arminjoniana and its close relatives Pt. heraldica and Pt. neglecta. By using a cophylogenetic approach that incorporates uncertainties in phylogenetic reconstructions, we show significant overall coevolution between Halipeurus lice and their hosts. However, the study also indicates that the presence of H. heraldicus on Pt. arminjoniana and Pt. neglecta on Round Island and on Pt. heraldica on Gambier Island are the result of a host switch whereas H. kermadecensis is the ancestral parasite of Pt. arminjoniana. This suggests that H. kermadecensis was lost during or after colonisation of Round Island by Pt. arminjoniana. We conclude that cophylogenetic analyses are central to inferring the evolutionary history and biogeographical patterns of hosts and their parasites
About the limits of microfiltration for the purification of wastewaters
In the past, microfiltration was widely used as a
pretreatment step for wastewater stream purification
purposes. Experiences performed during the last years
shows that microfiltration fails to maintain its
performances for longer period of times. Many case studies
demonstrate that the adoption of microfiltration leads to
the failure of the overall process; the severe fouling of the
microfiltration membranes leads to high operating costs
with the consequence to make the treatment of the
wastewater economically unfeasible. The boundary flux
concept is a profitable tool to analyze fouling issues in
membrane processes. The boundary flux value separates an
operating region characterized by reversible fouling
formation from irreversible one. Boundary flux values are
not content, but function of time, as calculated by the subboundary
fouling rate value. The knowledge of both
parameters may fully describe the membrane performances
in sub-boundary operating regimes. Many times, for
wastewater purification purposes, ultrafiltration
membranes appear to be suits better to the needs, even they
exhibit lower permeate fluxes compared to microfiltration.
Key to this choice is that ultrafiltration appears to resist
better to fouling issues, with a limited reduction of the
performances as a function of time. In other words, it
appears that ultrafiltration exhibit higher boundary flux
values and lower sub-boundary fouling rates. In this work,
after a brief introduction to the boundary flux concept, for
many different wastewater streams (more than 20,
produced by the most relevant industries in food,
agriculture, manufacture, pharmaceutics), the boundary
flux and sub-boundary fouling rate values of different
microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes will be
discussed and compared. The possibility to successfully
use microfiltration as a pretreatment step strongly depends
on the feedstock characteristics and, in detail, on the
particle size of the suspended matter. In most cases,
microfiltration demonstrates to be technically unsuitable
for pretreatment purposes of many wastewater streams; as
a consequence, the adoption of microfiltration pushes
operators to exceed boundary flux conditions, therefore
triggering severe fouling, that leads to economic
unfeasibility of the process in long terms
Influence of electromagnetic interferences on the gravimetric sensitivity of surface acoustic waveguides
Surface acoustic waveguides are increasing in interest for (bio)chemical
detection. The surface mass modification leads to measurable changes in the
propagation properties of the waveguide. Among a wide variety of waveguides,
Love mode has been investigated because of its high gravimetric sensitivity.
The acoustic signal launched and detected in the waveguide by electrical
transducers is accompanied by an electromagnetic wave; the interaction of the
two signals, easily enhanced by the open structure of the sensor, creates
interference patterns in the transfer function of the sensor. The influence of
these interferences on the gravimetric sensitivity is presented, whereby the
structure of the entire sensor is modelled. We show that electromagnetic
interferences generate an error in the experimental value of the sensitivity.
This error is different for the open and the closed loop configurations of the
sensor. The theoretical approach is completed by the experimentation of an
actual Love mode sensor operated under liquid in open loop configuration. The
experiment indicates that the interaction depends on the frequency and the mass
modifications.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figure
Corrections to Universal Fluctuations in Correlated Systems: the 2D XY-model
Generalized universality, as recently proposed, postulates a universal
non-Gaussian form of the probability density function (PDF) of certain global
observables for a wide class of highly correlated systems of finite volume N.
Studying the 2D XY -model, we link its validity to renormalization group
properties. It would be valid if there were a single dimension 0 operator, but
the actual existence of several such operators leads to T-dependent
corrections. The PDF is the Fourier transform of the partition function Z(q) of
an auxiliary theory which differs by a dimension 0 perturbation with a very
small imaginary coefficient iq/N from a theory which is asymptotically free in
the infrared. We compute the PDF from a systematic loop expansion of ln Z(q).Comment: To be published in Phys. Rev.
Chromium recovery by membranes for process reuse in the tannery industry
Leather tanning is a wide common industry all over the
world. In leather processing, water is one of the most
important medium, almost 40-45 L water kg-1 raw-hide or
skin is used by tanneries for processing finished leathers.
The composition of tannery wastewater presents
considerable dissimilarities in the concentration range of
pollutants both of inorganic (chlorides, with concentration
ranging from several hundred to over 10,000 mg L-1 Cl–;
sulphate (VI), ammonium ions and sulphide ions,
exhibiting concentration that ranges from tens to several
hundred mg L-1) and organic (the COD value is usually
several thousand mg L-1 O2). Throughout the years, many
conventional processes have been carried out to treat
wastewater from tannery industry: unfortunately, in this
case, biological treatment methods give rise to an
excessive production of sludge, whereas physical and
chemical methods are too expensive in terms of energy and
reagent costs. In this work, a membrane process based on
NF membrane modules was adopted to treat the tannery
feedstock after primary conventional treatment. In a first
step, the determination of all boundary flux parameters, in
order to inhibit severe fouling formation during operation,
were performed. After this, experimental work was carried
out to validate the approach. The target of water
purification was reached, that is the legal discharge to
municipal sewer system in Italy of 90% of the initial
wastewater stream volume. This allows having an
immediate cost saving of 21%. Moreover, the developed
process leads to a second benefit, that is the production of
5% of the initial volume as a highly chromium-rich
concentrate at no cost suitable to tannery process recycle
and reuse. In this case, cost saving rates exceeds 40%. At
the end, scale-up of the investigated process will be
discussed from technical and economic point of view
Software-defined networking: guidelines for experimentation and validation in large-scale real world scenarios
Part 1: IIVC WorkshopInternational audienceThis article thoroughly details large-scale real world experiments using Software-Defined Networking in the testbed setup. More precisely, it provides a description of the foundation technology behind these experiments, which in turn is focused around OpenFlow and on the OFELIA testbed. In this testbed preliminary experiments were performed in order to tune up settings and procedures, analysing the encountered problems and their respective solutions. A methodology consisting of five large-scale experiments is proposed in order to properly validate and improve the evaluation techniques used in OpenFlow scenarios
- …