686 research outputs found
Life cycle assessment of bacterial cellulose production
Purpose
Bacterial cellulose (BC), obtained by fermentation, is an innovative and promising material with a broad spectrum of potential applications. Despite the increasing efforts towards its industrialization, a deeper understanding of the environmental impact related to the BC production process is still required. This work aimed at quantifying the environmental, health, and resource depletion impacts related to a production of BC.
Methods
An attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to a process design of production of BC, by static culture, following a cradle-to-gate approach. The LCA was modeled with GaBi Pro Software using the ReCiPe 2016 (H) methodology with environmental impact indicators at midpoint level. The functional unit was defined as 1 kg of BC (dry mass), in 138.8 kg of water.
Results
From the total used resources (38.9 ton/kg of BC), water is the main one (36.1 ton/kg of BC), most of which (98%) is returned to fresh waters after treatment. The production of raw materials consumed 17.8 ton of water/kg of BC, 13.8 ton/kg of BC of which was for the production of carton packaging, culture medium raw materials, and sodium hydroxide (for the washing of BC). The remaining consumed water was mainly for the fermentation (3.9 ton/kg) and downstream process (7.7 ton/kg). From the identified potential environmental impacts, the production of raw materials had the highest impact, mainly on Climate change, Fossil depletion, Human toxicity, non-cancer, and Terrestrial toxicity. The sodium dihydrogen phosphate production, used in the culture medium, showed the highest environmental impacts in Human toxicity, non-cancer and Terrestrial ecotoxicity, followed by corn syrup and carton production. The static culture fermentation and downstream process showed impact in Climate change and Fossil depletion.
Conclusions
Per se, the BC production process had a small contribution to the consumption of resources and environmental impact of the BC global life cycle.This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation
for Science and Technology (FCT) within the scope of the strate gic funding of UIDB/04469/2020 and UIDB/00511/2020 units and
MultiBiorefinery project (SAICTPAC/0040/2015-POCI-01-0145-
FEDER-016403). This study was also supported by The Navigator
Company through the I&D no. 21874, “Inpactus-–Produtos e Tecno logias Inovadores a partir do Eucalipto”, funded through the European
Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Programa Operacional
Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) is greatly acknowl edged. The work by Belmira Neto was fnancially supported by Base
Funding—UIDB/00511/2020 of the Laboratory for Process Engineer ing, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy—LEPABE—funded by
national funds through the FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
The Complexity of Marriage in Rural Ethiopia: Parental Transfers and Postmarital Residence Choices
This paper examines the relationship between parental transfers and post-marital residence of
children in rural Ethiopia. We investigate whether asset transfers to children are an avenue which parents use
to secure old age. We model post-marital residence and transfers simultaneously in a two-stage probit least
squares estimation framework. We find a positive relationship between transfers and post-marital residence, a 10
proxy for old age support. Children who receive more assets are more likely to stay at birth place after marriage
and vice versa. In conditions of scarce or lacking social security mechanisms, parents make strategic transfers to
ensure better old age
Feasibility studies of time-like proton electromagnetic form factors at PANDA at FAIR
Simulation results for future measurements of electromagnetic proton form
factors at \PANDA (FAIR) within the PandaRoot software framework are reported.
The statistical precision with which the proton form factors can be determined
is estimated. The signal channel is studied on the basis
of two different but consistent procedures. The suppression of the main
background channel, , is studied.
Furthermore, the background versus signal efficiency, statistical and
systematical uncertainties on the extracted proton form factors are evaluated
using two different procedures. The results are consistent with those of a
previous simulation study using an older, simplified framework. However, a
slightly better precision is achieved in the PandaRoot study in a large range
of momentum transfer, assuming the nominal beam conditions and detector
performance
Observation and study of the decay
We report the observation and study of the decay
using events
collected with the BESIII detector. Its branching fraction, including all
possible intermediate states, is measured to be
. We also report evidence for a structure,
denoted as , in the mass spectrum in the GeV/
region. Using two decay modes of the meson ( and
), a simultaneous fit to the mass spectra is
performed. Assuming the quantum numbers of the to be , its
significance is found to be 4.4, with a mass and width of MeV/ and MeV, respectively, and a
product branching fraction
. Alternatively, assuming , the
significance is 3.8, with a mass and width of MeV/ and MeV, respectively, and a product
branching fraction
. The angular distribution of
is studied and the two assumptions of the
cannot be clearly distinguished due to the limited statistics. In all
measurements the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures and 4 table
Observation of in
Using a sample of events recorded with
the BESIII detector at the symmetric electron positron collider BEPCII, we
report the observation of the decay of the charmonium state
into a pair of mesons in the process
. The branching fraction is measured for the first
time to be , where the first uncertainty is
statistical, the second systematic and the third is from the uncertainty of
. The mass and width of the are
determined as MeV/ and
MeV.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Search for the decay
We search for radiative decays into a weakly interacting neutral
particle, namely an invisible particle, using the produced through the
process in a data sample of
decays collected by the BESIII detector
at BEPCII. No significant signal is observed. Using a modified frequentist
method, upper limits on the branching fractions are set under different
assumptions of invisible particle masses up to 1.2 . The upper limit corresponding to an invisible particle with zero mass
is 7.0 at the 90\% confidence level
First observations of hadrons
Based on events collected with
the BESIII detector, five hadronic decays are searched for via process
. Three of them, ,
, and are observed for the first
time, with statistical significances of 7.4, , and
9.1, and branching fractions of ,
, and ,
respectively, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second
systematic. No significant signal is observed for the other two decay modes,
and the corresponding upper limits of the branching fractions are determined to
be and at 90% confidence level.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figure
Measurement of proton electromagnetic form factors in in the energy region 2.00-3.08 GeV
The process of is studied at 22 center-of-mass
energy points () from 2.00 to 3.08 GeV, exploiting 688.5~pb of
data collected with the BESIII detector operating at the BEPCII collider. The
Born cross section~() of is
measured with the energy-scan technique and it is found to be consistent with
previously published data, but with much improved accuracy. In addition, the
electromagnetic form-factor ratio () and the value of the
effective (), electric () and magnetic () form
factors are measured by studying the helicity angle of the proton at 16
center-of-mass energy points. and are determined with
high accuracy, providing uncertainties comparable to data in the space-like
region, and is measured for the first time. We reach unprecedented
accuracy, and precision results in the time-like region provide information to
improve our understanding of the proton inner structure and to test theoretical
models which depend on non-perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics
Evidence for the decays of and
We study the hadronic decays of to the final states
and , using an annihilation
data sample of 567 pb taken at a center-of-mass energy of 4.6 GeV with
the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider. We find evidence for the decays
and with
statistical significance of and , respectively.
Normalizing to the reference decays and
, we obtain the ratios of the branching fractions
and to be and , respectively. The upper limits at the 90\% confidence level are
set to be and . Using BESIII measurements of the
branching fractions of the reference decays, we determine
() and
(). Here, the first uncertainties are statistical and the second
systematic. The obtained branching fraction of is
consistent with the previous measurement, and the branching fraction of
is measured for the first
time.Comment: Accepted by Chin. Phys. C : Chin. Phys. C 43, 083002, (2019
Precise Measurements of Branching Fractions for Meson Decays to Two Pseudoscalar Mesons
We measure the branching fractions for seven two-body decays to
pseudo-scalar mesons, by analyzing data collected at
GeV with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider. The branching fractions
are determined to be ,
,
,
,
,
,
,
where the first uncertainties are statistical, the second are systematic, and
the third are from external input branching fraction of the normalization mode
. Precision of our measurements is significantly improved
compared with that of the current world average values
- …