437 research outputs found
Adsorptive interactions between membranes and trace contaminants
Widespread occurrences of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in waterways have attracted a great attention of the scientific community. While scientific evidence associated with human health is restricted due to the long-term effects, impacts of EDCs on trout at the common concentration encountered in sewage effluent have been confirmed by both in vitro and in vivo studies. The impacts of steroid estrogens such as estrone, estradiol (natural hormones) and ethinylestradiol (a synthetic hormone) are often more serious than other synthetic EDCs as they have far higher endocrine-disrupting potency, despite of their low concentration. This paper investigates retention and adsorptive behavior of the natural hormones estrone by two commercial reverse osmosis membranes TFC-S and X-20, using dead end stirred cell systems. While an adsorptive process that reaches a breakthrough governs the retention of estrone by the TFC-S membrane; a sieving mechanism is responsible for the high removal of estrone using the X-20 membrane
Removal of the Natural Hormone Estrone from Aqueous Solutions using Nanofiltration and Reverse Osmosis
The ability of a variety of nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes to retain the natural
hormone estrone are examined here as a function of solution conditions. While size exclusion
dominates retention with the tighter membranes, both size exclusion and adsorptive effects appear
to be instrumental in maintaining high retention on nanofiltration membranes that otherwise exhibit
relatively low ion retentions. These adsorptive effects may be driven by hydrogen bonding between
estrone and the membrane. Electrostatic attraction appears to aid retention with an apparent slight
decrease in retention at high NaCl concentrations. Deprotonation of estrone leads to a significant
decrease in retention, most likely as a result of the effect of strong electrostatic repulsive forces
decreasing the proximity of the negatively charged estrone to the negatively charged membrane
surface and thus lowering the potential for adsorptive retention. This deprotonation effect is absent
for tight RO membranes. The results reported here indicate that while open nanofiltration
membranes may be effective in retaining estrone under some conditions, the extent of retention may
be very susceptible to maintenance of adsorptive capacity at the membrane surface and depend on
solution chemistry
Fouling mechanisms of submerged ultrafiltration membranes in greywater recycling
This study examined the influence of greywater constituents on the fouling behaviour of submerged
hollow fibre UF membranes during greywater treatment for recycling purposes. Experiments were
carried out on a bench-scale equipment using a Zenon ZW1 module. The membrane was operated
under constant flux where an increase in transmembrane pressure was used to determine the extent
of fouling. Wastewater constituent variables used in this study were kaolin, cellulose, humic acid,
surfactant, and calcium concentration. Results indicate that during filtration of synthetic greywater
multivalent ions like calcium played an important role. Depending on concentration agglomerates
of different structure and size were formed and the structure and size determined the extent of
fouling and retention. It was also shown that the surfactant sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) may
cause fouling through particle stabilisation and strongly interacts with calcium enhancing calcium
retention especially in the critical micelle concentration (cmc) region. It is hypothesized that SDS
competes with humic acids (HAs) for adsorption sites resulting in lower UV254nm retention. Solution
chemistry and cake deposition also influence the retention and hence product water quality
Improving the Representation and Conversion of Mathematical Formulae by Considering their Textual Context
Mathematical formulae represent complex semantic information in a concise
form. Especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics,
mathematical formulae are crucial to communicate information, e.g., in
scientific papers, and to perform computations using computer algebra systems.
Enabling computers to access the information encoded in mathematical formulae
requires machine-readable formats that can represent both the presentation and
content, i.e., the semantics, of formulae. Exchanging such information between
systems additionally requires conversion methods for mathematical
representation formats. We analyze how the semantic enrichment of formulae
improves the format conversion process and show that considering the textual
context of formulae reduces the error rate of such conversions. Our main
contributions are: (1) providing an openly available benchmark dataset for the
mathematical format conversion task consisting of a newly created test
collection, an extensive, manually curated gold standard and task-specific
evaluation metrics; (2) performing a quantitative evaluation of
state-of-the-art tools for mathematical format conversions; (3) presenting a
new approach that considers the textual context of formulae to reduce the error
rate for mathematical format conversions. Our benchmark dataset facilitates
future research on mathematical format conversions as well as research on many
problems in mathematical information retrieval. Because we annotated and linked
all components of formulae, e.g., identifiers, operators and other entities, to
Wikidata entries, the gold standard can, for instance, be used to train methods
for formula concept discovery and recognition. Such methods can then be applied
to improve mathematical information retrieval systems, e.g., for semantic
formula search, recommendation of mathematical content, or detection of
mathematical plagiarism.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
A novel mechanistic model for nitrogen removal in algal-bacterial photo sequencing batch reactors
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd A comprehensive mathematical model was constructed to evaluate the complex substrate and microbial interaction in algal-bacterial photo sequencing batch reactors (PSBR). The kinetics of metabolite, growth and endogenous respiration of ammonia oxidizing bacteria, nitrite oxidizing bacteria and heterotrophic bacteria were coupled to those of microalgae and then embedded into widely-used activated sludge model series. The impact of light intensity was considered for microalgae growth, while the effect of inorganic carbon was considered for each microorganism. The integrated model framework was assessed using experimental data from algal-bacterial consortia performing sidestream nitritation/denitritation. The validity of the model was further evaluated based on dataset from PSBR performing mainstream nitrification. The developed model could satisfactorily capture the dynamics of microbial populations and substrates under different operational conditions (i.e. feeding, carbon dosing and illuminating mode, light intensity, influent ammonium concentration), which might serve as a powerful tool for optimizing the novel algal-bacterial nitrogen removal processes
The extreme melt across the Greenland ice sheet in 2012
The discovery of the 2012 extreme melt event across almost the entire surface of the Greenland ice sheet is presented. Data from three different satellite sensors â including the Oceansat-2 scatterometer, the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder â are combined to obtain composite melt maps, representing the most complete melt conditions detectable across the ice sheet. Satellite observations reveal that melt occurred at or near the surface of the Greenland ice sheet across 98.6% of its entire extent on 12 July 2012, including the usually cold polar areas at high altitudes like Summit in the dry snow facies of the ice sheet. This melt event coincided with an anomalous ridge of warm air that became stagnant over Greenland. As seen in melt occurrences from multiple ice core records at Summit reported in the published literature, such a melt event is rare with the last significant one occurring in 1889 and the next previous one around seven centuries earlier in the Medieval Warm Period. Given its rarity, the 2012 extreme melt across Greenland provides an exceptional opportunity for new studies in broad interdisciplinary geophysical research
Online Monitoring of the Osiris Reactor with the Nucifer Neutrino Detector
Originally designed as a new nuclear reactor monitoring device, the Nucifer
detector has successfully detected its first neutrinos. We provide the second
shortest baseline measurement of the reactor neutrino flux. The detection of
electron antineutrinos emitted in the decay chains of the fission products,
combined with reactor core simulations, provides an new tool to assess both the
thermal power and the fissile content of the whole nuclear core and could be
used by the Inter- national Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA) to enhance the
Safeguards of civil nuclear reactors. Deployed at only 7.2m away from the
compact Osiris research reactor core (70MW) operating at the Saclay research
centre of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA),
the experiment also exhibits a well-suited configuration to search for a new
short baseline oscillation. We report the first results of the Nucifer
experiment, describing the performances of the 0.85m3 detector remotely
operating at a shallow depth equivalent to 12m of water and under intense
background radiation conditions. Based on 145 (106) days of data with reactor
ON (OFF), leading to the detection of an estimated 40760 electron
antineutrinos, the mean number of detected antineutrinos is 281 +- 7(stat) +-
18(syst) electron antineutrinos/day, in agreement with the prediction 277(23)
electron antineutrinos/day. Due the the large background no conclusive results
on the existence of light sterile neutrinos could be derived, however. As a
first societal application we quantify how antineutrinos could be used for the
Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures - Version
Oscillations in Procyon A: First results from a multi-site campaign
Procyon A is a bright F5IV star in a binary system. Although the distance,
mass and angular diameter of this star are all known with high precision, the
exact evolutionary state is still unclear. Evolutionary tracks with different
ages and different mass fractions of hydrogen in the core pass, within the
errors, through the observed position of Procyon A in the Hertzsprung-Russell
diagram. For more than 15 years several different groups have studied the
solar-like oscillations in Procyon A to determine its evolutionary state.
Although several studies independently detected power excess in the
periodogram, there is no agreement on the actual oscillation frequencies yet.
This is probably due to either insufficient high-quality data (i.e., aliasing)
or due to intrinsic properties of the star (i.e., short mode lifetimes). Now a
spectroscopic multi-site campaign using 10 telescopes world-wide (minimizing
aliasing effects) with a total time span of nearly 4 weeks (increase the
frequency resolution) is performed to identify frequencies in this star and
finally determine its properties and evolutionary state.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures to be published in the proceedings of HELAS II
International Conference: Helioseismology, Asteroseismology and MHD
Connections published in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series. High
resolution colour figures can be provided on reques
The carcinogenic potential of tacrolimus ointment beyond immune suppression: a hypothesis creating case report
BACKGROUND: Since tacrolimus ointment was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a promising treatment for atopic dermatitis, it has been approved in more than 30 additional countries, including numerous European Union member nations. Moreover, in the current clinical routine the use of this drug is no longer restricted to the approved indication, but has been extended to a wide variety of inflammatory skin diseases including some with the potential of malignant transformation. So far, the side-effects reported from the topical use of tacrolimus have been relatively minor (e.g. burning, pruritus, erythema). Recently, however, the FDA reviewed the safety of topical tacrolimus, which resulted in a warning that the use of calcineurin inhibitors may be associated with an increased risk of cancer. CASE PRESENTATION: Oral lichen planus (OLP) was diagnosed in a 56-year-old women in February 1999. After several ineffective local and systemic therapeutic measures an off-label treatment of this recalcitrant condition using Tacrolimus 0.1% ointment was initiated in May 2002. After a few weeks of treatment most of the lesions ameliorated, with the exception of the plaques on the sides of the tongue. Nevertheless, the patient became free of symptoms which, however, reoccurred once tacrolimus was weaned, as a consequence treatment was maintained. In April 2005, the plaques on the left side of the tongue appeared increasingly compact and a biopsy specimen confirmed the suspected diagnosis of an oral squamous cell carcinoma. CONCLUSION: The suspected causal relationship between topical use of tacrolimus and the development of a squamous cell carcinoma prompted us to test the notion that the carcinogenicity of tacrolimus may go beyond mere immune suppression. To this end, tacrolimus has been shown to have an impact on cancer signalling pathways such as the MAPK and the p53 pathway. In the given case, we were able to demonstrate that these pathways had also been altered subsequent to tacrolimus therapy
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