Chemical and physical properties of acid mine drainage floc

Acid mine drainage is a serious environmental concern in many regions worldwide, but especially in coal and metal mining regions. These acid drainages are often treated with chemicals to raise the pH of the water and to cause neutralization and precipitation of metals. As neutralization occurs, a looser gelatinous material called floc is produced. The effects of neutralizing chemical, pH, sulfate to iron molar ratio, and solids concentration on floc settling properties were determined in synthetic acid mine drainage. Sulfate was the important factor affecting floc physicochemical properties, increasing settling times from 25-125% and decreasing settling rates from 24-63%. Neutralization pH, treatment chemical cation and initial solids concentration were less important. Ability of treatment to meet discharge standards also decreased with increasing sulfate concentration. An understanding of sulfate and other solution property effects on floc properties may lead to increased treatment efficiency and improved stream water quality

Segmentation of Mediastinal Lymph Nodes in CT with Anatomical Priors

Purpose: Lymph nodes (LNs) in the chest have a tendency to enlarge due to various pathologies, such as lung cancer or pneumonia. Clinicians routinely measure nodal size to monitor disease progression, confirm metastatic cancer, and assess treatment response. However, variations in their shapes and appearances make it cumbersome to identify LNs, which reside outside of most organs. Methods: We propose to segment LNs in the mediastinum by leveraging the anatomical priors of 28 different structures (e.g., lung, trachea etc.) generated by the public TotalSegmentator tool. The CT volumes from 89 patients available in the public NIH CT Lymph Node dataset were used to train three 3D nnUNet models to segment LNs. The public St. Olavs dataset containing 15 patients (out-of-training-distribution) was used to evaluate the segmentation performance. Results: For the 15 test patients, the 3D cascade nnUNet model obtained the highest Dice score of 72.2 +- 22.3 for mediastinal LNs with short axis diameter $\geq$ 8mm and 54.8 +- 23.8 for all LNs respectively. These results represent an improvement of 10 points over a current approach that was evaluated on the same test dataset. Conclusion: To our knowledge, we are the first to harness 28 distinct anatomical priors to segment mediastinal LNs, and our work can be extended to other nodal zones in the body. The proposed method has immense potential for improved patient outcomes through the identification of enlarged nodes in initial staging CT scans.Comment: Submitted to CARS 202

Dynamics of a structured slug population model in the absence of seasonal variation

We develop a novel, nonlinear structured population model for the slug Deroceras reticulatum, a highly significant agricultural pest of great economic impact, in both organic and non-organic settings. In the absence of seasonal variations, we numerically explore the effect of life history traits that are dependent on an individual's size and measures of population biomass. We conduct a systematic exploration of parameter space and highlight the main mechanisms and implications of model design. A major conclusion of this work is that strong size dependent predation significantly adjusts the competitive balance, leading to non-monotonic steady state solutions and slowly decaying transients consisting of distinct generational cycles. Furthermore, we demonstrate how a simple ratio of adult to juvenile biomass can act as a useful diagnostic to distinguish between predated and non-predated environments, and may be useful in agricultural settings

Evaluation of uncomplicated acute respiratory tract infection management in veterans: A national utilization review.

BackgroundAntibiotics are overprescribed for acute respiratory tract infections (ARIs). Guidelines provide criteria to determine which patients should receive antibiotics. We assessed congruence between documentation of ARI diagnostic and treatment practices with guideline recommendations, treatment appropriateness, and outcomes.MethodsA multicenter quality improvement evaluation was conducted in 28 Veterans Affairs facilities. We included visits for pharyngitis, rhinosinusitis, bronchitis, and upper respiratory tract infections (URI-NOS) that occurred during the 2015-2016 winter season. A manual record review identified complicated cases, which were excluded. Data were extracted for visits meeting criteria, followed by analysis of practice patterns, guideline congruence, and outcomes.ResultsOf 5,740 visits, 4,305 met our inclusion criteria: pharyngitis (n = 558), rhinosinusitis (n = 715), bronchitis (n = 1,155), URI-NOS (n = 1,475), or mixed diagnoses (>1 ARI diagnosis) (n = 402). Antibiotics were prescribed in 68% of visits: pharyngitis (69%), rhinosinusitis (89%), bronchitis (86%), URI-NOS (37%), and mixed diagnosis (86%). Streptococcal diagnostic testing was performed in 33% of pharyngitis visits; group A Streptococcus was identified in 3% of visits. Streptococcal tests were ordered less frequently for patients who received antibiotics (28%) than those who did not receive antibiotics 44%; P < .01). Although 68% of visits for rhinosinusitis had documentation of symptoms, only 32% met diagnostic criteria for antibiotics. Overall, 39% of patients with uncomplicated ARIs received appropriate antibiotic management. The proportion of 30-day return visits for ARI care was similar for appropriate (11%) or inappropriate (10%) antibiotic management (P = .22).ConclusionsAntibiotics were prescribed in most uncomplicated ARI visits, indicating substantial overuse. Practice was frequently discordant with guideline diagnostic and treatment recommendations

Deriving economic values for national sheep breeding objectives using a bio-economic model

peer-reviewedThe economic value of a trait in a breeding objective can be defined as the value of a unit change in an individual trait, while keeping all other traits constant and are widely used in the development of breeding objectives internationally. The objective of this study was to provide a description of the development of economic values for the pertinent traits included in the Irish national sheep breeding objectives using a whole farm system bio-economic model. A total of fourteen traits of economic importance representing maternal, lambing, production and health characteristics were calculated within a whole farm bio-economic model. The model was parameterised to represent an average Irish flock of 107 ewes with a mean lambing date in early March, stocked at 7.5 ewes per hectare and weaning 1.5 lambs per ewe joined to the ram. The economic values (units in parenthesis) calculated for maternal traits were: €39.76 for number of lambs born (per lamb), €0.12 for ewe mature weight cull value (per kg), −€0.57 for ewe mature weight maintenance value (per kg), −€0.09 for ewe mature weight replacement value (per kg) and −€0.84 for ewe replacement rate (per%). The economic values calculated for lambing traits were: €54.84 for lamb surviving at birth (per lamb), −€0.27 and −€0.30 for direct lambing difficulty in single and multiple-bearing ewes, respectively (per%); the corresponding values for maternal single and multiple lambing difficulty (per%) were −€0.25 and −€0.27, respectively. The calculated economic values for production traits were: −€0.25 for days to slaughter (per day), €3.70 for carcass Conformation (per EUROP grade) and −€0.84 for carcass fat (per fat score). The economic values for health traits were: −€0.24 for ewe lameness (per%), −€0.08 for lamb lameness (per%), −€0.25 for mastitis (per%), −€0.34 for dag score (per dag score) and −€0.08 for faecal egg count (per 50 eggs/g). Within the two Irish breeding objectives, the terminal and replacement breeding objective, the greatest emphasis was placed on production traits across both the terminal (62.56%) and replacement (41.65%) breeding objectives. The maternal and lambing traits accounted for the 34.19% and 23.45% of the emphasis within the replacement breeding objective, respectively. Results from this study will enable the implementation of new economic values within the national terminal and replacement Irish sheep breeding objectives which highlights the traits of importance for increasing overall farm profitability

Marine power distribution system fault location using a portable injection unit

A portable injection unit for Active Impedance Estimation (AIE) is built and tested in a DC zonal marine power distribution system to provide useful information for system protection and restoration. The portable unit generates current “spikes” and injects them into the system once short circuit faults are detected (by measuring the system voltage drop). The faulted system impedance can be estimated by AIE and comparing the estimated impedance with the pre-calibrated value, the fault location can be determined. The proposed method does not rely on system fault transient information or communication from the remote-end measurement and offers fast and accurate fault location in DC marine distribution systems. The proposed method has been tested and validated on a 750V, 2 MW twin bus DC Commercial Test Facility with the system both de-energised and energised

Effect of Ghrelin Injection on Blood and Body Composition in Rats

Ghrelin has been reported to cause hyperglycemia in humans and adiposity in rodents. The objective of trial one was to test the effects of ghrelin on blood and body composition in rats. The objective of trial two was to evaluate the effect of two doses of ghrelin on blood and body composition. Trial One: Adult male Sprague Dawley rats were administered 1 μg/rat ghrelin in 0.15 M NaCl or vehicle (0.15 M NaCl) every morning for 30 days. The terminal blood sample was analyzed for glucose, urea nitrogen, and nonesterified fatty acids concentrations. The carcasses were analyzed for total lipid and nitrogen content. Blood urea nitrogen, nonesterified fatty acids, carcass total lipid, and carcass total nitrogen concentrations were similar for the control and ghrelin groups. However, blood glucose concentration tended to be higher in the ghrelin group than in the control. Ghrelin administered at 2.4 μg/kg did not cause adiposity in rats but did tend to cause hyperglycemia. Trial Two: Adult male Sprague Dawley rats were administered 1 μg/rat ghrelin, 20 μg/rat ghrelin, or vehicle every morning for 30 days. The terminal blood sample was analyzed for glucose and cholesterol concentrations. The carcasses were analyzed for total lipid and nitrogen content. Carcass total nitrogen concentrations were similar for the control and ghrelin groups. Carcass percent lipid was higher in the 1 μg/rat ghrelin group (P = 0.04). Feed intake among all three groups was the same. Blood glucose concentration, however, tended to be higher in the ghrelin groups than in the control. Blood cholesterol concentration was lower in the ghrelin treated animals. In the second trial, ghrelin injection of 1 μg/rat did cause an increase in adiposity whereas 20 μg/rat did not cause an increase in adiposity. Both ghrelin treatments tended to cause hyperglycemia in rats. In summary, ghrelin increased blood glucose concentration without changing body composition

On the equivalence between squeezing and entanglement potential for two-mode Gaussian states

The maximum amount of entanglement achievable under passive transformations by continuous-variable states is called the entanglement potential. Recent work has demonstrated that the entanglement potential is upper-bounded by a simple function of the squeezing of formation, and that certain classes of two-mode Gaussian states can indeed saturate this bound, though saturability in the general case remains an open problem. In this study, we introduce a larger class of states that we prove saturates the bound, and we conjecture that all two-mode Gaussian states can be passively transformed into this class, meaning that for all two-mode Gaussian states, entanglement potential is equivalent to squeezing of formation. We provide an explicit algorithm for the passive transformations and perform extensive numerical testing of our claim, which seeks to unite the resource theories of two characteristic quantum properties of continuous-variable systems.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Religion and Spirituality in Surrogate Decision Making for Hospitalized Older Adults

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 46 surrogate decision makers for hospitalized older adults to characterize the role of spirituality and religion in decision making. Three themes emerged: (1) religion as a guide to decision making, (2) control, and (3) faith, death and dying. For religious surrogates, religion played a central role in end of life decisions. There was variability regarding whether God or humans were perceived to be in control; however, beliefs about control led to varying perspectives on acceptance of comfort-focused treatment. We conclude that clinicians should attend to religious considerations due to their impact on decision making