Medidor de perdas na colheita de soja e trigo.

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Shotguns vs Lasers: Identifying barriers and facilitators to scaling-up plant molecular farming for high-value health products.

Plant molecular farming (PMF) is a convenient and cost-effective way to produce high-value recombinant proteins that can be used in the production of a range of health products, from pharmaceutical therapeutics to cosmetic products. New plant breeding techniques (NPBTs) provide a means to enhance PMF systems more quickly and with greater precision than ever before. However, the feasibility, regulatory standing and social acceptability of both PMF and NPBTs are in question. This paper explores the perceptions of key stakeholders on two European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 programmes-Pharma-Factory and Newcotiana-towards the barriers and facilitators of PMF and NPBTs in Europe. One-on-one qualitative interviews were undertaken with N = 20 individuals involved in one or both of the two projects at 16 institutions in seven countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, Spain and the UK). The findings indicate that the current EU regulatory environment and the perception of the public towards biotechnology are seen as the main barriers to scaling-up PMF and NPBTs. Competition from existing systems and the lack of plant-specific regulations likewise present challenges for PMF developing beyond its current niche. However, respondents felt that the communication of the benefits and purpose of NPBT PMF could provide a platform for improving the social acceptance of genetic modification. The importance of the media in this process was highlighted. This article also uses the multi-level perspective to explore the ways in which NPBTs are being legitimated by interested parties and the systemic factors that have shaped and are continuing to shape the development of PMF in Europe

A importância da Comissão de Proteção contra Radiações no contexto da qualidade do Centro Hospitalar do Porto

Os meios complementares de diagnóstico e terapêutica transformaram-se em ferramentas essenciais para todos os ramos e especialidades da Medicina. Devido às suas propriedades únicas, a radiação ionizante apresenta múltiplas aplicações terapêuticas. Contudo, pode também originar potenciais danos para os utilizadores e para os pacientes. A quantificação da dose de radiação nos pacientes e o tempo de exposição dos procedimentos são uma preocupação crescente dos utilizadores. Este trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar a importância da Comissão de Proteção contra Radiações (CPCR) no contexto da qualidade do Centro Hospitalar do Porto (CHP). A CPCR detém múltiplas atividades, estando, atualmente, as suas sinergias direcionadas para a normalização do registo de dose no processo clínico dos pacientes e para a notificação, pelos Técnicos de Radiologia, dos eventos radiológicos contemplados nas normas pré--estabelecidas pela Comissão. A atribuição à CPCR da competência de identificação, acompanhamento e avaliação das exposições dos doentes a procedimentos específicos com radiação tem contribuído para reforçar a sensibilização dos profissionais para os valores de dose e os seus efeitos. A implementação dos procedimentos da Comissão permite assegurar um melhor acompanhamento dos doentes em risco, uma maior acuidade na monitorização das doses e uma otimização de protocolos.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

DEVELOPMENT OF METHODS FOR MONITORING AND CONTROLLING POWER IN NUCLEAR REACTORS

Power monitoring of nuclear reactors is normally done by means of neutronic instruments, i.e. by the measurement of neutron flux. The greater the number of channels for power measuring the greater is the reliability and safety of reactor operations. The aim of this research is to develop new methodologies for on-line monitoring of nuclear reactor power using other reliable processes. One method uses the temperature difference between an instrumented fuel element and the pool water below the reactor core. Another method consists of the steady-state energy balance of the primary and secondary reactor cooling loops. A further method is the calorimetric procedure whereby a constant reactor power is monitored as a function of the temperature-rise rate and the system heat capacity. Another methodology, which does not employ thermal methods, is based on measurement of Cherenkov radiation produced within and around the core. The first three procedures, fuel temperature, energy balance and calorimetric, were implemented in the IPR-R1 TRIGA nuclear research reactor at Belo Horizonte (Brazil) and are the focus of the work described here. Knowledge of the reactor thermal power is very important for precise neutron flux and fuel element burnup calculations. The burnup is linearly dependent on the reactor thermal power and its accuracy is important in the determination of the mass of burned 235U, fission products, fuel element activity, decay heat power generation and radiotoxicity. The thermal balance method developed in this project is now the standard methodology used for IPR-R1 TRIGA reactor power calibration and the fuel temperature measuring is the most reliable way of on-line monitoring of the reactor power. This research project primarily aims at increasing the reliability and safety of nuclear reactors using alternative methods for power monitoring

Distinção de fenómenos de bulking em lamas activadas por técnicas de análise de imagem

No corrente trabalho pretendeu-se detectar e identificar diferentes tipos de perturbações em lamas activadas (bulking filamentoso, bulking viscoso e crescimento de flocos pin point) por técnicas de processamento e análise de imagem. Para o efeito foram determinados os parâmetros operacionais sólidos suspensos totais (SST) e índice volumétrico de lamas (IVL), assim como diversos parâmetros morfológicos (conteúdo e morfologia da biomassa agregada e filamentosa), obtidos por análise de imagem. Os resultados obtidos permitiram o esclarecimento das diferentes inter-relações presentes entre cada uma das condições estudadas e os parâmetros que caracterizaram a biomassa microbiana, assim como a aferição do parâmetro operacional IVL, a partir da caracterização da biomassa

Quantitative Image Analysis: a monitoring tool in wastewater treatment

Book of Abstracts of CEB Annual Meeting 2017[Excerpt] Computers are key equipment for the analysis of large amounts of data, for tasks requiring complex computation, and for the extraction of quantitative information, opposite to the qualitative evaluation of human analysis. Today, the automatic analysis of numerical images captured by digital cameras enables to rapidly extract quantitative information. Thus, quantitative image analysis (QIA) can be defined in general terms as the extraction of significant information from images, by means of digital image processing and analysis techniques. In the last twenty years, QIA have gained an unquestionable role in several fields of research worldwide and our lab is considered a pioneer research unit on the development of QIA procedures for biological wastewater treatment processes monitoring. Over the years, the number of QIA studies [1, 2] for aggregated (granules and flocs) biomass and filamentous bacteria characterization has been increasing. It should be noticed, though, that some difficulties may be encountered in QIA procedures related to the suitability of the employed microscopy technique, regarding the intended biological process characterization. [...]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Study of chemical oxygen demand and ammonia removal efficiencies by image analysis and multivariate statistics tools

Activated sludge systems are frequently used in wastewater treatment for chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia removal. However, several problems can affect the operation of these systems leading to abnormal conditions such as filamentous bulking, viscous bulking and pinpoint flocs, among others. These occurrences, which may lead to the decrease of COD and ammonia removal efficiencies, are linked to biomass morphological and physiological changes and can be studied by microscopic evaluation. However, traditional microscopic inspection by a human operator, and correspondent manual assessment, is a subjective and labor intensive procedure. Automated image processing and analysis presents considerable convenience in such cases. For this study, a lab-scale activated sludge reactor was operated for 100 days and monitored through microscopic staining and image analysis. The operational parameters were modified inducing the above mentioned abnormal conditions, apart from the normal operation. Biomass morphology was obtained by bright field microscopy combined with grayscale image processing. Biomass physiology was also studied by employing epifluorescence combined with color image processing. The LIVE/DEAD® BacLight™ Bacterial Viability Kit was employed to determine the biomass viability, and the LIVE BacLight™ Bacterial Gram Stain Kit for the biomass Gram status. Two ad-hoc Matlab specially developed programs were employed. COD and ammonia removal efficiencies were studied by clustering the data points in two large clusters: “95% or above” and “below 95%” for the COD, and “90% or above” and “below 90%” for ammonia. These clusters were selected based on the behavior of these two parameters throughout the experiment time. The results showed that the COD removal efficiency was well predicted by the best 10 physiological parameters with an overall accuracy of 94.1%, for the ensemble of the tested conditions. Relatively high accuracies of 90.6% and 91.2% were also obtained for the ammonia removal efficiency regarding the best 9 physiological and morphological parameters, respectively. Thus, for the ammonia removal efficiency both types of parameters are equally useful, leading to 95.3% accuracy when the best 3 physiological and 6 morphological parameters were used

Monitoring filamentous bulking and pin-point flocs in a lab-scale activated sludge system using image analysis

Activated sludge processes are the most frequently used techniques regarding biological wastewater treatment. However, depending on the process operation conditions, several malfunctions could take place, in which filamentous bulking and deflocculation processes, such as pin-point flocs, are the most common problems, causing the sludge settling ability decrease and effluent quality deterioration. Bright field Image analysis is nowadays considered a powerful tool to quantitatively characterize aggregated and filamentous bacteria. Furthermore, the use of epifluorescent staining techniques, coupled to image analysis, presents a promising method to determine bacteria gram nature and viability. Encouraged by the success of image analysis procedures over the last years, the present work studied a lab-scale activated sludge system, under operation conditions causing filamentous bulking and pin-point flocs phenomena. Sludge settling ability and turbidity values were measured verifying the nature of the settling problem. COD contents, as well as nitrogen contents, in terms of N-NH4+, N-NO3- and N-NO2-, were surveyed in the feeding effluent, reactor bulk and settler. Regarding the biomass characterization, four major morphological descriptors groups were studied, covering free filamentous bacteria contents, aggregates contents, aggregates size and aggregates morphology. With respect to the aggregates characterization, these were divided in 3 classes (large, intermediate and small aggregates) according to their size. Percentages of gram-positive bacteria, gram-negative bacteria, viable and damaged bacteria were also evaluated based on fluorescent image analysis. Finally, the raw resulting data was fed into a multivariate statistical analysis, in order to enlighten the relationships between the obtained image analysis information and operational parameters. An improvement of the sludge morphological characterisation was found by combining fluorescent and bright field image analysis procedures. Furthermore, the results obtained during the monitoring period indicate that automated image analysis can help clarifying the nature of the events within the aeration tank, when the system is submitted to disturbances