Extraction on a robotic platform - autonomous solvent selection under economic evaluation criteria

Steps and necessary decisions for a liquid-liquid extraction were pointed out for its automatic design on a robotic platform. A tool for solvent selection based on Hansen parameters was developed to simplify solvent selection. An approach was developed for automatic, visual phase boundary detection. Key performance indicators are used to ensure economically motivated decisions. The autonomous design of an extraction process is demonstrated for the separation of progesterone from a fermentation broth. The method leads to the selection of methanol and acetonitrile, with separation cost indicators of 146 and 183 € gProg.−1. This work constitutes the prospects of using autonomous robotic systems to design entire production processes

Aportaciones de la retórica a la escritura creativa en cuanto disciplina docente universitaria: una propuesta

Creative writing is a term that recurs to various educational and training possibilities through the medium of writing. For its specific realization, it resorts to resources and orientations coming from diverse knowledge and disciplines. Our proposal is to select one of these meanings of creative writing and show its relationship to rhetoric, a discipline that can contribute significant elements to the formative purposes of creative writing as we have delimited it. For this determination of meaning, we first briefly relate the story of its creation and then its purpose as a formative reality. On the basis of this objective, we broadly define the discipline of rhetoric and present its possible contributions to creative writing.Escritura creativa es un término que apela a diversas posibilidades educativas y formativas a través del medio de la escritura. Para su realización concreta recurre a recursos y orientaciones procedentes de diversos saberes y disciplinas. Nuestra propuesta es acotar uno de estos significados de la escritura creativa y presentar su relación con la retórica, disciplina que puede aportar elementos significativos a los fines formativos de la escritura creativa, tal como la hemos acotado. Para esta acotación del significado narraremos primero brevemente la historia de su constitución, y a continuación su finalidad como realidad formativa. Sobre la base de esta finalidad delimitaremos a grandes rasgos la disciplina de la retórica y presentaremos sus posibles aportaciones a la escritura creativa

A framework and computer system for knowledge-level acquisition, representation, and reasoning with process knowledge

The development of knowledge-based systems is usually approached through the combined skills of software and knowledge engineers (SEs and KEs, respectively) and of subject matter experts (SMEs). One of the most critical steps in this task aims at transferring knowledge from SMEs’ expertise to formal, machine-readable representations, which allow systems to reason with such knowledge. However, this process is costly and error prone. Alleviating such knowledge acquisition bottleneck requires enabling SMEs with the means to produce the target knowledge representations, minimizing the intervention of KEs. This is especially difficult in the case of complex knowledge types like processes. The analysis of scientific domains like Biology, Chemistry, and Physics uncovers: (i) that process knowledge is the single most frequent type of knowledge occurring in such domains and (ii) specific solutions need to be devised in order to allow SMEs to represent it in a computational form. We present a framework and computer system for the acquisition and representation of process knowledge in scientific domains by SMEs. We propose methods and techniques to enable SMEs to acquire process knowledge from the domains, to formally represent it, and to reason about it. We have developed an abstract process metamodel and a library of problem solving methods (PSMs), which support these tasks, respectively providing the terminology for SME-tailored process diagrams and an abstract formalization of the strategies needed for reasoning about processes. We have implemented this approach as part of the DarkMatter system and formally evaluated it in the context of the intermediate evaluation of Project Halo, an initiative aiming at the creation of question answering systems by SMEs

Microscopic observation of magnon bound states and their dynamics

More than eighty years ago, H. Bethe pointed out the existence of bound states of elementary spin waves in one-dimensional quantum magnets. To date, identifying signatures of such magnon bound states has remained a subject of intense theoretical research while their detection has proved challenging for experiments. Ultracold atoms offer an ideal setting to reveal such bound states by tracking the spin dynamics after a local quantum quench with single-spin and single-site resolution. Here we report on the direct observation of two-magnon bound states using in-situ correlation measurements in a one-dimensional Heisenberg spin chain realized with ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice. We observe the quantum walk of free and bound magnon states through time-resolved measurements of the two spin impurities. The increased effective mass of the compound magnon state results in slower spin dynamics as compared to single magnon excitations. In our measurements, we also determine the decay time of bound magnons, which is most likely limited by scattering on thermal fluctuations in the system. Our results open a new pathway for studying fundamental properties of quantum magnets and, more generally, properties of interacting impurities in quantum many-body systems.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Effects of b-lactam antibiotics and fluoroquinolones on human gut microbiota in relation to clostridium difficile associated diarrhea

Clostridium difficile infections are an emerging health problem in the modern hospital environment. Severe alterations of the gut microbiome with loss of resistance to colonization against C. difficile are thought to be the major trigger, but there is no clear concept of how C. difficile infection evolves and which microbiological factors are involved. We sequenced 16S rRNA amplicons generated from DNA and RNA/cDNA of fecal samples from three groups of individuals by FLX technology: (i) healthy controls (no antibiotic therapy); (ii) individuals receiving antibiotic therapy (Ampicillin/Sulbactam, cephalosporins, and fluoroquinolones with subsequent development of C. difficile infection or (iii) individuals receiving antibiotic therapy without C. difficile infection. We compared the effects of the three different antibiotic classes on the intestinal microbiome and the effects of alterations of the gut microbiome on C. difficile infection at the DNA (total microbiota) and rRNA (potentially active) levels. A comparison of antibiotic classes showed significant differences at DNA level, but not at RNA level. Among individuals that developed or did not develop a C. difficile infection under antibiotics we found no significant differences. We identified single species that were up- or down regulated in individuals receiving antibiotics who developed the infection compared to non-infected individuals. We found no significant differences in the global composition of the transcriptionally active gut microbiome associated with C. difficile infections. We suggest that up- and down regulation of specific bacterial species may be involved in colonization resistance against C. difficile providing a potential therapeutic approach through specific manipulation of the intestinal microbiome.This work was supported by the ERANET Project PathoGenoMics program grant number 0315441A.Peer Reviewe

Análisis de los pequeños productores de palto en el Perú : propuestas para la mejora de su rendimiento productivo

El Perú cuenta con un enorme potencial agroindustrial, pero los datos actuales sobre el sector revelan la existencia de un enorme desequilibrio perdurable en el tiempo entre los pequeños y medianos productores, y una minoría de grandes productores, reflejado tanto a nivel competitivo como de rendimientos productivos, lo que se termina traduciendo en una relevante desigualdad social histórica que no se ha podido revertir por más reformas o leyes que se han dado a lo largo de nuestra historia. La presente investigación ahonda en la situación actual de los pequeños productores de palto en el Perú, formulando propuestas de mejora que de implementarse permitirían aumentar el rendimiento productivo de la superficie cultivada pero bajo el paraguas de la competitividad. Tales propuestas se resumen en establecer un flujo de créditos garantizados total o parcialmente mediante mecanismos de gasto público, permitiendo a los pequeños productores poder invertir en tecnificación, desarrollar la asociatividad desde la doble perspectiva de las cadenas productivas y las cooperativas, implementar buenas prácticas agrícolas con el objetivo de lograr certificaciones de calidad, y finalmente conseguir el acceso del producto a los mercados internacionales, con el consiguiente incremento de utilidad para el pequeño productor

Improved Phylogenomic Taxon Sampling Noticeably Affects Nonbilaterian Relationships

Despite expanding data sets and advances in phylogenomic methods, deep-level metazoan relationships remain highly controversial. Recent phylogenomic analyses depart from classical concepts in recovering ctenophores as the earliest branching metazoan taxon and propose a sister-group relationship between sponges and cnidarians (e.g., Dunn CW, Hejnol A, Matus DQ, et al. (18 co-authors). 2008. Broad phylogenomic sampling improves resolution of the animal tree of life. Nature 452:745–749). Here, we argue that these results are artifacts stemming from insufficient taxon sampling and long-branch attraction (LBA). By increasing taxon sampling from previously unsampled nonbilaterians and using an identical gene set to that reported by Dunn et al., we recover monophyletic Porifera as the sister group to all other Metazoa. This suggests that the basal position of the fast-evolving Ctenophora proposed by Dunn et al. was due to LBA and that broad taxon sampling is of fundamental importance to metazoan phylogenomic analyses. Additionally, saturation in the Dunn et al. character set is comparatively high, possibly contributing to the poor support for some nonbilaterian nodes

Systematic Studies of the Micro-Bunching Instability at Very Low Bunch Charges

At KARA, the KArlsruhe Research Accelerator of the KIT synchrotron, the so called short bunch operation mode allows the reduction of the bunch length down to a few picoseconds. The micro- bunching instability resulting from the high degree of longitudinal compression leads to fluctuations in the emitted THz radiation, referred to as bursting. For extremely compressed bunches at KARA, bursting occurs not only in one but in two different bunch-current ranges that are separated by a stable region. This work presents measurements of the bursting behavior in both regimes. Good agreement is found between data and numerical solutions of the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, to be submitte

Epidemiology and outcomes of bone and joint infections in solid organ transplant recipients

Bone and joint infection (BJI) epidemiology and outcomes in solid organ transplant recipients (SOTr) remain largely unknown. We aim to describe BJI in a multi-center cohort of SOTr (Swiss Transplant Cohort Study). All consecutive SOTr with BJI (01.05.2008-31.12.2019) were included. A nested case-control study to identify risk factors for BJI was performed. Among 4482 patients, 61 SOTr with 82 BJI were included, at an incidence of 1.4% (95% CI 1.1-1.7), higher in heart and kidney-pancreas SOTr (Gray's test p < .01). Although BJI were predominately late events (median of 18.5 months post-SOT), most infections occurred during the first year post-transplant in thoracic SOTr. Diabetic foot osteomyelitis was the most frequent infection (38/82, 46.3%), followed by non-vertebral osteomyelitis (26/82, 31.7%). Pathogens included Gram-positive cocci (70/131, 53.4%), Gram-negative bacilli (34/131, 26.0%), and fungi (9/131, 6.9%). BJI predictors included male gender (OR 2.94, 95% CI 1.26-6.89) and diabetes (OR 2.97, 95% CI 1.34-6.56). Treatment failure was observed in 25.9% (21/81) patients and 1-year mortality post-BJI diagnosis was 14.8% (9/61). BJI remain a rare event in SOTr, associated with subtle clinical presentations, high morbidity and relapses, requiring additional studies in the future

The ALMA-CRISTAL survey: Widespread dust-obscured star formation in typical star-forming galaxies at z=4-6

We present the morphological parameters and global properties of dust-obscured star formation in typical star-forming galaxies at z=4-6. Among 26 galaxies composed of 20 galaxies observed by the Cycle-8 ALMA Large Program, CRISTAL, and six galaxies from archival data, we have individually detected rest-frame 158$\mu$m dust continuum emission from 19 galaxies, nine of which are reported for the first time. The derived far-infrared luminosities are in the range $\log_{10} L_{\rm IR}\,[L_{\odot}]=$10.9-12.4, an order of magnitude lower than previously detected massive dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs). The average relationship between the fraction of dust-obscured star formation ($f_{\rm obs}$) and the stellar mass is consistent with previous results at z=4-6 in a mass range of $\log_{10} M_{\ast}\,[M_{\odot}]\sim$9.5-11.0 and show potential evolution from z=6-9. The individual $f_{\rm obs}$ exhibits a significant diversity, and it shows a correlation with the spatial offset between the dust and the UV continuum, suggesting the inhomogeneous dust reddening may cause the source-to-source scatter in $f_{\rm obs}$. The effective radii of the dust emission are on average $\sim$1.5 kpc and are $\sim2$ times more extended than the rest-frame UV. The infrared surface densities of these galaxies ($\Sigma_{\rm IR}\sim2.0\times10^{10}\,L_{\odot}\,{\rm kpc}^{-2}$) are one order of magnitude lower than those of DSFGs that host compact central starbursts. On the basis of the comparable contribution of dust-obscured and dust-unobscured star formation along with their similar spatial extent, we suggest that typical star-forming galaxies at z=4-6 form stars throughout the entirety of their disks