94 research outputs found

    Genesis-DB: a database for autonomous laboratory systems

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    Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven laboratory automation - combining robotic labware and autonomous software agents - is a powerful trend in modern biology. We developed Genesis-DB, a database system designed to support AI-driven autonomous laboratories by providing software agents access to large quantities of structured domain information. In addition, we present a new ontology for modeling data and metadata from autonomously performed yeast microchemostat cultivations in the framework of the Genesis robot scientist system. We show an example of how Genesis-DB enables the research life cycle by modeling yeast gene regulation, guiding future hypotheses generation and design of experiments. Genesis-DB supports AI-driven discovery through automated reasoning and its design is portable, generic, and easily extensible to other AI-driven molecular biology laboratory data and beyond

    A review of combined advanced oxidation technologies for the removal of organic pollutants from water

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    Water pollution through natural and anthropogenic activities has become a global problem causing short-and long-term impact on human and ecosystems. Substantial quantity of individual or mixtures of organic pollutants enter the surface water via point and nonpoint sources and thus affect the quality of freshwater. These pollutants are known to be toxic and difficult to remove by mere biological treatment. To date, most researches on the removal of organic pollutants from wastewater were based on the exploitation of individual treatment process. This single-treatment technology has inherent challenges and shortcomings with respect to efficiency and economics. Thus, application of two advanced treatment technologies characterized with high efficiency with respect to removal of primary and disinfection by-products in wastewater is desirable. This review article focuses on the application of integrated technologies such as electrohydraulic discharge with heterogeneous photocatalysts or sonophotocatalysis to remove target pollutants. The information gathered from more than 100 published articles, mostly laboratories studies, shows that process integration effectively remove and degrade recalcitrant toxic contaminants in wastewater better than single-technology processing. This review recommends an improvement on this technology (integrated electrohydraulic discharge with heterogeneous photocatalysts) viz-a-vis cost reduction in order to make it accessible and available in the rural and semi-urban settlement. Further recommendation includes development of an economic model to establish the cost implications of the combined technology. Proper monitoring, enforcement of the existing environmental regulations, and upgrading of current wastewater treatment plants with additional treatment steps such as photocatalysis and ozonation will greatly assist in the removal of environmental toxicants

    Treatment of persistent organic pollutants in wastewater using hydrodynamic cavitation in synergy with advanced oxidation process

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    Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are very tenacious wastewater contaminants. The consequences of their existence have been acknowledged for negatively affecting the ecosystem with specific impact upon endocrine disruption and hormonal diseases in humans. Their recalcitrance and circumvention of nearly all the known wastewater treatment procedures are also well documented. The reported successes of POPs treatment using various advanced technologies are not without setbacks such as low degradation efficiency, generation of toxic intermediates, massive sludge production, and high energy expenditure and operational cost. However, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have recently recorded successes in the treatment of POPs in wastewater. AOPs are technologies which involve the generation of OH radicals for the purpose of oxidising recalcitrant organic contaminants to their inert end products. This review provides information on the existence of POPs and their effects on humans. Besides, the merits and demerits of various advanced treatment technologies as well as the synergistic efficiency of combined AOPs in the treatment of wastewater containing POPs was reported. A concise review of recently published studies on successful treatment of POPs in wastewater using hydrodynamic cavitation technology in combination with other advanced oxidation processes is presented with the highlight of direction for future research focus

    Ultrasound-accelerated green and selective oxidation of sulfides to sulfoxides

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    In the present paper we report a novel and green approach for the selective synthesis of sulfoxide from sulfide using ultrasound. Use of aqueous media and easily separable and recyclable reagents makes this process green. Hydrogen peroxide is used as an oxidizing agent. Ultrasound is used to enhance the rates of reaction and selectivity of the oxidation reaction toward the desired product (sulfoxide). The effect of various parameters such as the presence and absence of ultrasound, initial concentration of the reactants, reaction temperature, molar ratio of the reactant to the oxidizing agent, mode of addition of the oxidizing agent, presence and absence of β-cyclodextrin, and amount of β-cyclodextrin has been studied. The optimum operating conditions found for the oxidation reaction on the laboratory scale were equally effective at a scaled up version of the reaction
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