Prospects for the Improvement of Energy Performance in Agroindustry Using Phase Change Materials

This work was partially supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, UIDB/00066/2020 (CTS – Center of Technology and Systems).The use of Phase Change Materials (PCMs), able to store latent heat, represents an opportunity to improve energy efficiency in the agroindustry by means of thermal energy storage. PCMs provide higher energy density then sensible heat storage mediums, thus paving the way to multiple applications, like supporting the integration of renewables or allowing for new storage architectures, decentralized and directly installed in the chain production equipment, creating e.g. the opportunity to recover and value low-grade operational heat sub-products. Such new and decentralized architecture, not currently applied in agroindustry, is proposed in this work. A chocolate tempering machine using an organic PCM is conceived and analyzed using ANSYS Fluent software for computational fluid dynamics simulations, comparing the main aspects in the storage capacity and discharging process with a conventional sensitive heat storage solution that uses water. PCMs allows improving the stored energy, keeping the chocolate in the working temperature after being tempered for more than four times longer than using only hot water. If the PCMs are charged by renewables, the self-consumption ratio can be improved while providing energy flexibility to the user.authorsversionpublishe

A systematic review of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of peer education and peer support in prisons.

BACKGROUND: Prisoners experience significantly worse health than the general population. This review examines the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of peer interventions in prison settings. METHODS: A mixed methods systematic review of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness studies, including qualitative and quantitative synthesis was conducted. In addition to grey literature identified and searches of websites, nineteen electronic databases were searched from 1985 to 2012. Study selection criteria were: Population: Prisoners resident in adult prisons and children resident in Young Offender Institutions (YOIs). INTERVENTION: Peer-based interventions Comparators: Review questions 3 and 4 compared peer and professionally led approaches. OUTCOMES: Prisoner health or determinants of health; organisational/ process outcomes; views of prison populations. STUDY DESIGNS: Quantitative, qualitative and mixed method evaluations. RESULTS: Fifty-seven studies were included in the effectiveness review and one study in the cost-effectiveness review; most were of poor methodological quality. Evidence suggested that peer education interventions are effective at reducing risky behaviours, and that peer support services are acceptable within the prison environment and have a positive effect on recipients, practically or emotionally. Consistent evidence from many, predominantly qualitative, studies, suggested that being a peer deliverer was associated with positive effects. There was little evidence on cost-effectiveness of peer-based interventions. CONCLUSIONS: There is consistent evidence from a large number of studies that being a peer worker is associated with positive health; peer support services are also an acceptable source of help within the prison environment and can have a positive effect on recipients. Research into cost-effectiveness is sparse. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: PROSPERO ref: CRD42012002349

APACHE III outcome prediction in patients admitted to the intensive care unit after liver transplantation: a retrospective cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) III prognostic system has not been previously validated in patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT). We hypothesized that APACHE III would perform satisfactorily in patients after OLT</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A retrospective cohort study was performed. Patients admitted to the ICU after OLT between July 1996 and May 2008 were identified. Data were abstracted from the institutional APACHE III and liver transplantation databases and individual patient medical records. Standardized mortality ratios (with 95% confidence intervals) were calculated by dividing the observed mortality rates by the rates predicted by APACHE III. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and the Hosmer-Lemeshow C statistic were used to assess, respectively, discrimination and calibration of APACHE III.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>APACHE III data were available for 918 admissions after OLT. Mean (standard deviation [SD]) APACHE III (APIII) and Acute Physiology (APS) scores on the day of transplant were 60.5 (25.8) and 50.8 (23.6), respectively. Mean (SD) predicted ICU and hospital mortality rates were 7.3% (15.4) and 10.6% (18.9), respectively. The observed ICU and hospital mortality rates were 1.1% and 3.4%, respectively. The standardized ICU and hospital mortality ratios with their 95% C.I. were 0.15 (0.07 to 0.27) and 0.32 (0.22 to 0.45), respectively.</p> <p>There were statistically significant differences in APS, APIII, predicted ICU and predicted hospital mortality between survivors and non-survivors. In predicting mortality, the AUC of APACHE III prediction of hospital death was 0.65 (95% CI, 0.62 to 0.68). The Hosmer-Lemeshow C statistic was 5.288 with a p value of 0.871 (10 degrees of freedom).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>APACHE III discriminates poorly between survivors and non-survivors of patients admitted to the ICU after OLT. Though APACHE III has been shown to be valid in heterogenous populations and in certain groups of patients with specific diagnoses, it should be used with caution – if used at all – in recipients of liver transplantation.</p

An in vitro model of early anteroposterior organization during human development.

The body plan of the mammalian embryo is shaped through the process of gastrulation, an early developmental event that transforms an isotropic group of cells into an ensemble of tissues that is ordered with reference to three orthogonal axes1. Although model organisms have provided much insight into this process, we know very little about gastrulation in humans, owing to the difficulty of obtaining embryos at such early stages of development and the ethical and technical restrictions that limit the feasibility of observing gastrulation ex vivo2. Here we show that human embryonic stem cells can be used to generate gastruloids-three-dimensional multicellular aggregates that differentiate to form derivatives of the three germ layers organized spatiotemporally, without additional extra-embryonic tissues. Human gastruloids undergo elongation along an anteroposterior axis, and we use spatial transcriptomics to show that they exhibit patterned gene expression. This includes a signature of somitogenesis that suggests that 72-h human gastruloids show some features of Carnegie-stage-9 embryos3. Our study represents an experimentally tractable model system to reveal and examine human-specific regulatory processes that occur during axial organization in early development

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta

Search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 in the second Advanced LIGO observing run with an improved hidden Markov model

We present results from a semicoherent search for continuous gravitational waves from the low-mass x-ray binary Scorpius X-1, using a hidden Markov model (HMM) to track spin wandering. This search improves on previous HMM-based searches of LIGO data by using an improved frequency domain matched filter, the J-statistic, and by analyzing data from Advanced LIGO's second observing run. In the frequency range searched, from 60 to 650 Hz, we find no evidence of gravitational radiation. At 194.6 Hz, the most sensitive search frequency, we report an upper limit on gravitational wave strain (at 95% confidence) of h095%=3.47×10-25 when marginalizing over source inclination angle. This is the most sensitive search for Scorpius X-1, to date, that is specifically designed to be robust in the presence of spin wandering. © 2019 American Physical Society

Search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 in the second Advanced LIGO observing run with an improved hidden Markov model

We present results from a semicoherent search for continuous gravitational waves from the low-mass x-ray binary Scorpius X-1, using a hidden Markov model (HMM) to track spin wandering. This search improves on previous HMM-based searches of LIGO data by using an improved frequency domain matched filter, the J-statistic, and by analyzing data from Advanced LIGO’s second observing run. In the frequency range searched, from 60 to 650 Hz, we find no evidence of gravitational radiation. At 194.6 Hz, the most sensitive search frequency, we report an upper limit on gravitational wave strain (at 95% confidence) of h95%0=3.47×10−25 when marginalizing over source inclination angle. This is the most sensitive search for Scorpius X-1, to date, that is specifically designed to be robust in the presence of spin wandering

First Measurement of the Hubble Constant from a Dark Standard Siren using the Dark Energy Survey Galaxies and the LIGO/Virgo Binary-Black-hole Merger GW170814

We present a multi-messenger measurement of the Hubble constant H 0 using the binary–black-hole merger GW170814 as a standard siren, combined with a photometric redshift catalog from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The luminosity distance is obtained from the gravitational wave signal detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) on 2017 August 14, and the redshift information is provided by the DES Year 3 data. Black hole mergers such as GW170814 are expected to lack bright electromagnetic emission to uniquely identify their host galaxies and build an object-by-object Hubble diagram. However, they are suitable for a statistical measurement, provided that a galaxy catalog of adequate depth and redshift completion is available. Here we present the first Hubble parameter measurement using a black hole merger. Our analysis results in ${H}_{0}={75}_{-32}^{+40}\,\mathrm{km}\,{{\rm{s}}}^{-1}\,{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$, which is consistent with both SN Ia and cosmic microwave background measurements of the Hubble constant. The quoted 68% credible region comprises 60% of the uniform prior range [20, 140] km s−1 Mpc−1, and it depends on the assumed prior range. If we take a broader prior of [10, 220] km s−1 Mpc−1, we find {H}_{0 {78}_{-24}^{+96}\,\mathrm{km}\,{{\rm{s}}}^{-1}\,{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1} (57% of the prior range). Although a weak constraint on the Hubble constant from a single event is expected using the dark siren method, a multifold increase in the LVC event rate is anticipated in the coming years and combinations of many sirens will lead to improved constraints on H 0