Evaluation of Chloride Diffusion and Corrosion Resistance in Reinforced Concrete Using Internal Curing and Shrinkage Reducing Admixtures

The properties of high-performance concretes obtained by the internal curing technique were studied in the fresh and hardened states. In some of the concrete mixtures, fine normal weight aggregates were replaced with lightweight aggregates (LWA) at 20 % vol. and ordinary portland cement was replaced by pulverized class F fly ash at 20 % by mass. Additionally, some mixtures were prepared including a shrinkage-reducing admixture, either as part of the mixing water or pre-soaked into the lightweight fine aggregates. The prepared concretes were subjected to degradation tests, such as accelerated carbonation and chloride ion deterioration. In addition, the reinforced concretes were analyzed through electrochemical corrosion tests with the linear polarization resistance technique. It was found that the internally cured concretes presented a mechanical resistance similar to those reported for the reference concretes (conventional concretes), but provided a higher resistance to carbonation, rapid penetration of chloride ions, and a lower chloride ion diffusion coefficient. The reinforcing steel structure in the internally cured concretes showed lower corrosion currents (Icorr) and corrosion potentials (Ecorr) in comparison to the reference concretes. Therefore, the use of the internal curing technique in concretes with pre-soaking in either water or a solution of shrinkage-reducing admixture can be considered as a viable alternative to extend the service life of concrete structures in contact with harmful environments

Desarrollo de un refractario de MgO dopado con η-Al2O3

Se estudia el efecto de las nanopartículas de α-Al2O3 (hasta 5 % en peso) sobre las propiedades físicas, mecánicas y térmicas, así como sobre la evolución microestructural de un refractario de magnesia densa. Se utilizan temperaturas de sinterización a 1300°C, 1500°C y 1600°C. Las propiedades físicas de interés fueron la densidad y la porosidad aparentes, que se evaluaron mediante el método de Arquímedes. Las propiedades térmicas se examinaron mediante calorimetría diferencial de barrido. El comportamiento mecánico se estudió mediante pruebas de resistencia a la trituración en frío y micro dureza. Finalmente, la microestructura y las características cualitativas mineralógicas se estudiaron mediante microscopía electrónica de barrido y difracción de rayos X, respectivamente. El aumento de la temperatura de sinterización dio como resultado una densidad mejorada y una porosidad aparente reducida. Sin embargo, a medida que aumentaba el contenido de nanopartículas de α-Al2O3, la densidad y la micro dureza disminuían. Las observaciones microestructurales mostraron que la presencia de nanopartículas de α-Al2O3 en la matriz de magnesia indujo la formación de espinela de magnesio-aluminato (MgAl2O4), que mejoró la resistencia mecánica más significativamente a 1500°C

Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

Desarrollo de un refractario MgO-CaZrO3 dopado con MgAl2O4 para la industria cementera

Se presenta el desarrollo de un innovador ladri- llo básico libre de cromo basado en la tecnología de MgO-CaZrO3, electrofundido con adiciones de espinel para mejorar sus propiedades. Se de- terminaron las propiedades microestructurales, fí- sicas, mecánicas y térmicas de la matriz de MgO- CaZrO3 electrofundido con MgO sinterizado. Se realizaron ensayos de resistencia estáticos y diná- micos mediante ataque químico por harina cru- da para clinker de cemento. Los resultados mues- tran que las propiedades termomecánicas de los nuevos ladrillos mejoran significativamente con el incremento de contenido de espinel. Los aná- lisis microestructurales revelan que la fase espinel ayuda a desarrollar un fuerte enlace entre las fa- ses de MgO y CaZrO3 Palabras clave: Refractarios, Circonato de calcio, Magnesia, Espinel, Hornos rotatorios

Review of the Pressure Swing Adsorption Process for the Production of Biofuels and Medical Oxygen: Separation and Purification Technology

The production of biofuels has had a great impact on climate change and the reduction of the use of fossil fuels. There are different technologies used for the separation and production of biofuels, which allow having compounds such as ethanol, methane, oxygen, and hydrogen, one of these promising technologies is the Pressure Swing Adsorption process (PSA). The objectives of this article focus on the production and purification of compounds that achieve purities of 99.5% bioethanol, 94.85% biohydrogen, 95.00% medical oxygen, and 99.99% biomethane through the PSA process; also, a significant review is contemplated to identify the different natural and synthetic adsorbents that have greater adsorption capacity, the different configurations in which a PSA operates are studied and identified, and the different mathematical models that describe the dynamic behavior of all the variables are established that interact in this PSA process, parametric studies are carried out in order to identify the variables that have the greatest effect on the purity obtained. The results obtained in this review allow facilitating the calculation of parameters, the optimization of the process, the automatic control to manipulate certain variables and to achieve the rejection of disturbances to have a recovery and production of biofuels with a high degree of purity

A community effort to identify and correct mislabeled samples in proteogenomic studies

Sample mislabeling or misannotation has been a long-standing problem in scientific research, particularly prevalent in large-scale, multi-omic studies due to the complexity of multi-omic workflows. There exists an urgent need for implementing quality controls to automatically screen for and correct sample mislabels or misannotations in multi-omic studies. Here, we describe a crowdsourced precisionFDA NCI-CPTAC Multi-omics Enabled Sample Mislabeling Correction Challenge, which provides a framework for systematic benchmarking and evaluation of mislabel identification and correction methods for integrative proteogenomic studies. The challenge received a large number of submissions from domestic and international data scientists, with highly variable performance observed across the submitted methods. Post-challenge collaboration between the top-performing teams and the challenge organizers has created an open-source software, COSMO, with demonstrated high accuracy and robustness in mislabeling identification and correction in simulated and real multi-omic datasets