Investigating the Inhibitory Effects of Fats, Oils and Grease Addition on Fatty Acids Degradation During Anaerobic Co-Digestion

Most of the wastewater treatment plants are being upgraded to serve as water resource recovery facilities, reducing and in some cases eliminating, the dependence on the electricity grid for energy requirements remains one of the preeminent targets. Methane yields from conventional anaerobic digestion systems are not often sufficient to fulfil the requirements of these modern-day resource recovery facilities. Although there are numerous articles on co-digestion of municipal sludge with fats, oils and grease (FOG) waste reporting noticeable increase in biogas production, there are enough reports of inhibition and digester upset to warrant further study. Our present study is focused on characterizing formation and consumption of intermediates at various stages occurring in biochemical methane potential tests. This information is crucial in understanding the nature and the mechanism of inhibition. Preliminary studies were conducted to find a sludge to FOG ratio which enabled us to produce maximum possible biogas and use that ratio for setting up bench-scale digesters for further investigations. Among all the compositions tested, FOG 25 was the only reactor to overcome inhibition after lag phase of 45 days. We also found that FOG-acclimated culture improved the performance of the digester by increasing cumulative methane production by 29.9%, during batch operation. When operated in semi-continuous mode, methane production rate per g-VS added in FOG 25 was 7.5% greater than control and %COD conversion to methane increased by 30.34%. For samples with FOG content higher than 25%, methanogenesis was inhibited, with very little methane produced. These results suggest possible recovery of digesters inhibited after a certain lag phase and contradicts earlier hypothesis of LCFA inhibition to be irreversible. Results obtained from the VFA and LCFA analysis suggest that accumulation of palmitate and stearate at high concentrations can be inhibitory to the methanogens as well as the microbes degrading VFAs and LCFAs. Additionally, absence of fatty acids with carbon chains of 14\u3en(C)\u3e6 could be indicative of degradation mechanisms other than β-oxidation

Molnupiravir plus usual care versus usual care alone as early treatment for adults with COVID-19 at increased risk of adverse outcomes (PANORAMIC): an open-label, platform-adaptive randomised controlled trial

Background: The safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of molnupiravir, an oral antiviral medication for SARS-CoV-2, has not been established in vaccinated patients in the community at increased risk of morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. We aimed to establish whether the addition of molnupiravir to usual care reduced hospital admissions and deaths associated with COVID-19 in this population. Methods: PANORAMIC was a UK-based, national, multicentre, open-label, multigroup, prospective, platform adaptive randomised controlled trial. Eligible participants were aged 50 years or older—or aged 18 years or older with relevant comorbidities—and had been unwell with confirmed COVID-19 for 5 days or fewer in the community. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive 800 mg molnupiravir twice daily for 5 days plus usual care or usual care only. A secure, web-based system (Spinnaker) was used for randomisation, which was stratified by age (<50 years vs ≥50 years) and vaccination status (yes vs no). COVID-19 outcomes were tracked via a self-completed online daily diary for 28 days after randomisation. The primary outcome was all-cause hospitalisation or death within 28 days of randomisation, which was analysed using Bayesian models in all eligible participants who were randomly assigned. This trial is registered with ISRCTN, number 30448031. Findings: Between Dec 8, 2021, and April 27, 2022, 26 411 participants were randomly assigned, 12 821 to molnupiravir plus usual care, 12 962 to usual care alone, and 628 to other treatment groups (which will be reported separately). 12 529 participants from the molnupiravir plus usual care group, and 12 525 from the usual care group were included in the primary analysis population. The mean age of the population was 56·6 years (SD 12·6), and 24 290 (94%) of 25 708 participants had had at least three doses of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Hospitalisations or deaths were recorded in 105 (1%) of 12 529 participants in the molnupiravir plus usual care group versus 98 (1%) of 12 525 in the usual care group (adjusted odds ratio 1·06 [95% Bayesian credible interval 0·81–1·41]; probability of superiority 0·33). There was no evidence of treatment interaction between subgroups. Serious adverse events were recorded for 50 (0·4%) of 12 774 participants in the molnupiravir plus usual care group and for 45 (0·3%) of 12 934 in the usual care group. None of these events were judged to be related to molnupiravir. Interpretation: Molnupiravir did not reduce the frequency of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations or death among high-risk vaccinated adults in the community

Molnupiravir plus usual care versus usual care alone as early treatment for adults with COVID-19 at increased risk of adverse outcomes (PANORAMIC): an open-label, platform-adaptive randomised controlled trial

BackgroundThe safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of molnupiravir, an oral antiviral medication for SARS-CoV-2, has not been established in vaccinated patients in the community at increased risk of morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. We aimed to establish whether the addition of molnupiravir to usual care reduced hospital admissions and deaths associated with COVID-19 in this population.MethodsPANORAMIC was a UK-based, national, multicentre, open-label, multigroup, prospective, platform adaptive randomised controlled trial. Eligible participants were aged 50 years or older—or aged 18 years or older with relevant comorbidities—and had been unwell with confirmed COVID-19 for 5 days or fewer in the community. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive 800 mg molnupiravir twice daily for 5 days plus usual care or usual care only. A secure, web-based system (Spinnaker) was used for randomisation, which was stratified by age (<50 years vs ≥50 years) and vaccination status (yes vs no). COVID-19 outcomes were tracked via a self-completed online daily diary for 28 days after randomisation. The primary outcome was all-cause hospitalisation or death within 28 days of randomisation, which was analysed using Bayesian models in all eligible participants who were randomly assigned. This trial is registered with ISRCTN, number 30448031.FindingsBetween Dec 8, 2021, and April 27, 2022, 26 411 participants were randomly assigned, 12 821 to molnupiravir plus usual care, 12 962 to usual care alone, and 628 to other treatment groups (which will be reported separately). 12 529 participants from the molnupiravir plus usual care group, and 12 525 from the usual care group were included in the primary analysis population. The mean age of the population was 56·6 years (SD 12·6), and 24 290 (94%) of 25 708 participants had had at least three doses of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Hospitalisations or deaths were recorded in 105 (1%) of 12 529 participants in the molnupiravir plus usual care group versus 98 (1%) of 12 525 in the usual care group (adjusted odds ratio 1·06 [95% Bayesian credible interval 0·81–1·41]; probability of superiority 0·33). There was no evidence of treatment interaction between subgroups. Serious adverse events were recorded for 50 (0·4%) of 12 774 participants in the molnupiravir plus usual care group and for 45 (0·3%) of 12 934 in the usual care group. None of these events were judged to be related to molnupiravir.InterpretationMolnupiravir did not reduce the frequency of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations or death among high-risk vaccinated adults in the community

OntoMove: A Knowledge Based Framework for Semantic Requirement Profiling and Resource Acquisition

The use of formal knowledge representation structures, or on-tologies, has found immense applicability for the interoperability of software systems, e.g., alignment of software and business pro-cess models. Toward the management of such knowledge struc-tures, an important foundational problem is that of ontology reuse – it is uncommon for new applications or for different components within one application to use an already available ontology in its entirety. Depending on component specific requirements, typical re-usages are restricted to refined versions of an existing ontology, with the refinement taking the form of a contraction of the knowl-edge contained therein. Furthermore, when the ontology is used to ascribe meaning to independently existing ‘resources ’ (e.g., doc-uments collections, source code, software manuals, process tem-plate repositories) by way of meta-data, there exists a direct map-ping between different views/re-uses of an ontology and their re-spective semantic scopes within an annotated resource repository thereby leading to the concept of view/reuse dependent resource retrieval. We implement a framework that supports ontology reuse by way of a requirement driven sub-ontology extraction method-ology. Additionally, based on this concept of a sub-ontology, we implement the idea of a user/component ‘requirement profile ’ con-sisting of semantic descriptions of the user’s interest within a ‘re-source repository ’ that has been annotated with semantic types from the ontology under consideration. A generic framework that implements these ideas and its application in the domains of Med-ical Information Retrieval systems and Business Process Manage-ment Systems (BPMS) is presented