Developing a Slow-Release Permanganate Composite for Degrading Aquaculture Antibiotics

Copious use of antibiotics in aquaculture farming systems has resulted in surface water contamination in some countries. Our objective was to develop a slow-release oxidant that could be used in situ to reduce antibiotic concentrations in discharges from aquaculture lagoons. We accomplished this by generating a slow-release permanganate (SR-MnO4-) that was composed of a biodegradable wax and a phosphate-based dispersing agent. Sulfadimethoxine (SDM) and its synergistic antibiotics were used as representative surrogates. Kinetic experiments verified that the antibiotic-MnO4- reactions were first-order with respect to MnO4- and initial antibiotic concentration (second-order rates: 0.056–0.128 s-1 M-1). A series of batch experiments showed that solution pH, water matrices, and humic acids impacted SDM degradation efficiency. Degradation plateaus were observed in the presence of humic acids (\u3e20 mgL-1), which caused greater MnO2 production. A mixture of KMnO4/beeswax/paraffin (SRB) at a ratio of 11.5:4:1 (w/w) was better for biodegradability and the continual release of MnO4-, but MnO2 formation altered release patterns. Adding tetrapotassium pyrophosphate (TKPP) into the composite resulted in delaying MnO2 aggregation and increased SDM removal efficiency to 90% due to the increased oxidative sites on the MnO2 particle surface. The MnO4- release data fit the Siepmann–Peppas model over the long term (t \u3c 48 d) while a Higuchi model provided a better fit for shorter timeframes (t \u3c 8 d). Our flow-through discharge tank system using SRB with TKPP continually reduced the SDM concentration in both DI water and lagoon wastewater. These results support SRB with TKPP as an effective composite for treating antibiotic residues in aquaculture discharge water

Enrofloxacin and Sulfamethoxazole Sorption on Carbonized Leonardite: Kinetics, Isotherms, Influential Effects, and Antibacterial Activity toward \u3ci\u3eS. aureus\u3c/i\u3e ATCC 25923

Excessive antibiotic use in veterinary applications has resulted in water contamination and potentially poses a serious threat to aquatic environments and human health. The objective of the current study was to quantify carbonized leonardite (cLND) adsorption capabilities to remove sulfamethoxazole (SMX)- and enrofloxacin (ENR)-contaminated water and to determine the microbial activity of ENR residuals on cLND following adsorption. The cLND samples prepared at 450oC and 850oC (cLND450 and cLND550, respectively) were evaluated for structural and physical characteristics and adsorption capabilities based on adsorption kinetics and isotherm studies. The low pyrolysis temperature of cLND resulted in a heterogeneous surface that was abundant in both hydrophobic and hydrophilic functional groups. SMX and ENR adsorption were best described using a pseudo-second-order rate expression. The SMX and ENR adsorption equilibrium data on cLND450 and cLND550 revealed their better compliance with a Langmuir isotherm than with four other models based on 2.3-fold higher values of qmENR than qmSMX. Under the presence of the environmental interference, the electrostatic interaction was the main contributing factor to the adsorption capability. Microbial activity experiments based on the growth of Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923 revealed that cLND could successfully adsorb and subsequently retain the adsorbed antibiotic on the cLND surface. This study demonstrated the potential of cLND550 as a suitable low-cost adsorbent for the highly efficient removal of antibiotics from water

QoS-Aware Error Recovery in Wireless Body Sensor Networks Using Adaptive Network Coding

Wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) for healthcare and medical applications are real-time and life-critical infrastructures, which require a strict guarantee of quality of service (QoS), in terms of latency, error rate and reliability. Considering the criticality of healthcare and medical applications, WBSNs need to fulfill users/applications and the corresponding network’s QoS requirements. For instance, for a real-time application to support on-time data delivery, a WBSN needs to guarantee a constrained delay at the network level. A network coding-based error recovery mechanism is an emerging mechanism that can be used in these systems to support QoS at very low energy, memory and hardware cost. However, in dynamic network environments and user requirements, the original non-adaptive version of network coding fails to support some of the network and user QoS requirements. This work explores the QoS requirements of WBSNs in both perspectives of QoS. Based on these requirements, this paper proposes an adaptive network coding-based, QoS-aware error recovery mechanism for WBSNs. It utilizes network-level and user-/application-level information to make it adaptive in both contexts. Thus, it provides improved QoS support adaptively in terms of reliability, energy efficiency and delay. Simulation results show the potential of the proposed mechanism in terms of adaptability, reliability, real-time data delivery and network lifetime compared to its counterparts

Surveillance of sensitive fenced areas using duty-cycled wireless sensor networks with asymmetrical links

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. This paper presents a cross-layer communication protocol for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) enabled surveillance system for sensitive fenced areas, e.g., nuclear/oil site. Initially, the proposed protocol identifies the boundary nodes of the deployed WSN to be used as sentinel nodes, i.e., nodes that are always in active state. The remaining nodes are used as duty-cycled relay nodes during the data communication phase. The boundary nodes identification process and data routing are both performed using an enhanced version of the Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR) protocol, which relies on a Non Unit Disk Graph (N-UDG) and referred to as GPSR over Symmetrical Links (GPSR-SL). Both greedy and perimeter modes of GPSR-SL forward data through symmetrical links only. Moreover, we apply the Mutual Witness (MW) fix to the Gabriel Graph (GG) planarization, to enable a correct perimeter routing on a N-UDG. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol achieves higher packet delive ry ratio by up to 3.63%, energy efficiency and satisfactory latency when compared to the same protocol based on the original GPSR

A MAC Protocol for Industrial Process Automation and Control

Industrial process automation and control is a promising application domain of wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSAN). This type of application requires reliable and timely data delivery which is inherently difficult to achieve in wireless communication. In this paper, we present a MAC protocol for the aforementioned application domain. The protocol excels in simplicity compared with WirelessHART standard as no central network management is needed

Implementation of a Deterministic Wireless Sensor Network

Currently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are not used in application scenarios that require timely reaction to sensor data for two main reasons. First, there is no exact method to dimension a wireless sensor network before deployment such that both delay and reliability are guaranteed. Second, most existing network components aim to be energy efficient while a few aim to minimize delay. However, none have considered a deterministic performance regarding both delay and reliability. Given the required message transfer delay D and reliability R, our proposed framework can dimension and then operate a WSN to satisfy these requirements

Planning for Heterogeneous IoT with Time Guaranties

Distributed IoT Systems with time guaranties need to be carefully dimensioned to provide correct operations timings. In heterogeneous systems, with wired and wireless components, there are many factors that have implications regarding timings. Beside of developing real-time operating systems, IoT platforms for real-time communications need to be carefully dimensioned to provide correct operation timings. In this paper we propose a planning algorithm that allows building a heterogeneous IoT system to operate with timing constrains. Current solutions to plan and predict latencies in distributed IoT systems are currently mostly based on a set of rules-of-thumb. Since time division multiple access (TDMA), token-ring and Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) based medium access control protocols can coexist in the same network, new approaches are needed to work with any of these protocols and heterogeneity. We consider protocols used in industry-strength solutions and propose a latency model, which can be used by the engineering teams to guarantee strict timing compliance in their heterogeneous plans

Data from greenhouse solar drying using response surface methodology for the production of dried banana

The research contributes to understanding the potential of solar drying and its application in the context of banana processing. The research emphasizes the significant variable of drying time and drying temperature on the quality of dried banana. Response surface methodology and statistical analysis were employed to evaluate the effects of experimental variables on moisture content and color change

Data from greenhouse solar drying using response surface methodology for the production of dried banana

The research contributes to understanding the potential of solar drying and its application in the context of banana processing. The research emphasizes the significant variable of drying time and drying temperature on the quality of dried banana. Response surface methodology and statistical analysis were employed to evaluate the effects of experimental variables on moisture content and color change.THIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV