Alternate Methods for Eluting Cesium from Spherical Resorcinol-Formaldehyde Resin

A small-column ion exchange (SCIX) system has been proposed for removing cesium from the supernate and dissolved salt solutions in the high-level-waste tanks at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The SCIX system could use either crystalline silicotitanate (CST), an inorganic, non-regenerable sorbent, or spherical resorcinol-formaldehyde (RF), a new regenerable resin, to remove cesium from the waste solutions. The baseline method for eluting the cesium from the RF resin uses 15 bed volumes (BV) of 0.5 M nitric acid (HNO{sub 3}). The nitric acid eluate, containing the radioactive cesium, would be combined with the sludge from the waste tanks and would be converted into glass at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) at SRS. The amount of nitric acid that would be used to elute the RF resin, using the current elution protocol, exceeds the capacity of DWPF to destroy the nitrate ions and maintain the required chemical reducing environment in the glass melt. Installing a denitration evaporator at SRS is technically feasible but would add considerable cost to the project. Alternate methods for eluting the resin have been tested, including using lower concentrations of nitric acid, other acids, and changing the flow regimes. About 4 BV of 0.5 M HNO{sub 3} are required to remove the sodium (titrate the resin) and most of the cesium from the resin, so the bulk of the acid used for the baseline elution method removes a very small quantity of cesium from the resin. A summary of the elution methods that have been tested are listed

Preach wine and serve vinegar: Public relations, relationships and doublethink

This article argues that organization-public relationships (OPR) generate challenges for PR as both a practical and theoretical discipline. The investigation is set against the backdrop of the growing pre-occupation with OPR in research and practice. The study highlights disconnections between how the field represents itself in an OPR context and the existence of particular attitudes and practices in each of these areas. It uses the Orwellian concept of doublethink as a conceptual device to tease out these tensions. These contradictions are framed as public relations doublethink and presented as critical propositions designed to illustrate the gaps that can exist between representation and reality. The article also debates the implications of these examples for the practical and theoretical development of public relations using research that considers how organizations listen to stakeholders on-line. It seeks to stimulate further debate through a new conceptualization of social media listening, as well as a set of inter-disciplinary insights concerned with the study of complex phenomenon. © 2014

The ecosystem of UK social entrepreneurship: a meta-analysis of contemporary studies

This chapter explores social enterprises as an alternative and addition to traditional entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs). It reviews the substantial social enterprise literature in order to identify the myriad of competing tensions constraining development and success of social EEs in areas of significant poverty and economic deprivation. Following this, the findings of several contemporary and novel studies are discussed. These collectively evidence ways social enterprises are overcoming the seemingly immutable constraints they operate under. In particular, the Social Enterprise Places initiative has been highly effective in supporting the development of flourishing social EEs in many locations in the UK. However, the growth of social enterprises, both in number and economic importance, presents further challenges that social enterprise owners and managers will have to contend with. Consequently, these organisations and their allied ecosystems require continued structural, financial and skills support

The triage of damaged proteins: degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway or repair by molecular chaperones

Accumulation of damaged proteins is causally related to many age-related diseases. The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway (UPP) plays a role in selective degradation of damaged proteins, whereas molecular chaperones, such as heat shock proteins, are involved in refolding denatured proteins. This work demonstrates for the first time that the UPP and molecular chaperones work in a competitive manner and that the fates of denatured proteins are determined by the relative activities of the UPP and molecular chaperones. Enhanced UPP activity suppresses the refolding of denatured proteins whereas elevated chaperone activity inhibits the degradation of denatured proteins. CHIP, a co-chaperone with E3 activity, plays a pivotal role in determining the fates of the damaged proteins. The delicate balance between UPP-mediated degradation and refolding of denatured proteins is governed by relative levels of CHIP and other molecular chaperones. Isopeptidases, the enzymes that reverse the actions of CHIP, also play an important role in determining the fate of denatured proteins

The Thermal Infrared Sensor on the Landsat Data Continuity Mission

The Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), a joint NASA and USGS mission, is scheduled for launch in December, 2012. The LDCM instrument payload will consist of the Operational Land Imager (OLI), provided by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation (BATC} under contract to NASA and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). This paper outlines the design of the TIRS instrument and gives an example of its application to monitoring water consumption by measuring evapotranspiration

Cryptospores and cryptophytes reveal hidden diversity in early land floras

Cryptospores, recovered from Ordovician through Devonian rocks, differ from trilete spores in possessing distinctive configurations (i.e. hilate monads, dyads, and permanent tetrads). Their affinities are contentious, but knowledge of their relationships is essential to understanding the nature of the earliest land flora. This review brings together evidence about the source plants, mostly obtained from spores extracted from minute, fragmented, yet exceptionally anatomically preserved fossils. We coin the term ‘cryptophytes’ for plants that produced the cryptospores and show them to have been simple terrestrial organisms of short stature (i.e. millimetres high). Two lineages are currently recognized. Partitatheca shows a combination of characters (e.g. spo-rophyte bifurcation, stomata, and dyads) unknown in plants today. Lenticulatheca encompasses discoidal sporangia containing monads formed from dyads with ultrastructure closer to that of higher plants, as exemplified by Cooksonia. Other emerging groupings are less well characterized, and their precise affinities to living clades remain unclear. Some may be stem group embryophytes or tracheophytes. Others are more closely related to the bryophytes, but they are not bryophytes as defined by extant representatives. Cryptophytes encompass a pool of diversity from which modern bryophytes and vascular plants emerged, but were competitively replaced by early tracheophytes. Sporogenesis always produced either dyads or tetrads, indicating strict genetic control. The long-held consensus that tetrads were the archetypal condition in land plants is challenged

Baryons at the Edge of the X-ray Brightest Galaxy Cluster

Studies of the diffuse X-ray emitting gas in galaxy clusters have provided powerful constraints on cosmological parameters and insights into plasma astrophysics. However, measurements of the faint cluster outskirts have become possible only recently. Using data from the Suzaku X-ray telescope, we determined an accurate, spatially resolved census of the gas, metals, and dark matter out to the edge of the Perseus Cluster. Contrary to previous results, our measurements of the cluster baryon fraction are consistent with the expected universal value at half of the virial radius. The apparent baryon fraction exceeds the cosmic mean at larger radii, suggesting a clumpy distribution of the gas, which is important for understanding the ongoing growth of clusters from the surrounding cosmic web.Comment: Accepted for publicatio

Acute oxytocin effects in inferring others' beliefs and social emotions in people at clinical high risk for psychosis

Social deficits are key hallmarks of the Clinical High Risk for Psychosis (CHR-P) state and of established psychotic disorders, and contribute to impaired social functioning, indicating a potential target for interventions. However, current treatments do not significantly ameliorate social impairments in CHR-P individuals. Given its critical role in social behaviour and cognition, the oxytocinergic (OT) system is a promising target for novel interventions in CHR-P subjects. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design, 30 CHR-P males were studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on two occasions, once after 40IU self-administered intranasal OT and once after placebo. A modified version of the Sally-Anne task was used to assess brain activation during inferring others’ beliefs and social emotions. The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test was acquired prior to the first scan to test whether OT effects were moderated by baseline social-emotional abilities. OT did not modulate behavioural performances but reduced activation in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus compared with placebo while inferring others’ social emotions. Furthermore, the relationship between brain activation and task performance after OT administration was moderated by baseline social-emotional abilities. While task accuracy during inferring others’ social emotion increased with decreasing activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus in CHR-P individuals with low social-emotional abilities, there was no such relationship in CHR-P individuals with high social-emotional abilities. Our findings may suggest that acute OT administration enhances neural efficiency in the inferior frontal gyrus during inferring others’ social emotions in those CHR-P subjects with low baseline social-emotional abilities

Connectome dysfunction in patients at clinical high risk for psychosis and modulation by oxytocin

Abnormalities in functional brain networks (functional connectome) are increasingly implicated in people at Clinical High Risk for Psychosis (CHR-P). Intranasal oxytocin, a potential novel treatment for the CHR-P state, modulates network topology in healthy individuals. However, its connectomic effects in people at CHR-P remain unknown. Forty-seven men (30 CHR-P and 17 healthy controls) received acute challenges of both intranasal oxytocin 40 IU and placebo in two parallel randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over studies which had similar but not identical designs. Multi-echo resting-state fMRI data was acquired at approximately 1 h post-dosing. Using a graph theoretical approach, the effects of group (CHR-P vs healthy control), treatment (oxytocin vs placebo) and respective interactions were tested on graph metrics describing the topology of the functional connectome. Group effects were observed in 12 regions (all p  < 0.05) most localised to the frontoparietal network. Treatment effects were found in 7 regions (all p  < 0.05) predominantly within the ventral attention network. Our major finding was that many effects of oxytocin on network topology differ across CHR-P and healthy individuals, with significant interaction effects observed in numerous subcortical regions strongly implicated in psychosis onset, such as the thalamus, pallidum and nucleus accumbens, and cortical regions which localised primarily to the default mode network (12 regions, all p  < 0.05). Collectively, our findings provide new insights on aberrant functional brain network organisation associated with psychosis risk and demonstrate, for the first time, that oxytocin modulates network topology in brain regions implicated in the pathophysiology of psychosis in a clinical status (CHR-P vs healthy control) specific manner. [Abstract copyright: © 2024. The Author(s).