Análise físico-químico actual da auga potable no encoro de Ceyranbatan (Azerbaiyán)

[Abstarct:] For the normal life and health of the population of each country becomes important at the present time, the quality and ecological assessment of water. Water is essential for normal physiological processes of the body. Due to the need to identify specific physico-chemical parameters of water and to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the state of drinking water in Absheron region in Azerbaijan, as research object was chosen the Ceyranbatan reservoir. The study was conducted to evaluate the chemical composition, as well as its compliance with drinking water quality standards. The structure of the thesis consists of an introduction, four chapters and conclusions. The first chapter is devoted to water, its composition and its effects on human health. In the second chapter deals with standards and hygienic requirements for drinking water quality. The third chapter deals with diseases caused by chemical composition of water. The fourth final chapter focuses on the physical-chemical water reservoir Ceyranbatan research, determining more than forty parameters including heavy metals. Effect of the water purification treatment in certain parameters was studied, analyzing the water before and after the cleaning treatment, in autumn and winter. Water samples analyzed comply with all standards and hygienic requirements for the quality of drinking water, demonstrating a highly efficient operation of the Ceyranbatan water treatment plant.[Resumen:] Actualmente se considera de gran importancia la calidad y la evaluación ecológica del agua para la vida normal y la salud de la población un país. El agua es esencial para los procesos fisiológicos normales del organismo. Este trabajo fin de master plantea como objetivo principal de investigación la necesidad de identificar los parámetros físico-químicos específicos y realizar una evaluación exhaustiva del estado del agua potable en la región de Apsherón en Azerbaiyán, para lo cual se seleccionó el embalse de Ceyranbatan. En el trabajo se estudió la composición químicadel agua, así como el grado de cumplimiento de los estándares de calidad del agua potable. La estructura de la tesis de master consta de una introducción, cuatro capítulos y conclusiones. El primer capítulo está dedicado al agua, su composición y sus efectos sobre la salud humana. El segundo capítulo se ocupa de las normas y requisitos de higiene para la calidad del agua potable. El tercer capítulo considera las enfermedades causadas por la composición química del agua. El cuarto capítulo final se centra en la investigación físico-química del agua del embalse Ceyranbatan, determinando más de cuarenta parámetros, entre los que se encuentran los metales pesados. Se estudió el efecto del tratamiento de potabilización del agua en los parámetros determinados, analizando el agua antes y después del tratamiento de limpieza, en otoño e invierno. Las muestras de agua analizadas cumplen con todas las normas y requisitos de higiene para la calidad del agua potable, demostrando una operación altamente eficiente dela potabilizadora de Ceyranbatan.[Resumo:] Actualmente considérase de gran importancia a calidade e a avaliación ecolóxica da auga para a vida normal e a saúde da poboación dun país. A auga é esencial para os procesos fisiolóxicos normais do organismo. Este traballo de fin de máster expón como obxectivo principal de investigación a necesidade de identificar os parámetros físico-químicos específicos e realizar unha avaliación exhaustiva do estado da auga potable na rexión de Apsherón en Azerbaiyán, para o que se seleccionou o encoro de Ceyranbatan. No traballo estudouse a composición química da auga, así como o grao de cumprimento dos estándares de calidade da auga potable.A estrutura da tese de máster consta dunha introdución, catro capítulos e conclusións. O primeiro capítulo está dedicado á auga, a súa composición e os seus efectos sobre a saúde humana. O segundo capítulo ocúpase das normas e requisitos de hixiene para a calidade da auga potable. O terceiro capítulo considera as enfermidades causadas pola composición química da auga. O cuarto capítulo final céntrase na investigación físico-química da auga do encoro Ceyranbatan, determinando máis de corenta parámetros, entre os que se atopan os metais pesados. Estudouse o efecto do tratamento de potabilización da auga nos parámetros determinados, analizando a auga antes e despois do tratamento de limpeza, no outono e no inverno. As mostras de auga analizadas cumpren con todas as normas e requisitos de hixiene para a calidade da auga potable, demostrando unha operación altamente eficiente da potabilizadora de Ceyranbatan.Traballo fin de mestrado (UDC.CIE). Ciencias, tecnoloxías e xestión ambiental. Curso 2015/201

Plant-based technologies to enable rapid response to Ebola outbreak

Ebola is a rare and deadly disease caused by infection with a strain of Ebola virus (Zaire, Sudan or Marburg). Ebola is spread through a direct contact with body fluids of infected patients. The recent Ebola outbreak affected multiple countries in West Africa and clearly demonstrated a need for development of technologies enabling production of adequate supply of vaccines and therapeutics to treat infected patients. We have undertaken efforts to develop methods and produce plant-based recombinant vaccine as well as a series of monoclonal antibodies to fight Ebola infection. Several approaches were carried out to develop vaccines based on recombinant soluble E-protein and on enveloped or non-enveloped (CP-based) virus-like particles. Preliminary results demonstrating challenges and opportunities for further development of plant-expressed Ebola vaccines will be discussed. In parallel efforts, we have developed a robust plant-based expression platform for expression of monoclonal antibodies against Zaire and Sudan strain of Ebola. We established and optimized expression system and process for rapid production of these antibodies in quantities sufficient to enable pre-clinical evaluation and stability studies. Initial characterization of selected Ebola antibodies will be presented

Digital diplomacy in Theory and Practice: A Case Study of Azerbaijan

Faculty: Graduate School of Science, Art and Technology Department: Political Science and Philosophy Major: Conflict Studies Supervisor: PhD, Farid GuliyevIn today's interconnected world, the internet and digital technologies have fundamentally transformed the way nations communicate and engage with one another. Diplomacy, once conducted solely through formal channels and behind closed doors, has become increasingly public and open, as governments utilize digital platforms to connect with global audiences and advance their national interests. This approach is known as digital diplomacy, and it has emerged as a critical tool for countries seeking to shape their international image, build relationships, and achieve their foreign policy objectives. Azerbaijan, a country located in the South Caucasus region, has been at the forefront of digital diplomacy efforts in recent years. Azerbaijan's government has recognized the importance of digital communication and has invested heavily in building its online presence. Through a range of digital diplomacy initiatives, including the use of social media, online campaigns, and digital platforms, Azerbaijan has sought to promote its culture, economic potential, and political agenda to a global audience. However, the effectiveness of these efforts is not without challenges, and the country faces several obstacles to leveraging digital diplomacy to its full potential. In spite of Azerbaijan’s central role in this digital diplomacy phenomenon, not much by way of research has been conducted into the Azerbaijan’s efforts. Thus, this thesis seeks to fill the research gap by addressing ten key research questions vis-à-vis Azerbaijan’s digital diplomacy. Apart from the benefits that Azerbaijan derives from digital diplomacy, there are several challenges which includes: personnel challenges in administering the tools; negative regional perception; problem of audience identification and targeting; generational gab in the use of social media in the foreign policy establishment; keeping pace with a fast paced media environment; the growing phenomenon of fake news from hostile sources; the use of digital tools by non-state actors to challenge state authority; the culture of anonymity in the digital realm; the risk of cyber-attacks and organizational culture and much more. In countering all these challenges, this research recommends the following solutions to the government of the Azerbaijan: constant training and upskilling of Azerbaijani diplomats and professionals within the foreign policy media circles; audience research in order to convey the right message as well as increased connectivity through social media; developing a rapid response mechanism to combat fake news; direct messages with other languages apart from Azerbaijani and English and raising awareness among targeted audiences about the risk that comes with social media. The findings indicated at the master thesis show that the Azerbaijani government's successful use of social media during the war played a significant role in shaping global perceptions of the conflict, mobilizing public opinion in support of Azerbaijan, and creating a new digital diplomacy paradigm for the country

Molecular definition of multiple sites of antibody inhibition of malaria transmission-blocking vaccine antigen Pfs25.

The Plasmodium falciparum Pfs25 protein (Pfs25) is a leading malaria transmission-blocking vaccine antigen. Pfs25 vaccination is intended to elicit antibodies that inhibit parasite development when ingested by Anopheles mosquitoes during blood meals. The Pfs25 three-dimensional structure has remained elusive, hampering a molecular understanding of its function and limiting immunogen design. We report six crystal structures of Pfs25 in complex with antibodies elicited by immunization via Pfs25 virus-like particles in human immunoglobulin loci transgenic mice. Our structural findings reveal the fine specificities associated with two distinct immunogenic sites on Pfs25. Importantly, one of these sites broadly overlaps with the epitope of the well-known 4B7 mouse antibody, which can be targeted simultaneously by antibodies that target a non-overlapping site to additively increase parasite inhibition. Our molecular characterization of inhibitory antibodies informs on the natural disposition of Pfs25 on the surface of ookinetes and provides the structural blueprints to design next-generation immunogens

The GRANDMA network in preparation for the fourth gravitational-wave observing run

GRANDMA is a world-wide collaboration with the primary scientific goal ofstudying gravitational-wave sources, discovering their electromagneticcounterparts and characterizing their emission. GRANDMA involves astronomers,astrophysicists, gravitational-wave physicists, and theorists. GRANDMA is now atruly global network of telescopes, with (so far) 30 telescopes in bothhemispheres. It incorporates a citizen science programme (Kilonova-Catcher)which constitutes an opportunity to spread the interest in time-domainastronomy. The telescope network is an heterogeneous set of already-existingobserving facilities that operate coordinated as a single observatory. Withinthe network there are wide-field imagers that can observe large areas of thesky to search for optical counterparts, narrow-field instruments that dotargeted searches within a predefined list of host-galaxy candidates, andlarger telescopes that are devoted to characterization and follow-up of theidentified counterparts. Here we present an overview of GRANDMA after the thirdobserving run of the LIGO/VIRGO gravitational-wave observatories in $2019-2020$and its ongoing preparation for the forthcoming fourth observational campaign(O4). Additionally, we review the potential of GRANDMA for the discovery andfollow-up of other types of astronomical transients.<br

Ready for O4 II: GRANDMA Observations of Swift GRBs during eight-weeks of Spring 2022

We present a campaign designed to train the GRANDMA network and its infrastructure to follow up on transient alerts and detect their early afterglows. In preparation for O4 II campaign, we focused on GRB alerts as they are expected to be an electromagnetic counterpart of gravitational-wave events. Our goal was to improve our response to the alerts and start prompt observations as soon as possible to better prepare the GRANDMA network for the fourth observational run of LIGO-Virgo-Kagra (which started at the end of May 2023), and future missions such as SM. To receive, manage and send out observational plans to our partner telescopes we set up dedicated infrastructure and a rota of follow-up adcates were organized to guarantee round-the-clock assistance to our telescope teams. To ensure a great number of observations, we focused on Swift GRBs whose localization errors were generally smaller than the GRANDMA telescopes' field of view. This allowed us to bypass the transient identification process and focus on the reaction time and efficiency of the network. During 'Ready for O4 II', 11 Swift/INTEGRAL GRB triggers were selected, nine fields had been observed, and three afterglows were detected (GRB 220403B, GRB 220427A, GRB 220514A), with 17 GRANDMA telescopes and 17 amateur astronomers from the citizen science project Kilonova-Catcher. Here we highlight the GRB 220427A analysis where our long-term follow-up of the host galaxy allowed us to obtain a photometric redshift of $z=0.82\pm0.09$, its lightcurve elution, fit the decay slope of the afterglows, and study the properties of the host galaxy

Multi-band analyses of the bright GRB~230812B and the associated SN2023pel

GRB~230812B is a bright and relatively nearby ($z =0.36$) long gamma-ray burst that has generated significant interest in the community and therefore has been subsequently observed over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. We report over 80 observations in X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and sub-millimeter bands from the GRANDMA (Global Rapid Advanced Network for Multi-messenger Addicts) network of observatories and from observational partners. Adding complementary data from the literature, we then derive essential physical parameters associated with the ejecta and external properties (i.e. the geometry and environment) and compare with other analyses of this event (e.g. Srinivasaragavan et al. 2023). We spectroscopically confirm the presence of an associated supernova, SN2023pel, and we derive a photospheric expansion velocity of v $\sim$ 17$\times10^3$ km $s^{-1}$. We analyze the photometric data first using empirical fits of the flux and then with full Bayesian Inference. We again strongly establish the presence of a supernova in the data, with an absolute peak r-band magnitude $M_r = - 19.41 \pm 0.10$. We find a flux-stretching factor or relative brightness $k_{\rm SN}=1.04 \pm 0.09$ and a time-stretching factor $s_{\rm SN}=0.68 \pm 0.05$, both compared to SN1998bw. Therefore, GRB 230812B appears to have a clear long GRB-supernova association, as expected in the standard collapsar model. However, as sometimes found in the afterglow modelling of such long GRBs, our best fit model favours a very low density environment ($\log_{10}({n_{\rm ISM}/{\rm cm}^{-3}}) = -2.16^{+1.21}_{-1.30}$). We also find small values for the jet's core angle $\theta_{\rm core}={1.70^{+1.00}_{-0.71}} \ \rm{deg}$ and viewing angle. GRB 230812B/SN2023pel is one of the best characterized afterglows with a distinctive supernova bump

GRANDMA and HXMT Observations of GRB 221009A -- the Standard-Luminosity Afterglow of a Hyper-Luminous Gamma-Ray Burst

GRB 221009A is the brightest Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) detected in more than 50 years of study. In this paper, we present observations in the X-ray and optical domains after the GRB obtained by the GRANDMA Collaboration (which includes observations from more than 30 professional and amateur telescopes) and the Insight-HXMT Collaboration. We study the optical afterglow with empirical fitting from GRANDMA+HXMT data, augmented with data from the literature up to 60 days. We then model numerically, using a Bayesian approach, the GRANDMA and HXMT-LE afterglow observations, that we augment with Swift-XRT and additional optical/NIR observations reported in the literature. We find that the GRB afterglow, extinguished by a large dust column, is most likely behind a combination of a large Milky-Way dust column combined with moderate low-metallicity dust in the host galaxy. Using the GRANDMA+HXMT-LE+XRT dataset, we find that the simplest model, where the observed afterglow is produced by synchrotron radiation at the forward external shock during the deceleration of a top-hat relativistic jet by a uniform medium, fits the multi-wavelength observations only moderately well, with a tension between the observed temporal and spectral evolution. This tension is confirmed when using the extended dataset. We find that the consideration of a jet structure (Gaussian or power-law), the inclusion of synchrotron self-Compton emission, or the presence of an underlying supernova do not improve the predictions, showing that the modelling of GRB22109A will require going beyond the most standard GRB afterglow model. Placed in the global context of GRB optical afterglows, we find the afterglow of GRB 221009A is luminous but not extraordinarily so, highlighting that some aspects of this GRB do not deviate from the global known sample despite its extreme energetics and the peculiar afterglow evolution.Comment: Accepted to ApJL for the special issue, 37 pages, 23 pages main text, 6 tables, 13 figure

Multiband analyses of the bright GRB 230812B and the associated SN2023pel

GRB 230812B is a bright and relatively nearby (z = 0.36) long gamma-ray burst (GRB) that has generated significant interest in the community and has thus been observed over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. We report over 80 observations in X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and submillimetre bands from the GRANDMA (Global Rapid Advanced Network for Multimessenger Addicts) network of observatories and from observational partners. Adding complementary data from the literature, we then derive essential physical parameters associated with the ejecta and external properties (i.e. the geometry and environment) of the GRB and compare with other analyses of this event. We spectroscopically confirm the presence of an associated supernova, SN2023pel, and we derive a photospheric expansion velocity of v ∼ 17 × 103 km s-1. We analyse the photometric data first using empirical fits of the flux and then with full Bayesian inference. We again strongly establish the presence of a supernova in the data, with a maximum (pseudo-)bolometric luminosity of 5.75 × 1042 erg s-1, at 15.76+-10.2181 d (in the observer frame) after the trigger, with a half-max time width of 22.0 d. We compare these values with those of SN1998bw, SN2006aj, and SN2013dx. Our best-fitting model favours a very low density environment (log10(nISM/cm-3) = -2.38+-11.6045) and small values for the jet's core angle θcore = 1.54+-01.8102 deg and viewing angle θobs = 0.76+-01.7629 deg. GRB 230812B is thus one of the best observed afterglows with a distinctive supernova bump