Water compatible resin for separation and recovery of dissolved precious metals

Trace Contaminants in Water: Genesis, Rapid Detection and Sustainable Removal Processes: abstract no. 353fOpen URL - http://apps.aiche.org/proceedings/Abstract.aspx?PaperID=119742The value of precious metals such as gold to be recovered in the industrial effluents within Pearl River Delta area is over HK$20 million per annual. Furthermore, with the expected tightening of environmental legislation and enforcement in the Mainland China, there is a growing need of effluent treatment technology. Traditionally, ion-exchange resin, polymer ultra-filtration and micro-emulsion are applied in the treatment of plating effluents. However, they all have different weaknesses. Many reports have been published for the separation using aqueous biphasic system. Based on this methodology, polystyrene-grafted-polyglycidol (PS-PG), a water-compatible polymer was synthesized. This type of polymer can be used for gold or silver extraction. After extraction, the recovery of metal can be achieved by direct electro-deposition or reverse extraction using sodium cyanide.postprintThe 2008 AIChE Annual Meeting (AIChE 100), Philadelphia, PA., 16-21 November 2008. In Conference Proceedings, 2008, p. 1-

Experimental studies and constitutive modelling of anelastic creep recovery during creep age forming

This paper presents a study of anelastic creep recovery during creep-ageing of an aluminium alloy AA7050-TAF. Uniaxial Creep-Ageing and Recovery Test (CART) was used to characterise the influence of anelastic creep strain on total creep deformation for determining the actual amount of springback in creep age forming (CAF) process. CART was performed on aluminium alloy AA7050-TAF at 174°C between the stress levels of 137.5 to 162.5 MPa. A constitutive model was developed for the prediction of the creep-ageing and recovery response of material in creep age forming. A 'back stress' variable was used to represent the net effect of the internal stresses of the material which causes anelastic creep recovery. Other microstructural variables were introduced to model complex micro-mechanisms and hardening effects including solid solution hardening, dislocation hardening, and age hardening. It has been found that the permanent strain after creep-ageing depends not only on total creep strain but also on anelastic strain. Simulation results from the constitutive model developed in this study show a good agreement with experimental data

HaploShare: identification of extended haplotypes shared by cases and evaluation against controls

Recent founder mutations may play important roles in complex diseases and Mendelian disorders. Detecting shared haplotypes that are identical by descent (IBD) could facilitate discovery of these mutations. Several programs address this, but are usually limited to detecting pair-wise shared haplotypes and not providing a comparison of cases and controls. We present a novel algorithm and software package, HaploShare, which detects extended haplotypes that are shared by multiple individuals, and allows comparisons between cases and controls. Testing on simulated and real cases demonstrated significant improvements in detection power and reduction of false positive rate by HaploShare relative to other programs.published_or_final_versio

They are Not Equally Reliable: Semantic Event Search Using Differentiated Concept Classifiers

© 2016 IEEE. Complex event detection on unconstrained Internet videos has seen much progress in recent years. However, state-of-the-art performance degrades dramatically when the number of positive training exemplars falls short. Since label acquisition is costly, laborious, and time-consuming, there is a real need to consider the much more challenging semantic event search problem, where no example video is given. In this paper, we present a state-of-the-art event search system without any example videos. Relying on the key observation that events (e.g. dog show) are usually compositions of multiple mid-level concepts (e.g. 'dog,' 'theater,' and 'dog jumping'), we first train a skip-gram model to measure the relevance of each concept with the event of interest. The relevant concept classifiers then cast votes on the test videos but their reliability, due to lack of labeled training videos, has been largely unaddressed. We propose to combine the concept classifiers based on a principled estimate of their accuracy on the unlabeled test videos. A novel warping technique is proposed to improve the performance and an efficient highly-scalable algorithm is provided to quickly solve the resulting optimization. We conduct extensive experiments on the latest TRECVID MEDTest 2014, MEDTest 2013 and CCV datasets, and achieve state-of-the-art performances

HLAreporter: a tool for HLA typing from next generation sequencing data

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing from next generation sequencing (NGS) data has the potential for widespread applications. Here we introduce a novel tool (HLAreporter) for HLA typing from NGS data based on read-mapping using a comprehensive reference panel containing all known HLA alleles, followed by de novo assembly of the gene-specific short reads. Accurate HLA typing at high-digit resolution was achieved when it was tested on publicly available NGS data, outperforming other newly developed tools such as HLAminer and PHLAT. HLAreporter can be downloaded from http://paed.hku.hk/genome/.published_or_final_versio

Identification of five novel WASP mutations in Chinese families with Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome.

The Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome (WAS) is an X-linked recessive immunodeficiency caused by mutation in the gene encoding WAS protein (WASP). The disease is characterized by eczema, thrombocytopenia and severe immunodeificency and is associated with extensive clinical heterogeneity. Mutation studies indicated that the mutated genotypes are also highly variable. In this study, we performed PCR-direct sequencing analysis of the WAS gene in six unrelated Chinese families. Five novel mutations identified, included two nonsense mutations (506C-->T, 1388-->T), a small insertion (685-686insCGCA) and two single-base deletions (384delT, 984delC). All of the mutations are predicted to lead to premature translational termination of WASP. Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.postprin

Behavior of hybrid FRP-concrete-steel tubular columns : experimental and theoretical studies

2006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

An innovation approach on the separation of metal

There has been increasing environmental concerns on the metallic pollution in recent decades. The conventional technologies used for metal extraction are ion-exchange resins, polymer ultrafiltration and microemulsion. The whole extraction mechanism can be divided into 4 steps: 1) The binding of dissolved metal to active sites, 2) Separation of the metal load extractant from the lean phase, 3) Reverse extraction of loaded metal for recovery 4) Recycling of extractant for repeated extraction. Each of the conventional methods suffers different drawbacks in different steps of the extraction mechanism….postprintThe 2008 AIChE Annual Meeting (AIChE 100), Philadelphia, PA., 16-21 November 2008. In Proceedings of the 2008 AIChE Annual Meeting, AIChE 10

Epitaxial YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub y/ thin films grown on silicon with a double buffer of Eu/sub 2/CuO/sub 4//YSZ

We report a double buffer of Eu/sub 2/CuO/sub 4/ (ECO)/YSZ to improve the growth of YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub y/(YBCO) on Si wafer. The ECO buffer material possesses a very stable 214-T' structure. It has excellent structural and chemical compatibilities with YBCO and YSZ. Our study showed that the epitaxy and crystallinity of YBCO deposited on Si could be considerably enhanced by using such a double buffer of ECO/YSZ. The grown films were characterized by grazing incidence X-ray reflection, rocking curve, SEM, TEM, and surface profiler. It was also found that such a double buffer could lead to a very smooth surface in the YBCO layer.published_or_final_versio

First two cases of living related liver transplantation with complicated anatomy of blood vessels in Beijing

Aim: Living related liver transplantation (LRLT) has been developed in response to the paediatric organ donor shortage. Though it has been succeeded in many centers worldwide, the safety of the donor is still a major concern, especially in donors with anatomy variation. We succeeded in performing the first two cases of living related liver transplantation with complicated anatomy of blood vessels as a way to overcome cadaveric organ shortage in Beijing. Methods: Two patients, with congenital liver fibrosis and congenital biliary atresia were performed with living donor liver transplantation in our hospital and then followed up from November 12 to December 13, 2001. The two living donors, mother and father, were healthy aged 34 and 35 years. One right lobe (segment V, VI, VII, VIII) and one left lateral lobe (segment II and III) were used. The grafts weighed 394 g and 300 g. The ratio of graff weight to the standard liver volume (SLV) of donors was 68% and 27%. The graft weight to recipient body weight ratio was 3.2% and 4.4%. The graft weight to recipient estimated standard liver mass (ESLM) ratio was 63% and 85%. The two donors had complicated blood vessel variation. Results: Two patients undergone living donor liver transplantation had good results. Abnormal liver function with high bilirubin level appeared in a few days after operation, bur liver function returned to normal one month after operation with bilirubin level almost decreased to near normal. No bleeding, thrombosis, infection and bile leakage occurred. One had an acure rejection and recovered. The two donors recovered in two weeks. One had slight fever because of a little collection in abdomen and recovered after paracentesis and drainage. Conclusion: Living donor liver transplantation has been proved to be a good way that offers a unique opportunity of getting a timely liver graft as a response to shortage of pediatric donors, though it could be a technically difficult operation if there is anatomical variation. Copyright © 2004 by The WJG Press.published_or_final_versio