Effect of key design parameters on bacteria community and effluent pollutant concentrations in constructed wetlands using mathematical models

Constructed wetlands are currently recognized as an effective environmental biotechnology for wastewater treatment, but the influence of their design parameters on internal functioning and contaminant removal efficiency is still under discussion. In this work, the effect of aspect ratio and water depth on bacteria communities as well as treatment efficiency of horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetlands (HSSF) under the Mediterranean climate was evaluated, using a mathematical model. For this purpose, experimental results from four pilot-scale wetlands of equal surface area but different aspect ratios and water depth were used. The HSSF system was fed with municipal wastewater. The experimental data were simulated using the BIO_PORE model, developed in the COMSOL Multiphysics™ platform. Simulations with the BIO_PORE model fitted well to the experimental results, showing a higher removal efficiency for the shallower HSSF for COD (93.7% removal efficiency) and ammonia nitrogen (73.8%). The aspect ratio had a weak relationship with the bacteria distribution and the removal efficiency. In contrast, the water depth was a factor. The results of the present study confirm a previous hypothesis in which depth has an important impact on the biochemical reactions causing contaminants transformation and degradation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Contribución al control de admisión en redes móviles celulares multiservicio

El trabajo contenido en esta tesis trata de contribuir en la caracterización, comprensión y desarrollo de mecanismos para la apropiada gestión de los recursos en las redes móviles celulares. En concreto, la aportación que comprende este esfuerzo incluye el desarrollo de modelos, algoritmos y métodos para estudiar el control de admisión desde una perspectiva estacionaria, y el desarrollo de esquemas que optimicen el comportamiento del control de admisión de manera adaptativa con respecto a las situaciones no estacionarias de los sistemas reales.García Roger, D. (2007). Contribución al control de admisión en redes móviles celulares multiservicio [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/1845Palanci

The planetary nebula IC 4776 and its post-common-envelope binary central star

We present a detailed analysis of IC 4776, a planetary nebula displaying a morphology believed to be typical of central star binarity. The nebula is shown to comprise a compact hourglass-shaped central region and a pair of precessing jet-like structures. Time-resolved spectroscopy of its central star reveals periodic radial velocity variability consistent with a binary system. While the data are insufficient to accurately determine the parameters of the binary, the most likely solutions indicate that the secondary is probably a low-mass main sequence star. An empirical analysis of the chemical abundances in IC 4776 indicates that the common-envelope phase may have cut short the AGB evolution of the progenitor. Abundances calculated from recombination lines are found to be discrepant by a factor of approximately two relative to those calculated using collisionally excited lines, suggesting a possible correlation between low abundance discrepancy factors and intermediate-period post-common-envelope central stars and/or Wolf-Rayet central stars. The detection of a radial velocity variability associated with binarity in the central star of IC 4776 may be indicative of a significant population of (intermediate-period) post-common-envelope binary central stars which would be undetected by classic photometric monitoring techniques.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

On the Conditions that Justify Dynamic Reconfigurability in WDM-TDMA Optical Access Networks

[EN] In a passive optical network with a hybrid wavelength division multiplexing time division multiple-access scheme, implementing reconfigurable wavelength assignment is complex; hence the need to determine the conditions for which the capacity improvements justify requiring reconfigurability over adopting a more inexpensive fixed wavelength assignment. Fixed and reconfigurable approaches to wavelength assignment are modeled and evaluated under nonstationary traffic conditions. The performance improvement is obtained in terms of bit rate gain relative to the nominal bandwidth and depends on the number of wavelength channels as well as the magnitude of the load offered by the optical network units. In addition, frame delay and frame loss in relation to the bit rate performance are obtained for Pareto and exponentially distributed traffic. Simulations show that when introducing reconfigurability, typical peak bit rate gains with respect to the fixed case are 17%, and maxima of 175% are potentially possible when traffic demands are particularly uneven.This work was supported by the EC 7th Framework Program: Architectures for fLexible Photonic Home and Access networks (ALPHA), under contract ICT CP-IP 212 352, from the Generalitat of Valencia under contract ACOMP/2010/196. The authors thank the Performability Engineering Research Group (PERFORM) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for developing the software tool Mobius.García Roger, D.; Artundo Martínez, I.; Ortega Tamarit, B. (2011). On the Conditions that Justify Dynamic Reconfigurability in WDM-TDMA Optical Access Networks. Journal of Optical Communications and Networking. 3(4):259-271. https://doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.3.000259S25927134A highly flexible and efficient passive optical network employing dynamic wavelength allocation. (2005). Journal of Lightwave Technology, 23(1), 277-286. doi:10.1109/jlt.2004.838811Maier, M., Herzog, M., & Reisslein, M. (2007). STARGATE: the next evolutionary step toward unleashing the potential of WDM EPONs [Topics in Optical Communications]. IEEE Communications Magazine, 45(5), 50-56. doi:10.1109/mcom.2007.358848Urban, P. J., Huiszoon, B., Roy, R., de Laat, M. M., Huijskens, F. M., Klein, E. J., … de Waardt, H. (2009). High-Bit-Rate Dynamically Reconfigurable WDM–TDM Access Network. Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, 1(2), A143. doi:10.1364/jocn.1.00a143Glatty, R., Guignard, P., & Chanclou, P. (2009). Fair Resource Distribution Within the Flexible WDMA/TDMA Optical Access Network Based on GPON Infrastructure. Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, 1(2), A17. doi:10.1364/jocn.1.000a17Roy, R., Manhoudt, G., & van Etten, W. (2008). Optical-router-based dynamically reconfigurable photonic access network. Journal of Optical Networking, 8(1), 51. doi:10.1364/jon.8.000051Koonen, T., Steenbergen, K., Janssen, F., & Wellen, J. (2001). Photonic Network Communications, 3(3), 297-306. doi:10.1023/a:1011411600793Homa, J., & Bala, K. (2008). ROADM Architectures and Their Enabling WSS Technology. IEEE Communications Magazine, 46(7), 150-154. doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4557058Strasser, T., & Taylor, J. (2008). ROADMS Unlock the Edge of the Network. IEEE Communications Magazine, 46(7), 146-149. doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4557057Leland, W. E., Taqqu, M. S., Willinger, W., & Wilson, D. V. (1994). On the self-similar nature of Ethernet traffic (extended version). IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2(1), 1-15. doi:10.1109/90.282603Kramer, G., Mukherjee, B., & Pesavento, G. (2002). Photonic Network Communications, 4(1), 89-107. doi:10.1023/a:1012959023043Skubic, B., Jiajia Chen, Ahmed, J., Wosinska, L., & Mukherjee, B. (2009). A comparison of dynamic bandwidth allocation for EPON, GPON, and next-generation TDM PON. IEEE Communications Magazine, 47(3), S40-S48. doi:10.1109/mcom.2009.4804388Papadimitriou, G. I., & Pomportsis, A. S. (1999). Self-adaptive TDMA protocols for WDM star networks: a learning-automata-based approach. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 11(10), 1322-1324. doi:10.1109/68.789731Linardakis, C., Leligou, H. C., Stavdas, A., & Angelopoulos, J. D. (2005). Using explicit reservations to arbitrate access to a metropolitan system of slotted interconnected rings combining TDMA and WDMA. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 23(4), 1576-1585. doi:10.1109/jlt.2005.844198Kanonakis, K., & Tomkos, I. (2010). Improving the efficiency of online upstream scheduling and wavelength assignment in hybrid WDM/TDMA EPON networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 28(6), 838-848. doi:10.1109/jsac.2010.100809McGarry, M. P., Reisslein, M., & Maier, M. (2006). WDM Ethernet passive optical networks. IEEE Communications Magazine, 44(2), 15-22. doi:10.1109/mcom.2006.1593545Dhaini, A. R., Assi, C. M., Maier, M., & Shami, A. (2007). Dynamic Wavelength and Bandwidth Allocation in Hybrid TDM/WDM EPON Networks. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 25(1), 277-286. doi:10.1109/jlt.2006.886683Chihchung Chen, Chengkuo Lee, & Yen-Jyh Lai. (2003). Novel voa using in-plane reflective micromirror and off-axis light attenuation. IEEE Communications Magazine, 41(8), S16-S20. doi:10.1109/mcom.2003.122271

Lessons from the Ionised and Molecular Mass of Post-CE PNe

Close binary evolution is widely invoked to explain the formation of axisymmetric planetary nebulae after a brief common envelope phase. The evolution of the primary would be interrupted abruptly, its still quite massive envelope being fully ejected to form the PN, which should be more massive than a planetary nebula coming from the same star, were it single. We test this hypothesis by investigating the ionised and molecular masses of a sample consisting of 21 post-common-envelope planetary nebulae, roughly one-fifth of their known total population, and comparing them to a large sample of regular planetary nebulae (not known to host close-binaries). We find that post-common-envelope planetary nebulae arising from single-degenerate systems are, on average, neither more nor less massive than regular planetary nebulae, whereas post-common-envelope planetary nebulae arising from double-degenerate systems are considerably more massive and show substantially larger linear momenta and kinetic energy than the rest. The reconstruction of the common envelope of four objects further suggests that the mass of single-degenerate nebulae actually amounts to a very small fraction of the envelope of their progenitor stars. This leads to the uncomfortable question of where the rest of the envelope is, raising serious doubts on our understanding of these intriguing objects

Análisis estructural y diseño de muros estructurales de concreto armado de una vivienda multifamiliar de siete niveles en Lima - Lima - Lince

La investigación que se realizo consta de realizar un plano arquitectónico de una vivienda multifamiliar como también la elaboración de un modelo estructural con el sistema a porticado y sistema dual con muros estructurales la muestra en estudio es en lince y la muestra Todas las viviendas de concreto armado del Jr. Julio C. Tello, este edifico consta de 4 vivienda multifamiliares es una investigación tipo aplicada de nivel descriptivo . los primeros pasos del proyecto en curso fue el predimencionamiento de los elementos estructurales con la finalidad de darle un área efectiva a los elementos y se realizo un modelo estructural usando el programa ETABS los modelos estructurales son de sistema pórtico y dual por lo que se concluye que el sistema dual esta conformado por muros estructurales de concreto armado lo cual estos elementos absorben gran parte de las fuerzas laterales por eso se denomina una estructura dual , al termino de todo el análisis los desplazamientos que se logro obtener para la dirección “X” se obtuvo una deriva de P1=0.0009175 , P2=0.002055, P3=0.00283875, P4=0.00334875, P5=0.00362625, P6=0.0037175, P7=0.0036775 , P8=0.00355875 y en la dirección “Y” es de P1=0.000735, P2=0.00164625 ,P3=0.00232125, P4=0.00279, P5=0.003075, P6=0.00321125, P7=0.00323 Y P8=0.00317375 siendo en ambos casos menor al 5/1000 para una vivienda multifamiliar de ocho niveles en Lince, todo el desarrollo fue con la finalidad de salvaguardar la integridad de vidas humadas y que después de un sismo esta estructura no pierda la rigidez o se dañe sus elementos estructurales ante una excitación sísmica de gran magnitud

Economic analysis and life cycle approach to compare drying reed beds and conventional treatments for sludge management

This book gathers experiences on sludge treatments wetlands from different European countries. Design and operation criteria adopted in Europe are here summarised. Focus is put on describing dewatering and mineralisation processes, leading to final biosolids characteristics that makes them appropriate for land application as organic fertilisers and soil conditioners. Finally, economic and environmental aspects are addressed.Postprint (published version

Parasite-host relationships of water mites (Acari: Hydrachnidia) and black flies (Diptera: Simuliidae) in southeastern Spain

Abstract Background: Documentation on water mites in Spain is scarce, as is information on the parasite-host relationship between certain water mite species and representatives of the dipteran family Simuliidae. The discomfort caused to humans and animals by black fies seems to be increasing in recent years. In this context, an investigation of parasitic water mites is of great importance, not only from the point of view of biodiversity, but also in terms of their potential to control black fy populations. Methods: Rivers across a wide region of eastern Spain were sampled to determine the specifc richness of simuliid dipterans and to investigate their possible parasites, such as water mites, mermithid nematodes and microsporidia (fungal microbes). Data on environmental variables, abundance, prevalence and intensity of parasitism on the collected specimens were analyzed. Results: In 10 streams, 15,396 simuliid pupae were collected and checked for the presence of water mite larvae; 426 pupae in seven streams were found to be associated with water mite larvae. Of the 21 simuliid species identifed based on morphological characters, eight were found to be associated with water mite larvae. Water mite infection was not equally distributed among black fy species. Also, the prevalence of parasitism was low and difered among simuliid species, ranging from one to 13 water mites per black fy pupa. Variation at the intra- and interspecifc levels was detected in terms of the number of water mites inside the black fy cocoons. Free-living deutonymphal and adult water mites representing 15 diferent species of six genera and fve families were morphologically identifed. The taxonomic identity of the parasitic mite larvae is unclear at present. Morphologically, they ft descriptions of larval Sperchon (Hispidosperchon) algeriensis Lundblad, 1942, but the possibility cannot be excluded that they represent Sperchon algeriensis, the most abundant species at the adult stage in this study and unknown at the larval stage, or even another species of the genus. A molecular analysis produced for the frst time cytochrome oxidase I gene sequences for S. algeriensis. Conclusions: Our results contribute to current knowledge on Spanish Hydrachnidia and their relationships with simuliids as hosts. However, further research is needed to evaluate the diversity, distribution, bioecology and prevalence of this parasitism

Mineralogical and thermal characterization of borate minerals from Rio Grande deposit, Uyuni (Bolivia)

Peer ReviewedPreprin