Biomimetic aquaporin membranes for osmotic membrane bioreactors: Membrane performance and contaminant removal

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd In this study, we investigated the performance of an osmotic membrane bioreactor (OMBR) enabled by a novel biomimetic aquaporin forward osmosis (FO) membrane. Membrane performance and removal of 30 trace organic contaminants (TrOCs) were examined. Results show that the aquaporin FO membrane had better transport properties in comparison with conventional cellulose triacetate and polyamide thin-film composite FO membranes. In particular, the aquaporin FO membrane exhibited much lower salt permeability and thus smaller reverse salt flux, resulting in a less severe salinity build-up in the bioreactor during OMBR operation. During OMBR operation, the aquaporin FO membrane well complemented biological treatment for stable and excellent contaminant removal. All 30 TrOCs selected here were removed by over 85% regardless of their diverse properties. Such high and stable contaminant removal over OMBR operation also indicates the stability and compatibility of the aquaporin FO membrane in combination with activated sludge treatment

Mobile Communication Signatures of Unemployment

The mapping of populations socio-economic well-being is highly constrained by the logistics of censuses and surveys. Consequently, spatially detailed changes across scales of days, weeks, or months, or even year to year, are difficult to assess; thus the speed of which policies can be designed and evaluated is limited. However, recent studies have shown the value of mobile phone data as an enabling methodology for demographic modeling and measurement. In this work, we investigate whether indicators extracted from mobile phone usage can reveal information about the socio-economical status of microregions such as districts (i.e., average spatial resolution < 2.7km). For this we examine anonymized mobile phone metadata combined with beneficiaries records from unemployment benefit program. We find that aggregated activity, social, and mobility patterns strongly correlate with unemployment. Furthermore, we construct a simple model to produce accurate reconstruction of district level unemployment from their mobile communication patterns alone. Our results suggest that reliable and cost-effective economical indicators could be built based on passively collected and anonymized mobile phone data. With similar data being collected every day by telecommunication services across the world, survey-based methods of measuring community socioeconomic status could potentially be augmented or replaced by such passive sensing methods in the future

The Mechanical Behavior of a 25Cr Super Duplex Stainless Steel at Elevated Temperature

Peer reviewedPostprin

Design and Testing of Cesium Atomic Concentration Detection System Based on TDLAS

In order to better build the Neutral Beam Injector with Negative Ion Source (NNBI), the pre-research on key technologies has been carried out for the Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology (CRAFT). Cesium seeding into negative-ion sources is a prerequisite to obtain the required negative hydrogen ion. The performance of ion source largely depends on the cesium conditions in the source. It is very necessary to quantitatively measure the amount of cesium in the source during the plasma on and off periods (vacuum stage). This article uses the absorption peak of cesium atoms near 852.1nm to build a cesium atom concentration detection system based on Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TDLAS) technology. The test experiment based on the cesium cell is carried out, obtained the variation curve of cesium concentration at different temperatures. The experimental results indicate that: the system detection range is within 5*10E6-2.5*10E7 pieces/cm3 and the system resolution better than 1*10E6 pieces/cm3.Comment: 8 pages,7 figures, the 20th International Symposium on Laser-Aided Plasma Diagnostic

Discovering duplicate tasks in transition systems for the simplification of process models

This work presents a set of methods to improve the understandability of process models. Traditionally, simplification methods trade off quality metrics, such as fitness or precision. Conversely, the methods proposed in this paper produce simplified models while preserving or even increasing fidelity metrics. The first problem addressed in the paper is the discovery of duplicate tasks. A new method is proposed that avoids overfitting by working on the transition system generated by the log. The method is able to discover duplicate tasks even in the presence of concurrency and choice. The second problem is the structural simplification of the model by identifying optional and repetitive tasks. The tasks are substituted by annotated events that allow the removal of silent tasks and reduce the complexity of the model. An important feature of the methods proposed in this paper is that they are independent from the actual miner used for process discovery.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Bridging Time Scales in Cellular Decision Making with a Stochastic Bistable Switch

Cellular transformations which involve a significant phenotypical change of the cell's state use bistable biochemical switches as underlying decision systems. In this work, we aim at linking cellular decisions taking place on a time scale of years to decades with the biochemical dynamics in signal transduction and gene regulation, occuring on a time scale of minutes to hours. We show that a stochastic bistable switch forms a viable biochemical mechanism to implement decision processes on long time scales. As a case study, the mechanism is applied to model the initiation of follicle growth in mammalian ovaries, where the physiological time scale of follicle pool depletion is on the order of the organism's lifespan. We construct a simple mathematical model for this process based on experimental evidence for the involved genetic mechanisms. Despite the underlying stochasticity, the proposed mechanism turns out to yield reliable behavior in large populations of cells subject to the considered decision process. Our model explains how the physiological time constant may emerge from the intrinsic stochasticity of the underlying gene regulatory network. Apart from ovarian follicles, the proposed mechanism may also be of relevance for other physiological systems where cells take binary decisions over a long time scale.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

The structure of a resuscitation-promoting factor domain from Mycobacterium tuberculosis shows homology to lysozymes

Resuscitation-promoting factor (RPF) proteins reactivate stationary-phase cultures of (G+C)-rich Gram-positive bacteria including the causative agent of tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We report the solution structure of the RPF domain from M. tuberculosis Rv1009 (RpfB) solved by heteronuclear multidimensional NMR. Structural homology with various glycoside hydrolases suggested that RpfB cleaved oligosaccharides. Biochemical studies indicate that a conserved active site glutamate is important for resuscitation activity. These data, as well as the presence of a clear binding pocket for a large molecule, indicate that oligosaccharide cleavage is probably the signal for revival from dormancy

Size-Dependent Photon Emission from Organometal Halide Perovskite Nanocrystals Embedded in an Organic Matrix

10.1021/jz502615eJournal of Physical Chemistry Letters63446-45