Control of VOCs from printing press air emissions by anaerobic bioscrubber: Performance and microbial community of an on-site pilot unit

A novel process consisted of an anaerobic bioscrubber was studied at the field scale for the removal of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from a printing press facility. The pilot unit worked under high fluctuating waste gas emissions containing ethanol, ethyl acetate, and 1-ethoxy-2-propanol as main pollutants, with airflows ranging between 184 and 1253 m3 h−1 and an average concentration of 1126 ± 470 mg-C Nm−3. Three scrubber configurations (cross-flow and vertical-flow packings and spray tower) were tested, and cross-flow packing was found to be the best one. For this packing, daily average values of VOC removal efficiency ranged between 83% and 93% for liquid to air volume ratios between 3.5·10−3 and 9.1·10−3. Biomass growth was prevented by periodical chemical cleaning; the average pressure drop was 165 Pa m−1. Rapid initiation of anaerobic degradation was achieved by using granular sludge from a brewery wastewater treatment plant. Despite the intermittent and fluctuating organic load, the expanded granular sludge bed reactor showed an excellent level of performance, reaching removal efficiencies of 93 ± 5% at 25.1 ± 3.2 °C, with biogas methane content of 94 ± 3% in volume. Volatile fatty acid concentration was as low as 200 mg acetic acid L−1 by treating daily average organic loads up to 3.0 kg COD h−1, equivalent to 24 kg COD m−3 bed d−1. The denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) results revealed the initial shift of the domains Archaea and Bacteria associated with the limitation of the carbon source to a few organic solvents. The Archaea domain was more sensitive, resulting in a drop of the Shannon index from 1.07 to 0.41 in the first 123 days. Among Archaea, the predominance of Methanosaeta persisted throughout the experimental period. The increase in the proportion of Methanospirillum and Methanobacterium sp. was linked to the spontaneous variations of operating temperature and load, respectively. Among Bacteria, high levels of ethanol degraders (Geobacter and Pelobacter sp.) were observed during the trial

Influences of synoptic situation and teleconnections on fog-water collection in the Mediterranean Iberian Peninsula, 2003-2012

Fog-water collection has been widely analysed for its quantification and potential uses; however, there are few studies assessing the synoptic conditions and largescale teleconnection patterns that affect its occurrence. Focusing on the Mediterranean Iberian Peninsula, this work aims to analyse the synoptic patterns, both at surface level and 850 hPa geopotential height, that most likely to favour fogwater collection, and to quantify the relationship between fog-water collection and the NAOi (North Atlantic Oscillation index), MOi (Mediterranean Oscillation index) as well as WeMOi (Western Mediterranean Oscillation index) teleconnection patterns. For this purpose, daily fog-water observations from a dense network of 23 fog-water collectors located along the Mediterranean Iberian Peninsula for 2003-2012 were analysed in relation to synoptic patterns and the threeteleconnection indices. The major findings are: (a) The most favourable synoptic patterns for fog-water collection are maritime advections carrying humidity from the Mediterranean basin, and cyclonic circulations, whereas anti-cyclonic situations generally led to large number of foggy days with low fog-collection rates. (b) In terms of winds at 850 hPa, the most favourable low-level flows for fogwater collection are associated with strong winds (>5.1 m s−1) from theMediterranean. Atlantic winds generally cause a greater number of fog days than Mediterranean winds, with less fog-water collection rates. (c) WeMOi has the greatest influence on fog-water collection, mainly during winter and spring months, with statistically significant negative relationships for most of the stations. MOi also shows a great influence, with a large number of statistically significant negative correlations, mainly during the same months as WeMOi. Lastly, NAOi presented the lowest and no significant negative correlations with fog-water collection

Estudio del postoperatorio tras la extracción quirúrgica de 100 terceros molares inferiores impactados en relación a la dificultad del acto quirúrgico

El propósito de este estudio es valorar el dolor, la inflamación, el trismo y el consumo de analgésicos durante los 7 días del postoperatorio, tras la extracción quirúrgica de terceros molares inferiores impactados, en relación con la dificultad de la intervención. Incluimos 100 pacientes sanos que fueron sometidos a la extracción quirúrgica de terceros molares inferiores impactados. Valoramos el dolor postquirúrgico usando una escala analógica-visual, la inflamación mediante una escala subjetiva, el trismo como disminución de la apertura interincisiva y el consumo de analgésicos. El tiempo de ostectomía, la práctica de odontosección y la duración de la intervención, influyeron en el postoperatorio aumentado el dolor, la inflamación y el trismo. El tiempo de ostectomía y la duración de la intervención presentaron una relación estadísticamente significativa con el trismo, y la odontosección con el dolor y el trismo. El estudio trata de ser una herramienta para ayudar a prever los efectos secundarios del postoperatorio, en función de la dificultad del acto quirúrgico

Dexketoprofen/tramadol: randomised double-blind trial and confirmation of empirical theory of combination analgesics in acute pain

Background: Combination analgesics are effective in acute pain, and a theoretical framework predicts efficacy for combinations. The combination of dexketoprofen and tramadol is untested, but predicted to be highly effective. Methods: This was a randomised, double-blind, double-dummy, parallel-group, placebo-controlled, single-dose trial in patients with moderate or severe pain following third molar extraction. There were ten treatment arms, including dexketoprofen trometamol (12.5 mg and 25 mg) and tramadol hydrochloride (37.5 mg and 75 mg), given as four different fixed combinations and single components, with ibuprofen 400 mg as active control as well as a placebo control. The study objective was to evaluate the superior analgesic efficacy and safety of each combination and each single agent versus placebo. The primary outcome was the proportion of patients with at least 50 % max TOTPAR over six hours. Results: 606 patients were randomised and provided at least one post-dose assessment. All combinations were significantly better than placebo. The highest percentage of responders (72 %) was achieved in the dexketoprofen trometamol 25 mg plus tramadol hydrochloride 75 mg group (NNT 1.6, 95 % confidence interval 1.3 to 2.1). Addition of tramadol to dexketoprofen resulted in greater peak pain relief and greater pain relief over the longer term, particularly at times longer than six hours (median duration of 8.1 h). Adverse events were unremarkable. Conclusions: Dexketoprofen trometamol 25 mg combined with tramadol hydrochloride 75 mg provided good analgesia with rapid onset and long duration in a model of moderate to severe pain. The results of the dose finding study are consistent with pre-trial calculations based on empirical formulae

Log-moment estimators of the Nakagami-lognormal distribution

[EN] In this paper, estimators of the Nakagami-lognormal (NL) distribution based on the method of log-moments have been derived and thoroughly analyzed. Unlike maximum likelihood (ML) estimators, the log-moment estimators of the NL distribution are obtained using straightforward equations with a unique solution. Also, their performance has been evaluated using the sample mean, confidence regions and normalized mean square error (NMSE). The NL distribution has been extensively used to model composite small-scale fading and shadowing in wireless communication channels. This distribution is of interest in scenarios where the small-scale fading and the shadowing processes cannot be easily separated such as the vehicular environment.This work has been funded in part by the Programa de Estancias de Movilidad de Profesores e Investigadores en Centros Extranjeros de Ensenanza Superior e Investigacion of the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte, Spain, PR2015-00151 and by the Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad of the Spanish Government under the national project TEC2017-86779-C2-2-R, through the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI) and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER).Reig, J.; Brennan, C.; Rodrigo Peñarrocha, VM.; Rubio Arjona, L. (2019). Log-moment estimators of the Nakagami-lognormal distribution. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking. 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13638-018-1328-6S110J. M. Ho, G. L. 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Mathiopoulos, in Adaptive M-QAM systems with diversity in correlated Nakagami-m fading and shadowing. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM 2010) (IEEEMiami, 2010), pp. 1–5.Ö. Bulakci, A. B. Saleh, J. Hämäläinen, S. Redana, Performance analysis of relay site planning over composite fading/shadowing channels with cochannel interference. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol.62(4), 1692–1706 (2013).W. Cheng, Y. Huang, On the performance of adaptive SC/MRC cooperative systems over composite fading channels. Chin. J. Electron.25(3), 533–540 (2016).M. G. Kibria, G. P. Villardi, W. Liao, K. Nguyen, K. Ishizu, F. Kojima, Outage analysis of offloading in heterogeneous networks: Composite fading channels. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol.66(10), 8990–9004 (2017).K. Cho, J. Lee, C. G. Kang, Stochastic geometry-based coverage and rate analysis under Nakagami & log-normal composite fading channel for downlink cellular networks. IEEE Commun. Lett.21(6), 1437–1440 (2017).R. Singh, M. Rawat, Closed-form distribution and analysis of a combined Nakagami-lognormal shadowing and unshadowing fading channel. J Telecommun. Inf. Technol.4:, 81–87 (2016).J. Reig, L. Rubio, Estimation of the composite fast fading and shadowing distribution using the log-moments in wireless communications. IEEE Trans. Wireless. Commun.12(8), 3672–3681 (2013).S. Atapattu, C. Tellambura, H. Jiang, A mixture gamma distribution to model the SNR of wireless channels. IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun.10(12), 4193–4203 (2011).Q. Wang, H. Lin, P. Kam, Tight bounds and invertible average error probability expressions over composite fading channels. J. Commun. Netw.18(2), 182–189 (2016).J. M. Holtzmann, On using perturbation analysis to do sensitivity analysis: derivatives versus differences. IEEE Trans. Autom. Control. 37(2), 243–247 (1992).H. Suzuki, A statistical model for urban radio propagation. IEEE Trans. Commun.25(7), 673–680 (1977).M. D. 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QCD moment sum rules for Coulomb systems: the charm and bottom quark masses

In this work the charm and bottom quark masses are determined from QCD moment sum rules for the charmonium and upsilon systems. To illustrate the special character of these sum rules when applied to Coulomb systems we first set up and study the behaviour of the sum rules in quantum mechanics. In our analysis we include both the results from nonrelativistic QCD and perturbation theory at next-next-to-leading order. The moments are evaluated at different values of q^2 which correspond to different relative influence among the theoretical contributions. In the numerical analysis we obtain the masses by choosing central values for all input parameters. The error is estimated from a variation of these parameters. First, the analysis is performed in the pole mass scheme. Second, we employ the potential-subtracted mass in intermediate steps of the calculation to then infer the quark masses in the MS-scheme. Our final results for the pole- and MS-masses are: M_c = 1.75 \pm 0.15 GeV, m_c(m_c) = 1.19 \pm 0.11 GeV, M_b = 4.98 \pm 0.125 GeV and m_b(m_b) = 4.24 \pm 0.10 GeV.Comment: 55 pages, 12 figures. References added, discussions extended. To appear in Phys. Rev.