Molecular characterization of mesophilic and thermophilic sulfate reducing microbial communities in expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactors

The microbial communities established in mesophilic and thermophilic expanded granular sludge bed reactors operated with sulfate as the electron acceptor were analyzed using 16S rRNA targeted molecular methods, including denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, cloning, and phylogenetic analysis. Bacterial and archaeal communities were examined over 450 days of operation treating ethanol (thermophilic reactor) or ethanol and later a simulated semiconductor manufacturing wastewater containing citrate, isopropanol, and polyethylene glycol 300 (mesophilic reactor), with and without the addition of copper(II). Analysis, of PCR-amplified 16S rRNA gene fragments using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis revealed a defined shift in microbial diversity in both reactors following a change in substrate composition (mesophilic reactor) and in temperature of operation from 30 degrees C to 55 degrees C (thermophilic reactor). The addition of copper(II) to the influent of both reactors did not noticeably affect the composition of the bacterial or archaeal communities, which is in agreement with the very low soluble copper concentrations (3-310 microg l(-1)) present in the reactor contents as a consequence of extensive precipitation of copper with biogenic sulfides. Furthermore, clone library analysis confirmed the phylogenetic diversity of sulfate-reducing consortia in mesophilic and thermophilic sulfidogenic reactors operated with simple substrate

Multi-source imagery fusion using deep learning in a cloud computing platform

Given the high availability of data collected by different remote sensing instruments, the data fusion of multi-spectral and hyperspectral images (HSI) is an important topic in remote sensing. In particular, super-resolution as a data fusion application using spatial and spectral domains is highly investigated because its fused images is used to improve the classification and tracking objects accuracy. On the other hand, the huge amount of data obtained by remote sensing instruments represent a key concern in terms of data storage, management and pre-processing. This paper proposes a Big Data Cloud platform using Hadoop and Spark to store, manages, and process remote sensing data. Also, a study over the parameter \textit{chunk size} is presented to suggest the appropriate value for this parameter to download imagery data from Hadoop into a Spark application, based on the format of our data. We also developed an alternative approach based on Long Short Term Memory trained with different patch sizes for super-resolution image. This approach fuse hyperspectral and multispectral images. As a result, we obtain images with high-spatial and high-spectral resolution. The experimental results show that for a chunk size of 64k, an average of 3.5s was required to download data from Hadoop into a Spark application. The proposed model for super-resolution provides a structural similarity index of 0.98 and 0.907 for the used dataset

Supersymmetric Nonlinear Sigma Model in AdS_5

We construct the supersymmetric nonlinear sigma model in a fixed AdS_5 background. We use component fields and find that the complex bosons must be the coordinates of a hyper-Kahler manifold that admits a Killing vector satisfying an inhomogeneous tri-holomorphic condition. We propose boundary conditions that map the on-shell bulk hypermultiplets into off-shell chiral multiplets on 3-branes that foliate the bulk. The supersymmetric AdS_5 isometries reduce to superconformal transformations on the brane fields.Comment: Latex, 7 pages. Published versio

Statins are associated with decreased mortality risk after status epilepticus.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Statins display anti-inflammatory and anti-epileptogenic properties in animal models, and may reduce the epilepsy risk in elderly humans; however, a possible modulating role on outcome in patients with status epilepticus (SE) has not been assessed. METHODS: This cohort study was based on a prospective registry including all consecutive adults with incident SE treated in our center between April 2006 and September 2012. SE outcome was categorized at hospital discharge into 'return to baseline', 'new disability' and 'mortality'. The role of potential predictors, including statins treatment on admission, was evaluated using a multinomial logistic regression model. RESULTS: Amongst 427 patients identified, information on statins was available in 413 (97%). Mean age was 60.9 (±17.8) years; 201 (49%) were women; 211 (51%) had a potentially fatal SE etiology; and 191 (46%) experienced generalized-convulsive or non-convulsive SE in coma. Statins (simvastatin, atorvastatin or pravastatin) were prescribed prior to admission in 76 (18%) subjects, mostly elderly. Whilst 208 (50.4%) patients returned to baseline, 58 (14%) died. After adjustment for established SE outcome predictors (age, etiology, SE severity score), statins correlated significantly with lower mortality (relative risk ratio 0.38, P = 0.046). CONCLUSION: This study suggests for the first time that exposure to statins before an SE episode is related to its outcome, involving a possible anti-epileptogenic role. Other studies are needed to confirm this intriguing finding

Vier Jahre Obama sind nicht genug! : Die US-Nuklearwaffenpolitik am Scheideweg

Als der amtierende Präsident der USA Barack Obama in seiner Prager Rede vor 20.000 Zuhörern seine Vision einer atomwaffenfreien Welt verkündete, schürte das Hoffnungen für eine beschleunigte nukleare Abrüstung. Doch was ist geblieben von der Euphorie? Genug, um auf vier weitere Jahre Obama zu hoffen, meint Marco Fey. Zwar habe mancher Schritt mehr Zeit in Anspruch genommen als erhofft, Vieles konnte jedoch umgesetzt werden. So markierte etwa das New START-Abkommen mit Russland einen wichtigen Erfolg in der Kontrolle von Nuklearwaffen. Die Abkehr von Obamas Vorgänger Bush zeigt sich besonders im Umgang mit multilateralen Regimen: Die Obama-Regierung wird nicht müde zu verkünden, dass sie sich an die Abrüstungsverpflichtung aus dem Nuklearen Nichtverbreitungsvertrag (NVV) gebunden fühlt. Mit der Offenlegung der exakten Anzahl amerikanischer Nuklearsprengköpfe bei der Überprüfungskonferenz des NVV im Mai 2010 demonstrierte Außenministerin Clinton Transparenz und erhöhte den Druck auf andere Staaten. Dennoch konnten einige Vorhaben noch nicht umgesetzt werden: Die Ratifikation des umfassenden Kernwaffenteststopp-Vertrags steht deshalb für eine mögliche zweite Amtszeit ebenso auf der Agenda wie die Intensivierung der Abrüstungsbemühungen mit Russland. Die Wahl Mitt Romneys würde hingegen einen Rückschlag für die nukleare Abrüstung und eine Rückkehr zur abrüstungsfeindlichen Bush-Politik bedeuten. Romney fordere höhere Verteidigungsausgaben und betrachte Russland immer noch als größten geopolitischen Feind, so Fey

The role of natural wood constituents on the anaerobic treatability of forest industry wastewaters

Anaerobic treatment has been shown to be an efficient and energy conserving method for treating various types of readily biodegradable non-inhibitory forest industry wastewaters. However, the high toxicity of paper mill effluents derived from chemical wood processing operations has hampered the wide spread application of anaerobic treatment in the forest industry.This dissertation describes research on the anaerobic treatment of inhibitory wastewaters from the forest industry. The main objective was to determine the role of natural woodderived organic constituents on the methanogenic toxicity of these wastewaters.Lignocellulosic feedstocks were pulped by processes commonly applied in the forest industry, namely thermomechanical (TMP) and alkaline pulping processes, to determine which factors are responsible for the extraction of toxic substances. Batch anaerobic biodegradability and methanogenic toxicity assay results indicated that the pulping conditions applied had a significant effect on the anaerobic treatability of the resulting wastewaters. TMP effluents were highly biodegradable and non-inhibitory. Soda pulping liquors contain important fractions of recalcitrant organic matter and exerted severe toxicity. Wood resin constituents were shown to be the major inhibitors present in pulping wastewaters. Wood resin is composed of fatty constituents which are poorly soluble in water at neutral to acid pH values. The increased solubility of resin at high pH values, indicates that the contact of alkali with wood contributes strongly to producing toxic wastewaters by extracting resinous compounds. The alkali promotes lignin solubilization and thereby also contributes to a lowered biodegradability of the wastewater.Compounds representative of the major wood resin constituents were assayed for methanogenic toxicity. The high toxicity of a variety of resin compounds including volatile terpenes, resin acids and apolar phenols was demonstrated. Concentrations causing 50% inhibition ranged from 20 to 330 mg/l.Aside from the resinous wood constituents, lignin derived compounds are also potential sources of toxicity in pulping wastewaters. The methanogenic toxicity of lignin mixtures isolated from paper mill effluents was determined. Experiments with ultrafiltered lignins revealed that the toxicity of various wastewater lignins originated from the low molecular weight (MW) fraction. Studies with selected low MW lignin model compounds showed that their inhibitory activity was related to the functional groups on the aromatic ring. Compounds with aldehyde groups or apolar substituents were highly toxic; whereas, those with carboxylic groups were distinctly less toxic.The effect of chemical structure on the methanogenic toxicity of aromatic compounds was investigated. Some basic structure- toxicity relationships were evident. In general, the toxicity increased with increasing the length of aliphatic side-chains and increasing the number of alkyl or chlorine groups. On the other hand, the toxicity decreased as polar 'functional groups were introduced on the alkylic side chains. The partition coefficient n-octanol/water, an indicator of hydrophobicity, was observed to be positively correlated with the methanogenic inhibition. The results indicate that hydrophobicity is an important factor contributing to the high toxicity of numerous aromatic compounds. Therefore, highly hydrophobic compounds such as resin constituents, apolar lignin derivatives and chlorinated aromatics and are the primary suspect toxicants in forest industry effluents.The susceptibility of important organic toxins in forest industry effluents to anaerobic biodegradation was assessed. The results indicated that anaerobic treatment technologies have a limited capacity to mineralize natural wood toxins. Although the degradation of a lignin derivative, guaiacol, and long chain fatty acids was demonstrated, other important wood toxins such as volatile terpenes and resin acids were persistent.Finally, the treatability of TMP and soda pulping effluents was evaluated in lab-scale upward-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors. TMP wastewaters were found highly suitable for anaerobic treatment. Despite the inhibitory character of soda pulping liquors, anaerobic systems were feasible for removing the biodegradable COD if, prior to biological treatment, the wastewaters were diluted to subtoxic levels or detoxified by pretreatment with the adsorbent Amberlite-XAD-2

Free hardware based system for air quality and CO2 monitoring

Due to the increase in air pollution, especially in Latin American countries of low and middle income, great environmental and health risks have been generated, highlighting that there is more pollution in closed environments. Given this problem, it has been proposed to develop a system based on free hardware for monitoring air quality and CO2, in order to reduce the levels of air pollution in a closed environment, improving the quality of life of people and contributing to the awareness of the damage caused to the environment by the hand of man himself. The system is based on V-Model, complemented with a ventilation prototype implemented with sensors and an application for its respective monitoring. The sample collected in the present investigation was non-probabilistic, derived from the reports of air indicators during 15 days with specific schedules of 9am, 1pm and 6pm. The results obtained indicated that the air quality decreased to 670 ppm, as well as the collection time decreased to 5 seconds and finally the presence of CO2 was reduced to 650 ppm after the implementation of the system, achieving to be within the standards recommended by the World Health Organization

Ultrastructural analysis of the antennae of Hemilucilia segmentaria (Diptera: Calliphoridae), a blowfly of forensic importance

Hemilucilia segmentaria (Fabricius, 1805) is a Neotropical blowfly species of forensic importance, with necrophagous and asynanthropic habits. In this study, the antennal ultrastructure of H. segmentaria was examined using scanning electron microscopy. The three antennal segments are covered by microtrichia. Sensilla chaetica were detected only on the scape and pedicel. Setiferous plaques and a pedicellar button were observed on the pedicel. Four types of sensilla were found on the postpedicel, including s. trichoidea, s. basiconica (subtype I, II and III), s. coeloconica subtype I, and sensory pits with s. coeloconica subtype II. This is the first time that the fine structure of the antennae of H. segmentaria was studied. Our results constitute a solid base for research on comparative and functional morphology in H. segmentaria and other blowflies

In-house PIV laser system design and development for measuring the velocity of liquids

Measuring the velocity of fluids is important for different scientific applications in industry. There are different methods for measuring the velocity of fluids such as the Pitot tube, orifice plate, Venturi tube and via a rotameter. As these methods are clearly invasive they present considerable errors. Consequently, an optical method could be used for measuring fluids with substantial error reduction. Among those, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV), Laser Doppler Velocimetry (DLV) are good options. In this work, a low-cost, in-house PIV laser system for measuring the velocity of a liquid in experimental form is developed based on our design. The results were then compared with the results of a rotameter at 2-5 litres per minute (LPM) in similar flow conditions. Full design and development of our system will be included in the manuscript