Use of Saline Water in Energy Development

Maps were made of the Upper Colorado River Basin showing locations of coal deposits, oil and gas, oil shale, uranium, and tar sand, in relationship to cities and towns in the area. Superimposed on these are locations of wells showing four ranges of water quality; 1,000-3,000 mg/l, 3,000-10,000 mg/l, 10,000-35,000 mg/l, and over 35,000 mg/l. Information was assembled relative to future energy-related projects in the upper basin, and estimates were made of their anticipated water needs. Using computer models, various options were tested for using saline water for coal-fired power plant cooling. Both cooling towers and brine evaporation ponds were included. information is presented of several proven water treatment technologies, and comparisons are made of their cost effectiveness when placed in various combinations in the power plant makeup and blowdown water systems. A relative value scale was developed which compares graphically the relative values of water of different salinities based on three different water treatment options and predetermined upper limits of cooling tower circulating salinities. Coal from several different mines was slurried in waters of different salinities. Samples were analyzed in the laboratory to determine which constituents had been leached from or absorbed by the coal, and what possible deleterious effects this might have on the burning properties of the coal, or on the water for culinary use or irrigation

EC97-277 Minerals and Vitamins For Beef Cows

Introduction Mineral supplementation programs range from elaborate, cafeteria-style delivery systems to simple white salt blocks put out periodically by producers. The reason for this diversity: little applicable research available for producers to evaluate mineral supplement programs. There is a need of information regarding mineral composition and availability from various feedstuffs (i.e. pasture grasses, hays, by-products, etc.) and the possible interactions between minerals in the digestive system. Also lacking is a data base to establish accurate estimates of mineral requirements for beef cattle. Assessing the consequence of mineral deficiencies in the cow, calf or stocker animal is difficult because slightly lowered weight gains in calves, reduced milk production and/or decreased reproduction rates may occur without visible signs of deficiency. At the same time, excess mineral consumption may cause reduced cow and/or calf performance without obvious signs of toxicity. Potential problems can occur due to mineral undernutrition in the cow herd; however, producers need sufficient information to establish a least cost method of correcting mineral undernutrition

Studies on Viruses in Water

A new procedure for the detection of viral antigens in fecal material was developed. The test is performed by first diluting a fecal sample with phosphate buffered saline to give a liquid consistency. The pH is then adjusted to 8.5-9.0 and the solids are allowed to settle for five minutes. Supernatant fluid from above the fecal sediment is placed on the upper surface of a well of an inverted Immulon microtiter plate and incubated for one hour at 37 degrees C to allow virus to adsorb to the plastic. The Immulon plate is then washed three times with a Tween 20 solution and dried. Adsorbed virus is stained with fluorescein labled antiviral antibody containing Evan\u27s Blue dye. The stained preparations are examined by epi-fluorescence microsopy for the presence of viral aggregates and virus-containing cellular membranes. The test is applied in a continuous water monitoring procedure that can be used to upplement methods in which infectious viruses are isolated from water. In another study a protamine sulfate procedure for concentrating and an immunofluorescent cell procedure for assaying infectious virus (IV, reovirus that is infectious without proteolytic enzyme treatment), and potentially infectious virus (PIV, enzyme enhanceable reovirus) from polluted waters have been developed. The presence of PIV inthe environment had not previously been investigated. In following these procedures, protamine sulfate concentratiosn of 0.005 percent for the first precipitation of the sample, and 0.0025 percent for the second were used. With these protamine concentrations and 0.25 percent fetal bovine serum, IV and PIV are concentrations over 500-fold from river water inoculated with virus. Virus recoveries are between 80 and 100 percent. The IV and PIV fractions are assayed respectively before and after treatment with 200 ug fo chymotrypsin per millileter. When PIV is precipitated from river water, and the precipitate is dissolved and stored at 20 degrees C as a protamine-virus concentrate, only 5 percent of the viral infectivity is lost after 14 days. Therefore, reovirus can be precipitated from water at the sampling site, and only the protamine concentrate needs to be taken to the laboratory to be examined for virus content. When reoviruses are treated with chlorine, PIV is more resistant to inactivation thatn IV, and PIV appears to be at least as resistant to chlorination as poliovirus and coxsackievirus A-2. Granular media filtration systems (i.e., sand, anthracite coal and sand; anthracite coal; sand and garnet) are ineffectual in the removal of the acteriophage MS 2 from water when used as in-line direct filters. Batch assays have indicated a 93 percent reduction of MS 2 can occur when polyelectrolytes are added to the water. In addition, alum concentrations of 20, 30, 40, and 50 mg/1 remove 80 to 98 percent of the virus by precipitation. No reduction of MS 2 was observed at alum concentrations from 1 to 10 mg/1

Quantitative Chemically-Specific Coherent Diffractive Imaging of Buried Interfaces using a Tabletop EUV Nanoscope

Characterizing buried layers and interfaces is critical for a host of applications in nanoscience and nano-manufacturing. Here we demonstrate non-invasive, non-destructive imaging of buried interfaces using a tabletop, extreme ultraviolet (EUV), coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) nanoscope. Copper nanostructures inlaid in SiO2 are coated with 100 nm of aluminum, which is opaque to visible light and thick enough that neither optical microscopy nor atomic force microscopy can image the buried interfaces. Short wavelength (29 nm) high harmonic light can penetrate the aluminum layer, yielding high-contrast images of the buried structures. Moreover, differences in the absolute reflectivity of the interfaces before and after coating reveal the formation of interstitial diffusion and oxidation layers at the Al-Cu and Al-SiO2 boundaries. Finally, we show that EUV CDI provides a unique capability for quantitative, chemically-specific imaging of buried structures, and the material evolution that occurs at these buried interfaces, compared with all other approaches.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Ice nucleation by viruses and their potential for cloud glaciation

In order to effectively predict the formation of ice in clouds we need to know which subsets of aerosol particles are effective at nucleating ice, how they are distributed and where they are from. A large proportion of ice-nucleating particles (INPs) in many locations are likely of biological origin, and some INPs are extremely small, being just tens of nanometres in size. The identity and sources of such INPs are not well characterized. Here, we show that several different types of virus particles can nucleate ice, with up to about 1 in 20 million virus particles able to nucleate ice at -20 degrees C. In terms of the impact on cloud glaciation, the ice-nucleating ability (the fraction which are ice nucleation active as a function of temperature) taken together with typical virus particle concentrations in the atmosphere leads to the conclusion that virus particles make a minor contribution to the atmospheric ice-nucleating particle population in the terrestrial-influenced atmosphere. However, they cannot be ruled out as being important in the remote marine atmosphere. It is striking that virus particles have an ice-nucleating activity, and further work should be done to explore other types of viruses for both their ice-nucleating potential and to understand the mechanism by which viruses nucleate ice.Peer reviewe

From disease ontology to disease-ontology lite: statistical methods to adapt a general-purpose ontology for the test of gene-ontology associations

Subjective methods have been reported to adapt a general-purpose ontology for a specific application. For example, Gene Ontology (GO) Slim was created from GO to generate a highly aggregated report of the human-genome annotation. We propose statistical methods to adapt the general purpose, OBO Foundry Disease Ontology (DO) for the identification of gene-disease associations. Thus, we need a simplified definition of disease categories derived from implicated genes. On the basis of the assumption that the DO terms having similar associated genes are closely related, we group the DO terms based on the similarity of gene-to-DO mapping profiles. Two types of binary distance metrics are defined to measure the overall and subset similarity between DO terms. A compactness-scalable fuzzy clustering method is then applied to group similar DO terms. To reduce false clustering, the semantic similarities between DO terms are also used to constrain clustering results. As such, the DO terms are aggregated and the redundant DO terms are largely removed. Using these methods, we constructed a simplified vocabulary list from the DO called Disease Ontology Lite (DOLite). We demonstrated that DOLite results in more interpretable results than DO for gene-disease association tests. The resultant DOLite has been used in the Functional Disease Ontology (FunDO) Web application at http://www.projects.bioinformatics.northwestern.edu/fundo

Near-Edge X-ray Absorption Fine Structure Study of Ion-beam-induced Phase Transformation in Gd2(Ti1-yZry)2O7

The structural and electronic properties of Gd2(Ti1−yZry)2O7 (y=0–1) pyrochlores following a 2.0-MeV Au2+ ion-beam irradiation (~5.0 X 1014 Au2+/cm2) have been investigated by Ti 2p and O 1s near-edge x-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS). The irradiation of Gd2(Ti1−yZry)2O7 leads to the phase transformation from the ordered pyrochlore structure (Fd3m) to the defect fluorite structure (Fm3m) regardless of Zr concentration. Irradiated Gd2(Ti1−yZry)2O7 with y≤0.5 are amorphous, although significant short-range order is present. Contrasting to this behavior, compositions with y≥0.75 retain crystallinity in the defect fluorite structure following irradiation. The local structures of Zr4+ in the irradiated Gd2(Ti1−yZry)2O7 with y≥0.75 determined by NEXAFS are the same as in the cubic fluorite-structured yttria-stabilized zirconia (Y–ZrO2), thereby providing conclusive evidence for the phase transformation. The TiO6 octahedra present in Gd2(Ti1−yZry)2O7 are completely modified by ion-beam irradiation to TiOx polyhedra, and the Ti coordination is increased to eight with longer Ti–O bond distances. The similarity between cation sites and the degree of disorder in Gd2Zr2O7 facilitate the rearrangement and relaxation of Gd, Zr, and O ions/defects. This inhibits amorphization during the ion-beam-induced phase transition to the radiation-resistant defect fluorite structure, which is in contrast to the ordered Gd2Ti2O7