Disentangling the Drivers of Diversity and Distribution of Fungal Community Composition in Wastewater Treatment Plants Across Spatial Scales

Activated sludge microbial community composition is a key bio-indicator of the sustainability of wastewater treatment systems. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the activated sludge microbial community dynamics is critical for environmental engineers to effectively manage the wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, fungal communities associated with activated sludge have been poorly elucidated. Here, the activated sludge fungal community in 18 geographically distributed WWTPs was determined by using Illumina sequencing. The results showed that differences in activated sludge fungal community composition were observed among all WWTPs and also between oxidation ditch and anaerobic-anoxic-aerobic (A/A/O) systems. Ascomycota was the largest phyla, followed by Basidiomycota in all samples. Sporidiobolales and Pezizales were the most abundant order in oxidation ditch and A/A/O systems, respectively. The network analysis indicated cooperative and co-occurrence interactions between fungal taxa in order to accomplish the wastewater treatment process. Hygrocybe sp., Sporobolomyces sp., Rhodotorula sp., Stemphylium sp., Parascedosporium sp., and Cylindrocarpon sp., were found to have statistically significant interactions. Redundancy analysis revealed that temperature, total phosphorus, pH, and ammonia nitrogen were significantly affected the fungal community. This study sheds light on providing the ecological characteristics of activated sludge fungal communities and useful guidance for improving wastewater treatment performance efficiency

Nomogram for Predicting Bone Development State of Female Children and Adolescents–A Fast Screening Approach Based on Pubes Stages for Growth and Development

Objective: To develop a nomogram for predicting bone development state (BDS) of female children and adolescents in a large scale.Methods: Four hundred forty-seven female students were designated as the training cohort to develop the predictive model, whereas 196 female students were used as the validation cohort to verify the established model. Bone age, height, body mass, body fat percentage, and secondary sexual characteristics were recorded, and BDS was determined with the chronological age and bone age. Multivariate logistic regression was conducted to determine the factors, and nomogram was developed and validated with the training and validation cohorts, respectively.Results: One hundred forty-seven female students were identified as BDS abnormal in the training cohort (32.9%), and 104 were determined in the validation cohort (53.1%). Age, height, weight, and pubes stage were selected for the predictive model. A nomogram was developed and showed a good estimation, with a C-index of 0.78 and a good calibration in the training cohort. Application of the nomogram to the validation cohort showed a similar C-index of 0.75 and a good calibration.Conclusion: A nomogram for predicting bone development was developed, which can provide a relatively good estimation of BDS for female children and adolescents in Chinese metropolis

New Particle Formation from Methanesulfonic Acid and Amines/Ammonia as a Function of Temperature.

Previous studies have shown that methanesulfonic acid (MSA) reacts with amines and ammonia to form particles, which is expected to be particularly important in coastal and agricultural areas. We present the first systematic study of temperature dependence of particle formation from the reactions of MSA with trimethylamine (TMA), dimethylamine (DMA), methylamine (MA), and ammonia over the range of 21-28 °C and 0.4-5.9 s in a flow reactor under dry conditions and in the presence of 3 × 1017 cm-3 water vapor. Overall activation energies (Eoverall) for particle formation calculated from the dependence of rates of particle formation on temperature for all of these bases are negative. The negative Eoverall is interpreted in terms of reverse reactions that decompose intermediate clusters in competition with the forward reactions that grow the clusters into particles. The average values of Eoverall for the formation of detectable particles are: TMA, -(168 ± 19) kcal mol-1; DMA, -(134 ± 30) kcal mol-1; MA, -(68 ± 23) kcal mol-1; NH3, -(110 ± 16) kcal mol-1 (±1σ). The strong inverse dependence of particle formation with temperature suggests that particle formation may not decline proportionally with concentrations of MSA and amines if temperature also decreases, for example at higher altitudes or in winter

Improved Self-Learning Genetic Algorithm for Solving Flexible Job Shop Scheduling

The flexible job shop scheduling problem (FJSP), one of the core problems in the field of generative manufacturing process planning, has become a hotspot and a challenge in manufacturing production research. In this study, an improved self-learning genetic algorithm is proposed. The single mutation approach of the genetic algorithm was improved, while four mutation operators were designed on the basis of process coding and machine coding; their weights were updated and their selection mutation operators were adjusted according to the performance in the iterative process. Combined with the improved population initialization method and the optimized crossover strategy, the local search capability was enhanced, and the convergence speed was accelerated. The effectiveness and feasibility of the algorithm were verified by testing the benchmark arithmetic examples and numerical experiments

New Particle Formation from Methanesulfonic Acid and Amines/Ammonia as a Function of Temperature

Previous studies have shown that methanesulfonic acid (MSA) reacts with amines and ammonia to form particles, which is expected to be particularly important in coastal and agricultural areas. We present the first systematic study of temperature dependence of particle formation from the reactions of MSA with trimethylamine (TMA), dimethylamine (DMA), methylamine (MA), and ammonia over the range of 21–28 °C and 0.4–5.9 s in a flow reactor under dry conditions and in the presence of 3 × 10¹⁷ cm^–3 water vapor. Overall activation energies (<i>E</i>_overall) for particle formation calculated from the dependence of rates of particle formation on temperature for all of these bases are negative. The negative <i>E</i>_overall is interpreted in terms of reverse reactions that decompose intermediate clusters in competition with the forward reactions that grow the clusters into particles. The average values of <i>E</i>_overall for the formation of detectable particles are: TMA, −(168 ± 19) kcal mol^–1; DMA, −(134 ± 30) kcal mol^–1; MA, −(68 ± 23) kcal mol^–1; NH₃, −(110 ± 16) kcal mol^–1 (±1σ). The strong inverse dependence of particle formation with temperature suggests that particle formation may not decline proportionally with concentrations of MSA and amines if temperature also decreases, for example at higher altitudes or in winter