Wastewater treatment and biomass growth of eight plants for shallow bed wetland roofs

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Wetland roof (WR) could bring many advantages for tropical cities such as thermal benefits, flood control, green coverage and domestic wastewater treatment. This study investigates wastewater treatment and biomass growth of eight local plants in shallow bed WRs. Results showed that removal rates of WRs were 21–28 kg COD ha−1 day−1, 9–13 kg TN ha−1 day−1 and 0.5–0.9 kg TP ha−1 day−1, respectively. The plants generated more biomass at lower hydraulic loading rate (HLR). Dry biomass growth was 0.4–28.1 g day−1 for average HLR of 247–403 m3 ha−1 day−1. Green leaf area of the plants was ranging as high as 67–99 m2 leaves per m2 of WR. In general, the descent order of Kyllinga brevifoliaRottb (WR8), Cyperus javanicus Houtt (WR5) and Imperata cylindrical (WR4) was suggested as effective vegetations in WR conditions in terms of wastewater treatment, dry biomass growth and green coverage ratio

Aerobic co-composting degradation of highly PCDD/F-contaminated field soil. A study of bacterial community

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. This study investigated bacterial communities during aerobic food waste co-composting degradation of highly PCDD/F-contaminated field soil. The total initial toxic equivalent quantity (TEQ) of the soil was 16,004 ng-TEQ kg −1 dry weight. After 42-day composting and bioactivity-enhanced monitored natural attenuation (MNA), the final compost product's TEQ reduced to 1916 ng-TEQ kg −1 dry weight (approximately 75% degradation) with a degradation rate of 136.33 ng-TEQ kg −1 day −1 . Variations in bacterial communities and PCDD/F degraders were identified by next-generation sequencing (NGS). Thermophilic conditions of the co-composting process resulted in fewer observed bacteria and PCDD/F concentrations. Numerous organic compound degraders were identified by NGS, supporting the conclusion that PCDD/Fs were degraded during food waste co-composting. Bacterial communities of the composting process were defined by four phyla (Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes). At the genus level, Bacillus (Firmicutes) emerged as the most dominant phylotype. Further studies on specific roles of these bacterial strains are needed, especially for the thermophiles which contributed to the high degradation rate of the co-co-composting treatment's first 14 days

Structure of hadron resonances with a nearby zero of the amplitude

We discuss the relation between the analytic structure of the scattering amplitude and the origin of an eigenstate represented by a pole of the amplitude.If the eigenstate is not dynamically generated by the interaction in the channel of interest, the residue of the pole vanishes in the zero coupling limit. Based on the topological nature of the phase of the scattering amplitude, we show that the pole must encounter with the Castillejo-Dalitz-Dyson (CDD) zero in this limit. It is concluded that the dynamical component of the eigenstate is small if a CDD zero exists near the eigenstate pole. We show that the line shape of the resonance is distorted from the Breit-Wigner form as an observable consequence of the nearby CDD zero. Finally, studying the positions of poles and CDD zeros of the KbarN-piSigma amplitude, we discuss the origin of the eigenstates in the Lambda(1405) region.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, v2: published versio

The Individual and Synergistic Indexes for Assessments of Heavy Metal Contamination in Global Rivers and Risk: a Review

This article provides an overview of heavy metal contamination in rivers and assessment methods of their contamination and effects. According to literature, rivers with heavy metal contamination in surface water are mainly found in developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean area, while rivers with heavy metal contamination in sediments are mostly found in Europe. The increase in heavy metal contamination in rivers has led to the adoption of individual and synergistic assessment methods. Individual methods are useful in assessing the contamination and effects for a single heavy metal, while synergistic methods assess the combined contamination and effects of several heavy metals present in surface water and sediments. These two approaches have been commonly used together in recent studies to overcome the limitations of each other and provide a more comprehensive assessment. The developments, equations, advantages, limitations, and future perspectives of these methods are discussed in this review. Calculating indexes are simple, easy-to-implement, and effective methods to provide early alerts for the environmental changes and the adverse impacts on ecosystems and human health. However, calculating indexes still have limitations due to the lack of background concentrations of heavy metals in the study area. Therefore, this issue should be addressed to overcome the limitations of these methods in the future. This review provides a useful reference for future studies on heavy metal contamination in global rivers and the assessment methods for heavy metal contamination and effects

Biocleavable Polycationic Micelles as Highly Efficient Gene Delivery Vectors

An amphiphilic disulfide-containing polyamidoamine was synthesized by Michael-type polyaddition reaction of piperazine to equimolar N, N′-bis(acryloyl)cystamine with 90% yield. The polycationic micelles (198 nm, 32.5 mV), prepared from the amphiphilic polyamidoamine by dialysis method, can condense foreign plasmid DNA to form nanosized polycationic micelles/DNA polyelectrolyte complexes with positive charges, which transfected 293T cells with high efficiency. Under optimized conditions, the transfection efficiencies of polycationic micelles/DNA complexes are comparable to, or even higher than that of commercially available branched PEI (Mw 25 kDa)

Protoplasmic Astrocytes Enhance the Ability of Neural Stem Cells to Differentiate into Neurons In Vitro

Protoplasmic astrocytes have been reported to exhibit neuroprotective effects on neurons, but there has been no direct evidence for a functional relationship between protoplasmic astrocytes and neural stem cells (NSCs). In this study, we examined neuronal differentiation of NSCs induced by protoplasmic astrocytes in a co-culture model. Protoplasmic astrocytes were isolated from new-born and NSCs from the E13-15 cortex of rats respectively. The differentiated cells labeled with neuron-specific marker β-tubulin III, were dramatically increased at 7 days in the co-culture condition. Blocking the effects of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) with an anti-BDNF antibody reduced the number of neurons differentiated from NSCs when co-cultured with protoplasmic astrocytes. In fact, the content of BDNF in the supernatant obtained from protoplasmic astrocytes and NSCs co-culture media was significantly greater than that from control media conditions. These results indicate that protoplasmic astrocytes promote neuronal differentiation of NSCs, which is driven, at least in part, by BDNF

Gold Nanoparticle Delivery of Modified CpG Stimulates Macrophages and Inhibits Tumor Growth for Enhanced Immunotherapy

Gold nanoparticle accumulation in immune cells has commonly been viewed as a side effect for cancer therapeutic delivery; however, this phenomenon can be utilized for developing gold nanoparticle mediated immunotherapy. Here, we conjugated a modified CpG oligodeoxynucleotide immune stimulant to gold nanoparticles using a simple and scalable selfassembled monolayer scheme that enhanced the functionality of CpG in vitro and in vivo. Nanoparticles can attenuate systemic side effects by enhancing CpG delivery passively to innate effector cells. The use of a triethylene glycol (TEG) spacer on top of the traditional poly-thymidine spacer increased CpG macrophage stimulatory effects without sacrificing DNA content on the nanoparticle, which directly correlates to particle uptake. In addition, the immune effects of modified CpGAuNPs were altered by the core particle size, with smaller 15 nm AuNPs generating maximum immune response. These TEG modified CpG-AuNP complexes induced macrophage and dendritic cell tumor infiltration, significantly inhibited tumor growth, and promoted survival in mice when compared to treatments with free CpG

A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons

Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots for b/w printin