Polyphenol, polysaccharide and lactate extraction from pulping factory black liquor by ionic liquids

International audienceExtraction of polyphenols, polysaccharides and organic acids present in a liquor issued from a pulping factory, so-called black liquor, was studied using two ionic liquids trihexyltetradecylphosphonium chloride ([P 66614 ]Cl) and trihexyltetradecylphosphonium bromide ([P 66614 ]Br). The extraction of each of the three compounds mentioned above was reported as a function of the dilution of the initial black liquor, the volume ratio of liquor vs. ionic liquid, and the initial pH of the black liquor. Polyphenols and polysaccharides were quantitatively extracted at room temperature with both ionic liquids. Extraction of lactate anions was found to be low, exhibiting distribution coefficients below 8 in all cases

Strong no-go theorem for Gaussian quantum bit commitment

Unconditionally secure bit commitment is forbidden by quantum mechanics. We extend this no-go theorem to continuous-variable protocols where both players are restricted to use Gaussian states and operations, which is a reasonable assumption in current-state optical implementations. Our Gaussian no-go theorem also provides a natural counter-example to a conjecture that quantum mechanics can be rederived from the assumption that key distribution is allowed while bit commitment is forbidden in Nature.Comment: 4 pages. v2: We discuss the implications of this theorem on the Brassard-Fuchs conjecture and the CBH theore

Transitions sol-gel de colloïdes anisotropes sous champs de cisaillement, pression et ondes ultrasonores, caractérisées par diffusion de rayons x aux petits angles in-situ

L'objectif de ce travail est de caractériser aux échelles mésoscopiques, l'effet combiné des champs de pression, hydrodynamiques et ultrasonores sur les mécanismes de transition sol-gel de colloïdes anisotropes d'argiles lors de l'ultrafiltration tangentielle. Pour cela, des cellules de filtration ont été développées en intégrant une lame vibrante sollicitée à 20kHz par un générateur ultrasonore. Ces cellules de filtration permettent l'observation in-situ aux échelles nanométriques par diffusion de rayons X aux petits angles (SAXS). Différentes suspensions aqueuses d'argiles ont été étudiées : des argiles naturelles de montmorillonite Wyoming-Na et des argiles synthétiques de Laponite en présence ou non d'un peptisant le tetrasodium diphosphate (Na4P2O7). Par ailleurs l'effet des ultrasons sur le comportement rhéologique de suspensions a aussi été étudié.  L'effet du pré-cisaillement induit par la pompe du circuit de filtration et l'effet des ultrasons, sur les contraintes de cisaillement des suspensions de Laponite ont été mises en évidence. Les deux sollicitations réduisent les niveaux de contrainte et l'effet est plus marqué sur les suspensions avec peptisant (à interaction répulsive dominante) que sur les suspensions sans peptisant (à interaction attractive dominante). Les évolutions temporelles de la structure et de la concentration en colloïdes en fonction de la distance à la membrane ont ainsi été caractérisées sous différentes conditions de filtration et de sollicitations ultrasonores. Deux mécanismes principaux ont été mis en évidence lors de l'application des ultrasons : soit un mécanisme de fracturation ou d'intensification locale de l'écoulement lorsque les colloïdes forment un réseau dense très anisotrope (cas des suspensions de Montmorillonite et de Laponite sans peptisant), soit un mécanisme d'érosion des couches concentrées pour les colloïdes assemblés en structures ouvertes (cas des suspensions de Laponite avec peptisant)

Radio-frequency ablation as primary management of well-tolerated sustained monomorphic ventricular tachycardia in patients with structural heart disease and left ventricular ejection fraction over 30%

Aims Patients with well-tolerated sustained monomorphic ventricular tachycardia (SMVT) and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) over 30% may benefit from a primary strategy of VT ablation without immediate need for a ‘back-up' implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD). Methods and results One hundred and sixty-six patients with structural heart disease (SHD), LVEF over 30%, and well-tolerated SMVT (no syncope) underwent primary radiofrequency ablation without ICD implantation at eight European centres. There were 139 men (84%) with mean age 62 ± 15 years and mean LVEF of 50 ± 10%. Fifty-five percent had ischaemic heart disease, 19% non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy, and 12% arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. Three hundred seventy-eight similar patients were implanted with an ICD during the same period and serve as a control group. All-cause mortality was 12% (20 patients) over a mean follow-up of 32 ± 27 months. Eight patients (40%) died from non-cardiovascular causes, 8 (40%) died from non-arrhythmic cardiovascular causes, and 4 (20%) died suddenly (SD) (2.4% of the population). All-cause mortality in the control group was 12%. Twenty-seven patients (16%) had a non-fatal recurrence at a median time of 5 months, while 20 patients (12%) required an ICD, of whom 4 died (20%). Conclusion Patients with well-tolerated SMVT, SHD, and LVEF > 30% undergoing primary VT ablation without a back-up ICD had a very low rate of arrhythmic death and recurrences were generally non-fatal. These data would support a randomized clinical trial comparing this approach with others incorporating implantation of an ICD as a primary strateg

Professional Exposure to Goats Increases the Risk of Pneumonic-Type Lung Adenocarcinoma: Results of the IFCT-0504-Epidemio Study

Pneumonic-type lung adenocarcinoma (P-ADC) represents a distinct subset of lung cancer with specific clinical, radiological, and pathological features. Given the weak association with tobacco-smoking and the striking similarities with jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus (JSRV)-induced ovine pulmonary adenocarcinoma, it has been suggested that a zoonotic viral agent infecting pulmonary cells may predispose to P-ADC in humans. Our objective was to explore whether exposure to domestic small ruminants may represent a risk factor for P-ADC. We performed a multicenter case-control study recruiting patients with P-ADC as cases and patients with non-P-ADC non-small cell lung cancer as controls. A dedicated 356-item questionnaire was built to evaluate exposure to livestock. A total of 44 cases and 132 controls were included. At multivariate analysis, P-ADC was significantly more associated with female gender (Odds-ratio (OR) = 3.23, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.32–7.87, p = 0.010), never- smoker status (OR = 3.57, 95% CI: 1.27–10.00, p = 0.015), personal history of extra-thoracic cancer before P-ADC diagnosis (OR = 3.43, 95% CI: 1.10–10.72, p = 0.034), and professional exposure to goats (OR = 5.09, 95% CI: 1.05–24.69, p = 0.043), as compared to other subtypes of lung cancer. This case-control suggests a link between professional exposure to goats and P-ADC, and prompts for further epidemiological evaluation of potential environmental risk factors for P-ADC

Opera and Hypnosis: Victor Maurel’s Experiments with Verdi’s Otello

One day in his private home on the avenue Bugeaud, in Paris’s sixteenth arrondissement, the famous baritone Victor Maurel hosted a meeting which combined music with hypnotism of a young woman

Vocal Culture in the Age of Laryngoscopy

For several months beginning in 1884, readers of Life, Science, Health, the Atlantic Monthly and similar magazines would have encountered half-page advertisements for a newly patented medical device called the ‘ammoniaphone’ (Figure 2.1). Invented and promoted by a Scottish doctor named Carter Moffat and endorsed by the soprano Adelina Patti, British Prime Minister William Gladstone and the Princess of Wales, the ammoniaphone promised a miraculous transformation in the voices of its users. It was recommended for ‘vocalists, clergymen, public speakers, parliamentary men, readers, reciters, lecturers, leaders of psalmody, schoolmasters, amateurs, church choirs, barristers, and all persons who have to use their voices professionally, or who desire to greatly improve their speaking or singing tones’. Some estimates indicated that Moffat sold upwards of 30,000 units, yet the ammoniaphone was a flash in the pan as far as such things go, fading from public view after 1886

Unsound Seeds

With this image of a curtain hiding and at the same time heightening some terrible secret, Max Kalbeck began his review of the first Viennese performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome. Theodor W. Adorno picked up the image of the curtain in the context of Strauss’s fabled skill at composing non-musical events, when he identified the opening flourish of Strauss’s Salome as the swooshing sound of the rising curtain. If this is so, the succès de scandale of the opera was achieved, in more than one sense, as soon as the curtain rose at Dresden’s Semperoper on 10 December 1905. Critics of the premiere noted that the opera set ‘boundless wildness and degeneration to music’; it brought ‘high decadence’ onto the operatic stage; a ‘composition of hysteria’, reflecting the ‘disease of our time’, Salome is ‘hardly music any more’.The outrage did not end there

Science, Technology and Love in Late Eighteenth-Century Opera

It is a tale told by countless operas: young love, thwarted by an old man’s financially motivated marriage plans, triumphs in the end thanks to a deception that tricks the old man into blessing the young lovers’ union. Always a doddering fool, the old man is often also an enthusiast for knowledge. Such is the case, for instance, in Carlo Goldoni’s comic opera libretto Il mondo della luna (1750), in which Buonafede’s interest in the moon opens him to an elaborate hoax that has him believe he and his daughters have left Earth for the lunar world; and also in the Singspiel Die Luftbälle, oder der Liebhaber à la Montgolfier (1788), wherein the apothecary Wurm trades Sophie, the ward he intended to marry himself, for a technological innovation that will make him a pioneering aeronaut