According to European Guidelines for Legionnaires' Disease prevention and control, travel-associated Legionnaires' disease (TALD) cases are managed differently if classified as sporadic or as part of ...a cluster and more stringent control measures are deployed after clusters are identified. In this study, we propose to modify the current cluster definition: 'two or more cases of Legionnaires' disease (LD) who stayed at, or visited, the same commercial accommodation site 2-10 days before onset of illness and whose onset is within the same 2-year period' with a new cluster definition, i.e. accommodation sites associated with multiple cases regardless of the time elapsed between them. TALD cases occurred in Italy and in the Balearic Islands between 2005 and 2015 were analysed applying the current European Legionnaires' Disease Surveillance Network (ELDSNet) cluster definition. In a sample of selected accommodation sites with multiple cases, a microbiological study was also conducted. Using the new definition, 63 additional sites (16.4% increase) and 225 additional linked cases (19.5% increase) were identified. Legionella pneumophila sg1 was isolated from 90.7% of the selected accommodation sites. The use of the here proposed TALD cluster definition would warrant a full investigation for each new identified case. This approach should therefore increase the number of sites that will require a risk assessment and, in the presence of an increased risk, the adoption of LD control measures to hopefully prevent additional cases.
Food waste: energy source Almeida, S.; Crespi, M. S.; Nozela, W. C. ...
Journal of thermal analysis and calorimetry,
11/2018, Letnik:
134, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Research indicates that the waste of food in residences of Brazilian families is due to the population’s habit of enjoying preparing and serving food in large quantities, as well as the lack of ...custom in the use of stalks and leaves of vegetables and throwing in the trash. Samples used in this research (A1) consisted of a mixture of diverse natural foods crushed in a blender. A2 is formed by the same constituents of food and the same mass; in this case, the food was cut into 0.5 cm in length. After oven drying at 70 °C, they were triturated in the crusher and sieved. The objective of this research was to verify the thermal behavior of two samples of food residues, with the identification of the gas released during the FTIR heating and the determination of the kinetic parameters by the Wanjun–Donghua modified method, as well as the determination of the higher heating value. The thermal behavior of the samples was different; A2 presented thermal degradation with well-defined peaks, which did not occur with A1 shown by DTG. The mean activation energies were, respectively, 130.0 kJ and 75.4 kJ, and the heats involved in the burning of A1 and A2 were 20.46 and 14.96 kJ g
−1
, and differences in the behavior of A1 A2 were due to the way of the sample preparation. The HHV compared with other matrices indicates good energetic properties. The hygroscopicity test indicates that A1 and A2 were equal around 7%.
Cellulose-phosphate composite membranes have been prepared from bacterial cellulose membranes (BC) and sodium polyphosphate solution. The structure and thermal behavior of the new composites were ...evaluated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), P-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetry (TG) and thermomechanical analysis (TMA). From XRD analyses the Ialpha and Ibeta cellulose crystalline phases were identified together with crystalline sodium phosphate that covers the cellulose microfibrils as revealed by SEM. P NMR spectra show peaks assigned to Q and Q phosphate structures to be compared to the Q units that characterize the precursor polyphosphate. Glass transition temperature, T g, obtained from TMA curves and thermal stability obtained from TG and DSC measurements, were observed to be dependent on the phosphate content.
The GAPS Programme with HARPS-N at TNG Bonomo, A. S.; Desidera, S.; Benatti, S. ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
06/2017, Letnik:
602
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We carried out a Bayesian homogeneous determination of the orbital parameters of 231 transiting giant planets (TGPs) that are alone or have distant companions; we employed differential evolution ...Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to analyse radial-velocity (RV) data from the literature and 782 new high-accuracy RVs obtained with the HARPS-N spectrograph for 45 systems over ~3 years. Our work yields the largest sample of systems with a transiting giant exoplanet and coherently determined orbital, planetary, and stellar parameters. We found that the orbital parameters of TGPs in non-compact planetary systems are clearly shaped by tides raised by their host stars. Indeed, the most eccentric planets have relatively large orbital separations and/or high mass ratios, as expected from the equilibrium tide theory. This feature would be the outcome of planetary migration from highly eccentric orbits excited by planet-planet scattering, Kozai-Lidov perturbations, or secular chaos. The distribution of α = a/aR, where a and aR are the semi-major axis and the Roche limit, for well-determined circular orbits peaks at 2.5; this agrees with expectations from the high-eccentricity migration (HEM), although it might not be limited to this migration scenario. The few planets of our sample with circular orbits and α> 5 values may have migrated through disc-planet interactions instead of HEM. By comparing circularisation times with stellar ages, we found that hot Jupiters with a< 0.05 au have modified tidal quality factors 105 ≲ Q'p ≲ 109, and that stellar Q's ≳ 106 - 107 are required to explain the presence of eccentric planets at the same orbital distance. As aby-product of our analysis, we detected a non-zero eccentricity e = 0.104-0.018+0.021 for HAT-P-29; we determined that five planets that were previously regarded to be eccentric or to have hints of non-zero eccentricity, namely CoRoT-2b, CoRoT-23b, TrES-3b, HAT-P-23b, and WASP-54b, have circular orbits or undetermined eccentricities; we unveiled curvatures caused by distant companions in the RV time series of HAT-P-2, HAT-P-22, and HAT-P-29; we significantly improved the orbital parameters of the long-period planet HAT-P-17c; and we revised the planetary parameters of CoRoT-1b, which turned out to be considerably more inflated than previously found.
This study investigates the most appropriate conditions to perform the proximate analysis (moisture, volatile matter, fixed carbon, and ash) of biomasses by thermogravimetry, focusing on providing ...better distinction for quantification of volatile and fixed carbon components. It was found, using a series of thermogravimetric methodologies, that heating rate and particle size are important factors to be taken into account, whereas temperature and carrier gas (type and flow rate) are critical to enable the proper quantification of volatiles and fixed carbon. In this case, the best condition was achieved by applying 600 °C and CO
2
as carrier gas (instead of N
2
). It is the highlight of the proposal method regarding the conditions often applied for this purpose. Furthermore, this method has proved to be advantageous in three important aspects: A single measurement is enough for quantification of all properties, it can be performed in a short time (1 h 27 min) in comparison with methods performed in a muffle furnace, and it can be applied for different kinds of biomasses, from lignocellulosic to residues. The procedure of validation demonstrated the low uncertainty of the data obtained by this method and the low propagation of uncertainty when they were applied for the prediction of the high heating value of the related biomasses, which supports its applicability as an alternative to biomass characterization.
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