Industrial development and increased energy requirements have led to high consumption of fossil fuels. Thus, environmental pollution has become a profound problem. Every year, a large amount of ...agro-industrial, municipal and forest residues are treated as waste, but they can be recovered and used to produce thermal and electrical energy through biological or thermochemical conversion processes. Among the main types of agro-industrial waste, soluble coffee residues represent a significant quantity all over the world. Silver skin and spent coffee grounds (SCG) are the main residues of the coffee industry. The many organic compounds contained in coffee residues suggest that their recovery and use could be very beneficial. Indeed, thanks to their composition, they can be used in the production of biodiesel, as a source of sugar, as a precursor for the creation of active carbon or as a sorbent for the removal of metals. After a careful evaluation of the possible uses of coffee grounds, the aim of this research was to show a broad characterization of coffee waste for energy purposes through physical and chemical analyses that highlight the most significant quality indexes, the interactions between them and the quantification of their importance. Results identify important tools for the qualification and quantification of the effects of coffee waste properties on energy production processes. They show that (SCG) are an excellent raw material as biomass, with excellent values in terms of calorific value and low ash content, allowing the production of 98% coffee pellets that are highly suitable for use in thermal conversion systems. Combustion tests were also carried out in an 80kW
boiler and the resulting emissions without any type of abatement filter were characterized.
A
bstract
We consider a spin-1 resonance produced with an arbitrary spectrum of velocities and decaying into a pair of massless leptons, and we study the probability density function of the energy of ...the leptons in the laboratory frame. A special case is represented by the production of
W
bosons in proton-proton collisions, for which the energy of the charged lepton from the decaying
W
can be measured with sufficient accuracy for a high-precision measurement of
M
W
. We find that half of the resonance mass is a special value of the lepton energy, since the probability density function at this point is in general not analytic for a narrow-width resonance. In particular, the higher-order derivatives of the density function are likely to develop singularities, such as cusps or poles. A finite width of the resonance restores the regularity, for example by smearing cusps and poles into local stationary points. The quest for such points offers a handle to estimate the resonance mass with much reduced dependence on the underlying production and decay dynamics of the resonance.
Background: The prevalence of exposure to pharmacogenomic medications is well established but little is known about how long patients are exposed to these medications. Aim: Our objective was to ...describe the amount of exposure to actionable pharmacogenomic medications using patient-level measures among a large nationally representative population using an insurance claims database. Methods: Our retrospective cohort study included adults (18+ years) from the IQVIA PharMetrics® Plus for Academics claims database with incident fills of 72 Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium level A, A/B, or B medications from January 2012 through September 2018. Patient-level outcomes included the proportion of days covered (PDC), number of fills, and average days supplied per fill over a 12-month period. Results: Over 1 million fills of pharmacogenetic medications were identified for 605,355 unique patients. The mean PDC for all medications was 0.21 (SD 0.3), suggesting patients were exposed 21% (77 days) of the year. Medications with the highest PDC (0.55–0.89) included ivacaftor, tamoxifen, clopidogrel, HIV medications, transplant medications, and statins; with the exception of statins, these medications were initiated by fewer patients. Pharmacogenomic medications were filled an average of 2.8 times (SD 3.0, range 1–81) during the year following the medication’s initiation, and the average days supplied for each fill was 22.3 days (SD 22.4, range 1–180 days). Conclusion: Patient characteristics associated with more medication exposure were male sex, older age, and comorbid chronic conditions. Prescription fill data provide patient-level exposure metrics that can further our understanding of pharmacogenomic medication utilization and help inform opportunities for pharmacogenomic testing.
Since the reports in Wuhan (China), in December 2019, of the first cluster of cases of pneumonia caused by the new Coronavirus called 2019-nCoV or SARS-CoV-2, there has been a pandemic spread of the ...infection. By now, we have no specific therapy to counteract this emergency. The latest epidemiological data suggest that children are just as likely as adults to get infected by the virus. Most of them show mild clinical pictures or are completely asymptomatic, but there is an increased risk for severe disease in infancy (<12 months of age) and in children with underlying medical conditions. In this article, research achievements on the treatment of pediatric SARS-CoV-2 infection are examined.
The Italian institute for nuclear physics (INFN) has financed the SIMP project (2019–2021) in order to strengthen its skills and technologies in the field of meV detectors with the ultimate aim of ...developing a single microwave photon detector. This goal will be pursued by improving the sensitivity and the dark-count rate of two types of photodetectors: current-biased Josephson junction (CBJJ) for the frequency range 10–50 GHz and transition-edge sensor (TES) for the frequency range 30–100 GHz. Preliminary results on materials and devices characterization are presented.
Lateral ankle sprains are very common injuries that can be treated with different strategies. The aim of the present systematic review was to provide a comprehensive analysis on the treatment of ...acute lateral ankle sprains to clarify the possible differences in outcome between surgical and conservative management, different external supports, and different rehabilitation protocols.
A literature search on three different topics was carried out on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases on June 25th, 2021. The main objective of the literature search was to identify the randomized trials comparing: (1) surgery to conservative management, (2) different external supports, and (3) different rehabilitation protocols for the treatment of acute lateral ankle sprains. Two investigators extracted independently relevant data from each paper and assessed the quality of the trials using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment.
A total of 12 studies for the first topic, 8 for the second one and 4 for the last one were included in this review. 8 out of 12 RCTs demonstrated a superior outcome and better socio-economic impact of conservative treatment compared to surgical management. In the other two comparisons, due to the wide variety of braces used and the different rehabilitation protocols, inconclusive results were obtained.
Conservative treatment should be the first choice for severe acute lateral ankle sprains, as it provides satisfactory functional outcomes without the risks and costs of surgery. It was not possible to identify the best external support, but a preference toward flexible braces emerged since they allow an earlier return to daily activities. The paucity of studies comparing different rehabilitation protocols precluded the possibility of defining the ideal one.
Determining the genetic population structure and intraspecific evolution of species is important for efficient management. Here we investigated 394 sequences of the mtDNA cyt b of the critically ...endangered European eel, Anguilla anguilla. We found 62 different haplotypes, among which 32 novel ones. All those sequences were grouped into 9 haplogroups on the basis of their frequency and links in the haplotype network. Two pairwise comparisons revealed significant genetic differentiation between regions. One comparison indicated small (ΦST = 0.02768; P = 0.0071) genetic differentiation between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. Another comparison indicated small (ΦST = 0.01144; P = 0.0440) genetic differentiation between eel samples caught in the Baltic Sea, the Curonian Lagoon and the Gulf of Riga and those captured in the North Sea. The results of the study are in agreement with the recent findings obtained using the mtDNA D-loop region as a molecular marker, indicating that although A. anguilla is considered a panmictic species the genetic structure of its population indicated by mtDNA markers could be characterized as a genetic mosaic.
PDF
