This paper presents a review of the main sludge treatment techniques used as a pretreatment to anaerobic digestion. These processes include biological (largely thermal phased anaerobic), thermal ...hydrolysis, mechanical (such as ultrasound, high pressure and lysis), chemical with oxidation (mainly ozonation), and alkali treatments. The first three are the most widespread. Emphasis is put on their impact on the resulting sludge properties, on the potential biogas (renewable energy) production and on their application at industrial scale. Thermal biological provides a moderate performance increase over mesophilic digestion, with moderate energetic input. Mechanical treatment methods are comparable, and provide moderate performance improvements with moderate electrical input. Thermal hydrolysis provides substantial performance increases, with a substantial consumption of thermal energy. It is likely that low impact pretreatment methods such as mechanical and thermal phased improve speed of degradation, while high impact methods such as thermal hydrolysis or oxidation improve both speed and extent of degradation. While increased nutrient release can be a substantial cost in enhanced sludge destruction, it also offers opportunities to recover nutrients from a concentrated water stream as mineral fertiliser.
The prevalence, among human clinical cases, of Salmonella enterica serotype 4,5,12:i:-, a serotype antigenically similar to Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium but lacking second-phase flagellar ...antigens, has increased considerably over the last 10 years. To probe the evolution and ecology of this emerging serotype, we characterized 190 Salmonella isolates initially classified as Salmonella serotypes 4,5,12:i:- (n = 90) and Typhimurium (n = 100) and obtained from various sources in the United States and Spain. These isolates were characterized into six sequence types (determined by multilocus sequence typing MLST) and 79 pulsed-field gel electrophoresis types. The majority of Salmonella serotype 4,5,12:i:- and Typhimurium isolates (85 and 84 isolates, respectively) represented a single MLST type. Existing genome information revealed different genome deletions (which included genes responsible for phase 2 flagellum expression) in four Spanish Salmonella serotype 4,5,12:i:- isolates and one U.S. Salmonella serotype 4,5,12:i:- isolate. Fifty-nine isolates of both serotypes, representing different sources and geographical locations as well as different molecular subtypes, were thus screened for the presence of six genes and one specific region, all of which were previously found to show variable presence among Salmonella serotype 4,5,12:i:- and Typhimurium strains. All Salmonella serotype 4,5,12:i:- isolates lacked the phase 2 flagella genes fljA and fljB, which were present in all Salmonella serotype Typhimurium isolates. While all Spanish Salmonella serotype 4,5,12:i:- isolates carried the same deletion surrounding fljAB, all but two U.S. isolates showed a different genomic deletion; the two atypical U.S. isolates represented the "Spanish" deletion genotype and a unique deletion genotype. Salmonella serotype 4,5,12:i:- thus appears to represent at least two common clones, which cannot easily be differentiated with standard diagnostic procedures.
GeSn alloys with Sn contents of 8.4 % and 10.7 % are grown pseudomorphically on Ge buffers on Si (001) substrates. The alloys as-grown are compressively strained, and therefore indirect bandgap. ...Undercut GeSn on Ge microdisk structures are fabricated and strained by silicon nitride stressor layers, which leads to tensile strain in the alloys, and direct bandgap photoluminescence in the 3-5 µm gas sensing window of the electromagnetic spectrum. The use of pseudomorphic layers and external stress mitigates the need for plastic deformation to obtain direct bandgap alloys. It is demonstrated, that the optically pumped light emission overlaps with the methane absorption lines, suggesting that GeSn alloys are well suited for mid-infrared integrated gas sensors on Si chips.
We analyze the two-dimensional distribution and kinematics of the stars as well as molecular and ionized gas in the central few hundred parsecs of five active and five matched inactive galaxies. The ...equivalent widths of the Brgamma line indicate that there is no ongoing star formation in their nuclei, although recent (terminated) starbursts are possible in the active galaxies. The stellar velocity fields show no signs of non-circular motions, while the 1-0 S(1) H sub(2) kinematics exhibit significant deviations from simple circular rotation. In the active galaxies the H sub(2) kinematics reveal inflow and outflow superimposed on disk rotation. Steady-state circumnuclear inflow is seen in three active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and hydrodynamical models indicate it can be driven by a large-scale bar. In three of the five AGNs, molecular outflows are spatially resolved. The outflows are oriented such that they intersect, or have an edge close to, the disk, which may be the source of molecular gas in the outflow. The relatively low speeds imply the gas will fall back onto the disk, and with moderate outflow rates, they will have only a local impact on the host galaxy. H sub(2) was detected in two inactive galaxies. These exhibit chaotic circumnuclear dust morphologies and have molecular structures that are counter-rotating with respect to the main gas component, which could lead to gas inflow in the near future. In our sample, all four galaxies with chaotic dust morphology in the circumnuclear region exist in moderately dense groups with 10-15 members where accretion of stripped gas can easily occur.
A prenylated dsRNA sensor protects against severe COVID-19 Wickenhagen, Arthur; Sugrue, Elena; Lytras, Spyros ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
2021-Oct-29, 2021-10-29, 20211029, Letnik:
374, Številka:
6567
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Inherited genetic factors can influence the severity of COVID-19, but the molecular explanation underpinning a genetic association is often unclear. Intracellular antiviral defenses can inhibit the ...replication of viruses and reduce disease severity. To better understand the antiviral defenses relevant to COVID-19, we used interferon-stimulated gene (ISG) expression screening to reveal that 2′-5′-oligoadenylate synthetase 1 (OAS1), through ribonuclease L, potently inhibits severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We show that a common splice-acceptor single-nucleotide polymorphism (Rs10774671) governs whether patients express prenylated OAS1 isoforms that are membrane-associated and sense-specific regions of SARS-CoV-2 RNAs or if they only express cytosolic, nonprenylated OAS1 that does not efficiently detect SARS-CoV-2. In hospitalized patients, expression of prenylated OAS1 was associated with protection from severe COVID-19, suggesting that this antiviral defense is a major component of a protective antiviral response.
Low-voltage swing (≤1.0 V) high-contrast ratio (6 dB) electro-absorption modulation covering 1460 to 1560 nm wavelength has been demonstrated using Ge/SiGe quantum confined Stark effect (QCSE) diodes ...grown on a silicon substrate. The heterolayers for the devices were designed using an 8-band k.p Poisson-Schrödinger solver which demonstrated excellent agreement with the experimental results. Modelling and experimental results demonstrate that by changing the quantum well width of the device, low power Ge/SiGe QCSE modulators can be designed to cover the S- and C-telecommunications bands.
This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as
computational ...phenomenology
because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy (e.g., the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, etc.). The first section presents a brief review of the overall project to naturalize phenomenology. The second section presents and evaluates philosophical objections to that project and situates our version of computational phenomenology with respect to these projects. The third section reviews the generative modelling framework. The final section presents our approach in detail. We conclude by discussing how our approach differs from previous attempts to use generative modelling to help understand consciousness. In summary, we describe a version of computational phenomenology which uses generative modelling to construct a computational model of the inferential or interpretive processes that best explain this or that kind of lived experience.
We present here a comparison of our results from ground-based observations of asteroid (21) Lutetia with imaging data acquired during the flyby of the asteroid by the ESA Rosetta mission. This flyby ...provided a unique opportunity to evaluate and calibrate our method of determination of size, 3-D shape, and spin of an asteroid from ground-based observations. Knowledge of certain observable physical properties of small bodies (e.g., size, spin, 3-D shape, and density) have far-reaching implications in furthering our understanding of these objects, such as composition, internal structure, and the effects of non-gravitational forces. We review the different observing techniques used to determine the above physical properties of asteroids and present our 3-D shape-modeling technique KOALA – Knitted Occultation, Adaptive-optics, and Lightcurve Analysis – which is based on multi-dataset inversion. We compare the results we obtained with KOALA, prior to the flyby, on asteroid (21) Lutetia with the high-spatial resolution images of the asteroid taken with the OSIRIS camera on-board the ESA Rosetta spacecraft, during its encounter with Lutetia on 2010 July 10. The spin axis determined with KOALA was found to be accurate to within 2°, while the KOALA diameter determinations were within 2% of the Rosetta-derived values. The 3-D shape of the KOALA model is also confirmed by the spectacular visual agreement between both 3-D shape models (KOALA pre- and OSIRIS post-flyby). We found a typical deviation of only 2km at local scales between the profiles from KOALA predictions and OSIRIS images, resulting in a volume uncertainty provided by KOALA better than 10%. Radiometric techniques for the interpretation of thermal infrared data also benefit greatly from the KOALA shape model: the absolute size and geometric albedo can be derived with high accuracy, and thermal properties, for example the thermal inertia, can be determined unambiguously. The corresponding Lutetia analysis leads to a geometric albedo of 0.19±0.01 and a thermal inertia below 40Jm−2s−0.5K−1, both in excellent agreement with the Rosetta findings. We consider this to be a validation of the KOALA method. Because space exploration will remain limited to only a few objects, KOALA stands as a powerful technique to study a much larger set of small bodies using Earth-based observations.
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NGC 1097 is a nearby Seyfert 1 galaxy with a bright circumnuclear starburst ring, a strong large-scale bar, and an active nucleus. We present a detailed study of the spatial variation of the ...far-infrared (FIR) CII 158 mu m and OI63 mu m lines and mid-infrared H sub(2) emission lines as tracers of gas cooling, and of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) bands as tracers of the photoelectric heating, using Herschel-PACS and Spitzer-IRS infrared spectral maps. We focus on the nucleus and the ring, and two star-forming regions (Enuc N and Enuc S). We estimated a photoelectric gas heating efficiency (CII158 mu +OI63 mu m)/PAH in the ring about 50% lower than in Enuc N and S. The average 11.3/7.7 mu m PAH ratio is also lower in the ring, which may suggest a larger fraction of ionized PAHs, but no clear correlation with CII158 mu m/PAH(5.5-14 mu m) is found. PAHs in the ring are responsible for a factor of two more CII158 mu m and OI63 mu m emission per unit mass than PAHs in the Enuc S. spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling indicates that at most 25% of the FIR power in the ring and Enuc S can come from high-intensity photodissociation regions (PDRs), in which case G sub(0) ~ 10 super(2.3) and n sub(H) ~ 10 super(3.5) cm super(-3) in the ring. For these values of G sub(0) and n sub(H), PDR models cannot reproduce the observed H sub(2) emission. Much of the H sub(2) emission in the starburst ring could come from warm regions in the diffuse interstellar medium that are heated by turbulent dissipation or shocks.
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