Driven by energy neutral/positive of wastewater treatment plants, significant efforts have been made on the research and development of mainstream partial nitritation and anaerobic ammonium oxidation ...(anammox) (PN/A) (deammonification) process since the early 2010s. To date, feasibility of mainstream PN/A process has been demonstrated and proven by experimental results at various scales although with the low loading rates and elevated nitrogen concentration in the effluent at low temperatures (15–10 °C). This review paper provides an overview of the current state of research and development of mainstream PN/A process and critically analyzes the bottlenecks for its full-scale application. The paper discusses the following: (i) the current status of research and development of mainstream PN/A process; (ii) the interactions among aerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria, aerobic nitrite-oxidizing bacteria, anammox bacteria, and heterotrophic bacteria; (iii) the suppression of aerobic nitrite-oxidizing bacteria; (iv) process and bioreactors; and (v) suggested further studies including efficient and robust carbon concentrating pretreatment, deepening of understanding competition between autotrophic nitrogen-converting organisms, intensification of biofilm anammox activity, reactor design, and final polishing.
Although the development of effective vaccines has saved countless lives from infectious diseases, the basic workings of the human immune system are complex and have required the development of ...animal models, such as inbred mice, to define mechanisms of immunity. More recently, new strategies and technologies have been developed to directly explore the human immune system with unprecedented precision. We discuss how these approaches are advancing our mechanistic understanding of human immunology and are facilitating the development of vaccines and therapeutics for infection, autoimmune diseases, and cancer.
Homochiral metal–organic framework (MOF) membranes have been recently reported for chiral separations. However, only a few high‐quality homochiral polycrystalline MOF membranes have been fabricated ...due to the difficulty in crystallization of a chiral MOF layer without defects on porous substrates. Alternatively, mixed matrix membranes (MMMs), which combine potential advantages of MOFs and polymers, have been widely demonstrated for gas separation and water purification. Here we report novel homochiral MOF–polymer MMMs for efficient chiral separation. Homochirality was successfully incorporated into achiral MIL‐53‐NH2 nanocrystals by post‐synthetic modification with amino acids, such as l‐histidine (l‐His) and l‐glutamic acid (l‐Glu). The MIL‐53‐NH‐l‐His and MIL‐53‐NH‐l‐Glu nanocrystals were then embedded into polyethersulfone (PES) matrix to form homochiral MMMs, which exhibited excellent enantioselectivity for racemic 1‐phenylethanol with the highest enantiomeric excess value up to 100 %. This work, as an example, demonstrates the feasibility of fabricating diverse large‐scale homochiral MOF‐based MMMs for chiral separation.
Superior separation: Homochiral MOF–polymer mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) are synthesized by incorporation of amino acid functionalized MIL‐53‐NH2 into the polyethersulfone (PES) matrix. The homochiral MIL‐53‐NH‐amino acid‐PES MMM exhibits excellent enantioselectivity towards racemic 1‐phenylethanol with enantiomeric excess values up to 100 %.
Finally, here is a modern, self-contained text on quantum information theory suitable for graduate-level courses. Developing the subject 'from the ground up' it covers classical results as well as ...major advances of the past decade. Beginning with an extensive overview of classical information theory suitable for the non-expert, the author then turns his attention to quantum mechanics for quantum information theory, and the important protocols of teleportation, super-dense coding and entanglement distribution. He develops all of the tools necessary for understanding important results in quantum information theory, including capacity theorems for classical, entanglement-assisted, private and quantum communication. The book also covers important recent developments such as superadditivity of private, coherent and Holevo information, and the superactivation of quantum capacity. This book will be warmly welcomed by the upcoming generation of quantum information theorists and the already established community of classical information theorists.
We study the spectrum of elementary excitations of a dipolar Bose gas in a three-dimensional anisotropic trap across the superfluid-supersolid phase transition. Theoretically, we show that, when ...entering the supersolid phase, two distinct excitation branches appear, respectively associated with dominantly crystal and superfluid excitations. These results confirm infinite-system predictions, showing that finite-size effects play only a small qualitative role, and connect the two branches to the simultaneous occurrence of crystal and superfluid orders. Experimentally, we probe compressional excitations in an Er quantum gas across the phase diagram. While in the Bose-Einstein condensate regime the system exhibits an ordinary quadrupole oscillation, in the supersolid regime we observe a striking two-frequency response of the system, related to the two spontaneously broken symmetries.
More than a decade ago, cardiovascular disease (CVD) was recognized as a major cause of death in children with advanced CKD. This observation has sparked the publication of multiple studies assessing ...cardiovascular risk, mechanisms of disease, and early markers of CVD in this population. Similar to adults, children with CKD have an extremely high prevalence of traditional and uremia-related CVD risk factors. Early markers of cardiomyopathy, such as left ventricular hypertrophy and dysfunction, and early markers of atherosclerosis, such as increased carotid artery intima-media thickness, carotid arterial wall stiffness, and coronary artery calcification, are frequently present in these children, especially those on maintenance dialysis. As a population without preexisting symptomatic cardiac disease, children with CKD potentially receive significant benefit from aggressive attempts to prevent and treat CVD. Early CKD, before needing dialysis, is the optimal time to both identify modifiable risk factors and intervene in an effort to avert future CVD. Slowing the progression of CKD, avoiding long-term dialysis and, if possible, conducting preemptive transplantation may represent the best strategies to decrease the risk of premature cardiac disease and death in children with CKD.
The vast majority of currently licensed human vaccines work on the basis of long-term protective antibody responses. It is now conceivable that an antibody-dependent HIV vaccine might be possible, ...given the discovery of HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) in some HIV-infected individuals. However, these antibodies are difficult to develop and have characteristics indicative of a high degree of affinity maturation in germinal centers (GCs). CD4+ T follicular helper (Tfh) cells are specialized for B cell help and necessary for GCs. Therefore, the development of HIV bnAbs might depend on Tfh cells. Here, we identified in normal individuals a subpopulation of circulating memory PD-1+CXCR5+CD4+ T cells that are resting memory cells most related to bona fide GC Tfh cells by gene expression profile, cytokine profile, and functional properties. Importantly, the frequency of these cells correlated with the development of bnAbs against HIV in a large cohort of HIV+ individuals.
•PD-1+CXCR5+CD4+ T cells are a population of circulating memory Tfh cells•Optimal Tfh-cell-like function is restricted to PD-1+CXCR3−CXCR5+CD4+ T cells•PD-1+CXCR3−CXCR5+CD4+ T cells correlate with HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies
This paper establishes several converse bounds on the private transmission capabilities of a quantum channel. The main conceptual development builds firmly on the notion of a private state, which is ...a powerful, uniquely quantum method for simplifying the tripartite picture of privacy involving local operations and public classical communication to a bipartite picture of quantum privacy involving local operations and classical communication. This approach has previously led to some of the strongest upper bounds on secret key rates, including the squashed entanglement and the relative entropy of entanglement. Here, we use this approach along with a "privacy test" to establish a general meta-converse bound for private communication, which has a number of applications. The meta-converse allows for proving that any quantum channel's relative entropy of entanglement is a strong converse rate for private communication. For covariant channels, the meta-converse also leads to second-order expansions of relative entropy of entanglement bounds for private communication rates. For such channels, the bounds also apply to the private communication setting in which the sender and the receiver are assisted by unlimited public classical communication, and as such, they are relevant for establishing various converse bounds for quantum key distribution protocols conducted over these channels. We find precise characterizations for several channels of interest and apply the methods to establish converse bounds on the private transmission capabilities of all phase-insensitive bosonic channels.
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) regulate critical events during development. In complex tissues, such as the mammalian central nervous system (CNS), networks likely provide the complex regulatory ...interactions needed to direct the specification of the many CNS cell types. Here, we dissect a GRN that regulates a binary fate decision between two siblings in the murine retina, the rod photoreceptor and bipolar interneuron. The GRN centers on Blimp1, one of the transcription factors (TFs) that regulates the rod versus bipolar cell fate decision. We identified a cis-regulatory module (CRM), B108, that mimics Blimp1 expression. Deletion of genomic B108 by CRISPR/Cas9 in vivo using electroporation abolished the function of Blimp1. Otx2 and RORβ were found to regulate Blimp1 expression via B108, and Blimp1 and Otx2 were shown to form a negative feedback loop that regulates the level of Otx2, which regulates the production of the correct ratio of rods and bipolar cells.
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•Blimp1, Otx2, RORβ, Chx10, and Notch form a GRN to control the rod-bipolar cell ratio•Blimp1/Otx2-negative feedback regulates Otx2 dosage for rod-bipolar fate decision•A Blimp1-centered gene regulatory network controls a retinal binary fate decision•CRISPR/Cas9 application in vivo validates a cis-regulatory module for Blimp1 control
Wang et al. examined rod versus bipolar cell ratio control in the murine retina and uncovered a Blimp1-centered gene regulatory network (GRN) that regulates Otx2 levels and controls the binary cell-fate decision. The application in vivo of CRISPR/Cas9 demonstrated the necessity of a cis-regulatory module of this GRN.