The water resources management has been an important factor for the sustainability of industrial processes, since there is a growing need for the development of methodologies aimed at the ...conservation and rational use of water. The objective of this work was to apply the heuristic-algorithmic method called Water Sources Diagram (WSD), which is used to define the target of minimum water consumption, to batch processes. Scenarios with reuse of streams were generated and evaluated with application of the method from the data of water quantity and concentration of contaminants in the operations. Two case studies aiming to show the reduction of water consumption and wastewater generation, and final treatment costs besides investment in storage tanks, were presented. The scenarios showed great promising, achieving reduction up to 45% in water consumption and wastewater generation, and a reduction of around 37% on cost of storage tanks, without the need to allocate regeneration processes. Thus, the WSD method showed to be a relevant and flexible alternative regarding to systemic tools aimed at minimizing the consumption of water in industrial processes, playing an important role within a program of water resources management.
Recently Leviton and Kilty reported that the birth dates of left-handed girls in elementary school display a seasonal trend which peaks in November. We report here a failure to replicate this finding ...for 257 male and 323 female college students. Further, we have considered the likelihood that the original finding was due to sampling error rather than speculating that environmental factors associated with the season of birth are implicated in the etiology of left-handedness, as Leviton and Kilty have stated.
In an attempt to clarify the relationship between self-reported birth complications and handedness, the handedness distributions of 181 college students who reported birth complications and 1320 ...students who reported no complications were compared. The results suggest a clear but modest shift in the birth complications group away from the dextral end of the continuum. However these data did not validate the hypothesis that left-handedness results from birth complications.
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