In this paper, the current and most recent applications of direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) are discussed. Apart from its rapidly increasing use for the desalination of highly saline feed ...water, the DCMD is gradually becoming a preferred technology for produced water treatment, purification of groundwater, reclamation of industrial process water, removal of micropollutants from drinking water, juice concentration, and production of chemical products. The fundamentals of the DCMD and governing equations (from heat and mass transfer principles) that describe performance parameters are first explained. Current issues in the DCMD operations such as the influence of membrane type, membrane fouling, and operating conditions on the DCMD performance or productivity are also discussed in this paper. Hybrid systems and renewable energy integration with DCMD systems have been presented as viable solutions that would enhance the sustainability of the DCMD operations.
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•DCMD technology has gained a tremendous amount of interest over the years.•Current research and recent applications of DCMD are reviewed in this paper.•Current issues such as membrane fouling and operating conditions are discussed.•Integration of DCMD with renewable energy such as solar energy is also presented.
Reject brine is the product from desalination processes containing high salinity, high temperature, and at many times, dissolved chemicals. With the growing demand of water, increasing amounts of ...brine are being produced from the desalination plants leading to significant adverse impacts on the environment. It is necessary therefore to effectively manage desalination reject brine in order to ensure more efficient disposal and reuse. This review gives a general idea on the recent and currently devised brine management processes, which have been employed to reduce the environmental issues related to concentrate dumping. Those management approaches consist of minimization techniques that can be divided into membrane-based, thermal-based and emerging technologies. Moreover, this critical review gives an overview of the various applications of brine and some sustainability aspects of the reject brine disposal and reuse. The most obvious sustainable improvements in reject brine management are based on minimization techniques or reuse that can be achieved through the recovery of valuable materials such as salts, metals, and chemicals. Many new research works in this field have been introduced and scientists have continued to devise reject brine reuse strategies and minimization technologies leading to very low quantities of residual brine.
•Reject brine or concentrate is the product from desalination processes.•Reject brine has potential damages to the environment, marine and habitats.•Brine management involves strategies such as minimization, disposal and reuse.•A critical review of different brine management methods has been developed.
Abstract
Aphids damage directly or indirectly cultures by feeding and spreading diseases, leading to huge economical losses. So far, only the use of pesticides can mitigate their impact, causing ...severe health and environmental issues. Hence, innovative eco-friendly and low-cost solutions must be promoted apart from chemical control. Here, we have investigated the use of laser radiation as a reliable solution. We have analyzed the lethal dose required to kill 90% of a population for two major pest aphid species (
Acyrthosiphon pisum
and
Rhopalosiphum padi
). We showed that irradiating insects at an early stage (one-day old nymph) is crucial to lower the lethal dose without affecting plant growth and health. The laser is mostly lethal, but it can also cause insect stunting and a reduction of survivors’ fecundity. Nevertheless, we did not notice any significant visible effect on the offspring of the surviving irradiated generation. The estimated energy cost and the harmless effect of laser radiation on host plants show that this physics-based strategy can be a promising alternative to chemical pesticides.
Trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) is indicated as second-line treatment for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive metastatic or unresectable locally advanced breast cancer, after ...progression on trastuzumab and a taxane-based chemotherapy. We wished to determine if the line of treatment in which T-DM1 is administered has an impact on progression-free survival (PFS) and in particular, if prior treatment with capecitabine/lapatinib or pertuzumab modifies PFS of further treatment with T-DM1.
We performed a multicenter retrospective study in 3 Belgian institutions. We evaluated PFS with T-DM1 in patients treated for HER2 positive metastatic or locally advanced unresectable breast cancer between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2016.
We included 51 patients. The median PFS was 9.01 months. The line of treatment in which T-DM1 (1st line, 2nd line, 3rd line or 4+ lines) was administered had no influence on PFS (hazard ratio 0.979, CI95: 0.835-1.143). There was no significant difference in PFS whether or not patients had received prior treatment with capecitabine/lapatinib (9.17 vs 5.56 months, p-value 0.875). But, patients who received pertuzumab before T-DM1 tended to exhibit a shorter PFS (3.55 months for T-DM1 after pertuzumab vs 9.50 months for T-DM1 without pretreatment with pertuzumab), even if this difference was not statistically significant (p-value 0.144).
Unlike with conventional chemotherapy, the line of treatment in which T-DM1 is administered does not influence PFS in our cohort of patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer.
Decision outcomes in unpredictable environments may not have exact known probabilities. Yet the predictability level of outcomes matters in decisions, and animals, including humans, generally avoid ...ambiguous options. Managing ambiguity may be more challenging and requires stronger cognitive skills than decision-making under risk, where decisions involve known probabilities. Here we compare decision-making in capuchins, macaques, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos in risky and ambiguous contexts. Subjects were shown lotteries (a tray of potential rewards, some large, some small) and could gamble a medium-sized food item to obtain one of the displayed rewards. The odds of winning and losing varied and were accessible in the risky context (all rewards were visible) or partially available in the ambiguous context (some rewards were covered). In the latter case, the level of information varied from fully ambiguous (individuals could not guess what was under the covers) to predictable (individuals could guess). None of the species avoided gambling in ambiguous lotteries and gambling rates were high if at least two large rewards were visible. Capuchins and bonobos ignored the covered items and gorillas and macaques took the presence of potential rewards into account, but only chimpanzees and orangutans could consistently build correct expectations about the size of the covered rewards. Chimpanzees and orangutans combined decision rules according to the number of large visible rewards and the level of predictability, a process resembling conditional probabilities assessment in humans. Despite a low sample size, this is the first evidence in non-human primates that a combination of several rules can underlie choices made in an unpredictable environment. Our finding that non-human primates can deal with the uncertainty of an outcome when exchanging one food item for another is a key element to the understanding of the evolutionary origins of economic behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue 'Existence and prevalence of economic behaviours among non-human primates'.
Transfers and services are frequent in the animal kingdom. However, there is no clear evidence in animals that such transactions are based on weighing costs and benefits when giving or returning ...favours and keeping track of them over time (i.e. calculated reciprocity). We tested two orang-utans (Pongo pygmaeus abelii) in a token-exchange paradigm, in which each individual could exchange a token for food with the experimenter but only after first obtaining the token from the other orang-utan. Each orang-utan possessed tokens valuable to their partner but useless to themselves. Both orang-utans actively transferred numerous tokens (mostly partner-valuable) to their partner. One of the orang-utans routinely used gestures to request tokens while the other complied with such requests. Although initially the transfers were biased in one direction, they became more balanced towards the end of the study. Indeed, data on the last three series produced evidence of reciprocity both between and within trials. We observed an increase in the number and complexity of exchanges and alternations. This study is the first experimental demonstration of the occurrence of direct transfers of goods based on calculated reciprocity in non-human-primates.
Delayed reciprocity is a potentially important mechanism for cooperation to occur. It is however rarely reported among animals, possibly because it requires special skills like the ability to plan a ...loss. We tested six brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in such skills. Subjects were studied in exchange tasks in which they had to retain a food item for a given time lag before returning it to an experimenter and obtaining a more desirable reward. Experiments showed that the subjects could wait for several minutes when allowed to return only part of the initial item. When required to return the full item intact, however, most subjects could not sustain a time lag longer than 10 s. Although the duration of waiting increased with the amount of return expected by subjects, in most cases it did not extend beyond 20 s even when the eperimenter offered a food amount 40 fold the initial item. The failure of capuchin monkeys to sustain long-lasting waiting periods may be explained by limited self-control abilities. This would prevent them achieving reciprocal altruism.
Animals deal with predictable and unpredictable events on a daily basis. Yet our knowledge of the cognitive processes involved in decisions remains limited. We tested capuchins, macaques and ...orang-utans in a food-gambling task to investigate whether or not individuals estimate the chances of different outcomes. Results highlighted that gambling decisions were negatively induced by the probability of losing and the frequency of previous losses, and positively induced by the probability of gaining. Actual decisions were consistent with first order stochastic dominance. The study of second order stochastic dominance revealed that macaques were risk-prone whereas capuchins and orang-utans were risk-adverse. We detected responses comparable to the hot-hand effect, a bias found in humans. Capuchins and orang-utans exhibited probability distortion and loss aversion, which were not systematically found in macaques. Given the heterogeneity among individuals, we implemented mixture models and showed that attitudes towards risk and probabilities play complementary and different roles in the three species.
Replenishment of benthic marine populations typically involves "settlement" from pelagic larval to benthic juvenile habitats. Mortality during this transition has been unknown because of the ...difficulty of measuring propagule supply in open water. For three weeks, we compared the nocturnal passage of presettlement fishes across the barrier reef encircling Moorea Island (French Polynesia) with the abundance of benthic recruits in the back-reef lagoon on the following morning. During this time, >40,000 presettlement unicornfish, Naso unicornis entered our study area of ∼ 1 km2with half arriving on just two nights. Using coupled Beverton-Holt functions to describe the decay of each cohort, we were able to predict the daily abundance of recruits and their final age structure from the presettlement inputs. The best model estimated that ∼ 61% of the potential settlers were lost between their nocturnal arrival and the following morning, independent of cohort size. Postsettlement mortality was density dependent, varying between 9% and 20% per day. We attribute all mortality to predation and suggest that high risk associated with settlement has shaped colonization strategies. Because fishing targets the survivors of this population bottleneck, aquarium fisheries may be more sustainable when sourced from pelagic juveniles.
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