This paper reviews and evaluates all the available heating technologies for worldwide agricultural greenhouses and discusses the representative applications of each technology. Available information ...on the location, ground area, cover materials and performance of the greenhouses coupled with each technology such as water storage (including solar flat plate collectors, ground-source heat pumps and shallow solar ponds), rock bed storage, phase change material storage and earth-to-air heat exchanger system is collected and presented in detail. Using the collected information an attempt has been made to correlate the approximate storage volume or weight of the material required for a given greenhouse area for different storage media under various greenhouse cover materials. These relations can be of great importance to the potential users for the successful development of future applications. Apart from the above-mentioned technologies, a complete review and performance evaluation of other greenhouse heating technologies such as movable insulation, north wall storage, ground air collector and aquifer coupled cavity flow heat exchanger system is also presented. Heating potential (overall performance) of each system under different cover materials along with their advantages, limitations and suitability is also discussed.
This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the Abbott Architect SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay in COVID-19 patients.
Residual sera from 177 symptomatic SARS-CoV-2-positive patients and 163 ...non-COVID-19 patients were tested for antibody with the Abbott SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay (Abbott Diagnostics, Chicago, USA). Clinical records for COVID-19 patients were reviewed to determine the time from onset of clinical illness to testing.
Specificity of the assay was 100.0% (95%CI: 97.1–100.0%). The clinical sensitivity of the assay varied depending on time from onset of symptoms, increasing with longer periods from the onset of clinical illness. The clinical sensitivity at ≤6 days was 8.6% (7/81; 95%CI: 3.8–17.5%), at 7–13 days 43.6% (17/39; 95%CI: 28.2–60.2%), at 14–20 days 84.0% (21/25; 95%CI: 63.1–94.7%), and at ≥21 days 84.4% (27/32; 95%CI: 66.5–94.1%). Clinical sensitivity was higher in the ≥14-day group compared to <14 days. There were no differences between the 14–20-day and ≥21-days groups; the combined clinical sensitivity for these groups (≥14 days) was 84.2% (49/57; 71.6–92.1%).
The Abbott SARS-CoV-2 IgG test has high specificity. Clinical sensitivity was limited in the early stages of disease but improved from 14 days after the onset of clinical symptoms.
Phosphorus is an essential element for all life forms. Phosphate solubilizing bacteria are capable of converting phosphate into a bioavailable form through solubilization and mineralization ...processes. Hence in the present study a phosphate solubilizing bacterium, PSB-37, was isolated from mangrove soil of the Mahanadi river delta using NBRIP-agar and NBRIP-BPB broth containing tricalcium phosphate as the phosphate source. Based on phenotypic and molecular characterization, the strain was identified as Serratia sp. The maximum phosphate solubilizing activity of the strain was determined to be 44.84μg/ml, accompanied by a decrease in pH of the growth medium from 7.0 to 3.15. During phosphate solubilization, various organic acids, such as malic acid (237mg/l), lactic acid (599.5mg/l) and acetic acid (5.0mg/l) were also detected in the broth culture through HPLC analysis. Acid phosphatase activity was determined by performing p-nitrophenyl phosphate assay (pNPP) of the bacterial broth culture. Optimum acid phosphatase activity was observed at 48h of incubation (76.808U/ml), temperature of 45°C (77.87U/ml), an agitation rate of 100rpm (80.40U/ml), pH 5.0 (80.66U/ml) and with glucose as a original carbon source (80.6U/ml) and ammonium sulphate as a original nitrogen source (80.92U/ml). Characterization of the partially purified acid phosphatase showed maximum activity at pH 5.0 (85.6U/ml), temperature of 45°C (97.87U/ml) and substrate concentration of 2.5mg/ml (92.7U/ml). Hence the present phosphate solubilizing and acid phosphatase production activity of the bacterium may have probable use for future industrial, agricultural and biotechnological application.
ABSTRACT We report a Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope search for H i 21 cm emission from a large sample of massive star-forming galaxies at z 1.18-1.34, lying in sub-fields of the DEEP2 Redshift ...Survey. The search was carried out by co-adding ("stacking") the H i 21 cm emission spectra of 857 galaxies, after shifting each galaxy's H i 21 cm spectrum to its rest frame. We obtain the 3 upper limit SH i < 2.5 Jy on the average H i 21 cm flux density of the 857 galaxies, at a velocity resolution of 315 km s−1. This yields the 3 constraint on the average H i mass of the 857 stacked galaxies, the first direct constraint on the atomic gas mass of galaxies at z > 1. The implied limit on the average atomic gas mass fraction (relative to stars) is MGAS/M* < 0.5, comparable to the cold molecular gas mass fraction in similar star-forming galaxies at these redshifts. We find that the cosmological mass density of neutral atomic gas in massive star-forming galaxies at z 1.3 is GAS < 3.7 × 10−4, significantly lower than GAS estimates in both galaxies in the local universe and damped Ly absorbers at z ≥ 2.2. Massive blue star-forming galaxies thus do not appear to dominate the neutral atomic gas content of the universe at z 1.3.
Plant-based or non-dairy milk alternative is the fast growing segment in newer food product development category of functional and specialty beverage across the globe. Nowadays, cow milk allergy, ...lactose intolerance, calorie concern and prevalence of hypercholesterolemia, more preference to vegan diets has influenced consumers towards choosing cow milk alternatives. Plant-based milk alternatives are a rising trend, which can serve as an inexpensive alternate to poor economic group of developing countries and in places, where cow’s milk supply is insufficient. Though numerous types of innovative food beverages from plant sources are being exploited for cow milk alternative, many of these faces some/any type of technological issues; either related to processing or preservation. Majority of these milk alternatives lack nutritional balance when compared to bovine milk, however they contain functionally active components with health promoting properties which attracts health conscious consumers. In case of legume based milk alternatives, sensory acceptability is a major limiting factor for its wide popularity. New and advanced non-thermal processing technologies such as ultra high temperature treatment, ultra high pressure homogenization, pulsed electric field processing are being researched for tackling the problems related to increase of shelf life, emulsion stability, nutritional completeness and sensory acceptability of the final product. Concerted research efforts are required in coming years in functional beverages segment to prepare tailor-made newer products which are palatable as well as nutritionally adequate.
This paper reviews the available worldwide cooling technologies for agricultural greenhouses and discusses the representative applications of each technology. Relevant information about the system ...characteristics, application and performance of the existing greenhouse cooling technologies such as ventilation (natural and forced), shading/reflection, evaporative cooling (fan-pad, mist/fog and roof cooling) and composite systems (earth-to-air heat exchanger system and aquifer coupled cavity flow heat exchanger system) is collected and presented in detail. As per the collected information, the pros and cons of each technology are also discussed. Finally, some important conclusions are drawn (based on the collected information) regarding the performance of each discussed system.
ABSTRACT
The detection of redshifted hyperfine line of neutral hydrogen (H i) is the most promising probe of the epoch of reionization (EoR). We report an analysis of 55 h of Murchison Widefield ...Array (MWA) phase II drift scan EoR data. The data correspond to a central frequency $\nu _0 = 154.24 \, \rm MHz$ (z ≃ 8.2 for the redshifted H i hyperfine line) and bandwidth $B = 10.24 \, \rm MHz$. As one expects greater system stability in a drift scan, we test the system stability by comparing the extracted power spectra from data with noise simulations and show that the power spectra for the cleanest data behave as thermal noise. We compute the H i power spectrum as a function of time in one and two dimensions. The best upper limit on the 1D power spectrum are: $\Delta ^2(k) \simeq (1000~\rm mK)^2$ at k ≃ 0.2h Mpc−1 and at k ≃ 1h Mpc−1. The cleanest modes, which might be the most suited for obtaining the optimal signal to noise, correspond to k ≳ 1h Mpc−1. We also study the time-dependence of the foreground-dominated modes in a drift scan and compare with the expected behaviour.
Measurements of 21 cm Epoch of Reionization (EoR) structure are subject to systematics originating from both the analysis and the observation conditions. Using 2013 data from the Murchison Widefield ...Array (MWA), we show the importance of mitigating both sources of contamination. A direct comparison between results from Beardsley et al. and our updated analysis demonstrates new precision techniques, lowering analysis systematics by a factor of 2.8 in power. We then further lower systematics by excising observations contaminated by ultra-faint RFI, reducing by an additional factor of 3.8 in power for the zenith pointing. With this enhanced analysis precision and newly developed RFI mitigation, we calculate a noise-dominated upper limit on the EoR structure of Δ2 ≤ 3.9 × 103 mK2 at k = 0.20 h Mpc−1 and z = 7 using 21 hr of data, improving previous MWA limits by almost an order of magnitude.
Abstract
We report a ≈400 hr Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) search for H
i
21 cm emission from star-forming galaxies at
z
= 1.18–1.39 in seven fields of the DEEP2 Galaxy Survey. Including ...data from an earlier 60 hr GMRT observing run, we co-added the H
i
21 cm emission signals from 2841 blue star-forming galaxies that lie within the FWHM of the GMRT primary beam. This yielded a 5.0
σ
detection of the average H
i
21 cm signal from the 2841 galaxies at an average redshift 〈
z
〉 ≈ 1.3, only the second detection of H
i
21 cm emission at
z
≥ 1. We obtain an average H
i
mass of 〈M
HI
〉 = (3.09 ± 0.61) × 10
10
M
⊙
and an H
i
-to-stellar mass ratio of 2.6 ± 0.5, both significantly higher than values in galaxies with similar stellar masses in the local universe. We also stacked the 1.4 GHz continuum emission of the galaxies to obtain a median star formation rate (SFR) of 14.5 ± 1.1 M
⊙
yr
−1
. This implies an average H
i
depletion timescale of ≈2 Gyr for blue star-forming galaxies at
z
≈ 1.3, a factor of ≈3.5 lower than that of similar local galaxies. Our results suggest that the H
i
content of galaxies toward the end of the epoch of peak cosmic SFR density is insufficient to sustain their high SFR for more than ≈2 Gyr. Insufficient gas accretion to replenish the H
i
could then explain the observed decline in the cosmic SFR density at
z
< 1.
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