Municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are frequently suspected as significant point sources or conduits of microplastics to the environment. To directly investigate these suspicions, effluent ...discharges from seven tertiary plants and one secondary plant in Southern California were studied. The study also looked at influent loads, particle size/type, conveyance, and removal at these wastewater treatment facilities. Over 0.189 million liters of effluent at each of the seven tertiary plants were filtered using an assembled stack of sieves with mesh sizes between 400 and 45 μm. Additionally, the surface of 28.4 million liters of final effluent at three tertiary plants was skimmed using a 125 μm filtering assembly. The results suggest that tertiary effluent is not a significant source of microplastics and that these plastic pollutants are effectively removed during the skimming and settling treatment processes. However, at a downstream secondary plant, an average of one micro-particle in every 1.14 thousand liters of final effluent was counted. The majority of microplastics identified in this study had a profile (color, shape, and size) similar to the blue polyethylene particles present in toothpaste formulations. Existing treatment processes were determined to be very effective for removal of microplastic contaminants entering typical municipal WWTPs.
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•Effluents from seven tertiary plants and one secondary plant were studied.•Existing wastewater treatment processes remove microplastics effectively.•Tertiary effluent may not be a significant source of microplastics.•Microplastics are mainly removed during skimming and settling processes.•Some toothpaste formulations contribute significantly to WWTP microplastic load.
The Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) level-2 (L2) cloud product (earth science data set names MOD06 and MYD06 for Terra and Aqua MODIS, respectively) provides pixel-level ...retrievals of cloud top properties (day and night pressure, temperature, and height) and cloud optical properties (optical thickness, effective particle radius, and water path for both liquid water and ice cloud thermodynamic phases-daytime only). Collection 6 (C6) reprocessing of the product was completed in May 2014 and March 2015 for MODIS Aqua and Terra, respectively. Here we provide an overview of major C6 optical property algorithm changes relative to the previous Collection 5 (C5) product. Notable C6 optical and microphysical algorithm changes include: 1) new ice cloud optical property models and a more extensive cloud radiative transfer code lookup table (LUT) approach; 2) improvement in the skill of the shortwave-derived cloud thermodynamic phase; 3) separate cloud effective radius retrieval data sets for each spectral combination used in previous collections; 4) separate retrievals for partly cloudy pixels and those associated with cloud edges; 5) failure metrics that provide diagnostic information for pixels having observations that fall outside the LUT solution space; and 6) enhanced pixel-level retrieval uncertainty calculations. The C6 algorithm changes can collectively result in significant changes relative to C5, though the magnitude depends on the data set and the pixel's retrieval location in the cloud parameter space. Example L2 granule and level-3 gridded data set differences between the two collections are shown. While the emphasis is on the suite of cloud optical property data sets, other MODIS cloud data sets are discussed when relevant.
Biologic drugs are highly complex molecules produced by living cells through a multistep manufacturing process. The key characteristics of these molecules, known as critical quality attributes ...(CQAs), can vary based on post-translational modifications that occur in the cellular environment or during the manufacturing process. The extent of the variation in each of the CQAs must be characterized for the originator molecule and systematically matched as closely as possible by the biosimilar developer to ensure bio-similarity. The close matching of the originator fingerprint is the foundation of the biosimilarity exercise, as the analytical tools designed to measure differences at the molecular level are far more sensitive and specific than tools available to physicians during clinical trials. Biosimilar development, therefore, has a greater focus on preclinical attributes compared with the development of an original biological agent. As changes in CQAs can occur at different stages of the manufacturing process, even small modifications to the process can alter biosimilar attributes beyond the point of similarity and impact clinical effectiveness and safety. The manufacturer's ability to provide consistent production and quality control will greatly influence the acceptance of biosimilars. To this end, preventing drift from the required specifications over time and avoiding the various implications brought by product shortage will enhance biosimilar integration into daily practice. As most prescribers are not familiar with this new drug development paradigm, educational programmes will be needed so that prescribers see biosimilars as fully equivalent, efficacious and safe medicines when compared with originator products.
Practical quantum networks require low-loss and noise-resilient optical interconnects as well as non-Gaussian resources for entanglement distillation and distributed quantum computation. The latter ...could be provided by superconducting circuits but existing solutions to interface the microwave and optical domains lack either scalability or efficiency, and in most cases the conversion noise is not known. In this work we utilize the unique opportunities of silicon photonics, cavity optomechanics and superconducting circuits to demonstrate a fully integrated, coherent transducer interfacing the microwave X and the telecom S bands with a total (internal) bidirectional transduction efficiency of 1.2% (135%) at millikelvin temperatures. The coupling relies solely on the radiation pressure interaction mediated by the femtometer-scale motion of two silicon nanobeams reaching a V
as low as 16 μV for sub-nanowatt pump powers. Without the associated optomechanical gain, we achieve a total (internal) pure conversion efficiency of up to 0.019% (1.6%), relevant for future noise-free operation on this qubit-compatible platform.
Biosimilar medicines have shown similarity with the originator biologic and offer a similar clinical outcome generally at a lower cost. This paper identifies benefits of off-patent biologics and ...biosimilars, and illustrates these benefits with empirical data from Europe. We provide a narrative review of published literature on values and benefits of biosimilars in Europe. The results describe cost savings as the key driver stemming from the lower price of biosimilars, than that of originator products, and from price competition between biosimilar(s), originator, and next-generation products. Cost savings may then translate into a number of other associated benefits. The lower price of biosimilars and similar effectiveness to the originator biologics improve cost effectiveness, implying that reimbursement can be granted or extended to other patient groups, or that the biologic therapy can be moved to an earlier line of treatment. Cost savings from biosimilars can be used to increase patient access to therapy or to increase the number of healthcare professionals. Finally, competition between off-patent biologics and biosimilars may stimulate an innovation in the formulation and development of next-generation biologics. Our paper illustrates that the benefit of off-patent biologics and biosimilars is not restricted to cost savings, but that these medicines may contribute to an expansion of medical treatment options for patients, hence concomitantly contributing to the long-term sustainability of the healthcare system. This review provides a broader view for clinical and economic decision makers and healthcare professionals on the added benefits of off-patent biologics and their use in clinical practice.
While the widely studied allocentric spatial representation holds a special status in neuroscience research, its exact nature and neural underpinnings continue to be the topic of debate, particularly ...in humans. Here, based on a review of human behavioral research, we argue that allocentric representations do not provide the kind of map-like, metric representation one might expect based on past theoretical work. Instead, we suggest that almost all tasks used in past studies involve a combination of egocentric and allocentric representation, complicating both the investigation of the cognitive basis of an allocentric representation and the task of identifying a brain region specifically dedicated to it. Indeed, as we discuss in detail, past studies suggest numerous brain regions important to allocentric spatial memory in addition to the hippocampus, including parahippocampal, retrosplenial, and prefrontal cortices. We thus argue that although allocentric computations will often require the hippocampus, particularly those involving extracting details across temporally specific routes, the hippocampus is not necessary for all allocentric computations. We instead suggest that a non-aggregate network process involving multiple interacting brain areas, including hippocampus and extra-hippocampal areas such as parahippocampal, retrosplenial, prefrontal, and parietal cortices, better characterizes the neural basis of spatial representation during navigation. According to this model, an allocentric representation does not emerge from the computations of a single brain region (i.e., hippocampus) nor is it readily decomposable into additive computations performed by separate brain regions. Instead, an allocentric representation emerges from computations partially shared across numerous interacting brain regions. We discuss our non-aggregate network model in light of existing data and provide several key predictions for future experiments.
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