Correlation of some organic pollution factors in water systems in Northern Greece

The degree of organic pollution in natural waters of northern Greece has been evaluated through measurement of TOC, DO, fluorescence, absorbance and complexing capacity. Additionally certain other parameters were measured like temperature, conductance, hardness, alkalinity and total iron content to get a better idea of the extent of pollution. The results showed that Lake Agios Vasilios was the most heavily polluted. On the other hand the River Loudias has greater organic charge than the River Axios.     

Study of the removal of dichlorvos and dimethoate in a titanium dioxide mediated photocatalytic process through the examination of intermediates and the reaction mechanism

The photocatalytic oxidation of two selected organophosphorous insecticides (dichlorvos and dimethoate) has been investigated. The aim of the study was the identification of the intermediates that are formed during photocatalytic treatment. Intermediate products from the slurry system were identified by means of solid-phase extraction (SPE) coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy techniques (GC-MS). Nine possible by-products were identified for dimethoate and three for dichlorvos. A proposed degradation pathway for each insecticide is presented, involving mainly oxidation and dealkylation reactions. The results demonstrated that some of the transient intermediates formed (oxon derivatives, disulfide, chlorinated fragments), were more toxic compared to parent compounds whereas most of them are less toxic than the parent compounds.     

Oxidation of two organophosphorous insecticides by the photo-assisted Fenton reaction

The photocatalytic degradation of two selected insecticides (dimethoate and methyl parathion) has been studied using the photo-assisted Fenton reaction. The degradation kinetics were studied under different conditions such as iron's and oxidant's concentration, temperature and inorganic ions. The degradation rates proved to be strongly influenced by these parameters. The replacement of hydrogen peroxide with peroxydisulfate was also tested in a photo-Fenton-like reaction. This system achieved high degradation rates of the selected compounds. Intermediate products formed during photocatalytic treatment were identified by means of solid-phase extraction (SPE) coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy techniques (GC-MS). Eight possible by-products were identified for parathion methyl and three for dimethoate formed through mainly oxidation and dealkylation reactions. Mineralization studies showed also that the photo-Fenton and the photo-Fenton-like systems are able to achieve mineralization of the insecticides. However, complete detoxification is achieved only in the presence of the photo-Fenton reagent.     

Cytotoxicity and cellular uptake of tri-block copolymer nanoparticles with different size and surface characteristics

Particulate matter (PM) pollution is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, the majority due to cardiovascular disease (CVD). While many potential pathophysiological mechanisms have been proposed, there is not yet a consensus as to which are most important in causing pollution-related morbidity/mortality. Nor is there consensus regarding which specific types of PM are most likely to affect public health in this regard. One toxicological mechanism linking exposure to airborne PM with CVD outcomes is oxidative stress, a contributor to the development of CVD risk factors including atherosclerosis. Recent work suggests that accelerated shortening of telomeres and, thus, early senescence of cells may be an important pathway by which oxidative stress may accelerate biological aging and the resultant development of age-related morbidity. This pathway may explain a significant proportion of PM-related adverse health outcomes, since shortened telomeres accelerate the progression of many diseases. There is limited but consistent evidence that vehicular emissions produce oxidative stress in humans. Given that oxidative stress is associated with accelerated erosion of telomeres, and that shortened telomeres are linked with acceleration of biological ageing and greater incidence of various age-related pathology, including CVD, it is hypothesized that associations noted between certain pollution types and sources and oxidative stress may reflect a mechanism by which these pollutants result in CVD-related morbidity and mortality, namely accelerated aging via enhanced erosion of telomeres. This paper reviews the literature providing links among oxidative stress, accelerated erosion of telomeres, CVD, and specific sources and types of air pollutants. If certain PM species/sources might be responsible for adverse health outcomes via the proposed mechanism, perhaps the pathway to reducing mortality/morbidity from PM would become clearer. Not only would pollution reduction imperatives be more focused, but interventions which could reduce oxidative stress would become all the more important.     

Program Repartitioning on Varying Communication Cost Parallel Architectures

In an earlier work, aThreshold Scheduling Algorithmwas proposed to schedule the functional (DAG) parallelism in a program on distributed memory systems. In this work, we address the issue of adapting the schedule for a set of distributed memory architectures with the same computation costs but higher communication costs. We introduce a new concept ofdominant edgesof a schedule to denote those edges which dictate the schedule time of the destination nodes due to the changes in their communication costs. Using this concept, we derive the conditions under which schedule on the whole or at least part of the graph can be reused for a different architecture keeping the cost of program repartitioning and rescheduling to a minimum. We demonstrate the practical significance of the method by incorporating it in the compiler backend for targeting Sisal (Streams and Iterations in a Single Assignment Language) on a family of Intel i860 architectures, Gamma, Delta, and Paragon, which vary in their communication costs. It is shown that almost 30 to 65% of the schedule can be reused unchanged, thereby avoiding program repartitioning to a large degree. The remainder of the schedule can beregeneratedthrough a linear algorithm at run time.     

The Banerjee–Wolfe and GCD Tests on Exact Data Dependence Information

The GCD test and the Banerjee–Wolfe test are the two tests traditionally used to determine statement data dependence, subject to direction vectors, in automatic vectorization/parallelization of loops. In an earlier study, a sufficient condition for the accuracy of the Banerjee–Wolfe test was stated and proved. In that work, we only considered the case of general data dependence, i.e., the case of data dependence without direction vector information. In this paper, we extend the previous result to the case of data dependence subject to an arbitrary direction vector. We also state and prove a sufficient condition for the accuracy of a combination of the GCD and Banerjee–Wolfe tests. Furthermore, we show that the sufficient conditions, for the accuracy of the Banerjee–Wolfe test and the accuracy of a combination of the GCD and Banerjee–Wolfe tests are necessary conditions as well. Finally, we demonstrate how these results can be used in actual practice to obtain exact data dependence information.