The Rational Use of Water Resources in the Strategy of Industry 4.0

The article substantiates that the transformation of the world economy associated with Industry 4.0 leads to a significant change in the way resources are used and affects the possibility of implementing the concept of sustainable development. In this regard, a combined analysis of the concept of new industrial development and the concept of sustainable development, as well as an assessment of the current practice of their implementation is required. In this paper, such an analysis was carried out on the example of water resources management. The paper proposes a methodology for assessing the correlation of water management and industrial development levels of regions. This includes the use of both traditional statistical approaches to the analysis of the level of development of economic systems, and elements of data mining. The neural network is constructed in order to estimate the forecasted values of the water intensity of the gross regional product when the indicators of the level of industrial development of the regions change. The results show that the most significant indicators for changing water intensity include advanced production technologies used, the share of value-added to high-tech industries, and innovative activities of organisations.

     

Community response to environmental noise and the impact on cardiovascular risk score

Objective

The objective of our study was to investigate and evaluate the relationship between road traffic noise and cardiovascular risk.

Methods

The study sample (n = 659; 36.9% male, 63.1% female university students, mean age 22.83 ± 1.58 years) included a group exposed to road traffic noise (n = 280, L_eq,24 h = 67 ± 2 dB(A)) and a control group (n = 379, L_eq,24 h = 58.7 ± 6 dB(A)). Subjective response was determined by a validated noise annoyance questionnaire. The ten year risk of developing a coronary heart disease event was quantified as an evaluation of cardiovascular risk (SCORE60, Framingham 10-year risk estimation and projection to the age of 60, relative risk SCORE chart).

Results

Cardiovascular risk scores were significantly higher in the exposed group based on the Framingham scores projected to the age of 60, SCORE60 (AOR = 2.72 (95% CI = 1.21-6.15)) and the relative risk SCORE chart (AOR = 2.81 (1.46-5.41)).

Conclusions

These findings highlight the association between road traffic noise and cardiovascular risk.     

Water remediation by micelle-clay system: case study for tetracycline and sulfonamide antibiotics

Removal of tetracycline and sulfonamide antibiotics from water by micelles pre-adsorbed on montmorillonite was studied. Micelles of benzyldimethylhexadecylammonium (BDMHDA) were used. Batch experiments demonstrated that the micelle-clay complexes (1% w/w) removed 96-99.9% of antibiotics from their water solutions containing from 5 to 50 mg/L of pharmaceuticals. Column filters (25 cm) made of a mixture of quartz sand and BDMHDA micelle-clay complex at 100:1 w/w ratio removed 94-99.9% of above pharmaceuticals from initial solutions containing 10mg/L and 89% of sulfamethizole from an initial solution containing 10 microg/L of this antibiotic. These filters were also very efficient in the removal of antibiotics in the presence of dissolved soil organic matter removing 89-99% of tetracycline and sulfamethizol from initial solutions containing 10 mg/L of antibiotic in the presence of 8 mg/L of humic acid, or 9 mg/L of fulvic acid. These data indicate that micelle-clay complexes are very efficient for water purification from tetracycline and sulfonamide antibiotics.     

Energy storage and control optimization for an electric vehicle

Two big issues involving electric vehicles are energy supply and power management control. To deal with the energy supply problem, this paper proposes the application of a hybrid energy source system, composed of battery pack and ultracapacitor bank. The power management control between the energy supplies was defined by a fuzzy logic with inference rules optimized through genetic algorithm. The genetic algorithm optimizes lower and upper limits of membership functions aiming to reduce the hybrid energy source system total mass while maximizing the electric vehicle drive range and performance. Through the Pareto frontier, we found the best trade‐off solution.     

Recognition of geological processes in permafrost conditions

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - Any evaluation of geological processes in the permafrost zone is complicated by the rigorous climate and the general inaccessibility of such...     

Some Characteristics of Free Cell Population in the Airways of Rats after Intratracheal Instillation of Copper-Containing Nano-Scale Particles

We used stable water suspensions of copper oxide particles with mean diameter 20 nm and of particles containing copper oxide and element copper with mean diameter 340 nm to assess the pulmonary phagocytosis response of rats to a single intratracheal instillation of these suspensions using optical, transmission electron, and semi-contact atomic force microscopy and biochemical indices measured in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Although both nano and submicron ultrafine particles were adversely bioactive, the former were found to be more toxic for lungs as compared with the latter while evoking more pronounced defense recruitment of alveolar macrophages and especially of neutrophil leukocytes and more active phagocytosis. Based on our results and literature data, we consider both copper solubilization and direct contact with cellular organelles (mainly, mitochondria) of persistent particles internalized by phagocytes as probable mechanisms of their cytotoxicity.     

Naive random subspace ensemble with linear classifiers for real-time classification of fMRI data

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides a spatially accurate measure of brain activity. Real-time classification allows the use of fMRI in neurofeedback experiments. With limited labelled data available, a fixed pre-trained classifier may be inaccurate. We propose that streaming fMRI data may be classified using a classifier ensemble which is updated through naive labelling. Naive labelling is a protocol where in the absence of ground truth, updates are carried out using the label assigned by the classifier. We perform experiments on three fMRI datasets to demonstrate that naive labelling is able to improve upon a pre-trained initial classifier.     

Effect of amine-terminated butadiene-acrylonitrile/clay combinations on the structure and properties of epoxy nanocomposites

The effect of the clay content and the method of its combination with amine-terminated butadiene-acrylonitrile (ATBN) on the structure and behavior of epoxy was studied. In the case of the simultaneous addition of both components, the increasing clay content had a very small effect on the size of the reaction-induced phase separation-formed particles at 5% rubber content due to predominant elimination of two major clay effects, i.e., the nucleation due to phase separation and the kinetics. As a result, both the time window between the onset of phase separation and vitrification and the viscosity at the cloud point did not change significantly. The minor change in the particle size/clay content dependences with different curing temperatures indicates that the balance between the two clay effects shifted. The corresponding study of the mechanical behavior indicated that the best balanced mechanical properties were obtained at certain clay/ATBN ratios, and thus, there was synergy between the components. Similar mechanical parameters were obtained for the application of both components in the form of ATBN/montmorillonite intercalate. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012