Use of Fenton oxidation to improve the biodegradability of a pharmaceutical wastewater

The applicability of Fenton's oxidation to improve the biodegradability of a pharmaceutical wastewater to be treated biologically was investigated. The wastewater was originated from a factory producing a variety of pharmaceutical chemicals. Treatability studies were conducted under laboratory conditions with all chemicals (having COD varying from 900 to 7000 mg/L) produced in the factory in order to determine the operational conditions to utilize in the full-scale treatment plant. Optimum pH was determined as 3.5 and 7.0 for the first (oxidation) and second stage (coagulation) of the Fenton process, respectively. For all chemicals, COD removal efficiency was highest when the molar ratio of H(2)O(2)/Fe(2+) was 150-250. At H(2)O(2)/Fe(2+) ratio of 155, 0.3M H(2)O(2) and 0.002 M Fe(2+), provided 45-65% COD removal. The wastewater treatment plant that employs Fenton oxidation followed by aerobic degradation in sequencing batch reactors (SBR), built after these treatability studies provided an overall COD removal efficiency of 98%, and compliance with the discharge limits. The efficiency of the Fenton's oxidation was around 45-50% and the efficiency in the SBR system which has two reactors each having a volume of 8m(3) and operated with a total cycle time of 1 day, was around 98%, regarding the COD removal.     

Grain boundary sensitization and desensitization during the ageing of 316L(N) austenitic stainless steels

Two casts of type 316L(N) austenitic stainless steel have been solution treated for 1 h at 1070 C, air-cooled, then aged for up to 20 000 h at temperatures between 550 C and 750 C. Grain boundary precipitation of the M₂₃C₆ phase occurs, and the Cr composition profile normal to the grain boundaries has been determined at high resolution by an analytical electron microscope. The data have been fitted firstly to collector plate models, which indicated that some of the material was in the process of desensitization, or healing, indicated by a rise in the boundary Cr content. The data were then fitted to a model of the Cr profile as a function of ageing treatment in the healing regime, and a good correlation was obtained.     

Detection of bacillus Calmette-Guerin in the blood by the polymerase chain reaction method of treated bladder cancer patients

PURPOSE: Following intravesical bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) instillation, we attempted to detect BCG in the blood using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method and correlate these findings with the occurrence of major complications due to this treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Intravesical BCG immunotherapy was given to 22 consecutive patients with superficial bladder tumors. In 2 patients the BCG instillation had to be discontinued due to serious side effects of therapy. Blood samples (252 aliquots) were obtained from 126 BCG courses in 22 cases, and 2 additional samples (4 aliquots) were obtained from 1 patient 1 and 3 months after cessation of therapy. All blood samples were analyzed by the PCR technique for detection of deoxyribonucleic acid tuberculosis Mycobacterium tuberculosis. RESULTS: Of the 126 blood samples 9 (7.1%) were PCR positive for M. tuberculosis. These 9 positive samples belonged to 3 patients, all of whom were among those 4 patients who had major clinical side effects. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated that rapid and sensitive detection of mycobacteremia by PCR correlated with the clinical course of these patients. We also demonstrated that PCR can be used to monitor BCG in the blood after antituberculous therapy. The early, fast and accurate diagnosis of BCG in the blood by PCR may alter the serious clinical course of these patients by initiation of specific treatment early. However, further extensive studies are needed to validate these results.     

Realization of a VCO for WLAN applications using 0.35 μm‐siGe BICMOS technology

In this article, a 4.5–5.8 GHz, ?G_m LC voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) for IEEE 802.11a standard is presented. The circuit is designed with Austria MicroSystems 0.35 μm SiGe BiCMOS process that includes high‐speed SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). According to measurement results, phase noise is ?102.3 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from 5 GHz carrier frequency. A linear, 1300 MHz tuning range is obtained utilizing accumulation‐mode varactors. Phase noise is relatively low because of the advantage of differential tuning concept. Output power of the fundamental frequency changes between ?1.6 and 0.9 dBm depending on the tuning voltage. Average second and third harmonic levels are ?25 and ?41 dBm, respectively. The circuit draws 14 mA DC current from 3.3 V supply including buffer circuits leading to a total power dissipation of 46.2 mW. The prototype VCO occupies an area of 0.6 mm² on Si substrate, including DC and RF pads. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2008.     

Learning Latent Representations of 3D Human Pose with Deep Neural Networks

Most recent approaches to monocular 3D pose estimation rely on Deep Learning. They either train a Convolutional Neural Network to directly regress from an image to a 3D pose, which ignores the dependencies between human joints, or model these dependencies via a max-margin structured learning framework, which involves a high computational cost at inference time. In this paper, we introduce a Deep Learning regression architecture for structured prediction of 3D human pose from monocular images or 2D joint location heatmaps that relies on an overcomplete autoencoder to learn a high-dimensional latent pose representation and accounts for joint dependencies. We further propose an efficient Long Short-Term Memory network to enforce temporal consistency on 3D pose predictions. We demonstrate that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance both in terms of structure preservation and prediction accuracy on standard 3D human pose estimation benchmarks.     

Effects of interesterified vegetable oils and sugar beet fibre on the quality of Turkish-type salami

Turkish‐type salami is an emulsion type product that is only shelf stable at chilling temperature. The use of three interesterified vegetable oils (IVOs) prepared from either palm, cottonseed or olive oil (IPO, ICO and IOO, respectively) together with 2% sugar beet fibre (SBF) (<425 μm) was studied in the production of Turkish‐type salami. These compounds were used to modify the fatty acid composition and increase the dietary fibre content of the traditional product. Beef fat (10%) was replaced by one of the IVOs at either 60 or 100%. The addition of SBF significantly increased (P < 0.05) the total dietary fibre content and water‐holding capacity of salamis. Incorporation of IVOs improved the nutritional content of the product because it altered the fatty acid composition. It was found that total or partial replacement of beef fat by IVOs, as well as the presence of 2% SBF, did not lead to significant changes in appearance, colour, texture, flavour or sensory score. The use of IVO and SBF as fat substitutes could be used to obtain a low fat product with high dietary fibre and a modified fatty acid composition.     

The impact of Nd3+ ions on linear/nonlinear and the ionizing radiation attenuation parameters of TeO2-PbO-Y2O3 glasses

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - The influence of Nd3+ ion-reinforced yttrium lead borotellurite glasses based on (49-x)B2O3-35TeO2-15PbO-1.0Y2O3-xNd2O3 (where...     

Factors affecting the electrical resistivity of soybean oil

The electrical resistivity of soybean oil that had been purified to remove polar constituents was determined, and the effect of measuring conditions and the addition of polar constituents (free fatty acids, phospholipids, monoglyceride, α-to-copherol, β-sitosterol, β-carotene, peroxides, and water) on resistivity was investigated. For reproducible resistivity measurements, voltages in excess of 50 volts and charging times greater than 120 s were necessary. As temperature was increased linearly, the resistivity of the oil decreased logarithmically. For making comparisons, a temperature of 24°C, a potential of 50 volts, and 120 s charging times were chosen. All polar constituents decreased the resistivity of the purified soybean oil, but water, phospholipids, and monoglycerides had the greatest effects. Water increased the resistivity-lowering effects of all other constituents except for free fatty acids, which were affected by water only slightly. The synergistic effect of water was much greater for phospholipids and monoglyceride than for other constituents.     

Cross‐Coupled Ratio Control Structure

Abstract

In this paper, a cross‐coupled ratio control structure with two blend stations has been proposed. The main feature of the proposed structure is to give a good ratio performance for both set‐point changes and load disturbances that might occur in any one of the two loops. A simple tuning procedure for the inner controllers of the two loops and an easy design methodology for the blend stations have been proposed in order to avoid any significant tuning and design effort for the implementer. The proposed structure is realized on a microcontroller based system. This cross‐coupled ratio control structure that has been embedded into the microcontroller is then used to maintain the prescribed ratio “a” of the two processes, namely heat transfer process trainer (PT 326‐Feedback) and process control simulator (PCS 327‐Feedback). The same two processes are run under another alternative ratio control structure and the results are compared with each other.     

Optical and physical behaviours of newly developed germanium-tellurium (GeTe) glasses: a comprehensive experimental and in-silico study with commercial glasses and ordinary shields

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - In this study, synthesis and determination of physical, optical, and radiation shielding properties of glasses based on TeO2 and GeO2 were...