Keithmcdaniel1851

The zero-valent iron-anaerobic ammonium oxidation (ZVI-anammox) system has received widespread attention due to its excellent nitrogen removal performance and user-friendly operation. However, its disadvantages include a short service life, high ZVI consumption, and poor system stability. The use of ultrasound as a physical method is increasing in various water treatment processes. In this study, a series of batch tests were conducted to obtain the best ultrasonic parameter and explore the comprehensive effects of ultrasound on a ZVI-anammox system. The highest specific anammox activity of the ZVI-anammox system was found to be 2.88 mg total nitrogen/g of volatile suspended solids/h after ultrasonic treatment (0.2 w/mL, 5 min), which was 37.85% higher than a control group. Additionally, the service life of ZVI extended by 28.57% and the total nitrogen removal efficiency changed from 58.03-72.08 to 63.92-78.33% under ultrasonic irradiation. These phenomena were related to the mechanical force and cavitation of ultrasonic waves. Judging from the characteristics of sludge and ZVI, ultrasound can promote anammox sludge granulation, ease ZVI passivation, and enhance the stability of the entire system. This paper also briefly discusses the impact mechanisms of ultrasound on the ZVI-anammox system. In brief, ultrasound destroys the surface structure of ZVI and thus provides numerous attachment points for microorganisms that improve the performance of the entire system. The proposed ultrasound combined with ZVI is a novel method that has potential for use in large-scale engineering applications in actual sewage treatment after comprehensive analysis.Considering the economic activities that trigger alarming situations for the global atmosphere and ecology, this work probes the associations of unemployment (UNE), GDP, population growth (POP), renewable (REN), non-renewable energy use (ENE), and ecological footprints (EF) for South Asian countries. The annual data of 1991-2019 is analyzed for empirical results. This is the first study that employs panel as well as country-specific estimations for South Asian countries by utilizing the Pool mean group (PMG) and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) methods, respectively. The study also validates the environmental Phillips curve (EPC) for selected counties. The empirical evidence in all models confirms the positive effects of GDP, ENE, and POP on environmental dilapidation whereas REN and UNE reduce environmental deprivation. The findings confirm the presence of the EPC in South Asian countries. This work presents some important policy instruments for south Asian countries to reduce environmental pollution. In the efforts to improve air quality, these countries have increased unemployment. These nations have to raise the share of renewable energy to the total energy consumption. This will sustain their economies with an increasing employment ratio. At the same time, there is a need to revise the urban policies because the increasing population is also a contributing factor towards environmental degradation.The study's goal is to investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI), tourism, electricity consumption, and economic development on CO2 emissions in Bangladesh between 1990 and 2019. Empirical results reveal that FDI, electricity consumption, and economic development variables have significant and positive long-term effects on CO2 emissions. Tourism, on the other hand, has a long-term negative effect. The square of the GDP variable has a substantial negative coefficient. This indicates that in Bangladesh, the nexus between CO2 emissions and economic development is U-shaped inverted. As a result, the EKC postulate is proven to be correct. In the short term, electricity consumption, economic development, GDP2, and tourism have no substantial effect on CO2 emissions. Only the coefficients of FDI are negative and significant. The expected ECM coefficients are also negative and statistically significant. According to these data, the system as a whole adjusts at a rate of 60%. The Granger causality study reveals one direction of causation between electricity consumption and CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions and economic development, electricity consumption and economic development, FDI, and CO2 emissions.For decades, the rapid urbanization and economic development in China inevitably lead to the increase of household energy demand and CO2 emissions. Existing studies regard the household sector as an exogenous sector unrelated to production, ignoring that the wages, goods, and services provided by production sectors will affect the consumption of the household sector. This paper analyzes the impact of the household sector on production sectors and the total CO2 emissions by establishing a semi-closed environmentally extended input-output model in China from 2007 to 2017. Through the calculation of index of the power of dispersion and index of sensitivity of dispersion, the index of sensitivity of dispersion of household is large, and household has push to several sectors' CO2 emissions. selleck chemicals Furthermore, we explore the drivers of China's household CO2 emissions using structural decomposition analysis and claim that consumption per capita and urbanization rate are the dominant factors driving household CO2 emissions, while carbon intensity and economic structure are the main factors inhibiting household CO2 emissions. Our research shows a clear picture of sector linkages and driving forces of household CO2 emissions, providing strong evidence for the development of China's household CO2 reduction policies.The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a shift from on-campus to remote online examinations, which are usually difficult to invigilate. Meanwhile, closed-ended question formats, such as true-false (TF), are particularly suited to these examination conditions, as they allow automatic marking by computer software. While previous studies have reported the score characteristics in TF questions in conventional supervised examinations, this study investigates the efficacy of using TF questions in online, unsupervised examinations at the undergraduate level of Biomedical Engineering. We examine the TF and other question-type scores of 57 students across three examinations held in 2020 under online, unsupervised conditions. Our analysis shows significantly larger coefficient of variance (CV) in scores in TF questions (42.7%) than other question types (22.3%). The high CV in TF questions may be explained by different answering strategies among students, with 13.3 ± 17.2% of TF questions left unanswered (zero marks) and 16.4 ± 11.5% of TF questions guessed incorrectly (negative marks awarded). In unsupervised, open-book examination where sharing of answers among students is a potential risk; questions that induce a larger variation in responses may be desirable to differentiate among students. We also observed a significant relationship (r = 0.64, p  less then  0.05) between TF scores and the overall subject scores, indicating that TF questions are an effective predictor of overall student performance. Our results from this initial analysis suggests that TF questions are useful for assessing biomedical-theme content in online, unsupervised examinations, and are encouraging for their ongoing use in future assessments.

Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells are widely used for vaccine production, however, the safety of MDCK cells needs to be considered seriously because of high tumorigenicity. Micro RNAs (miRNAs) that are involved in the tumorigenicity of MDCK cells have been never been reported.

To reveal the role of miRNA in the tumorigenic phenotype of MDCK cell line.

The miRNA expression profiles of two monoclonal MDCK cells (M09CL and M35CL) with low tumorigenicity and one MDCK cell line (M73P) with high tumorigenicity were characterized and investigated by using small RNA-seq technology.

A total of 5 known miRNAs and 5 novel miRNAs were highly expressed in M73P. In addition, 4 known miRNAs and 4 novel miRNAs were highly expressed in M09CL and M35CL. The target genes of the differentially expressed miRNAs were significantly enriched in several biological processes, and the majority of these genes were involved in pathways in cancer and the MAPK signaling pathway. Through interaction analysis, 4 up-regulated miRNAs (cfa-miR-452, cfa-miR-8826, cfa-miR-224, and cfa-miR-2387) and their crucial target genes related to the tumor regulation network were identified. Results indicated these 4 miRNAs might play crucial roles in the tumorigenesis of MDCK cells.

Our findings, which were based on the functional prediction of miRNAs and target genes, suggested that miRNAs might influence the tumorigenicity of MDCK cells by regulating target genes. Moreover, the results provided important data for understanding the miRNA-mediated regulatory networks that control the tumorigenicities of MDCK cells.

Our findings, which were based on the functional prediction of miRNAs and target genes, suggested that miRNAs might influence the tumorigenicity of MDCK cells by regulating target genes. Moreover, the results provided important data for understanding the miRNA-mediated regulatory networks that control the tumorigenicities of MDCK cells.The notion that the brain achieves visual word recognition by encoding the relative positions of letters with open-bigram representations (e.g., 'h-e', 'h-r' and 'e-r' driving recognition of 'her') has been successful in accounting for many behaviors and phenomena. However, one characteristic of open-bigrams has remained unexplored How is the activation of a bigram modulated by the distance between its constituents in the visual field? On the one hand, contiguous letters (e.g., 'at' in 'father') may allow for a clearer percept of the bigram. On the other hand, an increasing distance between letters (e.g., 'ae' in 'father') should create more certainty about their relative positions, which is precisely what the bigram is meant to convey. This matter was investigated with two experiments in which participants indicated whether target pairs of letters occurred in random letter strings. They were instructed that letter order mattered (i.e., 'a-b' does not occur in 'kbac'), while letter contiguity did not (i.e., 'a-b' occurs in 'akcb'). Controlling for crowding and eccentricity, bigrams were recognized faster upon decreasing the letter distance. However, when switching the target letter order (meaning the string should be met by a 'no' response), shorter letter distances yielded slower responses and more false positives. Neither relative position-coding models nor absolute position-coding models accommodate both these patterns at once. We discuss how a complete account of our effects may instead combine elements from both model types.

Cocultures of human gingival fibrobasts (hGF) and endothelial cells could enhance regeneration and repair models as well as improve vascularization limitations in tissue engineering. The aim of this study was to assess if hGF could support formation of stable vessel-like networks.

Explant primary hGF were isolated from gum surgical wastes collected from healthy patients with no history of periodontitis. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) were two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) cocultured in vitro with hGF at a cell ratio of 11 and medium of 11 of their respective media during at least 31days. Vessel quantification of HUVEC networks was performed. In order to investigate the pericyte-like properties of hGF, the expression of perivascular markers α-SMA, NG2, CD146 and PDGFR-β was studied using immunocytochemistry and flow cytometry on 2D cultures.

hGF were able to support a long-lasting HUVEC network at least 31days, even in the absence of a bioreactor with flow. As observed, HUVEC started to communicate with each other from day 7, constructing a network.