Ranking of pre-treatment technologies for reverse osmosis for water recovery

Agro-industries are a life-line for sustainable future of human kind. However, the wastewater generated by agro-industries poses direct threat to the same sustainable future by polluting the freshwater sources when discharged into those freshwater sources. Thus, we need both advanced treatment technologies to treat those wastewater streams generated and better reuse practices for the treated effluents. Reverse osmosis (RO) is one of the advanced treatments to treat dissolved solids that are present in agricultural wastewater streams. But, RO is very sensitive to suspended solids (SS) present in the wastewater streams. Those SS can foul the RO membrane and make it ineffective in producing treated effluent at desired rates. Therefore, suitable pre-treatment scheme is necessary to treat the agro-wastewater streams before passing through RO. This study focuses on the qualitative and quantitative ranking of the available conventional and modern pre-treatment technologies as pre-treatment for RO. This study considers wastewater that has been treated through a secondary treatment system for example activated sludge process as the target water that needs pre-treatment. Based on qualitative ranking of conventional pre-treatment options, the Lime clarification/Granular Media filtration (GMF) option is ranked as the best; whereas finescreens/ micro-screens option ranked as the least preferred option based on the scores they attained in treating the water quality parameters that are considered essential. Based on the quantitative ranking, the low pressure membrane technology such as ultra-filtration (UF) stood first and microfiltration (MF) stood last.

Implementing recovery in low-resource stationary wireless sensor networks

Implementation of certain types of protocols on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be difficult due to the architecture of the motes. Identification of these issues and recommendations for workarounds can be very useful for the WSN research community testing hardware. In recent work, the authors developed and implemented clustering, reprogramming and authentication protocols involved in recovering WSNs with low resources. In attempting to integrate these protocols, several issues arose in the implementation phase connected to pre-set configurations of the motes used. In this paper, we describe the issues arising in integrating our protocols using Zigbee with IEEE 802.15.4 and the reprogramming module Deluge, and compare our challenges and solutions with those faced by other researchers in this area. Finally, we provide recommendations for consideration by researchers who may in future consider integrating several protocols on these platforms.

Energy efficiency methods in electrified railways based on recovery of regenerated power

Various attempts have been made to minimise energy consumption of rail vehicles by means of regenerative power from electric braking of traction motors. This paper describes energy efficiency methods in electrified railways based on recovery of energy. Direct recovery methods that return regenerative power to electrified networks, and recovery methods based on energy storage systems are elaborated. The benefits of developing recovery methods and advantages of energy storage systems are discussed.

Improved image recovery from compressed data contaminated with impulsive noise

Compressed sensing (CS) is a new information sampling theory for acquiring sparse or compressible data with much fewer measurements than those otherwise required by the Nyquist/Shannon counterpart. This is particularly important for some imaging applications such as magnetic resonance imaging or in astronomy. However, in the existing CS formulation, the use of the â„“ 2 norm on the residuals is not particularly efficient when the noise is impulsive. This could lead to an increase in the upper bound of the recovery error. To address this problem, we consider a robust formulation for CS to suppress outliers in the residuals. We propose an iterative algorithm for solving the robust CS problem that exploits the power of existing CS solvers. We also show that the upper bound on the recovery error in the case of non-Gaussian noise is reduced and then demonstrate the efficacy of the method through numerical studies.

High accuracy context recovery using clustering mechanisms

This paper examines the recovery of user context in indoor environmnents with existing wireless infrastructures to enable assistive systems. We present a novel approach to the extraction of user context, casting the problem of context recovery as an unsupervised, clustering problem. A well known density-based clustering technique, DBSCAN, is adapted to recover user context that includes user motion state, and significant places the user visits from WiFi observations consisting of access point id and signal strength. Furthermore, user rhythms or sequences of places the user visits periodically are derived from the above low level contexts by employing state-of-the-art probabilistic clustering technique, the Latent Dirichiet Allocation (LDA), to enable a variety of application services. Experimental results with real data are presented to validate the proposed unsupervised learning approach and demonstrate its applicability.

Fouling in reverse osmosis (RO) membrane in water recovery from secondary effluent : a review

Reverse osmosis (RO) is the most preferable process for water recovery from secondary effluent (SE) because of its higher rejection of impurities with lower associated cost and higher quality of product. Fouling still is a major challenge during the water recovery due to higher contaminant loadings in SE and high rejection capability of this membrane. The presence of suspended solids, colloidal and organic matters, and high level of biological activities in SE further elevate fouling potentiality. This review was performed to identify major foulants causing hindrance in sustainable application of reverse osmosis and to present available pre-treatment options for these foulants. There are four fouling types present in RO namely; bio-fouling, inorganic/scaling, organic, and particulate fouling. Among them; bio-fouling is less understood but dominant since the pre-treatment options are not well developed. Other fouling mechanisms have been overcome by well developed pre-treatments. The major foulants for RO are dissolved and macromolecular organic substances, sparingly soluble inorganic compounds, colloidal and suspended particles, and micro-organisms. Some of these potential fouling water quality parameters (PFWQPs) are interrelated with each others such as electrical conductivity is a surrogate measure of total dissolved solids with established stable relationship. Most of these PFWQPs such as total suspended solids, turbidity, chemical oxygen demand can be removed by conventional pre-treatment; some such as colloidal particles and micro-organisms by modern options and even others such as endocrine disrupting compounds, pharmaceutical and personal care products are still challenging for current pre-treatments. These foulants need to be identified properly to integrate appropriate pre-treatments for minimizing fouling potentiality to increase water recovery at minimal costs.

The Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test (Level 1) to discriminate elite junior Australian football players

The Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery (IR) Test is currently used to assess endurance performance in team sport athletes. However, to date, no data has been presented on its application to an elite junior Australian football (AF) playing group. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 1 (IR1) ability to discriminate between junior AF players at two different playing standards and a group of non-athletic healthy males. Sixty age matched participants (16.6 ± 0.5 years) spread over three groups (20 per group): elite junior footballers; sub-elite junior footballers; and non-athletic healthy males participated in this study. Participants undertook a single Yo-Yo test performance on an indoor basketball court for each group. A one-way ANOVA with Scheffe's post hoc analysis revealed the elite junior footballers covered a significantly greater total distance (p < 0.001) and completed a significantly greater number of high-intensity efforts (p < 0.001) in comparison to their sub-elite counterparts, whilst both AF groups performed significantly better (p < 0.001) than the non-athletic healthy males. This study demonstrates the ability of the Yo-Yo IR1 to discriminate endurance performance between elite and sub-elite AF players, whilst further distinguishing AF players from a non-athletic healthy control group.

The role of informal caregivers during cancer patients’ recovery from chemotherapy

Aims:  (i) To investigate the availability, perceived importance and roles of informal caregivers in the recovery of patients treated at day oncology centres and (ii) identify differences between patients with and without informal caregivers in the extent to which they experienced symptoms, and the level of bother symptoms caused.

Method:  Patients from three Australian hospitals (n = 122) were recruited during cycles 1 or 2 of adjuvant chemotherapy. Participants completed a modified version of the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (RSCL) each day for 5 days after chemotherapy. A telephone interview conducted 10 days post-treatment explored the availability, importance and roles of caregivers. During the interview, participants also completed the modified RSCL in which they were asked about the extent to which they experienced, and were bothered by, each symptom over the prior 5 days combined.

Results:  Overall, 71% of participants had an informal caregiver in the 5 days postchemotherapy, commonly a partner. More women (71%) than men (48%) had a caregiver (p < 0.05). Caregivers were perceived to be highly important; they were more important for women than men (U = 213.50, p < 0.01). The most common assistance caregivers provided was meal preparation and emotional support and companionship. On days 6–10 postchemotherapy, the extent to which overall physical symptoms were experienced was higher for patients with a caregiver than without (U = 987.50, p < 0.05); similarly their symptoms caused more bother (U = 966.00, p < 0.01).

Conclusions:  These findings highlighted the importance of informal caregivers to patients postchemotherapy. It is imperative that patients are informed of the importance of this support so a caregiver can be arranged, if possible. Understanding the needs of patients following chemotherapy would enable health professionals to advise patients, with or without caregivers, how to best prepare for and manage their recovery at home.

Effects of the aromatase inhibitor Fadrozole on plasma sex steroid secretion and oocyte maturation in female coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) during vitellogenesis

17β-estradiol, 17α-20β-dihydroxy-4-pregnen-3-one (17α-20β-P), and testosterone levels were measured in plasma samples obtained from vitellogenic coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) before and 32 days after injection of the aromatase inhibitor Fadrozole (AI). Plasma 17β-estradiol levels decreased significantly 6 h after injection in all AI treated fish. The higher the dose the longer the maintenance of low plasma 17β-estradiol levels. Inversely, plasma 17α-20β-P increased significantly 6 h after injection in all AI treated fish, and the higher the dose the longer the maintenance of high plasma 17α-20β-P levels. At 48 h after injection plasma testosterone levels were significantly higher in the AI treated groups. The oocyte maturation index showed that multiple injections with AI retarded oocyte development. Besides, oocyte diameter and GSI were lower in the same group, which presented high incidence of atresia of vitellogenic oocytes. The ovarian follicles and brain of the fish which received multiple injections secreted less 17β-estradiol, in vitro. These findings suggest that aromatase inhibitors such as Fadrozole may have a potential as a tool to regulate sexual development in salmon.