Study on the properties of denitrifying carbon sources from cellulose plants and their nitrogen removal mechanisms

Carbon sources of cellulose plants are the promising materials that enhancing the activities of denitrifying bacteria in the groundwater system. To further verify the denitrification performance of cellulose plants and the main factors of affecting the denitrifying system, six cellulose plants from agricultural wastes (wood chip, corn cob, rice husk, corn straw, wheat straw, and sugar cane) were selected for bioavailable organic matter leaching experiments, carbon denitrification experiments, functional bacteria identification, and analysis experiments. The results show that the extracts of cellulose plants contain a mixed carbon sources system including small molecular organic acids, sugars, nitrogen-containing organic components, and esters. The qPCR results showed that the denitrifying bacteria had obvious advantages compare to anaerobic ammonia-oxidizing bacteria during the stable period; the denitrification experiment showed that each of six cellulose plants removed more than 80% of nitrogen, and the denitrification rates reached 1.00–2.00 mg N cm−3·d−1. The supplement of cellulose plants promotes the metabolism rate of denitrifying bacteria, and the additional denitrifying bacteria have little effect on nitrate removal. In summary, the expected denitrification reaction occurred in the cellulose plant system, which is suitable as a carbon source material for water body nitrogen pollution remediation.

Histogenous Hypoxia and Acid Retention in Schizophrenia: Changes in Venous Blood Gas Analysis and SOD in Acute and Stable Schizophrenia Patients

Background: Oxidative stress may play an important role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia (SCH), and there is considerable indirect evidence that hypoxia is closely related to SCH, but direct evidence of hypoxia in SCH has never been found.Methods:In this study, superoxide dismutase (SOD), venous blood gas, and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) were examined in 40 SCH patients and compared with those of 40 healthy controls. The patients were treated with combination of atypical antipsychotics and Ditan Huayu Lishen decoction (a Chinese medicine decoction) and examined in the acute and stable period, respectively. Comparisons of indicators between two groups were performed using an independent-samples t-test, comparison of indicators between the acute and stable periods in the SCH group was performed using paired-samples t-test. Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression analyses were performed to investigate the relationships between the effect indicators.Results: Higher venous pH, PvO2, and fasting blood glucose levels and lower SOD, lactic acid, and PvCO2 levels were found in SCH patients compared with the control group; SOD was negatively correlated with the general psychopathology subscale score (PANSS-G), and PvO2 levels were closely related to venous pH in SCH and related to PvCO2 in the control group. It was also found that SOD activity showed no significant difference in acute and stable period, whereas PvO2 showed a downward trend, and venous pH was decreased significantly after treatment. Both the venous pH and PvO2 were higher in patients with SCH than that in healthy controls.Conclusion: It suggests that histogenous hypoxia and acid retention exist in relation to SCH, and there is an improvement of acid retention and a downward trend in histogenous hypoxia after combination treatment. Venous pH, PvO2, and PvCO2 are trait variables, but not state variables of SCH. The theory of histogenous hypoxia and acid retention can well explain the decrease in pH value and the increase in lactic acid in brain tissue of patients with SCH. Histogenous hypoxia and acid retention closely related to glucose metabolism. So they may play an important role in pathophysiology for SCH.

POLYETIOLOGY OF NEONATAL GASTROENTERITIS IN CALVES

The work was carried out at the Department of «Animal Diseases and VSE» of the Saratov State Agrarian University named after N.I. Vavilov, as well as in JSC «Meliorator» and JSC «Trudovaya»of the Marksovsky district of the Saratov region. The effect of insufficient feeding on the level of amino acids in the blood and colostrum and the effect of these factors on the incidence of diarrhea in calves has been established. With less complete and monotonous feeding (below the norm of feed units by 8.2 %, digestible protein by 44.2 %, calcium by 15.5 % and phosphorus by 50.9 %), there is a significant decrease in lysine, serine, alanine, tryptophan, methionine, valine, phenylalanine, leucine+ isoleucine, threonine, cystine+cysteine, arginine, histidine and tyrosine, and the amount of glycine, aspartic acid and glutamic acid decreases by a statistically unreliable amount. In cows that were in the stable period on a more complete feed diet, the content of free amino acids in the blood is lower in the month before calving by an average of 6.8 % and immediately after calving by 11.1 % than in the blood of cows 5-7 months before calving. In animals that were in the stable period on a less complete feed diet, the content of free amino acids in the blood is lower by an average of 18.4 % a month before calving and by 30 % immediately after calving than in the blood of cows 5-7 months before calving. The content of free amino acids in the blood of cows of the farm «prosperous» for diarrhea is higher than in the blood of cows of the farm «dysfunctional» for the disease.

Elections will produce uncertain outlook in Chile

Significance Neither of the two coalitions that have governed since the restoration of democracy in 1990 seems likely to form the next government, marking the beginning of a new and probably less stable period. The new government taking office in March will have to grapple, at least initially, with slow growth and higher inflation as well as conflicting demands for change and stability. Impacts Traditional party loyalties have been undermined by a new stability-versus-change cleavage which will complicate governability. The introduction in 2017 of a more proportional voting system for legislative elections has prompted the rise of new parties. Boric’s attempts to expand into the centre will come up against the presence of the Communist Party in his coalition.

Resource-saving technologies of hay harvesting in the mountainous zone of the Central Caucasus

The authors present the technology and descriptions of aggregates for hay harvesting on mountain slopes. The aim of the study is to reduce the loss of green mass when harvesting hay with the use of mountain modification aggregates, to improve the safety of hay with the use of a preservative (table salt). The object of the study is a complex of hay harvesters, aggregated with low-clearance tractors, designed to work on sloping areas with a slope of up to 16°. The tasks of the research included: to select a set of hay harvesters, to study and use their technical capabilities, which allow optimizing the harvesting time, ensuring the lowest losses of the harvested feed, increasing its quality and safety for the winter-stable period of keeping animals. The novelty of the technical solution is that the selected haymaking machines allow you to reduce the time of haymaking operations in mountainous areas and reduce the cost of manual labor. Tests of this technology were carried out in the mountain zone of the RSO – Alania (Dargavs basin, the stronghold of the SKNIIGPSH) at an altitude of 1540 m above sea level in the south-eastern exposure with a slope steepness of up to 150. Results. It was found that the content of pressed hay increased-feed units by 32.1 %; dry matter by 29.6 %; crude protein by 17.3 %; fat by 7.4 %; fiber by 14.2 %; sugar by 17.6 %; metabolic energy by 8.0 %. The developed technology allows more than 1.2 times to reduce mechanical losses, provides an increase in productivity compared to manual harvesting in 4–5 times, reducing the time cleaning 3 times at the same time increase the nutritive value of forage mass, increases palatability harvested forage 18.5 %, which positively affects the physiological condition of the animals during the winter housing period, increasing milk yield is 11.7 %.

Association between capillary congestion and macular edema recurrence in chronic branch retinal vein occlusion through quantitative analysis of OCT angiography

This study aims to quantitatively investigate the optical coherence tomographic angiography (OCTA) findings of capillary congestion and its association with macular edema (ME) recurrence in chronic branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO). We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 115 consecutive patients with major ischemic BRVO who reached stable macula (without ME for two consecutive visits) at baseline (the first visit within the stable period). All patients were classified into a recurrence or non-recurrence groups depending on ME recurrence. Capillary congestion of deep capillary plexuses (DCP-C) and other abnormal capillary lesions were segmented, and their areas, vascular densities, and mean retinal thicknesses (MRT) were calculated. The main outcomes were differences between the two groups and risk factors for recurrence among baseline and OCTA parameters. A total of 76 eyes were included, of which 22 (28.9%) recurred. DCP-C existed in all eyes at baseline. MRT of DCP-C (p = 0.006) was greater in the recurrence group. Greater MRT of DCP-C (OR: 1.044; p = 0.002) and more frequent intravitreal injections (OR: 1.803; p < 0.001) were associated with a higher risk of relapsing ME. DCP-C may contribute to the anatomical stability of chronic BRVO and simultaneously be the source of ME.

A simple mathematical model for the evaluation of the long first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

We propose herein a mathematical model to predict the COVID-19 evolution and evaluate the impact of governmental decisions on this evolution, attempting to explain the long duration of the pandemic in the 26 Brazilian states and their capitals well as in the Federative Unit. The prediction was performed based on the growth rate of new cases in a stable period, and the graphics plotted with the significant governmental decisions to evaluate the impact on the epidemic curve in each Brazilian state and city. Analysis of the predicted new cases was correlated with the total number of hospitalizations and deaths related to COVID-19. Because Brazil is a vast country, with high heterogeneity and complexity of the regional/local characteristics and governmental authorities among Brazilian states and cities, we individually predicted the epidemic curve based on a specific stable period with reduced or minimal interference on the growth rate of new cases. We found good accuracy, mainly in a short period (weeks). The most critical governmental decisions had a significant temporal impact on pandemic curve growth. A good relationship was found between the predicted number of new cases and the total number of inpatients and deaths related to COVID-19. In summary, we demonstrated that interventional and preventive measures directly and significantly impact the COVID-19 pandemic using a simple mathematical model. This model can easily be applied, helping, and directing health and governmental authorities to make further decisions to combat the pandemic.

Constructing the Phrase Dictionary and Visualizing Consumer Behaviors in the Food Industry Based on Online Reviews during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic affects food industrylargely. In this study, the data of online reviewsare collected from dianping.com during the outbreak and stable period of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, and the rules in combination with the statistical methods are adopted to train the dictionary ofrestaurant phrases.After the K-means algorithm is adopted to cluster the phrases in the dictionary, and the cluster class tags are defined, the co-occurrence analysis and the wordcloud analysis are conducted on the reviews. As indicated from the results, consumers pay attention to the three basic elements (i.e., services, environments and tastes), as well as to the social distance between people; Consumers who are more concerned about the pandemic situation raise higher requirements on environmental health issues than ordinary consumers, and place stress on the acquisition of security. As revealed from the mentioned results, restaurants should primarily take measures to maintain safe social distance between people and raise more rigorous environmental hygiene requirements on the environment. This method is served as a reference for the further online reviews analysis and provides implications for the management of the restaurants in COVID-19 pandemic period.

Study on Adsorption of Methylene Blue from Aqueous Solution by Biochar Derived from Mimosa Pigra Plant

Biochar from mimosa pigra was studied to remove methylene blue (MB) from aqueous solution. The properties of biochars were determined using Fourier Transform Infrared, scanning electron microscope, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller. The biochar achieved the yield of 24.62 % at 500 oC pyrolysis. The specific surface area of ​​the biochar is 285.53 m2/g, the total pore size is 0.153 cm3/g and the ash content is 2.79%. The optimal dose of removing MB of the biochar is 5 g/L and the optimal pH is 2 - 10. MB removal reached over 80% in the first 30 min, followed by a stable period of 120 to 360 min reaching over 90% of removal. Maximum adsorption capacity reached 20.18 mg/g at 25 oC. MB adsorption data is suitable for kinetic models in order: Avrami > Elovich > PSO > PFO. The adsorption process may comprise physical and chemical adsorption andmultiple stages.

DC-DC Zeta Power Converter: Ramp Compensation Control Design and Stability Analysis

The design of robust and reliable power converters is fundamental in the incorporation of novel power systems. In this paper, we perform a detailed theoretical analysis of a synchronous ZETA converter controlled via peak-current with ramp compensation. The controller is designed to guarantee a stable Period 1 orbit with low steady state error at different values of input and reference voltages. The stability of the desired Period 1 orbit of the converter is studied in terms of the Floquet multipliers of the solution. We show that the control strategy is stable over a wide range of parameters, and it only loses stability: (i) when extreme values of the duty cycle are required; and (ii) when input and reference voltages are comparable but small. We also show by means of bifurcation diagrams and Lyapunov exponents that the Period 1 orbit loses stability through a period doubling mechanism and transits to chaos when the duty cycle saturates. We finally present numerical experiments to show that the ramp compensation control is robust to a large set of perturbations.