Wetlands for wastewater treatment and subsequent recycling of treated effluent : a review

Due to water scarcity challenges around the world, it is essential to think about non-conventional water resources to address the increased demand in clean freshwater. Environmental and public health problems may result from insufficient provision of sanitation and wastewater disposal facilities. Because of this, wastewater treatment and recycling methods will be vital to provide sufficient freshwater in the coming decades, since water resources are limited and more than 70% of water are consumed for irrigation purposes. Therefore, the application of treated wastewater for agricultural irrigation has much potential, especially when incorporating the reuse of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous, which are essential for plant production. Among the current treatment technologies applied in urban wastewater reuse for irrigation, wetlands were concluded to be the one of the most suitable ones in terms of pollutant removal and have advantages due to both low maintenance costs and required energy. Wetland behavior and efficiency concerning wastewater treatment is mainly linked to macrophyte composition, substrate, hydrology, surface loading rate, influent feeding mode, microorganism availability, and temperature. Constructed wetlands are very effective in removing organics and suspended solids, whereas the removal of nitrogen is relatively low, but could be improved by using a combination of various types of constructed wetlands meeting the irrigation reuse standards. The removal of phosphorus is usually low, unless special media with high sorption capacity are used. Pathogen removal from wetland effluent to meet irrigation reuse standards is a challenge unless supplementary lagoons or hybrid wetland systems are used

Study of hadronic event-shape variables in multijet final states in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe

Constraints on parton distribution functions and extraction of the strong coupling constant from the inclusive jet cross section in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe

Divisive Gain Modulation with Dynamic Stimuli in Integrate-and-Fire Neurons

The modulation of the sensitivity, or gain, of neural responses to input is an important component of neural computation. It has been shown that divisive gain modulation of neural responses can result from a stochastic shunting from balanced (mixed excitation and inhibition) background activity. This gain control scheme was developed and explored with static inputs, where the membrane and spike train statistics were stationary in time. However, input statistics, such as the firing rates of pre-synaptic neurons, are often dynamic, varying on timescales comparable to typical membrane time constants. Using a population density approach for integrate-and-fire neurons with dynamic and temporally rich inputs, we find that the same fluctuation-induced divisive gain modulation is operative for dynamic inputs driving nonequilibrium responses. Moreover, the degree of divisive scaling of the dynamic response is quantitatively the same as the steady-state responses—thus, gain modulation via balanced conductance fluctuations generalizes in a straight-forward way to a dynamic setting

Study of Vector Boson Scattering and Search for New Physics in Events with Two Same-Sign Leptons and Two Jets

A study of vector boson scattering in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV is presented. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.4 fb(-1) collected with the CMS detector. Candidate events are selected with exactly two leptons of the same charge, two jets with large rapidity separation and high dijet mass, and moderate missing transverse energy. The signal region is expected to be dominated by electroweak same-sign W-boson pair production. The observation agrees with the standard model prediction. The observed significance is 2.0 standard deviations, where a significance of 3.1 standard deviations is expected based on the standard model. Cross section measurements for (WW +/-)-W-+/- and WZ processes in the fiducial region are reported. Bounds on the structure of quartic vector-boson interactions are given in the framework of dimension-eight effective field theory operators, as well as limits on the production of doubly charged Higgs bosons

Measurement of prompt J/ψ pair production in pp collisions at√s = 7 Tev

Abstract: Production of prompt J/ψ meson pairs in proton-proton collisions at (formula presented.) = 7 TeV is measured with the CMS experiment at the LHC in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 4.7 fb−1. The two J/ψ mesons are fully reconstructed via their decays into μ+μ− pairs. This observation provides for the first time access to the high-transverse-momentum region of J/ψ pair production where model predictions are not yet established. The total and differential cross sections are measured in a phase space defined by the individual J/ψ transverse momentum (pTJ/ψ) and rapidity (|yJ/ψ|): |yJ/ψ | 6.5 GeV/c; 1.2 4.5 GeV/c. The total cross section, assuming unpolarized prompt J/ψ pair production is 1.49 ± 0.07 (stat) ±0.13 (syst) nb. Different assumptions about the J/ψ polarization imply modifications to the cross section ranging from −31% to +27%

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

Search for neutral MSSM Higgs bosons decaying to a pair of tau leptons in pp collisions

A search for neutral Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (MSSM) decaying to tau-lepton pairs in pp collisions is performed, using events recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 24.6 fb(-1), with 4.9 fb(-1) at 7TeV and 19.7 fb(-1) at 8TeV. To enhance the sensitivity to neutral MSSM Higgs bosons, the search includes the case where the Higgs boson is produced in association with a b-quark jet. No excess is observed in the tau-lepton-pair invariant mass spectrum. Exclusion limits are presented in the MSSM parameter space for different benchmark scenarios, m(h)(max), m(h)(mod+), m(h)(mod-), light-stop, light-stau, T-phobic, and low-m(H). Upper limits on the cross section times branching fraction for gluon fusion and b-quark associated Higgs boson production are also given