Effects of water and CMA in mitigating industrial road dust resuspension

Water spraying and/or chemical suppressants such as salts and polymers have been suggested to reduce road dust resuspension due to their capability to increase adhesion, and therefore the effective size and weight of particles, but contrasting results have been obtained so further testing are needed. This study presents the first results of street washing and Calcium Magnesium Acetate (CMA) efficiencies at two industrial roads (paved and unpaved) in the Mediterranean region where the high solar radiation, warm climate, and scarce precipitation, may play a key role in determining the efficiency of mitigation techniques Results show that, at both sites, street washing (water only) was more effective than CMA. Street washing made observe 18% (daily basis) and >90% (first hour) reductions of kerbside PM10 concentrations for the paved and unpaved road respectively, while with CMA PM10 decrease was generally lower and with less statistical significance.his work was funded by AIRUSE LIFE+ ENV/ES/584 project. The study was also partially funded by Spanish Ministry of Environment through the Fundación Biodiversidad, with project acronym EMIDIF. The logistic support from the City Hall of L'Alcora, and the Cantera La Torreta (grupo ORIGEN MATERIALES) company is also acknoweldged. Fulvio Amato is beneficiary of the Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral grant (JCI-2012-13473). Support is acknowledged to Generalitat de Catalunya 2014 SGR33 and to AXA Research Fund

Cross-Language Question Re-Ranking

We study how to find relevant questions in community forums when the language of the new questions is different from that of the existing questions in the forum. In particular, we explore the Arabic-English language pair. We compare a kernel-based system with a feed-forward neural network in a scenario where a large parallel corpus is available for training a machine translation system, bilingual dictionaries, and cross-language word embeddings. We observe that both approaches degrade the performance of the system when working on the translated text, especially the kernel-based system, which depends heavily on a syntactic kernel. We address this issue using a cross-language tree kernel, which compares the original Arabic tree to the English trees of the related questions. We show that this kernel almost closes the performance gap with respect to the monolingual system. On the neural network side, we use the parallel corpus to train cross-language embeddings, which we then use to represent the Arabic input and the English related questions in the same space. The results also improve to close to those of the monolingual neural network. Overall, the kernel system shows a better performance compared to the neural network in all cases.Comment: SIGIR-2017; Community Question Answering; Cross-language Approaches; Question Retrieval; Kernel-based Methods; Neural Networks; Distributed Representation

Production of n-propyl acetate by reactive distillation : experimental and theoretical study

First steps of the development of a catalytic reactive distillation process for the production of n-propyl acetate based on experiments and simulations are proposed. The kinetics for homogeneously (sulphuric acid) and heterogeneously (Amberlyst 15) catalysed reaction were investigated and the constants for a pseudo-homogeneous model are presented. Pilot plant experiments were performed using a homogeneous strong acid catalyst in a packed column. A top-column decanter is used to withdraw the aqueous phase and to reflux the organic phase. Simulation results are in good agreement with experimental data. Thermodynamics nonidealities are taken into account using VLE and LLE NRTL interaction parameters. Alcohol conversion and n-propyl acetate purity may be dramatically increased just by adding to the pilot plant a stripping section in an additional column: six different configurations are identified to achieve such a production. The startup is studied in order to determine the best strategy to achieve steady-state conditions. The strong influence of the composition of the initial charging in the decanter can be seen and an initial charging of the two-phase top product leads to the fastest startup

Identificação do gene pccB A partir da varredura de uma biblioteca genômica de Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis visando uma vacina contra linfadenite caseosa.

Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis é o agente etiológico da linfadenite caseosa (LC), que acomete principalmente ovinos e caprinos. Esta doença é causadora de grandes problemas na ovinocaprinocultura. Diversas pesquisas tem sido realizadas na busca de uma vacina eficaz contra a LC. Estudos recentes utilizando um gene reporter em C. pseudotuberculosis, identificou a expressão do gene pccB (cadeia β da propionil CoA carboxilase) em macrófagos, indicando um possível envolvimento na virulência deste patógeno e um bom antígeno a ser explorado no desenvolvimento de uma nova estratégia vacinal. Como a sequência deste gene ainda não está disponível em banco de dados, o objetivo deste trabalho foi realizar varredura em uma biblioteca genômica de C. pseudotuberculosis para identificação completa da sequência do gene pccB. Uma sonda foi gerada a partir de um fragmento parcial do gene pccB marcado com [α32P]dCTP. A biblioteca genômica foi plaqueada em placas de lise para obter 2X103 pfu/placa e em seguida transferida para membranas de nylon previamente tratadas com soluções desnaturante, neutralizante e de pré-hibridização, a fim de, posteriormente, reagir com a sonda radioativa seguido da exposição das membranas a um filme de raio X. Dois clones positivos foram isolados e utilizados como template em reação de PCR, utilizando primers específicos da biblioteca genômica, gerando produtos de 3 Kb que foram sequenciados e analisados por BlastX, verificando-se 82% de identidade com o gene pccB2 de C. diphtheriae. Acreditando que haja sintenia entre as duas espécies mencionadas, foram desenhados primers com genes que flanqueiam o gene pccB2 de C. diphtheriae. Esses foram utilizados como iniciadores em reação de PCR, tendo como molde o DNA genômico de C. Pseudotuberculosis, gerando um fragmento de 2,1 Kb que foi clonado no vetor pGEM-T easy, sequenciado e analisado por BlastX. Resultados preliminares indicam que novos primers precisam ser desenhados para concluir a sequência deste gene

Análise da variabilidade intra-espécie dos genes pld e rpoB de Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis por meio de marcadores PCR-RFLP.

Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis é o agente etiológico da linfadenite caseosa em ovinos e caprinos, uma doença infectocontagiosa crônica caracterizada por abscessos em linfonodos superficiais ou internos. Os animais acometidos podem apresentar lesões internas ou externas, o que representa perdas econômicas graves na caprinovinocultura, como o comprometimento da produção de lã em ovinos, deficiência reprodutiva, condenação da carne ou morte do animal. Uma vez estabelecida a infecção no rebanho, torna-se difícil sua erradicação. Com o objetivo de avaliar a variabilidade genética intra-espécie em C. pseudotuberculosis, 31 isolados provenientes de seis municípios do Estado de Pernambuco, sendo 23 de caprinos e oito de ovinos, tiveram os seus DNAs genômicos extraídos e analisados por reação em cadeia da polimerase e análise de polimorfismos por tamanho de fragmentos de restrição (PCR-RFLP). Os locis escolhidos foram os genes pld e rpoB, cujas seqüências dos oligonucleotídeos amplificaram fragmentos de 924 e 447 pares de bases (pb), respectivamente. Os produtos da amplificação foram digeridos com as enzimas Pst I e Msp I (gene pld) e HpyCh4 IV e Msp I (gene rpoB). Os fragmentos de restrição foram corridos em gel de poliacrilamida a 15%, os quais foram corados com brometo de etídeo. Para o gene pld, digerido com a enzima Pst I, foram obtidos fragmentos de 566, 195, 91 e 72 pb; e com a enzima Msp I, fragmentos de 395, 369, 108 e 52 pb. O gene rpoB digerido com a enzima HpyCh4 IV apresentou fragmentos de 235, 126 e 86 pb; e com a enzima Msp I apresentou fragmentos de 222, 93, 78 e 54 pb. O padrão de bandas obtido para os 31 isolados de C. pseudotuberculosis, analisados neste estudo, foi monomórfico, não havendo, portanto, polimorfismo entre os diferentes isolados, independentes da espécie hospedeira ou da área geográfica estudada, o que corrobora com o padrão homogêneo da infecção para a região.bitstream/CNPGC-2009-09/12402/1/DOC167.pd

I paesi lontani e lo straniero nelle Lettere curiose

The Lettere curiose translate into Italian a selection of texts from the Marquis d'Argens' Lettres Juives, a work that had great success throughout Europe. The Italian version, attributed to the Venetian Ponziano Conti, succeeds in a difficult undertaking: to offer the public of Italian readers a text that can not only overcome the barriers of the national censorships and the obstacles of the cultural differences, but also preserve the elements the caused the success of the French text

Comparação genotípica de isolados de Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis de caprinos e ovinos do sertão de Pernambuco.

Objetivou-se com este estudo comparar genotipicamente 35 isolados de Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis recuperados de conteúdo de abscessos de caprinos e ovinos com linfadenite caseosa, procedentes de cinco municípios localizados no Sertão de Pernambuco, Brasil. Utilizou-se a técnica de fingerprint RFLP-PCR com as enzimas de restrição Hpy-Ch4 e Msp 1 aplicada ao gene pld. Não houve diferença nos padrões de fragmentos de bandas entre os isolados, independente da espécie hospedeira ou da área geográfica estudada, definindo-se um padrão genotípico homogêneo de C. pseudotuberculosis responsável por abscessos superficiais na região

Two-vibron bound states in alpha-helix proteins : the interplay between the intramolecular anharmonicity and the strong vibron-phonon coupling

The influence of the intramolecular anharmonicity and the strong vibron-phonon coupling on the two-vibron dynamics in an $\alpha$-helix protein is studied within a modified Davydov model. The intramolecular anharmonicity of each amide-I vibration is considered and the vibron dynamics is described according to the small polaron approach. A unitary transformation is performed to remove the intramolecular anharmonicity and a modified Lang-Firsov transformation is applied to renormalize the vibron-phonon interaction. Then, a mean field procedure is realized to obtain the dressed anharmonic vibron Hamiltonian. It is shown that the anharmonicity modifies the vibron-phonon interaction which results in an enhancement of the dressing effect. In addition, both the anharmonicity and the dressing favor the occurrence of two different bound states which the properties strongly depend on the interplay between the anharmonicity and the dressing. Such a dependence was summarized in a phase diagram which characterizes the number and the nature of the bound states as a function of the relevant parameters of the problem. For a significant anharmonicity, the low frequency bound states describe two vibrons trapped onto the same amide-I vibration whereas the high frequency bound states refer to the trapping of the two vibrons onto nearest neighbor amide-I vibrations.Comment: may 2003 submitted to Phys. Rev.

The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition

This review article presents evidence for the claim that frequency effects are pervasive in children's first language acquisition, and hence constitute a phenomenon that any successful account must explain. The article is organized around four key domains of research: children's acquisition of single words, inflectional morphology, simple syntactic constructions, and more advanced constructions. In presenting this evidence, we develop five theses. (i) There exist different types of frequency effect, from effects at the level of concrete lexical strings to effects at the level of abstract cues to thematic-role assignment, as well as effects of both token and type, and absolute and relative, frequency. High-frequency forms are (ii) early acquired and (iii) prevent errors in contexts where they are the target, but also (iv) cause errors in contexts in which a competing lower-frequency form is the target. (v) Frequency effects interact with other factors (e.g. serial position, utterance length), and the patterning of these interactions is generally informative with regard to the nature of the learning mechanism. We conclude by arguing that any successful account of language acquisition, from whatever theoretical standpoint, must be frequency sensitive to the extent that it can explain the effects documented in this review, and outline some types of account that do and do not meet this criterion