Combining reverse osmosis and pulsed electrical current electrodialysis for improved recovery of dissolved organic matter from seawater

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the oceans is one of the largest dynamic reservoirs of carbon on earth, comparable in size to the atmospheric reservoir of carbon (as CO₂) in the atmosphere, or to the amount of carbon in all terrestrial and aquatic biota. The concerted efforts of earth scientists, atmospheric scientists, and biologists who study global biogeochemical cycles and the earth's climate have yielded a rather detailed understanding of carbon in the atmosphere and in biota. Marine dissolved organic matter (DOM) is far less well characterized, principally because it exists as a highly diluted mixture of perhaps millions of organic compounds in a highly saline aqueous solution. Prior to 2007, only around 1/3 of marine DOM was typically recovered from seawater for research purposes, regardless of the method of isolation. In 2007, reverse osmosis (RO) and electrodialysis (ED) were coupled to achieve recoveries of 64–93% of marine DOM. The level of residual salts in the concentrated samples, however, still precluded the characterization of marine DOM by solid-state NMR, mass spectrometry, or even elemental analysis. This paper describes a major improvement to the RO/ED method, in which pulsed ED is used (at sea) to reach roughly 100-fold greater removal of salts compared to non-pulsed ED while maintaining comparable recoveries of DOM.     

Estimation of the Lipschitz constant of a function

A number of global optimisation algorithms rely on the value of the Lipschitz constant of the objective function. In this paper we present a stochastic method for estimating the Lipschitz constant. We show that the largest slope in a fixed size sample of slopes has an approximate Reverse Weibull distribution. Such a distribution is fitted to the largest slopes and the location parameter used as an estimator of the Lipschitz constant. Numerical results are presented.     

Algorithms for generalized halfspace range searching and other intersection searching problems

In a generalized intersection searching problem, a set S of colored geometric objects is to be preprocessed so that, given a query object q, the distinct colors of the objects of S that are intersected by q can be reported or counted efficiently. These problems generalize the well-studied standard intersection searching problems and have many applications. Unfortunately, the solutions known for the standard problems do not yield efficient solutions to the generalized problems. Recently, efficient solutions have been given for generalized problems where the input and query objects are iso-oriented (i.e., axes-parallel) or where the color classes satisfy additional properties (e.g., connectedness). In this paper, efficient algorithms are given for several generalized problems involving objects that are not necessarily iso-oriented. These problems include: generalized halfspace range searching in , for any fixed d ≥ 2, and segment intersection searching, triangle stabbing, and triangle range searching in for certain classes of line segments and triangles. The techniques used include: computing suitable sparse representations of the input, persistent data structures, and filtering search.     

Quantum dots-based reverse phase protein microarray

CdSe nanocrystals, also called quantum dots (Qdots) are a novel class of fluorophores, which have a diameter of a few nanometers and possess high quantum yield, tunable emission wavelength and photostability. They are an attractive alternative to conventional fluorescent dyes. Quantum dots can be silanized to be soluble in aqueous solution under biological conditions, and thus be used in bio-detection. In this study, we established a novel Qdot-based technology platform that can perform accurate and reproducible quantification of protein concentration in a crude cell lysate background. Protein lysates have been spiked with a target protein, and a dilution series of the cell lysate with a dynamic range of three orders of magnitude has been used for this proof-of-concept study. The dilution series has been spotted in microarray format, and protein detection has been achieved with a sensitivity that is at least comparable to standard commercial assays, which are based on horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-catalyzed diaminobenzidine (DAB) chromogenesis. The data obtained through the Qdot method has shown a close linear correlation between relative fluorescence unit and relative protein concentration. The Qdot results are in almost complete agreement with data we obtained with the well-established HRP-DAB colorimetric array (R² = 0.986). This suggests that Qdots can be used for protein quantification in microarray format, using the platform presented here.     

Convexification and Concavification for a General Class of Global Optimization Problems

A kind of general convexification and concavification methods is proposed for solving some classes of global optimization problems with certain monotone properties. It is shown that these minimization problems can be transformed into equivalent concave minimization problem or reverse convex programming problem or canonical D.C. programming problem by using the proposed convexification and concavification schemes. The existing algorithms then can be used to find the global solutions of the transformed problems.     

Nanometer metallic copper particle synthesis in reverse micelles

We describe the synthesis in situ of copper nanoparticles in reverse micelles. It is possible to form metallic particles either surrounded or not surrounded by an oxide layer.     

Reverse lexicographic and lexicographic shifting

A short new proof of the fact that all shifted complexes are fixed by reverse lexicographic shifting is given. A notion of lexicographic shifting, Δ_lex—an operation that transforms a monomial ideal of S = K[x_i: i ∈ ℕ] that is finitely generated in each degree into a squarefree strongly stable ideal—is defined and studied. It is proved that (in contrast to the reverse lexicographic case) a squarefree strongly stable ideal I ⊂ S is fixed by lexicographic shifting if and only if I is a universal squarefree lexsegment ideal (abbreviated USLI) of S. Moreover, in the case when I is finitely generated and is not a USLI, it is verified that all the ideals in the sequence } are distinct. The limit ideal is well defined and is a USLI that depends only on a certain analog of the Hilbert function of I. Research partially supported by NSF grants DMS 0070571 and DMS 0100141.     

Balancing the competing demands of harvesting and safety from predation: Lévy walk searches outperform composite Brownian walk searches but only when foraging under the risk of predation

Some foragers have movement patterns that can be approximated by Lévy walks whilst others may be better represented as composite Brownian walks. Many attempts have been made to interpret these movement patterns in terms of optimal searching strategies for the location of randomly and sparsely distributed targets. Here it is shown that the relative merits of Lévy walk and composite Brownian walk searches are sensitively dependent upon target encounter dynamics which set the initial conditions for an extensive search. It is suggested these initial conditions are determined, at least in part, by the competing demands of harvesting and safety from predation. In accordance with observations, it is shown that Lévy walks are expected in tritrophic systems and where intraguild predation operates. Composite Brownian walks, on the other hand, are found to be advantageous when the risk of predation is low. Despite having fundamentally different properties, Lévy walks and composite Brownian walks can therefore compete a priori as possible models of animal movements. Throughout, attention is focused on searching for randomly and sparsely distributed resources that are not depleted or rejected once located but instead remain targets for future searches. We re-evaluate and overturn the widely held belief that in numerical simulations this ‘non-destructive’ searching scenario can faithfully and consistently represent destructive searching for patchily distributed resources, i.e. for resources that tend to occur in clusters rather than in isolation.     

BMO from dyadic BMO via expectations on product spaces of homogeneous type

Using the random dyadic lattices developed by Hytönen and Kairema, we build up a bridge between BMO and dyadic BMO, and hence one between VMO and dyadic VMO, via expectations over dyadic lattices on spaces of homogeneous type, including both the one-parameter and product cases. We also obtain a similar relationship between _Ap$A_p$ and dyadic _Ap$A_p$, as well as one between the reverse Hölder class _RHp${\mathit{RH}}_p$ and dyadic _RHp${\mathit{RH}}_p$, via geometric–arithmetic expectations. These results extend the earlier theory along this line, developed by Garnett, Jones, Pipher, Ward, Xiao and Treil, to the more general setting of spaces of homogeneous type in the sense of Coifman and Weiss.