Impact of Integration of FO Membranes into a Granular Biomass AnMBR for Water Reuse.

The granular sludge based anaerobic membrane bioreactor (G-AnMBR) has gained emphasis in the last decade by combining AnMBR advantages (high quality permeate and biogas production towards energy positive treatment) and benefits of granular biomass (boosted biological activity and reduced membrane fouling). With the aim to further reduce energy costs, produce higher quality effluent for water reuse applications and improve system efficiency, a forward osmosis (FO) system was integrated into a 17 L G-AnMBR pilot. Plate and frame microfiltration modules were step by step replaced by submerged FO ones, synthetic wastewater was used as feed (chemical oxygen demand (COD) content 500 mg/L), with hydraulic retention time of 10 h and operated at 25 °C.

Second-Generation Magnesium Phosphates as Water Extractant Agents in Forward Osmosis and Subsequent Use in Hydroponics.

The recovery of nutrients from wastewater streams for their later use in agricultural fertilization is an interesting approach. Wastewater recovered magnesium phosphate (MgP) salts were used in a forward osmosis (FO) system as draw solution in order to extract water and to produce a nutrient solution to be used in a hydroponic system with lettuces (, L.).

Landfill Leachate Treatment by Using Second-Hand Reverse Osmosis Membranes: Long-Term Case Study in a Full-Scale Operating Facility.

Landfill leachate (LFL) has a complex inorganic, organic and microbiological composition. Although pressure-driven membrane technology contributes to reaching the discharge limits, the need for frequent membrane replacement (typically every 1-3 years) is an economical and environmental limitation. The goal of this work is to evaluate the feasibility of using second-hand reverse osmosis (RO) membranes to treat LFL in an industrially relevant environment.

Exploring the limitations of forward osmosis for direct hydroponic fertigation: Impact of ion transfer and fertilizer composition on effective dilution.

There is a need for water reuse technologies and applications to minimize the imminent water crisis, caused by the world population growth, the reduction of freshwater resources and the increasing water pollution. Fertilizer-drawn forward osmosis (FDFO) is a promising process capable of simultaneously extracting fresh water from low-quality sources as feed water (e.g.

Impact of Forward Osmosis Operating Pressure on Deformation, Efficiency and Concentration Polarisation with Novel Links to CFD.

Forward osmosis (FO) modules currently suffer from performance efficiency limitations due to concentration polarisation (CP), as well as pressure drops during operation. There are incentives to further reduce CP effects, as well as optimise spacer design for pressure drop improvements and mechanical support. In this study, the effects of applying transmembrane pressure (TMP) on FO membrane deformation and the subsequent impact on module performance was investigated by comparing experimental data to 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for three commercial FO modules.

Forward Osmosis as Concentration Process: Review of Opportunities and Challenges.

In the past few years, osmotic membrane systems, such as forward osmosis (FO), have gained popularity as "soft" concentration processes. FO has unique properties by combining high rejection rate and low fouling propensity and can be operated without significant pressure or temperature gradient, and therefore can be considered as a potential candidate for a broad range of concentration applications where current technologies still suffer from critical limitations. This review extensively compiles and critically assesses recent considerations of FO as a concentration process for applications, including food and beverages, organics value added compounds, water reuse and nutrients recovery, treatment of waste streams and brine management.

Impact of FO Operating Pressure and Membrane Tensile Strength on Draw-Channel Geometry and Resulting Hydrodynamics.

In an effort to improve performances of forward osmosis (FO) systems, several innovative draw spacers have been proposed. However, the small pressure generally applied on the feed side of the process is expected to result in the membrane bending towards the draw side, and in the gradual occlusion of the channel. This phenomenon potentially presents detrimental effects on process performance, including pressure drop and external concentration polarization (ECP) in the draw channel.

Exploring Submerged Forward Osmosis for Water Recovery and Pre-Concentration of Wastewater Before Anaerobic Digestion: A Pilot Scale Study.

Applying forward osmosis directly on raw municipal wastewater is of high interest for the simultaneous production of a high quality permeate for water reuse and pre-concentrating wastewater for anaerobic digestion. This pilot scale study investigates, for the first time, the feasibility of concentrating real raw municipal wastewater using a submerged plate and frame forward osmosis module (0.34 m) to reach 70% water recovery.

The French National Registry of patients with Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy.

Background: Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy is a rare inherited neuromuscular disease with an estimated prevalence of 1/20,000 and France therefore harbors about 3000 FSHD patients. With research progress and the development of targeted therapies, patients' identification through registries can facilitate and improve recruitment in clinical trials and studies.

Results: The French National Registry of FSHD patients was designed as a mixed model registry involving both patients and physicians, through self-report and clinical evaluation questionnaires respectively, to collect molecular and clinical data.

Influence of microalgae wastewater treatment culturing conditions on forward osmosis concentration process.

Forward osmosis is envisioned as a technology for microalgae concentration but fouling propensity during dewatering is currently a limiting factor that requires better understanding. The purpose of this study is to define the impact of microalgae culturing conditions on the downstream forward osmosis (FO) separation process-water recovery and microalgae harvesting. Chlorella vulgaris was cultivated in an outdoor lab-scale reactor fed with synthetic wastewater mimicking primary settled municipal influent under changing environmental conditions (temperature, solar radiation, nutrient balance) with varying hydraulic retention time.

Submerged Osmotic Processes: Design and Operation to Mitigate Mass Transfer Limitations.

Submerged forward osmosis (FO) is of high interest for bioreactors, such as osmotic membrane bioreactor, microalgae photobioreactor, food or bioproduct concentration where pumping through pressurized modules is a limitation due to viscosity or breakage of fragile components. However, so far, most FO efforts have been put towards cross flow configurations. This study provides, for the first time, insights on mass transfer limitations in the operation of submerged osmotic systems and offer recommendations for optimized design and operation.

Efficiently Combining Water Reuse and Desalination through Forward Osmosis-Reverse Osmosis (FO-RO) Hybrids: A Critical Review.

Forward osmosis (FO) is a promising membrane technology to combine seawater desalination and water reuse. More specifically, in a FO-reverse osmosis (RO) hybrid process, high quality water recovered from the wastewater stream is used to dilute seawater before RO treatment. As such, lower desalination energy needs and/or water augmentation can be obtained while delivering safe water for direct potable reuse thanks to the double dense membrane barrier protection.

Augmenting water supply by combined desalination/water recycling methods: an economic assessment.

Dry coastal communities increasingly need to consider non-traditional methods of augmenting their water supply. This study presents a preliminary economic comparison of three alternatives for increasing the water supply by 50% for a hypothetical baseline coastal scenario: increasing desalination (Scenario A), direct potable water reuse (DPWR) (Scenario B), and a novel retrofitted configuration of a hybrid forward osmosis-reverse osmosis (FO-RO) plant (Scenario C). The latter used the dilution of the seawater feed to increase the recovery and overall output water of the original RO step.

Clinical heterogeneity and a high proportion of novel mutations in a Chinese cohort of patients with dysferlinopathy.

Background And Aims: Dysferlinopathies are a group of autosomal recessive muscular dystrophies caused by mutations in the dysferlin gene. This study presents clinical features and the mutational spectrum in the largest cohort of Chinese patients analyzed to date.

Patients And Methods: A total of 36 unrelated Chinese patients with diagnostic suspicion of dysferlinopathy were clinically and genetically characterized.

Identification of splicing defects caused by mutations in the dysferlin gene.

Missense, iso-semantic, and intronic mutations are challenging for interpretation, in particular for their impact in mRNA. Various tools such as the Human Splicing Finder (HSF) system could be used to predict the impact on splicing; however, no diagnosis result could rely on predictions alone, but requires functional testing. Here, we report an in vitro approach to study the impact of DYSF mutations on splicing.

A human skeletal muscle interactome centered on proteins involved in muscular dystrophies: LGMD interactome.

Background: The complexity of the skeletal muscle and the identification of numerous human disease-causing mutations in its constitutive proteins make it an interesting tissue for proteomic studies aimed at understanding functional relationships of interacting proteins in both health and diseases.

Method: We undertook a large-scale study using two-hybrid screens and a human skeletal-muscle cDNA library to establish a proteome-scale map of protein-protein interactions centered on proteins involved in limb-girdle muscular dystrophies (LGMD). LGMD is a group of more than 20 different neuromuscular disorders that principally affect the proximal pelvic and shoulder girdle muscles.

UMD-DYSF, a novel locus specific database for the compilation and interactive analysis of mutations in the dysferlin gene.

Mutations in the dysferlin gene (DYSF) lead to a complete or partial absence of the dysferlin protein in skeletal muscles and are at the origin of dysferlinopathies, a heterogeneous group of rare autosomal recessive inherited neuromuscular disorders. As a step towards a better understanding of the DYSF mutational spectrum, and towards possible inclusion of patients in future therapeutic clinical trials, we set up the Universal Mutation Database for Dysferlin (UMD-DYSF), a Locus-Specific Database developed with the UMD® software. The main objective of UMD-DYSF is to provide an updated compilation of mutational data and relevant interactive tools for the analysis of DYSF sequence variants, for diagnostic and research purposes.

Interactions with M-band titin and calpain 3 link myospryn (CMYA5) to tibial and limb-girdle muscular dystrophies.

Mutations in the C terminus of titin, situated at the M-band of the striated muscle sarcomere, cause tibial muscular dystrophy (TMD) and limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) type 2J. Mutations in the protease calpain 3 (CAPN3), in turn, lead to LGMD2A, and secondary CAPN3 deficiency in LGMD2J suggests that the pathomechanisms of the diseases are linked. Yeast two-hybrid screens carried out to elucidate the molecular pathways of TMD/LGMD2J and LGMD2A resulted in the identification of myospryn (CMYA5, cardiomyopathy-associated 5) as a binding partner for both M-band titin and CAPN3.

[The amazing treatment of ringworm in a Nantes hospital at the beginning of the 20th century].

In 1900, in Nantes, the ringworm was a real plague. Despite the very painful cares recovery could not be hoped before two years while the poor boys were roaming around far from school. At the Home St Jacques, a district for children suffering from ringworm and a department of electro-radiology were open where Doctor Gustave Bureau began to use X Rays to cure the ill hair and create a long lasting alopecia.

The genome of the blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni.

Schistosoma mansoni is responsible for the neglected tropical disease schistosomiasis that affects 210 million people in 76 countries. Here we present analysis of the 363 megabase nuclear genome of the blood fluke. It encodes at least 11,809 genes, with an unusual intron size distribution, and new families of micro-exon genes that undergo frequent alternative splicing.

The Trypanosoma cruzi L1Tc and NARTc non-LTR retrotransposons show relative site specificity for insertion.

The trypanosomatid protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi contains long autonomous (L1Tc) and short nonautonomous (NARTc) non-long terminal repeat retrotransposons. NARTc (0.25 kb) probably derived from L1Tc (4.

Evolution of non-LTR retrotransposons in the trypanosomatid genomes: Leishmania major has lost the active elements.

The ingi and L1Tc non-LTR retrotransposons--which constitute the ingi clade--are abundant in the genome of the trypanosomatid species Trypanosoma brucei and Trypanosoma cruzi, respectively. The corresponding retroelements, however, are not present in the genome of a closely related trypanosomatid, Leishmania major. To study the evolution of non-LTR retrotransposons in trypanosomatids, we have analyzed all ingi/L1Tc elements and highly degenerate ingi/L1Tc-related sequences identified in the recently completed T.

What the genome sequence is revealing about trypanosome antigenic variation.

African trypanosomes evade humoral immunity through antigenic variation, whereby they switch expression of the gene encoding their VSG (variant surface glycoprotein) coat. Switching proceeds by duplication of silent VSG genes into a transcriptionally active locus. The genome project has revealed that most of the silent archive consists of hundreds of subtelomeric VSG tandem arrays, and that most of these are not functional genes.

The genome of the African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei.

African trypanosomes cause human sleeping sickness and livestock trypanosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa. We present the sequence and analysis of the 11 megabase-sized chromosomes of Trypanosoma brucei. The 26-megabase genome contains 9068 predicted genes, including approximately 900 pseudogenes and approximately 1700 T.