Guarding Drinking Water Safety against Harmful Algal Blooms: Could UV/Cl Treatment Be the Answer?

Frequent and severe occurrences of harmful algal blooms increasingly threaten human health by the release of microcystins (MCs). Urgent attention is directed toward managing MCs, as evidenced by rising HAB-related do not drink/do not boil advisories due to unsafe MC levels in drinking water. UV/chlorine treatment, in which UV light is applied simultaneously with chlorine, showed early promise for effectively degrading MC-LR to values below the World Health Organization's guideline limits.

A high-throughput, turbulent-mixing, condensation aerosol concentrator for direct aerosol collection as a liquid suspension.

Trace measurement of aerosol chemical composition in workplace atmospheres requires the development of high-throughput aerosol collectors that are compact, hand-portable, and can be operated using personal pumps. We describe the design and characterization of a compact, high flow, Turbulent-mixing Condensation Aerosol-in-Liquid Concentrator (TCALC) that allows direct collection of aerosols as liquid suspensions, for off-line chemical, biological, or microscopy analysis. The TCALC unit, measuring approximately 12 × 16 × 18 cm, operates at an aerosol sample flowrate of up to 10 L min, using rapid mixing of a hot flow saturated with water vapor and a cold aerosol sample flow, thereby promoting condensational growth of aerosol particles.

Acyl-Homoserine Lactone Enhances the Resistance of Anammox Consortia under Heavy Metal Stress: Quorum Sensing Regulatory Mechanism.

Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) represents an energy-efficient process for the removal of biological nitrogen from ammonium-rich wastewater. However, the susceptibility of anammox bacteria to coexisting heavy metals considerably restricts their use in engineering practices. Here, we report that acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL), a signaling molecule that mediates quorum sensing (QS), significantly enhances the nitrogen removal rate by 24% under Cu stress.

Data Analytics to Support Policy Making for Noncommunicable Diseases: Scoping Review.

Background: There is an emerging need for evidence-based approaches harnessing large amounts of health care data and novel technologies (such as artificial intelligence) to optimize public health policy making.

Objective: The aim of this review was to explore the data analytics tools designed specifically for policy making in noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and their implementation.

Methods: A scoping review was conducted after searching the PubMed and IEEE databases for articles published in the last 10 years.

Compact, high-flow, water-based, turbulent-mixing, condensation aerosol concentrator for collection of spot samples.

A new high-flow, compact aerosol concentrator, using rapid, turbulent mixing to grow aerosol particles into droplets for dry spot sample collection, has been designed and tested. The "TCAC (Turbulent-mixing, Condensation Aerosol Concentrator)" is composed of a saturator for generating hot vapor, a mixing section where the hot vapor mixes with the cold aerosol flow, a growth tube where condensational droplet growth primarily occurs, and a converging nozzle that focuses the droplets into a beam. The prototype concentrator utilizes an aerosol sample flow rate of 4 L min.