Use and impact of a novel nurse-led consultation model in a palliative care consultation service for terminally ill cancer patients in Taiwan: an 11-year observational study.

Purpose: The early integration of palliative care for terminally ill cancer patients improves quality of life. We have developed a new nurse-led consultation model for use in a palliative care consultation service (PCCS) to initiate early palliative care for cancer patients.

Methods: In this 11-year observational study, data were collected from the Hospice-Palliative Clinical Database (HPCD) of Taichung Veterans General Hospital (TCVGH).

Land use, hydrology, and climate influence water quality of China's largest river.

Influences of multiple environmental factors on water quality patterns is less studied in large rivers. Landscape analysis, multiple statistical methods, and the water quality index (WQI) were used to detect water quality patterns and influencing factors in China's largest river, the Yangtze River. Compared with the dry season, the wet season had significantly higher total phosphorus (TP), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), and turbidity (TUR).

Functional Interrelationships of Microorganisms in Iron-Based Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment.

This study explicated the functional activities of microorganisms and their interrelationships under four previously reported iron reducing conditions to identify critical factors that governed the performance of these novel iron-dosed anaerobic biological wastewater treatment processes. Various iron-reducing bacteria (FeRB) and sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) were identified as the predominant species that concurrently facilitated organics oxidation and the main contributors to removal of organics. The high organic contents of wastewater provided sufficient electron donors for active growth of both FeRB and SRB.

Magnetic sludge byproducts for adsorptive phosphorus removal: Resource recovery from iron-based anaerobic sewage sludge.

This study evaluated feasibility of resource recovery from iron-based sewage sludge from a novel Fe(III)-dosed anaerobic bioreactor used for wastewater treatment. Sludge samples were calcined at five different temperatures (300, 350, 400, 450, and 500 °C) to investigate the transformation of the sludge into different magnetic phases of iron oxide particles. The material phase analysis revealed the presence of 14 to 39 wt% magnetite and 8 to 19 wt% maghemite for different temperature treatments, which indicate the successful conversion of sludge materials into magnetic particles.

A holistic assessment of water quality condition and spatiotemporal patterns in impounded lakes along the eastern route of China's South-to-North water diversion project.

Water quality is one of the key determinants for assessing effectiveness and success of water diversions, but rarely studied at a spatial scale that crosses large river basins. Multiple statistical methods and the water quality index (WQI) were used to assess overall condition and detect spatiotemporal patterns of water quality in a series of impounded lakes along the Eastern Route of China's South-to-North Water Diversion Project. Principal components analysis and analysis of variances identified three groups with distinct water quality characteristics: upstream Gaoyou Lake and Hongze Lake showing relatively higher nutrients, turbidity, and total suspended solids; downstream Dongping lake and Donghu Lake showing higher conductivity, total hardness, and chloride; and Luoma Lake and Nansi Lake intermediate between the two former groups.

Attenuation of organics contamination in polymers processing effluent using iron-based sludge: process optimization and oxidation mechanism.

The feasibility of using iron extracted from acid mine drainage (AMD) as Fenton's reagent for removal of organics pollutants from polymer and plastics manufacturing effluent was investigated in this study. AMD iron dose, HO concentration and pH were evaluated as the treatment factors for their effects on organics oxidation. Optimum treatment conditions were identified using response surface methodological analysis (RSM), and of the ranges of the treatment factors examined, an optimal treatment combination was found to be AMD iron concentration: 40 mg/L and HO: 500 mg/L at pH 2.

Eutrophication and heavy metal pollution patterns in the water suppling lakes of China's south-to-north water diversion project.

This study used non-supervised machine learning self-organizing maps (SOM) in conjunction with traditional multivariate statistical techniques (e.g., hierarchical cluster analysis, principle component analysis, Pearson's correlation analysis) to investigate spatio-temporal patterns of eutrophication and heavy metal pollution in the water supplying lakes (i.

Effects of Fe/S ratio on the kinetics and microbial ecology of an Fe(III)-dosed anaerobic wastewater treatment system.

Effects of Fe(III)/sulfate (Fe/S) ratio on organic carbon oxidation kinetics and microbial ecology of a novel Fe(III)-dosed anaerobic wastewater treatment system were investigated in this study. Fixed-film batch bioreactors under three Fe/S molar ratios (1, 2, and 3) yielded COD oxidation rates that increased with the Fe/S ratio, and estimated Michaelis-Menten model parameters V ranging in 0.47-1.

Background electrolytes and pH effects on selenate adsorption using iron-impregnated granular activated carbon and surface binding mechanisms.

Iron-impregnated granular activated carbon (Fe-GAC) has been shown effective for selenite adsorptive removal from aqueous solutions, but similar effectiveness was not observed with selenate. This study examined the effects of background electrolytes and pH on selenate adsorption on to Fe-GAC, and surface bindings to elucidate the selenate adsorption mechanisms. The decrease magnitude of selenate adsorption capacity under three background electrolytes followed the order: LiCl > NaCl > KCl, as ionic strength increased from 0.

Continuous sulfidogenic wastewater treatment with iron sulfide sludge oxidation and recycle.

This study evaluated the technical feasibility of packed-bed sulfidogenic bioreactors dosed with ferrous chloride for continuous wastewater treatment over a 450-day period. In phase I, the bioreactors were operated under different combinations of carbon, iron, and sulfate mass loads without sludge recycling to identify optimal treatment conditions. A COD/sulfate mass ratio of 2 and a Fe/S molar ratio of 1 yielded the best treatment performance with COD oxidation rate of 786 ± 82 mg/(L⋅d), which resulted in 84 ± 9% COD removal, 94 ± 6% sulfate reduction, and good iron retention (99 ± 1%) under favorable pH conditions (6.

A case study for orphaned chemicals: 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM) and propylene glycol phenyl ether (PPH) in riverine sediment and water treatment processes.

There are an estimated 30,000 chemicals in commerce used in quantities >1016kg per year in the US. Unfortunately there is limited information on the chemicals partitioning and reactivity properties. These orphaned or understudied chemicals are viewed as non-hazardous but can still pose serious economic, health, environmental and societal impacts as evidenced by the January 2014 spill of 37,900L of crude-MCHM (primarily 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol) and stripped-PPH (primarily dipropylene glycol phenyl ether and propylene glycol phenyl ether) into the Elk River near Charleston, WV.

Improved COD Measurements for Organic Content in Flowback Water with High Chloride Concentrations.

An improved method was used to determine chemical oxygen demand (COD) as a measure of organic content in water samples containing high chloride content. A contour plot of COD percent error in the Cl(-)-Cl(-):COD domain showed that COD errors increased with Cl(-):COD. Substantial errors (>10%) could occur in low Cl(-):COD regions (<300) for samples with low (<10 g/L) and high chloride concentrations (>25 g/L).

Kinetics and microbial ecology of batch sulfidogenic bioreactors for co-treatment of municipal wastewater and acid mine drainage.

The kinetics and microbial ecology in sulfidogenic bioreactors used in a novel two-stage process for co-treatment of acid mine drainage (AMD) and municipal wastewater (MWW) were investigated. Michaelis-Menten modeling of COD oxidation by sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) (Vmax=0.33mgL(-1)min(-1), Km=4.

Two-stage combined treatment of acid mine drainage and municipal wastewater.

This study examined the feasibility of the combined treatment of field-collected acid mine drainages (AMD, pH = 4.2 ± 0.9, iron = 112 ± 118 mg/L, sulfate = 1,846 ± 594 mg/L) and municipal wastewater (MWW, avg.

Effect of the disinfection agents chlorine, UV irradiation, silver ions, and TiO2 nanoparticles/near-UV on DNA molecules.

Extracellular DNA in municipal wastewater and effluents from hospitals and R&D laboratories contains antimicrobial resistance and recombinant genes that are today considered as a new class of emerging contaminants. The objective of this research was to investigate the effect of disinfection agents on the integrity of DNA molecules by using real-time PCR. Escherichia coli cell suspensions and genomic DNA in aqueous solution were exposed to increasing doses of disinfection systems, including chlorination, UV irradiation, silver ions, and TiO2 nanoparticles/near-UV.

As(III) removal using an iron-impregnated chitosan sorbent.

An iron-impregnated chitosan granular adsorbent was newly developed to evaluate its ability to remove arsenic from water. Since most existing arsenic removal technologies are effective in removing As(V) (arsenate), this study focused on As(III). The adsorption behavior of As(III) onto the iron-impregnated chitosan absorbent was examined by conducting batch and column studies.

Fate of amoxicillin in mixed-culture bioreactors and its effects on microbial growth and resistance to silver ions.

This research focused on studying the fate of amoxicillin (AMX) in mixed-culture bioreactors and its effects on bacterial growth and bacterial resistance to silver-ion disinfection. The bioreactors were dosed with a range of AMX (10-70 mg L(-1) d(-1)) mimicking a biological treatment unit of a proposed water recovery system for long-term space missions. Aqueous-phase AMX concentrations in the bioreactors were monitored to characterize the kinetics of selected AMX fate processes.

The effects of individual PCB congeners on the soil bacterial community structure and the abundance of biphenyl dioxygenase genes.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are toxic environmental contaminants that represent a class of 209 congeners characterized by different degrees of chlorination and substitution patterns. Most of experimental studies about microbial degradation of PCBs have been conducted on PCB mixtures, even though evidence accumulated in bacteria and other organisms shows that exposure to different congeners may have different biological effects. Microcosm experiments were conducted using aerobic agitated soil slurries individually exposed to PCB congeners with different degrees of chlorination: PCB-3, 15, 28, and 77, and the commercial mixture Aroclor 1242.

Effects of highway construction on stream water quality and macroinvertebrate condition in a mid-atlantic highlands watershed, USA.

Refining best management practices (BMPs) for future highway construction depends on a comprehensive understanding of environmental impacts from current construction methods. Based on a before-after-control impact (BACI) experimental design, long-term stream monitoring (1997-2006) was conducted at upstream (as control, n = 3) and downstream (as impact, n = 6) sites in the Lost River watershed of the Mid-Atlantic Highlands region, West Virginia. Monitoring data were analyzed to assess impacts of during and after highway construction on 15 water quality parameters and macroinvertebrate condition using the West Virginia stream condition index (WVSCI).

Responses of streams in central Appalachian Mountain region to reduced acidic deposition--comparisons with other regions in North America and Europe.

Data from 5 wet deposition stations and 21 streams during 1980-2006 were analyzed to investigate chemical responses of streams to reduced acidic deposition in the central Appalachian Mountain region of West Virginia, USA. Wet deposition of acidic anions (i.e.

Adsorptive selenite removal from water using iron-coated GAC adsorbents.

Removal of selenite from aqueous phase using iron-coated granular activated carbons (GAC) was investigated in this study. Five different types of GAC were used for iron coating by oxidizing ferrous chloride with sodium hypochlorite and the iron-coated GAC (Fe-GAC) were tested for selenite removal. Nitrogen adsorption-desorption analyses indicated that Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) specific surface area, pore size, and pore volume decreased with the iron coating.

Development of a nucleoside analog UV light sensor.

Conjugation of the photosensitive nucleoside (E)-5-(2-methoxycarbonylethenyl)cytidine to biotin provided a means to attach this analogue to microparticles for dosimetry applications that require UV sensor mobility.