An Efficient Method of Noroviruses Recovery from Oysters and Clams

Noroviruses (NoVs) are widespread causes of nonbacterial gastroenteritis. Outbreaks of NoVs caused diseases are commonly ascribed to the consumption of contaminated shellfish. The concentration and RNA extraction of NoVs are crucial steps of detecting NoVs in shellfish. This study aimed to select a simple, rapid and highly efficient recovery method of NoVs detection with real-time RT-PCR. Four methods of recovering GI.3 and GII.4 NoVs from spiked digestive tissues of oysters and clams, respectively, were compared, of them, the method involving proteinase K and PEG 8000 was found the most efficient. With this method, 9.3% and 13.1% of GI.3 and GII.4 NoVs were recovered from oysters and 9.6% and 12.3% of GI.3 and GII.4 NoVs were recovered from clams, respectively. This method was further used to detect NoVs in 84 oysters (Crassostrea gigas) and 86 clams (Ruditapes philippinarum) collected from 10 coastal cities in China from Jan. 2011 to Feb. 2012. The NoVs isolation rates were 10.47% of clams (9/86) and 7.14% of oysters (6/84). All the detected NoVs belonged to genotype GII. The NoVs recovery method selected is efficient for NoVs detection in oysters and clams.

Application of the Material Balance Method in Paleoelevation Recovery: A Case Study of the Longmen Mountains Foreland Basin on the Eastern Margin of the Tibetan Plateau

We applied the material balance principle of the denudation volume and sedimentary flux to study the denudation-accumulation system between the Longmen Mountains （Mts.） and the foreland basin. The amount of sediment in each sedimentation stage of the basin was estimated to obtain the denudation volume, erosion thickness and deposit thickness since the Late Triassic Epoch, to enable us to recover the paleoelevation of the provenance and the sedimentary area. The results show the following： （1） Since the Late Triassic Epoch, the elevation of the surface of the Longmen Mts. has uplifted from 0 m to 2751 m, and the crust of the Longmen Mts. has uplifted by 9.8 km. Approximately 72% of the materials introduced have been denuded from the mountains. （2） It is difficult to recover the paleoelevation of each stage of the Longmen Mts. foreland basin quantitatively by the present-day techniques and data. （3） The formation of the Longmen Mts. foreland basin consisted of three stages of thrust belt tectonic load and three stages of thrust belt erosional unload. During tectonic loading stages （Late Triassic Epoch, Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous, Late Cretaceous-Miocene）, the average elevation of Longmen Mts. was lower （approximately 700-1700 m）. During erosional unloading stages （Early and Middle Jurassic, Middle Cretaceous and Jiaguan, Late Cenozoic）, the average elevation of Longmen Mts. was high at approximately 2000-2800m.

Technical Methods for Recovering Sericin from Degumming Wastewater

Silk sericin is a natural polymer,which is often discarded as waste in silk reeling production.Sericin protein increases the COD value of degumming wastewater and increases the difficulty of sewage treatment.The recovery and utilization of sericin protein can minimize environmental problems,and has high scientific and commercial value.This paper introduced and analyzed current technical methods of recycling sericin from silk degumming wastewater,providing a reference for the utilization of recovered sericin.

A Derivative Recovery Spectral Volume Model for the Analysis of Constituents Transport in One-Dimensional Flows

The treatment of advective fluxes in high-order finite volume models is well established, but this is not the case for diffusive fluxes, due to the conflict between the discontinuous representation of the solution and the continuous structure of analytic solutions. In this paper, a derivative reconstruction approach is proposed in the context of spectral volume methods, for the approximation of diffusive fluxes, aiming at the reconciliation of this conflict. Two different reconstructions are used for advective and diffusive fluxes： the advective reconstruction makes use of the information contained in a spectral cell, and allows the formation of discontinuities at the spectral cells boundaries; the diffusive reconstruction makes use of the information contained in contiguous spectral cells, imposing the continuity of the reconstruction at the spectral cells boundaries. The method is demonstrated by a number of numerical experiments, including the solution of shallow-water equations, complemented with the advective-diffusive transport equation of a conservative substance, showing the promising abilities of the numerical scheme proposed.

Spectral Transmittance of Di-methyl Silicon Oil as a Heat Transfer Material for Concentrator Solar Cells

The accelerated life test was carded out to investigate the change of spectral transmittance of di-methyl silicon oil and the effects on the electrical performance of silicon solar cell. The di-methyl silicon oil samples be- fore and after accelerated life test were analyzed by FT-IR, GC-MS and LC-MS. The ring compounds and linear compounds with larger molecular weight were detected. The spectral transmittance of di-methyl silicon oil de- creased because the chromophore and auxochrome of the products made a sunlight receive decrease on the surface of the solar celt, and resulted in the reduction of cell performance. According to the decrease of spectral transmit- tance of di-methyl silicon oil, two recovery methods were proposed. The results showed that extraction was supe- rior to vacuum distillation in recovering the aged di-methyl silicon oil.

Assessment of porous aquifer hydrogeological parameters using automated groundwater level measurements in Greece

In this paper,the hydrogeological parameters of a confined aquifer,such as transmissivity(T),storativity(S)and radius of influence(R),have been assessed using real groundwater level measurements recorded by a monitoring network,consisting of automated municipal water supply boreholes at Nea Moudania aquifer,Chalkidiki,Greece.Particularly,the paper focused on the correlation between the drawdown and the constant flow rate during pumping time.So the Cooper-Jacob and the recovery test method were applied in order to delineate if turbulent head losses occur,as well as the impact of incorrect measurements of the radial distance(r)in the accuracy of estimating S values.The results show that a)the occurrence of a linear correlation between s and Q indicates a negligible turbulent head loss in the pumping wells and thus a reasonable flow rate usage,b)the validity of storativity values could be compromised if the r value is not accurately measured,and c)recovery test method can be used as an indicator of residual drawdown(s’)caused by previous pumping cycles,when the straight line intersecting the logarithmic t/t’axis has a value greater than 1.

An easily recoverable thermo-sensitive polyelectrolyte as draw agent for forward osmosis process

As a potential solution to the crises of energy and resources, forward osmosis(FO) has been limited by the development of draw agents. An ideal draw agent should be able to generate high osmotic pressure and can be easily recovered. In this study, a thermo-sensitive polyelectrolyte of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-acrylic acid)(PNA)is developed as an efficient draw agent, and two easy and simple methods are proposed to effectively recover the polyelectrolytes. After adjusting the pH value of polyelectrolyte solutions to around 6.0, the polyelectrolyte can generate relatively high osmotic pressure, and induce average water fluxes of 2.09 and 2.95 L·m^(-2)·h^(-1) during12 h FO processes when the polyelectrolyte concentrations are 0.20 and 0.38 g·ml^(-1) respectively. After acidifying and heating to 70 °C, the PNA-10 polyelectrolyte can aggregate together because of hydrophobic association and separate from water, so it can be easily recovered by either simple centrifugation or gravitational sedimentation. The recovery ratios of PNA-10 polyelectrolyte in both methods are as high as 89%, and the recovered polyelectrolytes can be reused with almost the same FO performance as fresh ones. The results in this study provide valuable guidance for designing efficient and easily recoverable draw agents for FO processes.

Contact-Stress-Based Stress Recovery Methods for Discontinuous Deformation Analysis

Discontinuous deformation analysis(DDA)has been widely applied for the simulation of block systems that have many discontinuous surfaces.The penalty method is utilized to ensure that there are no penetrations between blocks.A linear polynomial function for displacement leads to a constant stress for a block,which cannot precisely describe the stress field within the block.Therefore,a high-order polynomial displacement function and a flue mesh are always used to improve the precision of the stress field.However,these means are not practical for simulating block systems that have many contacts.In this paper,the contact-stress-based stress recovery methods are proposed for DDA.High-precision solutions for the contact stresses on the boundaries of the blocks are utilized.The first-order Gaussian point of a block is the block's centroid,where the constant stress obtained via DDA is of higher precision.The high-precision solutions for the stresses are utilized in the least squares method to recover a single block's inner stress field.The proposed methods enhance the resolution of the stress field inside a single block without increasing the computational effort in the main iterative process for displacement in DDA.Numerical examples are simulated using both the finite element method(FEM)with a fine mesh and the proposed DDA program.The recovered DDA results can accurately describe the distribution of the stresses in a single block and,in some areas,have the same precision as the FEM results.Moreover,the precision of the proposed methods improves as the gradient of the contact stress on the boundary decreases.

Power recovery method for testing the efficiency of the ECD of an integrated generation unit for offshore wind power and ocean wave energy

Offshore wind power and ocean wave energy are clean,renewable and rich resources.The integrated generation unit for the two

An Approximate Riemann Solver for Advection-Diffusion Based on the Generalized Riemann Problem

We construct an approximate Riemann solver for scalar advection-diffusion equations with piecewise polynomial initial data.The objective is to handle advection and diffusion simultaneously to reduce the inherent numerical diffusion produced by the usual advection flux calculations.The approximate solution is based on the weak formulation of the Riemann problem and is solved within a space-time discontinuous Galerkin approach with two subregions.The novel generalized Riemann solver produces piecewise polynomial solutions of the Riemann problem.In conjunction with a recovery polynomial,the Riemann solver is then applied to define the numerical flux within a finite volume method.Numerical results for a piecewise linear and a piecewise parabolic approximation are shown.These results indicate a reduction in numerical dissipation compared with the conventional separated flux calculation of advection and diffusion.Also,it is shown that using the proposed solver only in the vicinity of discontinuities gives way to an accurate and efficient finite volume scheme.

Trends in gravity changes from 2009 to 2013 derived from ground-based gravimetry and GRACE data in North China

North China is a key region for studying geophysical progress. In this study, ground-based and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment（GRACE） gravity data from 2009 to 2013 are used to calculate the gravity change rate（GCR） using the polynomial fitting method. In general, the study area was divided into the Shanxi rift, Jing-Jin-Ji（Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Province）, and Bohai Bay Basin（BBB） regions. Results of the distribution of the GCR determined from ground-based gravimetry show that the GCR appears to be ＂negativepositive-negative＂ from west to east, which indicates that different geophysical mechanisms are involved in the tectonic activities of these regions. However, GRACE solutions are conducted over a larger spatial scale and are able to show a difference between southern and northern areas and a mass redistribution of land water storage.

Modeling the Distribution of Marketable Timber Products of Private Teak(Tectona grandis L.f.)Plantations

Management of marketable products of private plantations will not be sustainable without class girth being identifiable readily. Modeling marketable products is a key to obtain good fitness between observed and theoretical girth distribution. We determine the best parameter recovery method with the Weibull function for two sylvicultural regimes (coppice and high forest). Data on stand variables were collected from 1101 sample plots. The three Weibull function parameters were estimated with three parameters recovery methods: the maximum likelihood method, the method of moments and the method of percentiles. Stepwise regression and the simultaneously re-estimated parameter using the Seemingly Unrelated Regression Estimation were applied to model each parameter. The results indicated that the three methods successfully predicted girth size distributions within the sample stands. The method of moments was the best one with lowest values of Reynolds error index and Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic however the sylvicultural regimes. The Weibull parameter distribution model developed for each of the two sylvicultural regimes was quite reliable.