Enhanced Cr(VI) removal and stabilization from bioleached wastewater by zero-valent iron coupled with hetero and autotrophic bacteria.

Zero-valent iron (Fe0) usually suffers from organic acid complexation and ferrochrome layer passivation in Cr(VI) removal from bioleached wastewater of Cr slag. In this work, a synergetic system combined Fe0 and mixed hetero/autotrophic bacteria was established to reduce and stabilize Cr(VI) from bioleached wastewater. Due to bacterial consumption of organic acid and hydrogen, severe iron corrosion and structured-Fe(II) mineral generation (e.g., magnetite and green rust) occurred on biotic Fe0 surface in terms of solid-phase characterization, which was crucial for Cr(VI) adsorption and reduction. Therefore, compared with the abiotic Fe0 system, this integrated system exhibited a 6.1-fold increase in Cr(VI) removal, with heterotrophic reduction contributing 3.4-fold and abiotic part promoted by hydrogen-autotrophic bacteria enhancing 2.7-fold. After reaction, the Cr valence distribution and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicated that most Cr(VI) was converted into immobilized products such as FexCr1-x(OH)3, Cr2O3, and FeCr2O4 by biotic Fe0. Reoxidation experiment revealed that these products exhibited superior stability to the immobilized products generated by Fe0 or bacteria. Additionally, organic acid concentration and Fe0 dosage showed significantly positive correlation with Cr(VI) removal within the range of biological adaptation, which emphasized that heterotrophic and autotrophic bacteria acted essential roles in Cr(VI) removal. This work highlighted the enhanced effect of heterotrophic and autotrophic activities on Cr(VI) reduction and stabilization by Fe0 and offered a promising approach for bioleached wastewater treatment.

Wide Residual Relation Network-Based Intelligent Fault Diagnosis of Rotating Machines with Small Samples.

Many existing fault diagnosis methods based on deep learning (DL) require numerous fault samples to train the diagnosis model. However, in industrial applications, rotating machines (RMs) operate in normal states for most of their service life with fault events being rare and thus failure samples are very limited. To solve the problem above, a novel wide residual relation network (WRRN) is proposed for intelligent fault diagnosis of the RMs. Specifically, the WRRN is trained by performing a series of learning tasks in RMs with sufficient samples to obtain knowledge about how to diagnose, and then it is directly transferred to realize fault task of the RM with small samples. In this method, a wide residual network-based feature extraction module is used to generate representative fault features from input samples, and a relation module is designed to calculate the relation score between the sample pairs so as to determine their categories. Extensive experiments are conducted on two RMs to validate the WRRN method. The results demonstrate that the WRRN can accurately identify the fault types of the RMs with only small samples or even one sample. The WRRN significantly outperforms the existing popular methods in diagnostic performance.

Parallel multi-fusion convolutional neural networks based fault diagnosis of rotating machinery under noisy environments.

Fault diagnosis has a great significance in preventing serious failures of rotating machinery and avoiding huge economic losses. The performance of the existing fault diagnosis approaches might be affected by two factors, i.e., the quality of fault features extracted from monitoring signals and the capability of fault diagnosis model. This paper proposes a new fault diagnosis method combined mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) with a designed parallel multi-fusion convolutional neural network (MFCNN) Specifically, a MFCC-based feature extraction method is defined to reduce the noise components in monitoring signal of rotating machinery and extract more useful low-frequency fault information for downstream task. Furthermore, a novel MFCNN is designed to enrich the high-level features after each convolution operation by using multiple activation functions, so as to improve the quality of the obtained fault features. Meanwhile, a new parallel MFCNN is constructed by using a defined structural ensemble operation to improve its diagnostic performance in different noise environments. Two typical bearing and gearbox failure datasets are applied to evaluate the performance of the proposed fault diagnosis method. The experimental results indicate that the proposed parallel MFCNN has the better diagnostic performance than other methods.

Phytoplankton community organization and succession by sea warming: A case study in thermal discharge area of the northern coastal seawater of China.

Thermal discharges from power plants elevate temperatures in the surrounding waters, and this warming of the marine environment inevitably influences phytoplankton communities. In this study, we conducted seasonal sampling in coastal waters of the Bohai Sea off Qinhuangdao, China. The results revealed that the coastal waters are notably affected by thermal discharge, with unseasonably-high water temperatures, particularly during winter. The change of phytoplankton community structure has been detected in the warmer coastal seawater. Although diatoms were the dominant species during field investigations, there were no significant seasonal changes in diatom abundance. In contrast, the density of dinoflagellates was low in all seasons due to the effects of thermal discharge. Consequently, the general trend in phytoplankton succession was interrupted. In general, the findings of this study may provide further insights into the warmer environmental impacts on phytoplankton communities in temperate regions.

Diversity in the Globally Distributed Diatom Genus Chaetoceros (Bacillariophyceae): Three New Species from Warm-Temperate Waters.

Chaetoceros is one of the most species rich, widespread and abundant diatom genera in marine and brackish habitats worldwide. It therefore forms an excellent model for in-depth biodiversity studies, assessing morphological and genetic differentiation among groups of strains. The global Chaetoceros lorenzianus complex presently comprises three species known to science. However, our recent studies have shown that the group includes several previously unknown species. In this article, 50 strains, mainly from high latitudes and from warm-temperate waters, were examined morphologically and genetically and the results compared with those of field studies from elsewhere. The strains clustered into five groups, two of which are formed by C. decipiens Cleve and C. mitra (Bailey) Cleve, respectively. Their species descriptions are emended based on samples collected close to the type localities. The three other groups are formed by new species, C. elegans sp. nov., C. laevisporus sp. nov. and C. mannaii sp. nov. Characters used to distinguish each species are: orientation of setae, shape and size of the apertures, shape, size and density of the poroids on the setae and, at least in some species, characters of the resting spores. Our aim is to cover the global species diversity in this complex, as correct species delineation is the basis for exploring biodiversity, distribution of organisms, interactions in the food web and effects of environmental changes.

The Fusion Expression of HBV preS Epitopes and the Core Antigen.

The DNA fragments encoding the preS epitopes of HBV surface antigen were fused to the HBc gene and expressed in E. coli under the control of the tac promoter. The products were analyzed by ELISA and Western blotting, which confirmed that the hybrid proteins were expressed as expected. Analysis by electron microscopy and CsCl density gradient ultracentrifugation revealed that all fusion proteins were able to form particles, only with a slightly lower density than the native multimeric HBc. Partially purified fusion particles were then used as immunogen to Balb/c mice and high titer antibody against the preS1(21-47) epitope was observed, which demonstrated that the immunogenictiy of preS1 (21-47) could be greatly improved when fused in the el loop in HBc protein.

The Expression of HCG Epitope Fused to Hepatits B Virus Core Antigen.

The DNA fragments encoding HGC-beta-37-CTP was amplified by PCR and fused to the core gene of HBV at the position of amino Acid 1(N-terminal fusion, pCn-HCG), 154(C-terminal fusion, pCc-HCG), 75-83(internal fusion,pCm-HCG), and both 75-83 and 154 (pC-HCG2) respectively. The fused genes were expressed in E. coli, and the antigenicity of both HBcAg and HCG as well as the expression level were analyzed. In addition, the chimeric particular characteristics of the proteins and their immunogenicity were identified. It revealed that the fusion proteins pCm-HCG and pCc-HCG were able to form particles, and that the fusion protein pCm-HCG could induce antibody of anti-HCG of high titers in mice, suggesting that the position at 75-83 amino acid residue should be a relatively promising fusion site for HCG.