A Novel Low-Temperature Thermal Desalination Technology Using Direct-Contact Spray Method

Electronic Circuits made of 2D Materials.

There is no molecular strategy for selectively increasing the Seebeck coefficient without reducing the electrical conductivity for organic thermoelectrics. Here, it is reported that the use of amphipathic side chains in an n-type donor-acceptor copolymer can selectively increase the Seebeck coefficient and thus increase the power factor by a factor of ≈5. The amphipathic side chain contains an alkyl chain segment as a spacer between the polymer backbone and an ethylene glycol type chain segment. The use of this alkyl spacer does not only reduce the energetic disorder in the conjugated polymer film but can also properly control the dopant sites away from the backbone, which minimizes the adverse influence of counterions. As confirmed by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations with the host-dopant distance as the only variable, a reduced Coulombic interaction resulting from a larger host-dopant distance contributes to a higher Seebeck coefficient for a given electrical conductivity. Finally, an optimized power factor of 18 µW m-1 K-2 is achieved in the doped polymer film. This work provides a facile molecular strategy for selectively improving the Seebeck coefficient and opens up a new route for optimizing the dopant location toward realizing better n-type polymeric thermoelectrics.

Concentrate (when discharged to the ocean) may have chronic/acute impacts on marine ecosystems, particularly in the mixing zone around outfalls. The environmental impact of the desalination plant discharges is very site- and volumetric specific, and depends to a great extent on the salinity tolerance of the specific marine microbial communities as well as higher order organisms inhabiting the water column in and around this extreme discharge environment. Scientific studies that aim to grant insight into possible impacts of concentrate discharge are very important, in order to understand how this may affect different marine species when exposed to elevated salinity levels or residual chemicals from the treatment process in the discharge site. The objective of this PhD research was to investigate the potential environmental effects of the concentrate discharge in the near-field area around the submerged discharge of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant by a combination of biological and hydrological studies. Possible changes in microbial abundance were assessed by using flow cytometric (FCM) analysis on a single-cell level in 107 samples, taken from the discharge area, the feed-water intake area and two control sites. Results indicate that changes in microbial abundance in the near-field area of the KAUST SWRO outfall are minor and appear to bethe result of a dilution effect rather than a direct impact of the concentrate discharge. In order to also investigate potential impacts on higher order organisms, a longterm in-situ salinity tolerance test at the discharge site was conducted on the coral Fungia granulosa and its photophysiology. The corals were exposed to elevated levels of salinity as a direct result of concentrate discharge. Their photosynthetic response after exposure to extreme salinity conditions around the full-scale operating SWRO desalination discharge was measured. A pulse amplitude modulated (PAM) fluorometer was used to assess photochemical energy conversion in photosystem II (PSII) measured under constant concentrate discharge conditions. Based on a literature review, we anticipated distinct impairment of photosynthetic characteristics as a response to elevated salinity levels. We also expected particularly quick indications of bleaching for the specimens exposed to the highest salinity levels. The hypothesis was strongly rejected as symbiotic dinoflagellates of Fungia granulosa demonstrated high tolerance to hyper saline stress as measured by effective quantum yield of PSII (ΔF/Fm’) during this study. A series of propulsion driven autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) missions with velocity and salinity measurements were used for possible plume detection and evaluation of the discharge. The Cornell Mixing Zone Expert System (CORMIX) was additionally utilized in order to assess discharge performance under different ambient velocity magnitudes. Results show that AUV missions could provide significant insight with regards to plume…

The Arabian Peninsula is one of the World’s largest dust source regions. It is also affected by natural and anthropogenic pollution of African, Asian, and European origin. As the Arabian Peninsula is highly under-sampled, we have since 2012 established and maintained aerosol monitoring sites at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), as well as in the North-Western part of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Red Sea coast. The sites incorporate the following instrumentation. Two CIMEL sun photometers operational since 2012 as a part of the NASA Aerosol Robotic NETwork (AERONET), providing aerosol optical depth (AOD) and aerosol parameters, reporting data to the NASA Goddard website (http://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/type_piece_of_map_opera_v2_new). The AOD distribution over the Red Sea is measured during KAUST Red Sea cruises using a hand-held sun photometer (Microtops II). The data are reported to the NASA Maritime Network (http://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/new_web/maritime_aerosol_network.html). Vertical Distribution of aerosols is sampled using the Micro Pulse Lidar (MPL) operating as a part of the NASA MPLNET (http://kimura.gsfc.nasa.gov/site--‐page?site=Kaust). We measure aerosol deposition rates on a monthly basis using passive samplers in different several locations (KAUST, 2015-2023; Al Wajh Lagoon, 2021-2022; DUBA & Tabuk,2022 -2023) and conducted a mineralogical analysis of deposited aerosols by X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and measured particle size distributions using Mastersizer3000.Our objective in this study is to conduct an in-depth analysis of the combined effects of natural and anthropogenic pollution on air quality, climate, and application of renewable energy across the Arabian Peninsula, providing a scientific foundation for model calibration in this region. Here we report on the data sets collected in 2012- 2023:KAUST campus site: Six dust deposition samplers, AERONET, MPL Al Wajh Lagoon site: Nine dust deposition samplers Duba site: Two dust deposition samplers Tabuk site: Two dust deposition samplers In our group’s research at KAUST, these data sets, in combination with the available satellite observations, were integrated into the meteorology-chemistry-aerosol model, WRF-Chem, to quantify the aerosol environmental impacts and support environmental decision-making in the region.

Keynote Speaker IFlexible piezoresistive material composed of conductive fillers and polymerProf. Luheng WangProfessor, doctoral supervisor, Shenghua Scholar Distinguished Professor, Central South University, ChinaBiography:Luheng Wang received the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Precision Instruments and Mechanology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is a professor and doctoral supervisor with the School of Information Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, China. He is currently the Shenghua scholar distinguished professor, and the leader of the CSU flexible sensor lab. His current research interest is to study the key mechanical/electrical properties and mechanisms for the novel flexible sensitive materials which possess multi-sensing-functions (e.g. pressure sensitive function, temperature sensitive function, magnetic sensitive function, and gas sensitive function, etc.), and to develop the multi-functional flexible sensor system based on the aforementioned sensitive materials.Research interests:Novel flexible sensitive materials, pressure sensitive function, temperature sensitive function, magnetic sensitive function, and gas sensitive function.:The composite composed of the conductive fillers and the polymer, which possesses not only the flexibility but also the piezoresistivity, can be used to develop the flexible pressure sensor. The progress in the research on the piezoresistivity of the composite is reported. The existing theories to explain the piezoresistive phenomena of the composite are summarized, including the “conductive filler gap theory”, the “conducting path theory”, the “conductive phase content theory”, and the “effective conductive path theory”. Furthermore, the limitations and the advantages of the aforementioned theories are compared and analyzed. Finally, the applications of the composite in the development of the flexible pressure sensor are presented.Keynote Speaker ⅡEmergence of topological and topological crystalline phases in T1BiS2 and T1SbS2Dr. Udo Erich Schwingenschl¨oglDoctor, King Abdullah University Of Science and Technology (KAUST), GermanyBiography:Dr. Udo Erich Schwingenschl¨ogl was a scientific employee in university of Augsburg, Germany from 07/2001–09/2004. From 09/2004–02/2008, he was a Secondary School Teacher in State of Bavaria, Germany. And from 03/2008–08/2008 he worked as a visiting Professor in University of Bras´ılia (ICCMP), Brazil. And during 09/2008– 10/2011, he was an assistant Professor in KAUST, Saudi Arabia. While during 09/2009–11/2012, he was the Program Chair “Materials Science & Engineering” of KAUST, Saudi Arabia. During 11/2011–06/2014, he was the Associate Professor in KAUST, Saudi Arabia, again. During 12/2012–06/2015, he became the Associate Dean “Physical Science & Engineering” in KAUST, Saudi Arabia. And until now, he was the professor of KAUST, Saudi Arabia.Research interests:Computational Physics and Materials Science, New Topological Materials:Using first-principles calculations, we investigate the band structure evolution and topological phase transitions in T1BiS2 and T1SbS2 under hydrostatic pressure as well as uniaxial and biaxial strain. The phase transitions are identified by parity analysis and by calculating the surface states. Zero, one, and four Dirac cones are found for the (111) surfaces of both T1BiS2 and T1SbS2 when the pressure grows, which confirm trivial-nontrivial-trivial phase transitions. The Dirac cones at the M points are anisotropic with large out-of-plane component. T1BiS2 shows normal, topological, and topological crystalline insulator phases under hydrostatic pressure, thus being the first compound to exhibit a phase transition from a topological to a topological crystalline insulator.

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO.41474099, 41674117 & 41630964). This paper is also based upon the work supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under award NO. 2230. We appreciate the open-source package of DENISE from https://github.com/danielkoehn/ and Mines Java Toolkit from https://github.com/dhale. We thank the useful advice from Tariq Alkhalifah (KAUST), Qiang Guo (KAUST), Zedong Wu (KAUST), Chenlong Wang (Tongji University) and Benxin Chi (Los Alamos).

BackgroundTumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) are key immune cells in the microenvironment of diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). The conventional M1/M2 classification of...

C.-Y.K. and C.-H.L. contributed equally to this work. This publication was financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST) (107-2221-E-009-113-MY3), the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) (OSR-2016-CRG5-3005), the KAUST Solar Center, KAUST Catalysis Center, and KAUST baseline funding. The authors would like to thank Prof. Nakamura Shuji of University of California, Santa Barbara and Dr. Lin Chien-Chung of the Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan for the helpful discussion, and express sincere gratitude to Everlight Electronics for helpful technical support with the LED devices.

The authors would like to thank Kadir Akbudak from ECRC at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and Mathieu Faverge and Florent Pruvost from INRIA Bordeaux for their support toward integrating AL4SAN into the HiCMA and Chameleon libraries, respectively. The authors would like also to thank Cray Inc. and Intel in the context of the Cray Center of Excellence and Intel Parallel Computing Center awarded to ECRC at KAUST. For computer time, this research used Shaheen-2 supercomputer hosted at the Supercomputing Laboratory at KAUST.

This work supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under Award No. OSR-2018-CPF-3669.02, KAUST OSR-CARF URF/1/3079-33-01, KAUST OSR-CRG RF/1/3383, KAUST OSR-CRG2018-3737, and IED OSR2019-4208. This work was supported in part by the US Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research (Grant Award No. N00014-20-1-2572). Financial support from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SI/501804-01 INTENT), the Swiss National Science Foundation (176552 Bridge Power, CRSII5_171000 Sinergia Episode), is acknowledged.

What is known and objectiveThe HbA1C marker used in assessing diabetes control quality is not sufficient in diabetes patients with thalassaemia.Case descriptionA male diabetic patient with thalassaemia was hospitalized due to distal neuropathic pain, right toe trophic ulcer, unacceptable five‐point glycaemic profile and recommended HbA1C value. After simultaneously initiated insulin therapy and management of ulcer by hyperbaric oxygen, the patient showed improved glycaemic control and ulcer healing, which led to the patient's discharge.What is new and conclusionIn thalassaemia and haemoglobinopathies, due to discrepancies in the five‐point glycaemic profile and HbA1C values, it is necessary to measure HbA1C with a different method or to determine HbA1C and fructosamine simultaneously.

Atmospheric conditions and air quality assessment over NEOM, kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract. The exploration of aerosol retrieval synergies from diverse combinations of ground-based passive Sun-photometric measurements with collocated active lidar ground-based and radiosonde observations using versatile Generalized Retrieval of Atmosphere and Surface Properties (GRASP) algorithm is presented. Several potentially fruitful aspects of observation synergy were considered. First, a set of passive and active ground-based observations collected during both day- and nighttime was inverted simultaneously under the assumption of temporal continuity of aerosol properties. Such an approach explores the complementarity of the information in different observations and results in a robust and consistent processing of all observations. For example, the interpretation of the nighttime active observations usually suffers from the lack of information about aerosol particles sizes, shapes and complex refractive index. In the realized synergy retrievals, the information propagating from the nearby Sun-photometric observations provides sufficient constraints for reliable interpretation of both day- and nighttime lidar observations. Second, the synergetic processing of such complementary observations with enhanced information content allows for optimizing the aerosol model used in the retrieval. Specifically, the external mixture of several aerosol components with predetermined sizes, shapes and composition has been identified as an efficient approach for achieving reliable retrieval of aerosol properties in several situations. This approach allows for achieving consistent and accurate aerosol retrievals from processing stand-alone advanced lidar observations with reduced information content about aerosol columnar properties. Third, the potential of synergy processing of the ground-based Sun-photometric and lidar observations, with the in situ backscatter sonde measurements was explored using the data from KAUST.15 and KAUST.16 field campaigns held at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in the August of 2015 and 2016. The inclusion of radiosonde data has been demonstrated to provide significant additional constraints to validate and improve the accuracy and scope of aerosol profiling. The results of all retrieval setups used for processing both synergy and stand-alone observation data sets are discussed and intercompared.

Background The Red Sea Research Center is part of a relatively new university on the Saudi Arabian Red Sea coast, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). KAUST officially opened in 2009 but began global collaborative research projects in 2007. Among the early discoveries arising from these collaborative projects was the identification of a whale shark aggregation site in the Red Sea. KAUST researchers have been studying this aggregation site since 2008. Approach KAUST researchers have employed various methods and technologies to track whale sharks, including acoustic tagging, satellite tagging technologies, genetics, and some technologies integrating the use of autonomous vehicles. Our whale shark studies include determining the population demographics of the sharks visiting our sites, the site fidelity of the sharks, and any potential connections with populations outside of the Red Sea. In 2012, KAUST began a collaborative effort with colleagues in the Marine Megafauna Foundation to study a whale shark aggregation at Mafia Island, Tanzania. Results The results from our movement studies highlight the pros and cons of various methodologies, and overall emphasize the importance of using multiple methods simultaneously to maximize the clarity of results. In Saudi Arabia, the whale sharks are very near to 50% male and 50% female, unusual compared to most aggregations. Satellite tracking suggests that the Saudi sharks migrate away from the site in the “off-season” and some are confirmed to have left the Red Sea. However, the majority of the sharks remain within the southern half of the Red Sea. Acoustic tracking of whale sharks at Mafia Island, in Tanzania, shows unexpected cryptic residency with many sharks being detected year-round despite a clear seasonal pattern in the sightings of whale sharks in boat-based surveys. These and brief summaries of our findings from other methods will be discussed. Conclusions The results from the Saudi aggregation are strikingly different from results of an aggregation we have been studying at Mafia Island, Tanzania. Future studies of plankton dynamics and fine-scale analysis of whale shark behavior may reveal fundamental differences in the sites that explain these differences in residency. Many emerging technologies hold great promise for improving our ability to learn more about the world's largest fish.

Molecular doping is a powerful tool to tune the thermoelectric (TE) properties of solution-processed semiconductors. In this work, we prepared a binary composite and effectively doped both of its constituents, that is, naphthalene diimide-bithiophene copolymers (PNDI2OD-T2) and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), by a 1H-benzimidazole derivative (N-DMBI). The doped composites show an n-type character and an in-plane TE figure of merit (ZT), exceeding the values obtained with the doped polymers. The use of SWCNTs consistently results in a higher σ with a maximum value above 102 S/cm, resulting in the highest power factor of 18.1 μW/mK2 for an SWCNT loading of 45.5 wt %. Furthermore, an SWCNT content up to 9 wt % does not compromise the low thermal conductivity of the polymer matrices, leading to a ZT value of 0.0045. The n-type composites show good solution processability and relatively stable Seebeck coefficients upon air exposure for 8 months.