Separate Sequences Research Articles

Extended Material Recovery from Municipal Solid Waste Incinerator Bottom Ash Using Magnetic, Eddy Current, and Density Separations

This research introduces an extended processing method for increasing the possibility of valorizing processed IBA (pr.IBA), which is currently only used as a construction material in landfill sites, considering its immense potential in valuable metal and mineral concentrations. Following a selective milling process, an extended material recovery sequence involving a magnetic, eddy current, and density separation sequence is developed. Based on the observations and outcomes explored in the present study, a substantially reliable and practical industrial approach is designed and tested to generate a cleaner mineral fraction and complementarily collect valuable metals from pr.IBA. Specifically, four enhanced valuable product streams can be anticipated, output mineral, high-magnetic, low-magnetic, and non-ferrous, which can be further utilized as alternative materials for cement clinker and concrete production coupled with iron, copper, and aluminum recovery in a conventional recycling operation. Therefore, in addition to introducing an additional perspective and moving one step closer to closing the waste management loop, this proposed method offers the opportunity to save primary materials and reduce carbon emissions by providing valuable alternative secondary resources.

Contextualised Processing of Stimuli Modulates Auditory Mismatch Responses in the Rat.

Mismatch negativity (MMN), an auditory prediction error signal, is an enhanced response to unexpected (deviant) stimuli compared to expected (standard) stimuli. There is strong interest in MMN due to reliable findings of reduced MMN in schizophrenia. To interpret reduced MMN in schizophrenia, an enhanced understanding of the factors that influence MMN amplitude could lead to a better understanding of neural mechanisms underpinning the reduction. While several laboratories have observed mismatch responses (MMRs) in rodents, this study assesses how MMR is altered in more complex auditory sequences in rats. Prediction-errors are elicited in relation to "predictive" internal models of regularities. These internal models are updated dynamically when a regularity changes, but human MMN exhibits order effects when two regularities alternate; while deviants in both regularities elicit MMN (ie, the model updates) there is a slower build-up in MMN amplitude over time in the second encountered regularity type. We investigate whether order effects occur in rat MMRs. MMRs were studied to rare ascending and descending frequency deviations in awake, freely moving Wistar rats using wireless telemetry in both separate sequences (one regularity at a time) and in alternating sequences where regularities changed back and forth. The rat MMR did not show order effects, however, substantial MMRs occurred in response to both ascending and descending deviants in the alternating context but to the ascending deviant only when the same regularities were presented separately. The longer-term sequence structure altered prediction-error signalling in rat auditory system revealing a long term context sensitivity in internal models.

Design and investigation of novel iridoid-based peptide conjugates for targeting EGFR and its mutants L858R and T790M/L858R/C797S: an in silico study.

In this work, we designed novel peptide conjugates with plant-based iridoid and lichen-derived depside derivatives to target the wild-type EGFR (WT) and its mutants, L858R and T790M/L858R/C797S triple mutant. These mutations are often expressed in multiple cancers, particularly lung cancer. Specifically, the iridoids included 7-deoxyloganetic acid (7-DGA) and loganic acid (LG), while the depside derivative was sekikaic acid (SK). These compounds are known for their innate anticancer properties and were conjugated with two separate peptide sequences KLPGWSG (K) and YSIPKSS (Y). These sequences have been shown to target EGFR in previous phage display library screening, although the mechanism is unknown. Thus, we created the di-conjugates for dual targeting and investigated their interactions of the di-conjugates and that of the neat peptides with the kinase domain of EGFR (WT) and the two mutants using molecular docking, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and MM-GBSA analysis. Docking studies revealed that the (7-DGA)2-K showed the highest binding affinity at - 9.3kcal/mol with the L858R mutant, while (LG)2-Y displayed the highest binding affinity at - 9.0kcal/mol for the triple mutant receptor. Our results indicated that several of the conjugates interacted with crucial residues of the kinase domain, including ASP855 and THR854 (activation loop), MET793 and PRO794 (hinge region), ARG841 (catalytic loop), and LYS728 and LEU718 of the glycine-rich P-loop. Interestingly, strong hydrophobic interactions were also observed with the C-terminal tail residues, such as PHE997 and ALA1000 as well as with ARG999 for the YSIPKSS peptide and most of the conjugates. The hydroxyl group of the cyclopentane ring and the oxygen of the pyran ring of the (7-DGA)2-peptide conjugates contributed to binding particularly in the hinge region, while the peptide components formed an extended structure that bound well into the C-lobe. The (SK)2-Y di-conjugate and KLPGWSG peptide formed hydrogen bonds with the SER797 residue of the triple mutant. Overall, our results show that the (7-DGA)2-K, di-conjugate, the (7-DGA)2-Y di-conjugate, and the neat YSIPKSS demonstrated strong and stable binding with the L858R mutant and the highly resistant triple mutant EGFR, respectively. The novel designed conjugates demonstrate potential for further optimization for laboratory studies aimed at developing new therapeutics for targeting specific EGFR mutant expressing cells.

Identify devices and events from non-IP heterogeneous IoT network traffic.

In recent years, notable advancements have been achieved in the realm of identifying IP-based Internet of Things (IoT) devices and events. Nevertheless, the majority of methods rely on extracting fingerprints or features from plain text IP-based packets, which limits their ability to accommodate heterogeneous IoT devices such as ZigBee and Z-Wave, and fails to address the challenge of limited traffic samples. To tackle these issues, we propose a novel approach based on IoT communication characteristics and featuring module extensibility. This method is presented to effectively identify IoT devices and events from non-IP heterogeneous IoT network traffic. To shield the differences caused by the heterogeneous IoT protocol, a heterogeneous sample extraction platform with an extensible structure is created to extract raw sequence samples from ZigBee and Z-Wave traffic, with potential for expansion to other protocols. To address the challenges arising from the scarcity of samples, a sample identification framework based on IoT communication characteristics is devised to create synthetic samples from the raw sequence samples, enabling concurrent processing of the raw and synthetic samples using an identification model featuring two separate sequence networks. Comparative assessments of our method against baseline sequence models and the latest techniques demonstrate the advantages of our approach in identifying non-IP heterogeneous IoT traffic. The experimental results indicate that our method achieves an average accuracy improvement of 29.7% compared to baseline models using only raw samples. Furthermore, our method shows improvements of 22.1%, 21.5%, and 21.8% in macro precision, macro recall, and macro F1-score, respectively, over the latest method.

Task-dependent coarticulation of movement sequences.

Combining individual actions into sequences is a hallmark of everyday activities. Classical theories propose that the motor system forms a single specification of the sequence as a whole, leading to the coarticulation of the different elements. In contrast, recent neural recordings challenge this idea and suggest independent execution of each element specified separately. Here, we show that separate or coarticulated sequences can result from the same task-dependent controller, without implying different representations in the brain. Simulations show that planning for multiple reaches simultaneously allows separate or coarticulated sequences depending on instructions about intermediate goals. Human experiments in a two-reach sequence task validated this model. Furthermore, in co-articulated sequences, the second goal influenced long-latency stretch responses to external loads applied during the first reach, demonstrating the involvement of the sensorimotor network supporting fast feedback control. Overall, our study establishes a computational framework for sequence production that highlights the importance of feedback control in this essential motor skill.

Assembly of mTORC3 Involves Binding of ETV7 to Two Separate Sequences in the mTOR Kinase Domain.

mTOR plays a crucial role in cell growth by controlling ribosome biogenesis, metabolism, autophagy, mRNA translation, and cytoskeleton organization. It is a serine/threonine kinase that is part of two distinct extensively described protein complexes, mTORC1 and mTORC2. We have identified a rapamycin-resistant mTOR complex, called mTORC3, which is different from the canonical mTORC1 and mTORC2 complexes in that it does not contain the Raptor, Rictor, or mLST8 mTORC1/2 components. mTORC3 phosphorylates mTORC1 and mTORC2 targets and contains the ETS transcription factor ETV7, which binds to mTOR and is essential for mTORC3 assembly in the cytoplasm. Tumor cells that assemble mTORC3 have a proliferative advantage and become resistant to rapamycin, indicating that inhibiting mTORC3 may have a therapeutic impact on cancer. Here, we investigate which domains or amino acid residues of ETV7 and mTOR are involved in their mutual binding. We found that the mTOR FRB and LBE sequences in the kinase domain interact with the pointed (PNT) and ETS domains of ETV7, respectively. We also found that forced expression of the mTOR FRB domain in the mTORC3-expressing, rapamycin-resistant cell line Karpas-299 out-competes mTOR for ETV7 binding and renders these cells rapamycin-sensitive in vivo. Our data provide useful information for the development of molecules that prevent the assembly of mTORC3, which may have therapeutic value in the treatment of mTORC3-positive cancer.

Random Carleson sequences for the Hardy space on the polydisc and the unit ball

We study the Kolmogorov 0−1 law for a random sequence with prescribed radii so that it generates a Carleson measure almost surely, both for the Hardy space on the polydisc and the Hardy space on the unit ball, thus providing improved versions of previous results of the first two authors and of a separate result of Massaneda. In the polydisc, the geometry of such sequences is not well understood, so we proceed by studying the random Gramians generated by random sequences, using tools from the theory of random matrices. Another result we prove, and that is of its own relevance, is the 0−1 law for a random sequence to be partitioned into M separated sequences with respect to the pseudo-hyperbolic distance, which is used also to describe the random sequences that are interpolating for the Bloch space on the unit disc almost surely.

Sustainable investigation and process intensification on the separation of ternary organic wastewater with heterogeneous characteristics

The tetrahydrofuran (THF)/water/n-propyl acetate (PROAC) mixture, which is categorized into class 2.0-2b-C, exhibits pressure-sensitive property along with heterogeneous regions in its phase diagram. Conventional pressure-swing distillations with different separation sequences (PSD-PTW, PSD-PWT) and a novel three-column heterogeneous azeotropic pressure-swing distillation (T-HAPSD) are designed to complete the separation. The PSD section of T-HAPSD combines three columns into two columns. The HAD section of T-HAPSD is more energy-efficient owing to the automatic separation in the decanter. T-HAPSD is more economical than conventional pressure-swing distillation. Heat integration and Self-heat recuperation technology (SHRT) are then introduced to reduce energy consumption and costs. Finally, the five processes are evaluated from four aspects (economy, energy, environment and exergy). The best of five processes is T-HAPSD-SHRT with 37.83% reduction in TAC, 51.17% reduction in TEC, 48.83% reduction in gas emissions and 52.63% reduction in exergy destruction when compared with PSD-PTW.

Disentangling cobionts and contamination in long-read genomic data using sequence composition.

The recent acceleration in genome sequencing targeting previously unexplored parts of the tree of life presents computational challenges. Samples collected from the wild often contain sequences from several organisms, including the target, its cobionts, and contaminants. Effective methods are therefore needed to separate sequences. Though advances in sequencing technology make this task easier, it remains difficult to taxonomically assign sequences from eukaryotic taxa that are not well represented in databases. Therefore, reference-based methods alone are insufficient. Here, I examine how we can take advantage of differences in sequence composition between organisms to identify symbionts, parasites, and contaminants in samples, with minimal reliance on reference data. To this end, I explore data from the Darwin Tree of Life project, including hundreds of high-quality HiFi read sets from insects. Visualizing two-dimensional representations of read tetranucleotide composition learned by a variational autoencoder can reveal distinct components of a sample. Annotating the embeddings with additional information, such as coding density, estimated coverage, or taxonomic labels allows rapid assessment of the contents of a dataset. The approach scales to millions of sequences, making it possible to explore unassembled read sets, even for large genomes. Combined with interactive visualization tools, it allows a large fraction of cobionts reported by reference-based screening to be identified. Crucially, it also facilitates retrieving genomes for which suitable reference data are absent.

Measuring the velocity of spatio-temporal attention waves

A sequence of visual or auditory events may be perceived as a single continuing sequence or as two or more separate sequences occurring in parallel. The latter percept occurs when the perceived distance between events is large, and the timing is fast, and is referred to as “streaming.” Several researchers have previously argued that streaming indicates a velocity constraint on the movement of attention. To test this hypothesis the present experiment measured tradeoffs between distance and timing for the onset or loss of streaming in a rectangular pattern of displayed lights. Two linear tradeoffs were found, one corresponding to the loss of streaming when the light pattern was slowed down, and one corresponding to the onset of streaming when the light pattern was sped up. The slopes of these linear relations are interpreted as integer multiples of the velocity of spatio-temporal attention waves. A process model postulates that participants adjust the wavelength of their spatio-temporal attentional traveling wave to match the height of the displayed rectangle. Streaming is assumed to occur when peaks in the attentional traveling wave coincide with the onsets of lights at the top and bottom of the displayed rectangle. Additional supporting evidence for temporal and spatial attention waves is reviewed. This model may be useful for understanding some forms of attentional deficits as well as expert attentional skills arising in musical performance, sports, meditation, and other tasks.

DMF-DM-seq: Digital-Microfluidics Enabled Dual-Modality Sequencing of Single-Cell mRNA and microRNA with High Integration, Sensitivity, and Automation.

Multimodal measurement of single cells provides deep insights into the intricate relationships between individual molecular layers and the regulatory mechanisms underlying intercellular variations. Here, we reported DMF-DM-seq, a highly integrated, sensitive, and automated platform for single-cell mRNA and microRNA (miRNA) co-sequencing based on digital microfluidics. This platform first integrates the processes of single-cell isolation, lysis, component separation, and simultaneous sequencing library preparation of mRNA and miRNA within a single DMF device. Compared with the current half-cell measuring strategy, DMF-DM-seq enables complete separation of single-cell mRNA and miRNA via a magnetic field application, resulting in a higher miRNA detection ability. DMF-DM-seq revealed differential expression patterns of single cells of noncancerous breast cells and noninvasive and aggressive breast cancer cells at both mRNA and miRNA levels. The results demonstrated the anticorrelated relationship between miRNA and their mRNA targets. Further, we unravel the tumor growth and metastasis-associated biological processes enriched by miRNA-targeted genes, along with important miRNA-interaction networks involved in significant signaling pathways. We also deconstruct the miRNA regulatory mechanisms underlying different signaling pathways across different breast cell types. In summary, DMF-DM-seq offers a powerful tool for a comprehensive study of the expression heterogeneity of single-cell mRNA and miRNA, which will be widely applied in basic and clinical research.

The Brown–Halmos theorem for discrete Wiener–Hopf operators

We prove an analogue of the Brown–Halmos theorem for discrete Wiener–Hopf operators acting on separable rearrangement-invariant Banach sequence spaces.

A Design Pattern for a Single Reliable Addressing Wake-up Receiver Based on Low-Frequency Pattern Matcher

Wake-up receivers (WuRxs) allow wireless sensor nodes to run on battery power while maintaining asynchronous, low-latency communication. This paper focuses on WuRxs based on low-frequency pattern matchers (LFPMs). Many recent studies either investigate physical WuRx implementations or simulate WuRx-based protocols. Our goal is to address the challenges that arise when realizing WuRx-based protocols in hardware. These challenges are, that a packet activates unwanted WuRxs, an unreliable address space, and missing cluster broadcast capabilities. The proposed separation sequences and run-length limited patterns ensure a reliable address space. WuRxs based on LFPMs use a fixed pattern matching. Cluster broadcasts are enabled by the proposed variable Manchester coding. Typically, LFPMs use Manchester coding with an efficiency of only 0.5 bit/symbol. We introduce two non-Manchester coding techniques with higher efficiency: lookup table-based coding with an efficiency of 0.71 and 3S2B coding with an efficiency of 0.67.

Simulation and optimization of crude glycerol refining process as a co-product of biodiesel

Glycerol is an essential chemical raw material widely used in industries such as food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, tobacco, and textiles. With the increasing production of biodiesel, a considerable amount of crude glycerol co-product is generated. Purification of crude glycerol by separating it from biodiesel co-products can lead to the production of high-purity glycerol, thus enabling the synthesis of high-value-added chemicals to reduce the production cost of biodiesel. This paper proposes a new glycerol purification process based on the acidification of potassium oleate soap using sulphuric acid. The composition of crude glycerol is complex. The presence of salts can affect the binary interaction parameters of glycerol and water. The ion forms resulting from the ionization of potassium fatty acid soaps are not available in the database and require important data to be provided through physical property estimation. Additionally, the dissociation of sulphuric acid is involved in the system. These issues make it challenging to propose a complete process based on the characteristics of crude glycerol. In this study, the vapor–liquid equilibrium data of the glycerol-water system containing potassium sulphate under reduced pressure were experimentally determined, and the binary interaction parameters of the glycerol-water system were regressed and used in the subsequent process simulation. The entire process of crude glycerol refining from biodiesel co-products was simulated and optimized using Aspen Plus software, proposing an optimized complete refining process for crude glycerol and designing a crude glycerol refining process with a production scale of 100,000 tons per year. The potassium oleate soap is first acidified with sulphuric acid, then removed by centrifugation, with the resulting lower layer entering the distillation process. We compared two different distillation processes and identified the more optimal separation sequence. Glycerol products with a mass concentration of 99.2% were obtained, with glycerol and methanol yields of 98.83% and 99.79%, respectively. Based on the above research, energy integration and optimization of the process were further investigated through pinch analysis. Overall, energy savings of 7.192 Gcal/h were achieved, resulting in a reduction in energy consumption of 40.65%. This paper proposes a new purification scheme for crude glycerol and an energy integration scheme to reduce the purification cost of high-purity glycerol. This is significant for the rational utilization of crude glycerol, a co-product of biodiesel.

Wideband spectrum compressive sensing utilizing photonic multi-coset sampling with dual low-rate optical pulses

A wideband spectrum compressive sensing approach for sparse multiband signals utilizing photonic multi-coset sampling (MCS) is presented. The method employs dual low-rate optical pulses, initially modulated by separate pseudo-random binary sequences (PRBSs), which are then multiplexed to achieve the desired multi-coset pattern. It results in a substantial reduction of the rate requirements for both the sampling optical pulses and PRBSs, leading to a significant enhancement of system bandwidth. In simulations, an instantaneous system bandwidth of 21 GHz is achieved at a low mean sampling rate of 4.8 GS/s, employing two optical pulses with rates of 8.4 GHz and 6 GHz, respectively. The spectra of a mixed signal with six passbands are accurately identified, illustrating the capability of the scheme to recognize the spectra of various types of multiband signals. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the performance between our proposed scheme and traditional MCS techniques is conducted.

Ethyl acetate production by Fischer esterification: use of excess of acetic acid and complete separation sequence

Abstract In this work, production of ethyl acetate (EtAc) using Fischer esterification between acetic acid (AcOH) and ethyl alcohol (EtOH) is presented. Batch kinetics was developed with EtOH as the limiting reactant to avoid the problems associated with unreacted ethanol in the final product. Regression was performed to estimate the parameters of the Langmuir Hinshelwood type kinetic equation. Reaction mass obtained during kinetics was subjected to separation and purification. Molecular sieves (MS) were used to remove water. Distillation (simple and extractive distillation – with entrainer, dimethyl sulfoxide, DMSO) was used to obtain almost pure AcOH, EtOH, EtAc and DMSO. Future work in reactive separation environment is indicated. Use of EtOH as the limiting reactant, use of MS for water removal and complete separation sequence are important features of this work.

Design and optimization for the separation of xylene isomers with a novel double extractants-based extractive distillation

Xylene is a crucial chemical raw material, serving as a synthetic monomer and solvent extensively employed in coating, medicine, rubber and other industries. It contains of three isomers: o-xylene (OX), m-xylene (MX), and p-xylene (PX), their separation is considered a worldwide challenge due to their extremely close boiling points. A novel extractive distillation based on double extractants is first proposed to separate these isomers in this paper, while it was considered impractical to separate these isomers by distillation technology alone in the past. Through the analysis of residual curve and extractant screening, two potential solvents, i.e., N-Methylpyrrolidone (NMP) and Tetramethylene sulfone (Sul) were used as extractants, and then the separation sequences were designed and optimized. The extractive distillation processes were optimized by sequential iterative method according to the minimum total annual cost (TAC), and the best separation sequence and process parameters were determined. For comparison, it was found that the optimized double extractant-based extractive distillation (DEED) process has the best economic performance with TAC of 5.72×106$, and the energy consumption was greatly reduced by 41.2% compared to the single extractant-based extractive distillation (SEED). This article provides a new perspective on energy-efficient distillation technology for industrial xylene separation and purification production.

Impact of Peripheral Hydrogen Bond on Electronic Properties of the Primary Acceptor Chlorophyll in the Reaction Center of Photosystem I.

Photosystem I (PS I) is a photosynthetic pigment-protein complex that absorbs light and uses the absorbed energy to initiate electron transfer. Electron transfer has been shown to occur concurrently along two (A- and B-) branches of reaction center (RC) cofactors. The electron transfer chain originates from a special pair of chlorophyll a molecules (P700), followed by two chlorophylls and one phylloquinone in each branch (denoted as A-1, A0, A1, respectively), converging in a single iron-sulfur complex Fx. While there is a consensus that the ultimate electron donor-acceptor pair is P700+A0-, the involvement of A-1 in electron transfer, as well as the mechanism of the very first step in the charge separation sequence, has been under debate. To resolve this question, multiple groups have targeted electron transfer cofactors by site-directed mutations. In this work, the peripheral hydrogen bonds to keto groups of A0 chlorophylls have been disrupted by mutagenesis. Four mutants were generated: PsaA-Y692F; PsaB-Y667F; PsaB-Y667A; and a double mutant PsaA-Y692F/PsaB-Y667F. Contrary to expectations, but in agreement with density functional theory modeling, the removal of the hydrogen bond by Tyr → Phe substitution was found to have a negligible effect on redox potentials and optical absorption spectra of respective chlorophylls. In contrast, Tyr → Ala substitution was shown to have a fatal effect on the PS I function. It is thus inferred that PsaA-Y692 and PsaB-Y667 residues have primarily structural significance, and their ability to coordinate respective chlorophylls in electron transfer via hydrogen bond plays a minor role.

Steady‐state and dynamic control of hydrocracking tail oil distillation process for high‐valued products

AbstractThe maximum utilization of hydrocracking tail oil becomes increasingly important for petrochemical industry. The aim of this work is to develop optimized distillation processes to achieve various high‐valued qualified oil products from hydrocracking tail oil. Six different oil products is produced and the steady‐state distillation process, which aims to fractionate six qualified narrow distillates is established. The algorithm method incorporating divided‐wall column (DWC) configuration was introduced into the steady‐state design. Compared with traditional separation sequences, the DWC configuration leads to an energy‐saving potential up to 11.17%. Furthermore, effective dynamic control strategies were proposed, demonstrating precise and efficient control performance. In the presence of a 15% feed disturbance, the dynamic control structure is capable of maintaining the product distillation range near the set value. This comprehensive study provides a thorough investigation into the efficient utilization of hydrocracking tail oil, establishing a robust theoretical foundation for its industrial application.

Energy-saving extractive distillation process for the separation of close-boiling 2, 6-xylenol and p-cresol mixture

1) Background2,6-xylenol and p-cresol are widely used in medicine synthesis, which are both important raw materials in chemical engineering. It is shown significant economic benefits to separate 2,6-xylenol and p-cresol. Owing to the extremely relative volatility between 2,6-xylenol and p-cresol, it is difficult to separate the two phenolic compounds through conventional distillation. 2) MethodsThe results of vapor–liquid equilibrium analysis, COSMO-SAC and reduced density gradient result are used to investigate molecular interaction in the separation system, indicating diethylene glycol (DEG) as the optimal solvent. Accordingly, we propose an energy-saving extractive distillation process with DEG as an efficient entrainer for the separation of 2,6-xylenol and p-cresol. Total annual cost (TAC) and CO2 emission are investigated for optimization and estimation of the proposed process. In addition, three energy-saving scenarios for further reductions in TAC and CO2 emission are proposed. 3) Significant FindingsCompared with the benchmark process, the TAC and CO2 emission of the energy-saving design vapor recompression heat pump assisted extractive distillation separation sequence B are reduced by 26.18 % and 49.18 %, respectively, which indicates that the considerable industrial potential of the proposed design.