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•Possible sources and pathway of pharmaceutical compounds entering into the aquatic environment have been highlighted.•The degradation of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in ...water by heterogeneous photocatalysis has been reviewed.•Intermediates produced during photocatalytic reaction and their temporal effects on aquatic environment have been discussed.
The presence of pharmaceutical compounds in natural water is considered as an environmental problem due to their regular input in aquatic system and hence their removal becomes a challenging task. The present study provides information about the occurrence of pharmaceutical contaminants in water and their treatment. The advancement of distinct treatment processes for the removal of active pharmaceutical ingredients in wastewater has been described. The main objective of this study is to summarize the latest studies of the degradation of analgesic and anti-inflammatory drugs by heterogeneous photocatalysis. This study also highlights the effect of various operational parameters on degradation efficiency, kinetics and mineralization of various pharmaceutical compounds during the process.
Radio waves coming from the planet Jupiter are electromagnetic phenomena generated by synchrotron emission mechanism, due to the interaction of Jovian magnetic field with charged particles produced ...by the satellite Io. These radio waves fall directly upon the ionosphere affecting earth's radio communications. At the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Technology of Pereira (OAUTP) the research group in Astro-engineering Alfa Orion, developed a magnetic loop antenna designed to resonate at 20.1 MHz, which coupled with the receptor and the software from NASA's Radio Jove project enabled the observation of radio sources A, B, C, IoA, IoB and IoC from Jupiter, allowing the construction of a database for the study of the Jovian activity in radio waves.
Ondas de radio provenientes del planeta Júpiter son fenómenos electromagnéticos generados por emisión de sincrotrón, debidos a la interacción del campo magnético Joviano con partículas cargadas producidas por su luna Ío. Estas ondas de radio interactúan con la ionósfera, afectando las radio-comunicaciones terrestres. En el Observatorio Astronómico de la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira (OAUTP) el grupo de investigación en Astroingeniería Alfa-Orión desarrolló una antena tipo Loop Magnética diseñada para resonar a 20.1 MHz, la cual fue acoplada con el receptor y el software del proyecto de la NASA Radio Jove. Esto permitió la observación de las fuentes de radio A, B, C, IoA, IoB y IoC desde Júpiter, permitiendo la construcción de una base de datos para el estudio de la actividad Joviana en ondas de Radio.
En los últimos años, debido a la expansión del uso de la Web, los usuarios se ven
cada vez más desbordados en sus tareas de búsqueda y recuperación de
información por la ingente cantidad de datos a ...los que pueden acceder. Por este
motivo, los sistemas de recomendación han tenido un éxito y uso crecientes. Un
sistema de recomendación es una técnica de filtrado de información que permite a
un usuario acceder a los datos útiles para él atendiendo a sus preferencias (gustos,
intereses, objetivos).
Existen numerosos tipos de sistemas de recomendación, y se ha observado la
importancia del contexto (día y hora, localización del usuario, estado emocional,
compañía, etc.) para mejorar la eficacia de las recomendaciones. Por ejemplo, no es
lo mismo recomendar un hotel a una pareja para su luna de miel que para una
familia.
El contexto de un usuario se compone de las fuentes de influencia que pueden
hacerle variar en sus decisiones. Algunas de estas fuentes pueden ser externas,
como por ejemplo, la hora, o internas, como el estado de ánimo. Hoy en día, se
pueden obtener muchos factores del contexto de un usuario gracias a los
smartphones. Prácticamente todas las personas llevamos un teléfono móvil encima
en cada momento.
Por otro lado, la importancia de la música en la vida de las personas es evidente.
Además, el consumo de música se ha multiplicado precisamente por el uso del
teléfono móvil, ya que es muy fácil acceder a música a través de él.
Por estos motivos, se ha visto la importancia de la unión de los sistemas de
recomendación con la música y el contexto de usuario. Así, el objetivo de este
proyecto es el diseño, implementación y evaluación de una aplicación móvil que
recomiende música contextualizada al usuario.
El objetivo principal perseguido con la aplicación desarrollada es intentar concluir
qué tipo de recomendaciones son más eficaces: las sensibles al contexto o las que
no lo tienen en cuenta y solo hacen uso de las preferencias del usuario. Para ello, se
ha realizado un estudio preliminar con usuarios de la aplicación. Los resultados
obtenidos en el experimento muestran que un equilibrio entre preferencias
In the last years, due to the expansion of the Web, and the huge amount of
information that can be accessed on the Internet, people are overwhelmed in their
information search and retrieval tasks. For this reason, recommender systems
have been successful and their use has been increased unexpectedly. A
recommender system is an information filtering technique that lets a user access
to useful and relevant data for him according to her preferences (tastes and
interests).
There are many types of recommender systems, but in most of them, it has been
shown the importance of considering the user’s context (e.g., current time and
date, the user’s location, mood, and social company) to improve the effectiveness
of the personalized recommendations. For instance, it is not the same to
recommend a hotel to a couple for their honey moon than to recommend a hotel to
a family with children.
The user’s context consists in influence sources (signals) that can make him
change his currents decisions. Some of these sources are external, like the time,
while others are internal, like the user’s mood. Today, we can obtain many of these
context’s sources by means of a mobile phone. Almost every person is carrying a
mobile phone every time, everywhere.
On the other hand, the importance of music in the people’s life is evident. And,
thanks to the expansion of the use of mobile phones, music consumption has been
increased exponentially, since it is very easy to access and listen to music.
For these reasons, we have seen the importance of the union of recommender
systems, music and user’s context. Thus, the target of this project is to design,
implement and evaluate a mobile application that recommends contextualized
music to the user.
The main goal pursued with the developed application is to conclude which types
of recommendations are more effective: the ones that are aware of the user’s
context or the ones that are only based on the user’s preferences. To achieve such
goal, we have conducted a preliminary study with real users. Among other things,
the results obtained in the experiment have shown that a balance between the two
options lets achieve the best recommendations.
Previously proposed hypotheses on the origin of life are reviewed and it is demonstrated that none of them can provide the energy flux of ionizing radiation (UV/X/γ photons, and high-energy charged ...particles and neutrons) required to synthesize organic materials as demonstrated by the experiments by Miller and Urey in 1953. In order to overcome this difficulty, Ebisuzaki and Maruyama, in 2017, proposed a new hypothesis called the “Nuclear Geyser Model” of the origin of life, in which high-energy flux from a natural nuclear reactor drives chemical reactions to produce major biological molecules, such as amino acids, nucleotides, sugars, and fatty acids from raw molecules (H2O, N2, and CO2). Natural nuclear reactors were common on the surface of Hadean Earth, because the 235U/238U ratio was as high as 20%, which is much higher than the present value (0.7%), due to the shorter half-life of 235U than 238U. Ebisuzaki and Maruyama further posited that aqueous electrons and glyceraldehyde play key roles in the networks of chemical reactions in a nuclear geyser and suggested that primordial life depended on glyceraldehyde phosphate (GAP) from the nuclear geyser system as energy, carbon, and phosphate sources, pointing to a possible parallelism with the anaerobic glycolysis pathway; in particular, the lower stem path starting from GAP through Acetyl Coenzyme A to produce ATP and reduction power. It is shown that microbes (members of candidate division OD1) inhabiting high alkali hot springs, a modern analogue of the Hadean Earth environment, do not possess genes associated with conventional metabolisms, such as those of the TCA cycle, but only have genes in the lower stem path of the glycolysis. This is named the “Hadean Primordial Pathway”, because it is believed that this striking result points to a plausible origin of metabolic pathways of extant organisms. Also proposed is a step-by-step scenario of the evolution of the metabolism: 1) Chemical degradation of GAP supplied from the nuclear geyser to lactate; 2) Catalytic reactions to produce reductive power and acetyl coenzyme A (or its primitive form) and self-reproductive reactions by ribozymes on the surface of minerals (pyrite and struvite), which precipitate in a nuclear geyser (RNA world); 3) Enzymatic reactions by proteins with pyrites and the struvite in their reaction centers (RNP world); and, 4) Metabolism of extant organisms with the full assembly of enzymes produced by translating molecular machines with information stored in DNA sequences (DNA world). It is further inferred that relics of primordial metabolic evolution in the Hadean nuclear geyser can be seen at the reaction centers of enzymes of both pyrite and struvite types, nucleotide-like molecules as a cofactor of the enzymes, Calvin Cycle of photosynthesis, and chemical abundance of cytoplasm.
This innovative volume provides a state-of-the-art overview of the relationship between language and cognition with a focus on bilinguals. It brings together contributions from international leading ...figures in various disciplines and showcases contemporary research on the emerging area of bilingual cognition.
The first part of the volume discusses the relationship between language and cognition as studied in various disciplines, from psychology to philosophy to anthropology to linguistics, with chapters written by some of the major thinkers in each discipline. The second part concerns language and cognition in bilinguals. Following an introductory overview and contributions from established figures in the field, bilingual cognition researchers provide examples of their latest research on topics including time, space, motion, colors, and emotion. The third part discusses practical applications of the idea of bilingual cognition, such as marketing and translation.
The volume is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students with an interest in language and cognition, or in bilingualism and second languages.
