We studied removal rates of plankton and total particulate organic nitrogen (PON) by benthic reef communities from the overlying water in a large experimental flume. The flume was filled with mixtures of coral and coral rubble, and biomass of plankton was measured as water was recirculated over the experimental benthic community. All planktonic particle types, picoplankton, nanoplankton, microp...

A Single Particle Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (SPAMS), a Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2) and various meteorological instruments were employed to investigate the chemical and physical properties of black carbon (BC) aerosols during a regional air pollution episode in urban Shanghai over a 5-day period in December 2013. The refractory black carbon (rBC) mass concentrations measured by SP2 ave...

As part of the Fire Lab at Missoula Experiments (FLAME) in 2006–2007, we examined hygroscopic properties of particles emitted from open combustion of 33 select biomass fuels. Measurements of humidification growth factors for subsaturated water relative humidity (RH) conditions were made with a hygroscopic tandem differential mobility analyzer (HTDMA) for dry particle sizes of 50, 100 and 250 nm...

Lytic bacteriophages and protozoan predators are the major causes of bacterial mortality in natural microbial communities, which also makes them potential candidates for biological control of bacterial pathogens. However, little is known about the relative impact of bacteriophages and protozoa on the dynamics of bacterial biomass in aqueous and biofilm phases. Here, we studied the temporal and ...

This study assessed the characteristics of and changes in the suspended particles and the associated bacteria in an unchlorinated drinking water distribution system and its reservoirs with different water sources. The results show that particle-associated bacteria (PAB) were present at a level of 0.8-4.5 × 10(3) cells ml(-1) with a biological activity of 0.01-0.04 ng l(-1) ATP. Different PAB co...

Biomass steam pretreatment is a key process in converting agricultural wastes to bioethanol. The pretreatment occurs in a large pressurized tank called a thermal reactor. Two key parameters influence the successfulness of the process: the reactor temperature, and the retention time. A particle pump pressurizes untreated biomass from atmospheric to reactor pressure with recycled steam from the r...

Th is considered a valuable and useful tracer of oceanic biogeochemical processes occurring over timescales of days to weeks. While the geochemical behaviour of this radionuclide in the marine environment is well known, relatively few studies have explored its interactions with biota. To better understand biologically related Th dynamics, bioaccumulation of Th from the dissolved phase and its s...

The low bulk density and low flowability of lignocellulosic biomass feedstock have been regarded widely as major barriers for a sustainable and efficient supply system. Densification of biomass is a viable option to increase the bulk (and inherent energy) density and flowability of feedstock, leading to improved efficiency of the supply system. The energy consumption of feedstock densification ...

The University of California in collaboration with West Biofuels, LCC, has developed an advanced thermochemical gasification system (5 ton/day) for the conversion of waste stream biomass for the production of bio-fuels and bio-energy. The “Pyrox” gasifier design is based on a dual-fluidized bed system operating at atmospheric pressure with air. Simulation of this gasifier was conducted with a n...

This paper deals with the problem of predicting biomass and grain protein content using Improved Particle Filtering (IPF) based on minimizing Kullback-Leibler divergence. The performances of improved particle filtering are compared with those of the conventional Particle Filtering (PF) in two comparative studies. In the first one, we apply IPF and PF at a simple dynamic crop model with the aim ...