We examined the distribution of uncultured Planctomycetes phylotypes along depth profiles spanning the redox gradient of the Black Sea suboxic zone to gain insight into their respective ecological niches. Planctomycetes phylogeny correlated with depth and chemical profiles, implying similar metabolisms within phylogenetic groups. A suboxic zone sample was split into > 30 and < 30 μm fractions t...

Anammox is a cost-effective process to treat nitrogenous wastewater. In this work, excitation-emission matrix (EEM) fluorescence spectroscopy was used to characterize the intracellular and extracellular substances of anammox sludge during reactor operation of 276 days. Four main fluorophores were identified from the intracellular substances. Two main protein-like fluorophores were identified fr...

Perfect phylogeny is one of the fundamental models for studying evolution. We investigate the following variant of the problem: The input is an n ×m species-characters matrix. The characters are binary and directed, i.e., a species can only gain characters. The difference from standard perfect phylogeny is that for some species the state of some characters is unknown. The question is whether on...

Introduction In electron beam therapy bolus is often used to conform as closely as possible to the target volume while avoiding critical structures in the depth. In most cases a flexible bolus can cover the skin without air gap. However, under certain conditions it is difficult –or even not possible– to avoid air gaps between bolus and patient without reducing treatment quality. In a special cl...

This paper reports on successful laboratory testing of a new nitrogen removal process called DEAMOX (DEnitrifying AMmonium OXidation) for the treatment of strong nitrogenous wastewater such as baker's yeast effluent. The concept of this process combines the recently discovered ANAMMOX (ANaerobic AMMonium OXidation) reaction with autotrophic denitrifying conditions using sulfide as an electron d...

We report 2 patients who developed sarcoidosis after the implantation of adjustable silicone gastric banding (GB) in Germany. Before implantation, no pulmonary diseases were evident in the medical history of either patient. The 1st patient suffered sarcoidosis 12 months after GB. He has been treated at a hospital specialising in pulmonary diseases. Because of the treatment with corticoids, the ...

L. Vigilant et al. (1) recently presented "the strongest support yet for the placement of [their] common mtDNA [mitochondrial DNA] ancestor in Africa some 200,000 years ago." This support stems from a tree estimated by maximum parsimony from mtDNA sequence data with the use of the computer program PAUP (2). The African origin is inferred from this tree because (i) the most basal splits are amon...

This study deals with the influence of heterotrophic growth on autotrophic nitrogen removal from wastewater in a granular sludge reactor. A mathematical model was set-up including autotrophic and heterotrophic growth and decay in the granules from a partial nitritation-anammox process. A distinction between heterotrophic bacteria was made based on the electron acceptor (dissolved oxygen, nitrit...

One of the challenges to be confronted during landfill operations is to handle the landfill leachate with high ammonium content. Current biological ammonium removal processes either are complicated and hard to manage, or require major investments. Low cost and low maintenance onsite systems for the treatment of landfill leachate with high ammonium content are in urgent need, especially for land...

Identification of anaerobic ammonium oxidizing (anammox) bacteria by molecular tools aimed at the evaluation of bacterial diversity in autotrophic nitrogen removal systems is limited by the difficulty to design universal primers for the Bacteria domain able to amplify the anammox 16S rRNA genes. A metagenomic analysis (pyrosequencing) of total bacterial diversity including anammox population in...