Biochar modified with calcium source is acted as an effective adsorbent for phosphorous recovery. In this research, eggshell is used as a low-cost and environmentally friendly calcium source to replace chemical reagents such as CaCO3, Ca(OH)2 and CaCl2 used in the modified biochar production. Biochar derived from rape straw and modified with eggshell shows prominent phosphorous adsorption performance (e.g., equilibrium adsorption amount, 109.7 mg/g). The kinetic and isotherm analysis demonstrate that chemical adsorption process is performed as the main controlled step for the modified biochar adsorption, and the phosphate adsorption process is composed of both monolayer adsorption and multi-layer adsorption. Moreover, it is found from the physicochemical structures comparison before and after phosphate adsorption that Ca-P precipitation, hydrogen bonding and electrostatic attraction are identified as main adsorption mechanisms. In addition, the adsorbed phosphates are mainly distributed inside the space with pore sizes of 15-50 nm.
Whereas scientific evidence is the basis for recommendations and guidance on radiological protection, professional ethics is critically important and should always guide professional behaviour. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) established Task Group 109 to advise medical professionals, patients, families, carers, the public, and authorities about the ethical aspects of radiological protection of patients in the diagnostic and therapeutic use of radiation in medicine. Occupational exposures and research-related exposures are not within the scope of this task group. Task Group 109 will produce a report that will be available to the different interested parties for consultation before publication. Presently, the report is at the stage of a working document that has benefitted from an international workshop organised on the topic by the World Health Organization. It presents the history of ethics in medicine in ICRP, and explains why this subject is important, and the benefits it can bring to the standard biomedical ethics. As risk is an essential part in decision-making and communication, a summary is included on what is known about the dose-effect relationship, with emphasis on the associated uncertainties. Once this theoretical framework has been presented, the report becomes resolutely more practical. First, it proposes an evaluation method to analyse specific situations from an ethical point of view. This method allows stakeholders to review a set of six ethical values and provides hints on how they could be balanced. Next, various situations (e.g. pregnancy, elderly, paediatric, end of life) are considered in two steps: first within a realistic, ethically challenging scenario on which the evaluation method is applied; and second within a more general context. Scenarios are presented and discussed with attention to specific patient circumstances, and on how and which reflections on ethical values can be of help in the decision-making process. Finally, two important related aspects are considered: how should we communicate with patients, family, and other stakeholders; and how should we incorporate ethics into the education and training of medical professionals?
Scientific advances are continually improving the knowledge of acne and contributing to the refinement of treatment options; it is important for clinicians to regularly update their practice patterns to reflect current standards. The Global Alliance to Improve Outcomes in Acne is an international group of dermatologists with an interest in acne research and education that has been meeting regularly since 2001. As a group, we have continuously evaluated the literature on acne. This supplement focuses on providing relevant clinical guidance to health care practitioners managing patients with acne, with an emphasis on areas where the evidence base may be sparse or need interpretation for daily practice.
A combination of fifteen top quark mass measurements performed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC is presented. The datasets used correspond to an integrated luminosity of up to 5 and 20 fb^{-1} of proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, respectively. The combination includes measurements in top quark pair events that exploit both the semileptonic and hadronic decays of the top quark, and a measurement using events enriched in single top quark production via the electroweak t channel. The combination accounts for the correlations between measurements and achieves an improvement in the total uncertainty of 31% relative to the most precise input measurement. The result is m_{t}=172.52±0.14(stat)±0.30(syst) GeV, with a total uncertainty of 0.33 GeV.
The first evidence for the Higgs boson decay to a Z boson and a photon is presented, with a statistical significance of 3.4 standard deviations. The result is derived from a combined analysis of the searches performed by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations with proton-proton collision datasets collected at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) from 2015 to 2018. These correspond to integrated luminosities of around 140 fb^{-1} for each experiment, at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The measured signal yield is 2.2±0.7 times the standard model prediction, and agrees with the theoretical expectation within 1.9 standard deviations.