ABSTRACT Objectives: Rectocele with constipation might be related to methane (CH4) producing intestinal bacteria. We investigated the breath CH4 levels and the clinical characteristics of colorectal motility in constipated patients with rectocele. Methods: A database of consecutive female outpatients was reviewed for the evaluation of constipation according to the Rome III criteria. The patients underwent the lactulose CH4 breath test (LMBT), colon marker study, anorectal manometry, defecography and bowel symptom questionnaire. The profiles of the lactulose breath test (LBT) in 33 patients with rectocele (with size ≥ 2 cm) and 26 patients with functional constipation (FC) were compared with the breath test results of 30 healthy control subjects. Results: The mean size of rectocele was 3.52 ± 1.06 cm. The rate of a positive LMBT (LMBT+) was significantly higher in patients with rectocele (33.3%) than in those with FC (23.1%) or healthy controls (6.7%) (p = 0.04). Breath CH4 concentration was positively correlated with rectosigmoid colon transit time in rectocele patients (γ = 0.481, p < 0.01). A maximum high pressure zone pressure > 155 mmHg was a significant independent factor of LMBT+ in rectocele patients (OR = 8.93, 95% CI = 1.14-71.4, p = 0.04). Conclusions: LMBT+ might be expected in constipated patients with rectocele. Moreover, increased rectosigmoid colonic transit or high anorectal pressure might be associated with CH4 breath levels. Breath CH4 could be an important therapeutic target for managing constipated patients with rectocele.

The palladium catalyst supported on agarose-alumina composite and its utilization in the Suzuki reaction have been investigated. The agarose-alumina composite was prepared and modified with organofunctional groups by reacting with the coupling reagent 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) through Al−O−Si bonds. Palladium was efficiently loaded on the composite by the amino groups. The Suzuki coupling reaction can proceed successfully at room temperature under air. High yields of various aryl-aryl products have been obtained. Recycling studies have shown that the catalyst can be easily recovered and reused several times. The yields decreased from 95% to 85% in five cycles.

A laboratory-scale anaerobic/anoxic/oxic system operated at the hydraulic retention times (HRT) of 20, 40, and 60 h with mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) concentrations of 3 g/L and 6 g/L was considered for treating chemical industrial wastewater rich in complex organic compounds and total dissolved solids. Extending the HRT and increasing the MLSS concentration resulted in higher removal efficiency for chemical oxygen demand at 72%. Organic compounds in wastewater could be classified into easily-removed and refractory compounds during treatment. The easily-removed compounds consisted primarily of ethers, alcohols, and aldehydes, whereas the refractory compounds included mainly oxygen-containing heterocyclic and benzene-containing compounds. Results from energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy showed that several metal ions accumulated in activated sludge, particularly Fe(III). Fe accumulated mainly on the surface of sludge floc pellets and resulted in the compactness of activated sludge, which caused the values of mixed liquor volatile suspended solids /MLSS and sludge volume index to decrease.

Na construção de uma área de influência, o método de dilatação baseada em rasterização inevitavelmente introduz erros, e o método de dupla linha paralela envolve uma série de operações complexas. Neste artigo, propõe-se um algoritmo de armazenamento paralelo baseado na fusão de área e MPI (Interface de transferência de Mensagem) para melhorar o desempenho de análise de armazenamento, no processamento de grandes conjuntos de dados. Os resultados experimentais revelam que há três grandes gargalos de desempenho que impactam significativamente a eficiência de construção de armazenamentos seriais e paralelos, incluindo a estratégia de fusão de área, a tarefa / método do balanceamento de carga e os MPI resultantes da estratégia de fusão. Para superar esses gargalos, são sugeridas abordagens de correspondência de otimização envolvendo a estratégia de fusão em árvore, um método orientado de partição do número de vértices em tarefas paralelas e uma estratégia de fusão dos inter-processos. Os experimentos foram realizados para examinar a eficiência do algoritmo paralelo de otimização. Os resultados estimados sugerem que as abordagens de otimização podem fornecer alto desempenho e capacidade de processamento para a construção de armazenamento em um ambiente paralelo agrupado. Esse método pode fornecer sugestões sobre a paralelização de algoritmos de análise espacial.

On buffer zone construction, the rasterization-based dilation method inevitably introduces errors, and the double-sided parallel line method involves a series of complex operations. In this paper, we proposed a parallel buffer algorithm based on area merging and MPI (Message Passing Interface) to improve the performances of buffer analyses on processing large datasets. Experimental results reveal that there are three major performance bottlenecks which significantly impact the serial and parallel buffer construction efficiencies, including the area merging strategy, the task load balance method and the MPI inter-process results merging strategy. Corresponding optimization approaches involving tree-like area merging strategy, the vertex number oriented parallel task partition method and the inter-process results merging strategy were suggested to overcome these bottlenecks. Experiments were carried out to examine the performance efficiency of the optimized parallel algorithm. The estimation results suggested that the optimization approaches could provide high performance and processing ability for buffer construction in a cluster parallel environment. Our method could provide insights into the parallelization of spatial analysis algorithm.

Um método de indexação de semeamento bidireccional (dual-way seeds indexing - DWSI), baseado em árvore-R e no modelo simples de característica de Consórcio Geoespacial Aberto (Open Geospatial Consortium - OGC), foi proposto para solucionar o problema de alastramento de intersecção de polígonos. O algoritmo de união paralela de polígono baseado no método DWSI melhorado e o modelo paralela de programação OpenMP foi desenvolvido para validar a usabilidade do método de partição de dados. Os resultados experimentais revelaram que o método DWSI melhorado pode implementar uma partição paralela de tarefas robustas, superando o problema de alastramento de intersecção de polígonos. O algoritmo de união paralela aplicado ao DWSI não apenas levou o processamento de dados a uma escala maior, como também acelerou a computação em comparação com a proposta serial, demonstrando uma maior eficiência computacional com referências de aceleração mais altas no tratamento de conjuntos de dados em larga-escala. Portanto, o método DWSI melhorado pode ser uma abordagem potencial para a paralelização e otimização dos algoritmos de sobreposição de dados de vetor baseados no modelo de dados simples OGC no nível de camada de característica.

A dual-way seeds indexing (DWSI) method based on R-tree and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) simple feature model was proposed to solve the polygon intersection-spreading problem. The parallel polygon union algorithm based on the improved DWSI and the OpenMP parallel programming model was developed to validate the usability of the data partition method. The experimental results reveal that the improved DWSI method can implement a robust parallel task partition by overcoming the polygon intersection-spreading problem. The parallel union algorithm applied DWSI not only scaled up the data processing but also speeded up the computation compared with the serial proposal, and it showed a higher computational efficiency with higher speedup benchmarks in the treatment of larger-scale dataset. Therefore, the improved DWSI can be a potential approach to parallelizing the vector data overlay algorithms based on the OGC simple data model at the feature layer level.

A laboratory scale aerobic oxidation ditch combined with an anoxic reactor was conducted to treat wastewater from a chemical industrial park in Tianjin, China. The wastewater exhibited a low biodegradability, and the results of gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis showed that some recalcitrant organic components are present in the wastewater. Ammonia nitrogen (NH4+-N) removal efficiency of over 90% was obtained. However, the removal efficiencies of total nitrogen (TN) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) were below 16% and 15%, respectively. The addition of glucose to the anoxic reactor in the system increased the removal efficiencies of TN and COD to approximately 72% and 25.57%, respectively. Results of mass balance indicate that about 60% of the external carbon was consumed as electron donor for denitrification, while 40% was consumed as a substrate for co-metabolism. The optimal dose of added glucose was also investigated, which was determined at 0.35 to 1.20 (CODglucose:CODoriginal).

Um novo método para oxidação regiosseletiva de trans-chalconas com peróxido de hidrogênio em acetonitrila para fornecer ácidos cinâmicos é reportado. Somente os ácidos trans-b-arilacrílicos foram obtidos. Um largo intervalo de produtos funcionalizados pode ser efetivamente produzido a partir de várias chalconas com rendimentos de bons a excelentes.

A novel method for regioselective oxidation of trans-chalcones with hydrogen peroxide in acetonitrile to afford cinnamic acids is reported. Only trans-b-arylacrylic acids were observed. A wide range of functionalized products can be effectively produced from various chalcones in good to excellent yields.