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PubMed2001

ThermoEnergy Ammonia Recovery Process for municipal and agricultural wastes.

The Ammonia Recovery Process (ARP) is an award-winning, low-cost, environmentally responsible method of recovering nitrogen, in the form of ammonia, from various dilute waste streams and converting it into concentrated ammonium sulfate. The ThermoEnergy Biogas System utilizes the new chemisorption-based ARP to recover ammonia from anaerobically digested wastes. The process provides for optimal biogas production and significantly reduced nitrogen levels in the treated water discharge. Process flows for the ammonia recovery and ThermoEnergy biogas processes are presented and discussed. A comparison with other techniques such as biological nitrogen removal is made. The ARP technology uses reversible chemisorption and double salt crystal precipitation to recover and concentrate the ammonia. The ARP technology was successfully proven in a recent large-scale field demonstration at New York City's Oakwood Beach Wastewater Treatment Plant, located on Staten Island. This project was a joint effort with Foster Wheeler Environmental Corporation, the Civil Engineering Research Foundation, and New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Independent validated plant data show that ARP consistently recovers up to 99.9% of the ammonia from the city's centrate waste stream (derived from dewatering of sewage sludge), as ammonium sulfate. ARP technology can reduce the nitrogen (ammonia) discharged daily into local bodies of water by municipalities, concentrated animal farming operations, and industry. Recent advances to ARP enhance its performance and economic competitiveness in comparison to stripping or ammonia destruction technologies.

Agriculture↗
PubMed2004

Formation of advanced tokamak plasmas without the use of an ohmic-heating solenoid.

A new operational scenario of advanced tokamak formation was demonstrated in the JT-60U tokamak. This was accomplished by electron cyclotron and lower hybrid waves, neutral beam injection, and the loop voltage supplied by the vertical field and shaping coils. The Ohmic heating (OH) solenoid was not used but a small inboard coil (part of the shaping coil), providing less than 20% of total poloidal flux, was used. The plasma thus obtained had both internal and edge transport barriers, with an energy confinement time of 1.6 times H-mode scaling, a poloidal beta of 3.6, and a normalized beta of 1.6, and a large bootstrap current fraction (>90%). This result opens up a possibility to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the OH solenoid from a tokamak reactor, which will greatly improve its economic competitiveness.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1983

Preemptive strategies.

Preemptive strategies often offer the best opportunity to gain advantage over competitors and upset industry balance. Preemptive moves exist all along the industry chain if one knows where to look for them. Companies can preempt their rivals in myriad ways, ranging from threatening major investments and securing critical skills to cornering raw materials and components and positioning products in a unique way.

Economic Competition↗
PubMed1983

Patients' trust and the quality of physicians.

Patients are uncertain of physicians' quality but learn about the quality of particular physicians through experience in treatment. Patients come to trust physicians who have served them well. This paper explores the economic consequences of patients' learning and trust within a model of the market for physicians' services. In a market equilibrium, there are too many incompetent physicians in practice. Surprisingly, even the more competent physicians have an interest in preventing patients from judging quality except through experience. As we show, all physicians, including the most competent, may oppose steps to inform patients of physicians' quality.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed1996

Individuality and community: the contrasting role of the state in family life in the United States and Sweden.

Underlying moral values of individuality versus community and assumptions about what is a "just society" make public policies toward children vastly different in Sweden and the United States. This article explores the origins, cost, and benefits of welfare policies that permit child poverty in the U.S. as a cost of the high value of autonomy/individuality, and policies that prevent child poverty in Sweden, at the cost of economic competitiveness and individual initiative. I conclude that both extremes of moral values have more social costs than benefits but that children should be protected in any nation as the future of the society.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Marry in haste, repent at leisure: women, bureaucracy and the post office, 1870-1920.

Between these two extremes [of caring for children and manual labour] there lies what may be called a neutral or debatable ground of labour requiring the exercise of qualities which are the exclusive property of neither sex. It is in this neutral field ... [that] the activities of women are confined to those departments of the labour market into which men do not care, or actively object, to enter. Thus, if there were no question of economic competition, it seems to me that the invasion by woman of these departments ... formerly monopolized by men would be bound to awaken a certain amount of opposition; since her consequent desertion of the dull, unpleasant, and monotonous tasks assigned to her, might mean that these tasks would have to be performed by those who had hitherto escaped the necessity by shifting it on to her shoulders. Hence a natural and comprehensible resentment.

Employment↗
PubMed2005

In vivo enzymatic digestion, in vitro xylanase digestion, metabolic analogues, surfactants and polyethylene glycol ameliorate laccase production from Ganoderma sp. kk-02.

AIMS: The effect of in vivo enzymatic digestion (IVED), in vitro xylanase digestion (IVXD), metabolic analogues, surfactants and polyethylene glycol (PEG) on laccase production from Ganoderma sp. kk-02 was studied. METHODS AND RESULTS: An acidic laccase producing Ganoderma sp. kk-02 produced 16.0 U ml(-1) and 365.0 U g(-1) of laccase, when grown under submerged (SmF) and solid state (SSF) fermentation conditions, respectively. Modification of the substrate (wheat bran) molecular architecture by IVED and IVXD increased subsequent laccase production from Ganoderma sp. kk-02 by 1.31-fold (21.0 U ml(-1)) (SmF); 2.21-fold (810.0 U g(-1)) (SSF) and 1.10-fold (18.0 U ml(-1)) (SmF); 1.78-fold (650.0 U g(-1)) (SSF) when compared with untreated wheat bran. Further enhancement in laccase yield under SmF and SSF was obtained when IVED treated wheat bran was used in conjunction with amino acids [DL-tryptophan, 2.66-fold (56.0 U ml(-1)) SmF; 2.86-fold (2324.0 U g(-1)) SSF], vitamins [biotin, 1.71-fold (36.0 U ml(-1)) SmF; 3.06-fold (2483.0 U g(-1)) SSF], surfactants [Tween-40, 1.85-fold (39.0 U ml(-1)) SmF; 2.25-fold (1828.0 U g(-1)) SSF], and PEG [PEG 6000, 1.93-fold (40.0 U ml(-1)) SmF; 1.58-fold (1284.0 U g(-1)) SSF]. CONCLUSIONS: The IVED of substrate (wheat bran) facilitated hyper laccase production in presence of additives from Ganoderma sp. kk-02. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: The study highlights a new methodology viz. IVED for concomitant and economic production of diverse enzymes using the same substrate. The hyper laccase levels obtained could improve the economic competitiveness of environmentally benign processes applied in varied industries. The work also provides an insight into the regulation of complex metabolic pathways governing the expression of extra cellular proteins from white-rot fungi.

Bacillus↗
PubMed2006

The influence of health policy and market factors on the hospital safety net.

OBJECTIVE: To examine how the financial pressures resulting from the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 interacted with private sector pressures to affect indigent care provision. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: American Hospital Association Annual Survey, Area Resource File, InterStudy Health Maintenance Organization files, Current Population Survey, and Bureau of Primary Health Care data. STUDY DESIGN: We distinguished core and voluntary safety net hospitals in our analysis. Core safety net hospitals provide a large share of uncompensated care in their markets and have large indigent care patient mix. Voluntary safety net hospitals provide substantial indigent care but less so than core hospitals. We examined the effect of financial pressure in the initial year of the 1997 BBA on uncompensated care for three hospital groups. Data for 1996-2000 were analyzed using approaches that control for hospital and market heterogeneity. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS: All urban U.S. general acute care hospitals with complete data for at least 2 years between 1996 and 2000, which totaled 1,693 institutions. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Core safety net hospitals reduced their uncompensated care in response to Medicaid financial pressure. Voluntary safety net hospitals also responded in this way but only when faced with the combined forces of Medicaid and private sector payment pressures. Nonsafety net hospitals did not exhibit similar responses. CONCLUSIONS: Our results are consistent with theories of hospital behavior when institutions face reductions in payment. They raise concern given continuing state budget crises plus the focus of recent federal deficit reduction legislation intended to cut Medicaid expenditures.

Budgets↗
PubMed1998

Cloning of the Alcaligenes latus polyhydroxyalkanoate biosynthesis genes and use of these genes for enhanced production of Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) in Escherichia coli.

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are microbial polyesters that can be used as completely biodegradable polymers, but the high production cost prevents their use in a wide range of applications. Recombinant Escherichia coli strains harboring the Ralstonia eutropha PHA biosynthesis genes have been reported to have several advantages as PHA producers compared with wild-type PHA-producing bacteria. However, the PHA productivity (amount of PHA produced per unit volume per unit time) obtained with these recombinant E. coli strains has been lower than that obtained with the wild-type bacterium Alcaligenes latus. To endow the potentially superior PHA biosynthetic machinery to E. coli, we cloned the PHA biosynthesis genes from A. latus. The three PHA biosynthesis genes formed an operon with the order PHA synthase, beta-ketothiolase, and reductase genes and were constitutively expressed from the natural promoter in E. coli. Recombinant E. coli strains harboring the A. latus PHA biosynthesis genes accumulated poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB), a model PHA product, more efficiently than those harboring the R. eutropha genes. With a pH-stat fed-batch culture of recombinant E. coli harboring a stable plasmid containing the A. latus PHA biosynthesis genes, final cell and PHB concentrations of 194.1 and 141.6 g/liter, respectively, were obtained, resulting in a high productivity of 4.63 g of PHB/liter/h. This improvement should allow recombinant E. coli to be used for the production of PHB with a high level of economic competitiveness.

Acyltransferases↗
PubMed2005

Principles of plant health management for ornamental plants.

Economic, environmental, and technological influences complicate the task of achieving disease-free products in the ornamentals industry. Integrated pest management (IPM) is a cornerstone of floriculture and nursery crop production: strategies include sanitation, clean stock, host resistance, and control through biological, cultural, environmental, chemical, and regulatory means. Sanitation measures and cultural controls must keep pace with new production technologies. Clean stock programs are used for many crops that are propagated vegetatively. Breeding, selection, and biotechnology provide crops resistant to pathogens. Offshore production for economic competitiveness can introduce pathogens that make regulatory programs necessary. New biocontrol and chemical products continue to improve control while meeting the requirement for minimal environmental impact. Continual introduction of new crops and new production technologies creates new opportunities for pathogens to exploit, such that new disease management tactics must be discovered and old ones rediscovered to achieve optimum health management for ornamentals.

Agriculture↗
PubMed1986

Health care: for patients or for profits?

The author contends that the medical-industrial complex has come to dominate a substantial and growing segment of the health care "market." This complex is characterized by its ability to charge and collect for services, pass through its capital costs, and skim off profitable patients--and, at the same time, to shun its proportionate responsibility for the medically indigent, for the costs of medical education and research, and for meeting community needs. He concludes that physicians have an ethical imperative to join in a broad public coalition to protect equity and quality in medical care.

Biomedical Research↗