Absorption processes have traditionally been used in the removal of contaminants from natural gas. A dualmembrane concept is proposed to improve the performance of membrane gas-liquid contactors. In the proposed configurations, a second membrane was added to a single-membrane system and a sweeping gas or a lower pressure applied on the permeate side of either a porous or nonporous second membrane. Theoretically, the new configurations can partially regenerate the solvent stream simultaneously with the absorption process, and, therefore, better absorption efficiencies can be obtained. The proposed configurations and the ordinary single-membrane contactor were simulated using partial differential equations based on a single-component absorption scheme. The solutions showed that the proposed dual-membrane contactor could remove gas components more efficiently, when compared to the ordinary contactor. A significant improvement in solvent flow rate and regeneration efficiency and, therefore, overall gas purification performance will be achieved using a dual-membrane absorption system.

Currently, there is a need to explore the consequences of different types of protein-anthocyanin complexations, as well as possible changes in the nutrition and allergenicity of formed complexes. Here, we...

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Previous studies have shown that children with Kawasaki disease (KD) who fail to respond to intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) therapy are at higher risk of developing coronary artery lesions (CALs). We aimed to conduct a meta-analysis to uncover the risk factors associated with IVIG resistance in children with KD. PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases were searched up to 31st October 2019, and 23 case-control studies were finally eligible, enrolling 2,053 patients of IVIG resistance and 16,635 patients of IVIG sensitivity. Potential factors were comprehensively analyzed by using stata15 software with a standard meta-analysis procedure and consequently found that in addition to patients with polymorphous rash or swelling of extremities symptoms had a tendency to be non-responders, IVIG resistance was more likely to occur in patients with severe anemia, hypoalbuminemia, decreased baseline platelet count, and elevated levels of erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), total bilirubin, alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and neutrophils percentage. Particularly, male sex, hyponatraemia, increased aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and C-reactive protein (CRP) were confirmed as the risk factors favor IVIG resistance in Mongoloids from Asia countries, but not in Caucasians from non-Asia regions. In summary, we report several risk factors relevant to IVIG resistance in children with KD, which may provide guidance for the prediction of IVIG resistance. But a proposing of an optimal prediction system with high specificity and sensitivity needs further studies because of confounding factors.

An HBsAb-positive status is associated with a low rate of diabetes and better metabolic status. A prospective study of patients with known vaccination records is needed to investigate whether hepatitis B virus vaccination could protect against the development of diabetes.

Multi-parallel grid-connected voltage source inverters (VSIs) are widely applied in the fields of renewable energy, energy storage, harmonic suppression, etc. However, these inverters may cause harmonic stability problems due to the interactions among the grid-connected inverters through the grid impedance, which can seriously threaten system stability. The impedance-based stability criterion provides an effective tool for analyzing harmonic instability issues and can be divided into two types, namely, a ratio type and a sum type. Based on the existing studies of the sum-type criterion, this paper further proposes a new sum-type form based on the global admittance from the PCC to assess system stability through frequency-domain analysis. This global admittance-based stability criterion can be used not only to analyze system stability, but also to reveal the influence of each VSI unit on system stability with a lower computational burden and provide guidance for resonance suppression, especially in the case of a large number of grid-connected inverters and asymmetric inverter parameters. Finally, a MATLAB/Simulink model and 400 kVA/400 V experimental platform consisting of six grid-connected VSIs were established, and the corresponding results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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