Cytokines and Rheumatoid Arthritis The term “cytokine” is coined from the combination of “cyto”, a prefix which means cell, and “kine”, which denotes movement. Cytokines all have the following features: 1. They are low-molecular-weight glycoproteins that are not hormones. 2. They have an effect at very small concentrations. 3. Different cytokines can have the same function (redundancy). For exa...

There is an ongoing need to treat leachates from landfills using approaches that avoid expensive installation and operating costs. Faced with such a problem, Powys County Council (Wales, UK) developed a treatment system based on practical experience. Leachate was re-circulated through aeration towers containing a biofilm supported on plastic media before being polished in reed/filter beds. Inve...

This study investigated the occurrence and removal of 12 antibiotics (ciprofloxacin, enrofloxacin, levofloxacin, norfloxacin, nalidixic acid, azithromycin, clarithromycin, roxithromycin, lincomycin, novobiocin, sulfamethoxazole, trimethoprim) at four sewage treatment plants (STPs): two STPs in Kyoto, Japan and two STPs in Beijing, China. The STPs differed in design and operation conditions, uti...

Neck shoulder pain or lumbocrural pain caused by intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) could seriously affect the qualities life of patients. Current treatments mainly focus on alleviating pain and the symptoms of nerve compression, which could not radically stop the process of intervertebral disc degeneration, but conversely lead to high recurrence rate. In recent years, scholars have turned ...

Introduction Petroleum refining utilize large quantities of water for desalting, distillation, thermal cracking, catalytic and treatment processes to produce useful products [liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, asphalt and petrochemical feedstock] 1-3. Refining process generates wastewater (0.4-1.6 times the volume of crude oil processed)4. Discharge of untreated petroleu...

Problem statement: E-coating process is widely used to provide a protective coating layer on metal parts in the automotive and metal finishing industry. The wastewater from the coating process contains organic compounds that are used in the cleaning, pretreatment and coating steps. Organic pollutants can be removed biologically. In the aerobic biological treatment, water aeration accounts for a...