Digital imaging-in-flow (FlowCAM) and probabilistic machine learning to assess the sonolytic disinfection of cyanobacteria in sewage wastewater.

Assessing the cyanobacteria disinfection in sewage and its compliance with international-standards requires determining the concentration and viability, which can be achieve using Imaging Flow Cytometry device called FlowCAM. The objective is to thoroughly investigate the sonolytic morphological changes and disinfection-performance towards toxic cyanobacteria existing in sewage using the FlowCAM. After optimizing the process conditions, over 80% decline in cyanobacterial cell counts was observed, accompanied by an additional 10-15% of cells exhibiting injuries, as confirmed through morphological investigation. Moreover, for the first time, the experimentally collected data was utilized to build deep-learning probabilistic-neural-networks (PNN) and natural-gradient-boosting (NGBoost) models for predicting disinfection efficiency and ABD area as target outputs. The findings suggest that the NGBoost model exhibited superior prediction performance for both targets, with high test coefficient of determination (R2 > 0.87) and lower test errors (RMSE < 7.10, MAE < 4.14). The confidence interval examination in NGBoost prediction performance showed a minute variation from the experimentally calculated values, suggesting a high accuracy in model prediction. Finally, SHAP analysis suggests the sonolytic time alone contributes around 50% to the cyanobacteria disinfection. Overall, the findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the FlowCAM device and the potential of machine-learning modeling in predicting disinfection outcomes.

Profiling emerging micropollutants in urban stormwater runoff using suspect and non-target screening via high-resolution mass spectrometry.

Urban surface runoff contains chemicals that can negatively affect water quality. Urban runoff studies have determined the transport dynamics of many legacy pollutants. However, less attention has been paid to determining the first-flush effects (FFE) of emerging micropollutants using suspect and non-target screening (SNTS). Therefore, this study employed suspect and non-target analyses using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry to detect emerging pollutants in urban receiving waters during stormwater events. Time-interval sampling was used to determine occurrence trends during stormwater events. Suspect screening tentatively identified 65 substances, then, their occurrence trend was grouped using correlation analysis. Non-target peaks were prioritized through hierarchical cluster analysis, focusing on the first flush-concentrated peaks. This approach revealed 38 substances using in silico identification. Simultaneously, substances identified through homologous series observation were evaluated for their observed trends in individual events using network analysis. The results of SNTS were normalized through internal standards to assess the FFE, and the most of tentatively identified substances showed observed FFE. Our findings suggested that diverse pollutants that could not be covered by target screening alone entered urban water through stormwater runoff during the first flush. This study showcases the applicability of the SNTS in evaluating the FFE of urban pollutants, offering insights for first-flush stormwater monitoring and management.

Predicting the distribution coefficient of cesium in solid phase groups using machine learning.

The migration and retention of radioactive contaminants such as 137Cesium (137Cs) in various environmental media pose significant long-term storage challenges for nuclear waste. The distribution coefficient (Kd) is a critical parameter for assessing the mobility of radioactive contaminants and is influenced by various environmental conditions. This study presents machine-learning models based on the Japan Atomic Energy Agency Sorption Database (JAEA-SDB) to predict the Kd values for Cs in solid phase groups. We used three different machine learning models: random forest (RF), artificial neural network (ANN), and convolutional neural network (CNN). The models were trained on 14 input variables from the JAEA-SDB, including factors such as the Cs concentration, solid-phase properties, and solution conditions, which were preprocessed by normalization and log-transformation. The performances of the models were evaluated using the coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean squared error (RMSE). The RF, ANN, and CNN models achieved R2 values greater than 0.97, 0.86, and 0.88, respectively. We also analyzed the variable importance of RF using an out-of-bag (OOB) and a CNN with an attention module. Our results showed that the environmental media, initial radionuclide concentration, solid phase properties, and solution conditions were significant variables for Kd prediction. Our models accurately predict Kd values for different environmental conditions and can assess the environmental risk by analyzing the behavior of radionuclides in solid phase groups. The results of this study can improve safety analyses and long-term risk assessments related to waste disposal and prevent potential hazards and sources of contamination in the surrounding environment.

Projected climate change impact on cyanobacterial bloom phenology in temperate rivers based on temperature dependency.

Climate warming is linked to earlier onset and extended duration of cyanobacterial blooms in temperate rivers. This causes an unpredictable extent of harm to the functioning of the ecosystem and public health. We used Microcystis spp. cell density data monitored for seven years (2016-2022) in ten sites across four temperate rivers of the Republic of Korea to define the phenology of cyanobacterial blooms and elucidate the climatic effect on their pattern. The day of year marking the onset, peak, and end of Microcystis growth were estimated using a Weibull function, and linear mixed-effect models were employed to analyze their relationships with environmental variables. These models identified river-specific temperatures at the beginning and end dates of cyanobacterial blooms. Furthermore, the most realistic models were employed to project future Microcystis bloom phenology, considering downscaled and quantile-mapped regional air temperatures from a general circulation model. Daily minimum and daily maximum air temperatures (mintemp and maxtemp) primarily drove the timing of the beginning and end of the bloom, respectively. The models successfully captured the spatiotemporal variations of the beginning and end dates, with mintemp and maxtemp predicted to be 24℃ (R2 = 0.68) and 16℃ (R2 = 0.35), respectively. The beginning and end dates were projected to advance considerably in the future under the Representative Concentration Pathway 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5. The simulations suggested that the largest uncertainty lies in the timing of when the bloom ends, whereas the timing of when blooming begins has less variation. Our study highlights the dependency of cyanobacterial bloom phenology on temperatures and earlier and prolonged bloom development.

Machine learning analysis to interpret the effect of the photocatalytic reaction rate constant (k) of semiconductor-based photocatalysts on dye removal.

Photocatalytic reactions with semiconductor-based photocatalysts have been investigated extensively for application to wastewater treatment, especially dye degradation, yet the interactions between different process parameters have rarely been reported due to their complicated reaction mechanisms. Hence, this study aims to discern the impact of each factor, and each interaction between multiple factors on reaction rate constant (k) using a decision tree model. The dyes selected as target pollutants were indigo and malachite green, and 5 different semiconductor-based photocatalysts with 17 different compositions were tested, which generated 34 input features and 1527 data points. The Boruta Shapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) feature selection for the 34 inputs found that 11 inputs were significantly important. The decision tree model exhibited for 11 input features with an R2 value of 0.94. The SHAP feature importance analysis suggested that photocatalytic experimental conditions, with an importance of 59%, was the most important input category, followed by atomic composition (39%) and physicochemical properties (2%). Additionally, the effects on k of the synergy between the metal cocatalysts and important experimental conditions were confirmed by two feature SHAP dependence plots, regardless of importance order. This work provides insight into the single and multiple factors that affect reaction rate and mechanism.

Machine learning-based water quality prediction using octennial in-situ Daphnia magna biological early warning system data.

Biological early warning system (BEWS) has been globally used for surface water quality monitoring. Despite its extensive use, BEWS has exhibited limitations, including difficulties in biological interpretation and low alarm reproducibility. This study addressed these issues by applying machine learning (ML) models to eight years of in-situ BEWS data for Daphnia magna. Six ML models were adopted to predict contamination alarms from Daphnia behavioral parameters. The light gradient boosting machine model demonstrated the most significant improvement in predicting alarms from Daphnia behaviors. Compared with the traditional BEWS alarm index, the ML model enhanced the precision and recall by 29.50% and 43.41%, respectively. The speed distribution index and swimming speed were significant parameters for predicting water quality warnings. The nonlinear relationships between the monitored Daphnia behaviors and water physicochemical water quality parameters (i.e., flow rate, Chlorophyll-a concentration, water temperature, and conductivity) were identified by ML models for simulating Daphnia behavior based on the water contaminants. These findings suggest that ML models have the potential to establish a robust framework for advancing the predictive capabilities of BEWS, providing a promising avenue for real-time and accurate assessment of water quality. Thereby, it can contribute to more proactive and effective water quality management strategies.

Deep learning-based efficient drone-borne sensing of cyanobacterial blooms using a clique-based feature extraction approach.

Recent advances in remote sensing techniques provide a new horizon for monitoring the spatiotemporal variations of harmful algal blooms (HABs) using hyperspectral data in inland water. In this study, a hierarchical concatenated variational autoencoder (HCVAE) is proposed as an efficient and accurate deep learning (DL) based bio-optical model. To demonstrate its usefulness in retrieving algal pigments, the HCVAE is applied to bloom-prone regions in Daecheong Lake, South Korea. By abstracting the similarity between highly related features using layer-wise clique-based latent-feature extraction, HCVAE reduces the computational loads in deriving outputs while preventing performance degradation. Graph-based clique-detection uses information theory-based criteria to group the related reflectance spectra. Consequently, six latent features were extracted from 79 spectral bands to consist of a multilevel hierarchy of HCVAE that can simultaneously estimate concentrations of chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and phycocyanin (PC). Despite the parsimonious model architecture, the Chl-a and PC concentrations estimated by HCVAE closely agree with the measured concentrations, with test R2 values of 0.76 and 0.82, respectively. In addition, spatial distribution maps of algal pigments obtained from HCVAE using drone-borne reflectance successfully capture the blooming spots. Based on its multilevel hierarchical architecture, HCVAE can provide the importance of latent features along with their individual wavelengths using Shapley additive explanations. The most important latent features covered the spectral regions associated with both Chl-a and PC. The lightweight neural network DNNsel, which uses only the spectral bands of highest importance in latent-feature extraction, performed comparably to HCVAE. The study results demonstrate the utility of the multilevel hierarchical architecture as a comprehensive assessment model for near-real-time drone-borne sensing of HABs. Moreover, HCVAE is applicable to a wide range of environmental big data, as it can handle numerous sets of features.

Long short-term memory models of water quality in inland water environments.

Water quality is substantially influenced by a multitude of dynamic and interrelated variables, including climate conditions, landuse and seasonal changes. Deep learning models have demonstrated predictive power of water quality due to the superior ability to automatically learn complex patterns and relationships from variables. Long short-term memory (LSTM), one of deep learning models for water quality prediction, is a type of recurrent neural network that can account for longer-term traits of time-dependent data. It is the most widely applied network used to predict the time series of water quality variables. First, we reviewed applications of a standalone LSTM and discussed its calculation time, prediction accuracy, and good robustness with process-driven numerical models and the other machine learning. This review was expanded into the LSTM model with data pre-processing techniques, including the Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise method and Synchrosqueezed Wavelet Transform. The review then focused on the coupling of LSTM with a convolutional neural network, attention network, and transfer learning. The coupled networks demonstrated their performance over the standalone LSTM model. We also emphasized the influence of the static variables in the model and used the transformation method on the dataset. Outlook and further challenges were addressed. The outlook for research and application of LSTM in hydrology concludes the review.

Automatic classification of microplastics and natural organic matter mixtures using a deep learning model.

Several preprocessing procedures are required for the classification of microplastics (MPs) in aquatic systems using spectroscopic analysis. Procedures such as oxidation, which are employed to remove natural organic matter (NOM) from MPs, can be time- and cost-intensive. Furthermore, the identification process is prone to errors due to the subjective judgment of the operators. Therefore, in this study, deep learning (DL) was applied to improve the classification accuracies for mixtures of microplastic and natural organic matter (MP-NOM). A convolutional neural network (CNN)-based DL model with a spatial attention mechanism was adopted to classify substances from their Raman spectra. Subsequently, the classification results were compared with those obtained using conventional Raman spectral library software to evaluate the applicability of the model. Additionally, the crucial spectral band for training the DL model was investigated by applying gradient-weighted class activation mapping (Grad-CAM) as a post-processing technique. The model achieved an accuracy of 99.54%, which is much higher than the 31.44% achieved by the Raman spectral library. The Grad-CAM approach confirmed that the DL model can effectively identify MPs based on their visually prominent peaks in the Raman spectra. Furthermore, by tracking distinctive spectra without relying solely on visually prominent peaks, we can accurately classify MPs with less prominent peaks, which are characterized by a high standard deviation of intensity. These findings demonstrate the potential for automated and objective classification of MPs without the need for NOM preprocessing, indicating a promising direction for future research in microplastic classification.

Time-series modelling of harmful cyanobacteria blooms by convolutional neural networks and wavelet generated time-frequency images of environmental driving variables.

Early warning systems for harmful cyanobacterial blooms (HCBs) that enable precautional control measures within water bodies and in water works are largely based on inferential time-series modelling. Among deep learning techniques, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are widely applied for recognition of pictorial, acoustic and thermal images. Time-frequency images of environmental drivers generated by wavelets may provide crucial signals for modelling of HCBs to be recognized by CNNs. This study applies CNNs for time-series modelling of HCBs of Microcystis sp. in four South Korean rivers between 2016 and 2022 by means of time-frequency images of environmental drivers within the lead time of HCBs. After estimating the cardinal dates of beginning, peak, and ending of HCBs, wavelet analysis identified key drivers by phase analysis and generated time-frequency images of the drivers within the cardinal dates for 3, 4 and 5 years. Performances of CNNs were compared in terms of four determinants of input images: methods of estimating critical timings, the number of segments, time-series continuity, and image size. The resulting CNNs predicted high or low intensities of HCBs with a mean accuracy of 97.79 ± 0.06% and F1-score 97.49 ± 0.06% for training dataset, and a mean accuracy of 95.01 ± 0.06% and F1-score 93.30 ± 0.07% for testing dataset. Predictions of Microcystis abundances by CNNs achieved a mean MSE of 2.58 ± 2.46 and a mean R2 of 0.78 ± 0.20 for training, and a mean MSE of 2.76 ± 2.42 and a mean R2 of 0.55 ± 0.20 for testing dataset. Precipitation and discharge appeared to be the best performing drivers for qualitative and quantitative predictions of HCBs pointing at the nonstationary nature of river habitats. This study highlights the opportunities of time-series modelling by CNNs driven by wavelet generated time-frequency images of key environmental variables for forecasting of HCBs.

Molecular-level chemical composition of aerosol and its potential source tracking at Antarctic Peninsula.

Marine organic aerosols play crucial roles in global climatic systems. However, their chemical properties and relationships with various potential organic sources still need clarification. This study employed high-resolution mass spectrometry to investigate the identity, origin, and transportation of organic aerosols in pristine Antarctic environments (King Sejong Station; 62.2°S, 58.8°W), where complex ocean-cryosphere-atmosphere interactions occur. First, we classified the aerosol samples into three clusters based on their air mass transport history. Next, we investigated the relationship between organic aerosols and their potential sources, including organic matter dissolved in the open ocean, coastal waters, and runoff waters. Cluster 1 (C1), in which the aerosols mainly originated from the open ocean area (i.e., pelagic zone-influenced), exhibited a higher abundance of lipid-like and protein-like organic aerosols than cluster 3 (C3), with ratios 1.8- and 1.6-times higher, respectively. In contrast, C3, characterized by longer air mass retention over sea ice and land areas (i.e., inshore-influenced), had higher lignin- and condensed aromatic structures (CAS)-like organic aerosols by 2.2- and 3.4-times compared to C1. Cluster 2 (C2) has intermediate characteristics between C1 and C3 concerning the chemical properties of the aerosols and air mass travel history. Notably, the chemical properties of the aerosols assigned to C1 are closely related to those of phytoplankton-derived organics enriched in the open ocean. In contrast, those of C3 are comparable to those of terrestrial plant-derived organics enriched in coastal and runoff waters. These findings help evaluate the source-dependent properties of organic aerosols in changing Antarctic environment.

The risk assessment of arsenic contamination in the urbanized coastal aquifer of Rayong groundwater basin, Thailand using the machine learning approach.

The rapid expansion of urbanization has resulted in an insufficient of groundwater resource. In order to use groundwater more efficiently, a risk assessment of groundwater pollution should be proposed. The present study used machine learning with three algorithms consisting of Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to locate risk areas of arsenic contamination in Rayong coastal aquifers, Thailand and selected the suitable model based on model performance and uncertainty for risk assessment. The parameters of 653 groundwater wells (Deep=236, Shallow=417) were selected based on the correlation of each hydrochemical parameters with arsenic concentration in deep and shallow aquifer environments. The models were validated with arsenic concentration collected from 27 well data in the field. The model's performance indicated that the RF algorithm has the highest performance as compared to those of SVM and ANN in both deep and shallow aquifers (Deep: AUC=0.72, Recall=0.61, F1 =0.69; Shallow: AUC=0.81, Recall=0.79, F1 =0.68). In addition, the uncertainty from the quantile regression of each model confirmed that the RF algorithm has the lowest uncertainty (Deep: PICP=0.20; Shallow: PICP=0.34). The result of the risk map obtained from the RF reveals that the deep aquifer, in the northern part of the Rayong basin has a higher risk for people to expose to As. In contrast, the shallow aquifer revealed that the southern part of the basin has a higher risk, which is also supported by the location of the landfill and industrial estates in the area. Therefore, health surveillance is important in monitoring the toxic effects on the residents who use groundwater from these contaminated wells. The outcome of this study can help policymakers in regions to manage the quality of groundwater resources and enhance the sustainable use of groundwater resources. The novelty process of this research can be used to further study other groundwater aquifers contaminated and increase the effectiveness of groundwater quality management.

Characterization of micropollutants in urban stormwater using high-resolution monitoring and machine learning.

Urban rainfall events can lead to the runoff of pollutants, including industrial, pesticide, and pharmaceutical chemicals. Transporting micropollutants (MPs) into water systems can harm both human health and aquatic species. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the dynamics of MPs during rainfall events. However, few studies have examined MPs during rainfall events due to the high analytical expenses and extensive spatiotemporal variability. Few studies have investigated the occurrence patterns of MPs and factors that influence their transport, such as rainfall duration, antecedent dry periods, and variations in streamflow. Moreover, while there have been many analyses of nutrients, suspended solids, and heavy metals during the first flush effect (FFE), studies on the transport of MPs during FFE are insufficient. This study aimed to identify the dynamics of MPs and FFE in an urban catchment, using high-resolution monitoring and machine learning methods. Hierarchical clustering analysis and partial least squares regression (PLSR) were implemented to estimate the similarity between each MP and identify the factors influencing their transport during rainfall events. Eleven dominant MPs comprised 75% of the total MP concentration and had a 100% detection frequency. During rainfall events, pesticides and pharmaceutical MPs showed a higher FFE than industrial MPs. Moreover, the initial 30% of the runoff volume contained 78.0% of pesticide and 50.1% of pharmaceutical substances for events W1 (July 5 to July 6, 2021) and W6 (August 31 to September 1, 2021), respectively. The PLSR model suggested that stormflow (m3/s) and the duration of antecedent dry hours (h) significantly influenced MP dynamics, yielding the variable importance on projection scores greater than 1.0. Hence, our findings indicate that MPs in urban waters should be managed by considering FFE.

Ocean-atmosphere interactions: Different organic components across Pacific and Southern Oceans.

Sea spray aerosol (SSA) particles strongly influence clouds and climate but the potential impact of ocean microbiota on SSA fluxes is still a matter of active research. Here-by means of in situ ship-borne measurements-we explore simultaneously molecular-level chemical properties of organic matter (OM) in oceans, sea ice, and the ambient PM2.5 aerosols along a transect of 15,000 km from the western Pacific Ocean (36°13'N) to the Southern Ocean (75°15'S). By means of orbitrap mass spectrometry and optical characteristics, lignin-like material (24 ± 5 %) and humic material (57 ± 8 %) were found to dominate the pelagic Pacific Ocean surface, while intermediate conditions were observed in the Pacific-Southern Ocean waters. In the marine atmosphere, we found a gradient of features in the aerosol: lignin-like material (31 ± 9 %) dominating coastal areas and the pelagic Pacific Ocean, whereas lipid-like (23 ± 16 %) and protein-like (11 ± 10 %) OM controlled the sympagic Southern Ocean (sea ice-influence). The results of this study showed that the OM composition in the ocean, which changes with latitude, affects the OM in aerosol compositions in the atmosphere. This study highlights the importance of the global-scale OM monitoring of the close interaction between the ocean, sea ice, and the atmosphere. Sympagic primary marine aerosols in polar regions must be treated differently from other pelagic-type oceans.

An autopsy study of hollow fiber and multibore ultrafiltration membranes from a pilot-scale ultra high-recovery filtration system for surface water treatment.

The organic fouling characteristics of hollow fiber ultrafiltration (HFUF) and multibore ultrafiltration (MBUF) membranes from long-term ultrafiltration (UF) membrane systems were systemically investigated in this study. The objective was to obtain insights into the fouling behavior of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in a pilot-scale ultra-high-recovery membrane filtration system (p-UHMS) used for surface water treatment. The pilot system consisted of a series of two different UF membranes (1st stage: polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) HFUF and 2nd stage: polyethersulfone (PES) MBUF). It was designed to feed the HFUF concentrate to the MBUF membranes to achieve ≥99.5 % total water recovery for surface water treatment, as these advances might enhance the production efficiencies of drinking water. The experimental results confirmed that hydrophobic DOM controlled the formation of HFUF membrane organic fouling, whereas hydrophilic DOM, including polysaccharide-like and protein-like matter, promoted MBUF membrane fouling. These opposing trends were attributed to the hydrophilic characteristics of the MBUF membrane surfaces (contact angle: PVDF = 90-130° and PES ≤ 80°), which reduced the hydrophobic interactions between the UF membrane surfaces and foulants. The performance declines of the MBUF membrane due to fouling layer formation was considerably severer than those of the HFUF membrane, decreasing total permeate water in the p-UHMS. Moreover, the quantity of the desorbed MBUF membrane foulants via 0.1 N NaOH was roughly 7.2 times larger than that of the desorbed HFUF membrane foulants through 0.1 N NaOH, indicating that alkaline-based cleaning agent could much more efficiently recover the performance of the fouled MBUF membranes. Hence, adequate cleaning strategies using alkaline-based agent for the MBUF membrane appeared to be essential for preventing the performance deterioration of the p-UHMS.

Machine learning approaches to predict the photocatalytic performance of bismuth ferrite-based materials in the removal of malachite green.

This study focuses on the potential capability of numerous machine learning models, namely CatBoost, GradientBoosting, HistGradientBoosting, ExtraTrees, XGBoost, DecisionTree, Bagging, light gradient boosting machine (LGBM), GaussianProcess, artificial neural network (ANN), and light long short-term memory (LightLSTM). These models were investigated to predict the photocatalytic degradation of malachite green from wastewater using various NM-BiFeO3 composites. A comprehensive databank of 1200 data points was generated under various experimental conditions. The ten input variables selected were the catalyst type, reaction time, light intensity, initial concentration, catalyst loading, solution pH, humic acid concentration, anions, surface area, and pore volume of various photocatalysts. The MG dye degradation efficiency was selected as the output variable. An evaluation of the performance metrics suggested that the CatBoost model, with the highest test coefficient of determination (0.99) and lowest mean absolute error (0.64) and root-mean-square error (1.34), outperformed all other models. The CatBoost model showed that the photocatalytic reaction conditions were more important than the material properties. The modeling results suggested that the optimized process conditions were a light intensity of 105 W, catalyst loading of 1.5 g/L, initial MG dye concentration of 5 mg/L and solution pH of 7. Finally, the implications and drawbacks of the current study were stated in detail.

An open-source deep learning model for predicting effluent concentration in capacitive deionization.

To effectively evaluate the performance of capacitive deionization (CDI), an electrochemical ion separation technology, it is necessary to accurately estimate the number of ions removed (effluent concentration) according to energy consumption. Herein, we propose and evaluate a deep learning model for predicting the effluent concentration of a CDI process. The developed deep learning model exhibited excellent prediction accuracy for both constant current and constant voltage modes (R2 ≥ 0.968), and the accuracy increased with the data size. This model was based on the open-source language, Python, and the code has since been distributed with proper instructions for general use. Owing to the nature of the data-oriented deep learning model, the findings of this study are not only applicable to conventional CDI but also to various types of CDI (membrane CDI, flow CDI, faradaic CDI, etc.). Therefore, by referring to the examples shown in this study, we hope that this open-source deep learning code will be widely used in CDI research.

Automation of membrane capacitive deionization process using reinforcement learning.

Capacitive deionization (CDI) is an alternative desalination technology that uses electrochemical ion separation. Although several attempts have been made to maximize the energy efficiency and productivity of CDI with conventional control methods, it is difficult to optimize the CDI processes because of the complex correlation between the operational conditions and the composition of feed water. To address these challenges, we applied deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to automatically control the membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI) process, which is one of the representative CDI processes, to accomplish high energy efficiency while desalinating water. In the DRL model, the numerical model is combined as the environment that provides states according to the actions. The feed water conditions, that is, the input state of the DRL, were assumed to have a random salt concentration and constant foulant concentration. The model was constructed to minimize energy consumption and maximize desalted water volume per cycle. After training of 1,000 episodes, the DRL model achieved a 22.07% reduction in specific energy consumption (from 0.054 to 0.042 kWh m-3) and 11.60% increase in water desalted water volume per cycle (from 1.96×10-5 to 2.19×10-5 m3), achieving the desired degree of desalination, compared to the first episode. This improved performance was because the trained model selected the optimized operating conditions of current, voltage, and the number and intensity of flushing. Furthermore, it was possible to train the model depending on demand by modifying the reward function of the DRL model. The fundamental principle described in this study for applying the DRL model in MCDI operations can be the cornerstone of a fully automated water desalination process.

Lysophosphatidic acid-induced amphiregulin secretion by cancer-associated fibroblasts augments cancer cell invasion.

Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are key structural components of the tumor microenvironment and are closely associated with tumor invasion and metastasis. Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) is a biolipid produced extracellularly and involved in tumorigenesis and metastasis. LPA has recently been implicated in the education and transdifferentiation of normal fibroblasts (NFs) into CAFs. However, little is known about the effects of LPA on CAFs and their participation in cancer cell invasion. In the present study, we identified a critical role of LPA-induced amphiregulin (AREG) secreted from CAFs in cancer invasiveness. CAFs secrete higher amounts of AREG than NFs, and LPA induces AREG expression in CAFs to augment their invasiveness. Strikingly, knocking out the AREG gene in CAFs attenuates cancer invasiveness and metastasis. Mechanistically, LPA induces Yes-associated protein (YAP) activation and Zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1 (Zeb1) expression through the LPAR1 and LPAR3/Gi/Rho signaling axes, leading to AREG expression. Furthermore, we provide evidence that metformin, a biguanide derivative, significantly inhibits LPA-induced AREG expression in CAFs to attenuate cancer cell invasiveness. Collectively, the present data show that LPA induces AREG expression through YAP and Zeb1 in CAFs to promote cancer cell invasiveness, with the process being inhibited by metformin, providing potential biomarkers and therapeutic avenues to interdict cancer cell invasion.

Deep reinforcement learning in an ultrafiltration system: Optimizing operating pressure and chemical cleaning conditions.

Enhancing engineering efficiency and reducing operating costs are permanent subjects that face all engineers over the world. To effectively improve the performance of filtration systems, it is necessary to determine an optimal operating condition beyond conventional methods of periodic and empirical operation. Herein, this paper proposes an effective approach to finding an optimal operating strategy using deep reinforcement learning (DRL), particularly for an ultrafiltration (UF) system. Deep learning was developed to represent the UF system utilizing a long-short term memory and provided an environment for DRL. DRL was designed to control three actions; operating pressure, cleaning time, and cleaning concentration. Ultimately, DRL proposed the UF system to actively change the operating pressure and cleaning conditions over time toward better water productivity and operating efficiency. DRL denoted ∼20.9% of specific energy consumption can be reduced by increasing average water flux (39.5-43.7 L m-2 h-1) and reducing operating pressure (0.617-0.540 bar). Moreover, the optimal action of DRL was reasonable to achieve better performance beyond the conventional operation. Crucially, this study demonstrated that due to the nature of DRL, the approach is tractable for engineering systems that have structurally complex relationships among operating conditions and resultants.