Prioritising the best use of biomass resources: conceptualising trade-offs

02.09.13 KB. Ok to add report to Spiral. Authors hold copyrightUsing biomass to provide energy services is one of the most versatile options for increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the existing system. This report reviews metrics used to compare alternative bio-energy pathways and identifies limitations inherent in the way that they are calculated and interpreted. It also looks at how companies and investors approach strategic decisions in the bio-energy area. Bio-energy pathways have has physical and economic attributes that can be measured or modelled. These include: the capital cost, operating cost, emissions to air, land and water. Conceptually, comparing alternative pathways is as simple as selecting the attributes and metrics you consider to be most important and ranking the alternative pathways accordingly. At an abstract level there is good agreement about which features of bio-energy pathways are desirable, but there is little agreement about which performance metrics best capture all the relevant information about a bio-energy pathway. Between studies there is also a great deal of variation and this impedes comparison. Common metrics describe energetic performance, economic performance, environmental performance (emissions, land and water use), and social and ecological performance. Compound metrics may be used to integrate multiple attributes but their highly aggregate nature may make them difficult to interpret. Insights that may be drawn from the analysis include:

The future of bioethanol

Yeasts have been domesticated by mankind before horses. After the mastering of alcoholic fermentation for centuries, yeasts have become the protagonist of one of the most important biotechnological industries worldwide: the production of bioethanol. This chapter will initially present some important challenges to be overcome in this industry, both in first and second generation biofuel production. Then, it will briefly revisit some advances obtained in recent years. Finally, it will present and discuss some opportunities, in the scope of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, that will likely be present in the future of bioethanol

Investigating the protective role of the natural hormone Melatonin, in reducing drug-induced cardiotoxicity in the therapy of chronic diseases

Heart failure (HF) is a highly complex disorder and a major end-point of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). The pathogenesis of HF is mostly unresolved but involves interplay between cardiac structural and electrical remodelling, metabolic alterations, cell death and altered gene expression. Mitochondrial dysfunction and HF are common complications of chronic treatment from diverse groups of drugs, in particular anticancer drugs such as doxorubicin (DOX). Treatment of animals and cardiomyocytes with cardiotoxic chemicals such as β-adrenergic receptor agonists (such as isoproterenol) induces cardiac dysfunction and HF. Previous work done by the group have identified the pineal hormone melatonin was protective against stress-induced cardiac arrhythmias and simulated heart failure in cardiomyocytes in vitro. Melatonin synthesis is also dramatically decreased with age and in patients with CVD. The aim of the present project was to better understand the pathogenesis of druginduced cardiac dysfunction and delineate the role of melatonin in cardioprotection in H9c2, a model rat cell line in vitro. Using the Seahorse XF analyser method, it was demonstrated that commonly used medication for chronic diseases such as amiodarone, amitriptyline, and statins all caused altered mitochondrial dysfunction. In addition, cardiotoxic chemicals (isoproterenol, hydrogen peroxide, DOX) altered oxidative phosphorylation and glycolysis in living cardiomyocyte-derived H9c2 cells; these deleterious metabolic changes were ameliorated by melatonin. Flowcytometry and Alamar Blue staining methods demonstrated that DOX robustly induced apoptosis in H9c2 cells (~30%) which was reversed by melatonin. Doxorubicin-induced stress in H9c2 cells dramatically altered gene expression in several key signalling pathways integral in cardiac function and disease. These included mitochondrial metabolism (UCP2, PPARɣ, Drp1, Mfn1, Parp 1, Parp2, Sirt3 and Cav3), apoptosis (Bcl2 and Bcl-xL), cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmia (Scn5a, SERCA2a), calcium handling (SERCA2a) and cardiac remodelling (Myh7, ms1). Melatonin pre-treatment attenuated or completely blocked this DOX-induced alteration in gene expression in cardiomyocytes. In conclusion, the present result demonstrated for the first time that melatonin is cardioprotective against drug-induced cardiotoxicity and apoptosis via modifying diverse heart failure-related signalling pathways. This provides novel insight on the possible use of melatonin as an adjunct intervention in several therapies including anti-cancer

"There are too many, but never enough": qualitative case study investigating routine coding of clinical information in depression.

We sought to understand how clinical information relating to the management of depression is routinely coded in different clinical settings and the perspectives of and implications for different stakeholders with a view to understanding how these may be aligned

Narrative vignettes and online enquiry in researching therapist accounts of practice with children in schools : an analysis of the methodology

This article reviews a research methodology which uses a qualitative, narrative approach to online, in-depth analysis of vignettes. The research sought to investigate the ways in which dramatherapists, based in different countries, understood the nature of therapeutic change in their work with children. The article describes the approach to the generation of data through the internet by a combination of vignettes, aMSN messenger and email. It reports on the approach taken to the analysis of data with samples from the findings. Participants kept a diary of their response to the research and the article draws on this within its analysis of the methodology

Virtual sector profiles for innovation sharing in process industry : sector 01: chemicals

Production data in process industry are proprietary to a company since they are key to the process design and technology expertise. However, data confidentiality restrains industry from sharing results and advancing developments in and across process sectors. Using virtual profiles that simulate the typical operating modes of a given process industry offers an elegant solution for a company to share information with the outside world. This paper proposes a generic methodology to create sector blueprints and applies it to the chemicals industry. It details the profile of a typical chemical site based on essential units and realistic data gathered from existing refineries and chemical plants

Degradation of contaminants of emerging concern by UV/H2O2 for water reuse: Kinetics, mechanisms, and cytotoxicity analysis.

Advanced oxidation using UV and hydrogen peroxide (UV/H2O2) has been widely applied to degrade contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in wastewater for water reuse. This study investigated the degradation kinetics of mixed CECs by UV/H2O2 under variable H2O2 doses, including bisphenol A, estrone, diclofenac, ibuprofen, and triclosan. Reverse osmosis (RO) treated water samples from Orange County Water District's Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS) potable reuse project were collected on different dates and utilized as reaction matrices with spiked additions of chemicals (CECs and H2O2) to assess the application of UV/H2O2. Possible degradation pathways of selected CECs were proposed based on high resolution mass spectrometry identification of transformation products (TPs). Toxicity assessments included cytotoxicity, aryl hydrocarbon receptor-binding activity, and estrogen receptor-binding activity, in order to evaluate potential environmental impacts resulting from CEC degradation by UV/H2O2. Cytotoxicity and estrogenic activity were significantly reduced during the degradation of mixed CECs in Milli-Q water by UV/H2O2 with high UV fluence (3200 mJ cm-2). However, in GWRS RO-treated water samples collected in April 2017, the cytotoxicity and estrogen activity of spiked CEC-mixture after UV/H2O2 treatment were not significantly eliminated; this might be due to the high concentration of target CEC and their TPs, which was possibly affected by the varied quality of the secondary treatment influent at this facility such as sewer-shed and wastewater discharges. This study aimed to provide insight on the impacts of post-UV/H2O2 CECs and TPs on human and ecological health at cellular level

Neuroethology, Computational

Over the past decade, a number of neural network researchers have used the term computational neuroethology to describe a specific approach to neuroethology. Neuroethology is the study of the neural mechanisms underlying the generation of behavior in animals, and hence it lies at the intersection of neuroscience (the study of nervous systems) and ethology (the study of animal behavior); for an introduction to neuroethology, see Simmons and Young (1999). The definition of computational neuroethology is very similar, but is not quite so dependent on studying animals: animals just happen to be biological autonomous agents. But there are also non-biological autonomous agents such as some types of robots, and some types of simulated embodied agents operating in virtual worlds. In this context, autonomous agents are self-governing entities capable of operating (i.e., coordinating perception and action) for extended periods of time in environments that are complex, uncertain, and dynamic. Thus, computational neuroethology can be characterised as the attempt to analyze the computational principles underlying the generation of behavior in animals and in artificial autonomous agents