Extraction of Biocompatible Collagen From Blue Shark Skins Through the Conventional Extraction Process Intensification Using Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents

ERC-2016-CoG 725034The disposal of large amounts of skin waste resulting from the blue shark fishing industry presents several industrial and environmental waste management concerns. In addition, these marine subproducts are interesting sources of collagen, a fibrous protein that shows high social and economic interest in a broad range of biomedical, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic applications. However, blue shark wasted skins are a poorly explored matrix for this purpose, and conventional collagen recovery methodologies involve several pre-treatment steps, long extraction times and low temperatures. This work presents a new green and sustainable collagen extraction approach using a natural deep eutectic solvent composed of citric acid:xylitol:water at a 1:1:10 molar ratio, and the chemical characterization of the extracted collagen by discontinuous electrophoresis, thermogravimetric analysis, Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy and circular dichroism. The extracted material was a pure type I collagen, and the novel approach presented an extraction yield 2.5 times higher than the conventional one, without pre-treatment of raw material and reducing the procedure time from 96 to 1 h. Furthermore, the in vitro cytotoxicity evaluation, performed with a mouse fibroblasts cell line, has proven the biocompatibility of the extracted material. Overall, the obtained results demonstrate a simple, quick, cheap and environmentally sustainable process to obtain marine collagen with promising properties for biomedical and cosmetic applications.publishersversionpublishe

A penalty scheme for the Tchebycheff scalarization method to optimize the single screw extrusion

The polymer single screw extruder optimal design has been involving the optimization of six objectives. Multi-objective optimization methods, in particular those based on the weighted Tchebycheff Scalarization (wTS) function, have provided reasonable solutions in a way that good trade-offs between conflicting objectives are identified. In this work, a new penalty term is added to the wTS function aiming to guide the solution toward the Pareto front. The corresponding formulation works similarly to the penalty-based boundary intersection function. The goal of the proposed penalty parameter scheme is to balance convergence and diversity. Since six objectives are simultaneously optimized, the penalty scheme provides large as well as small penalty parameter values to enlarge the improving region. The results show that the set of solutions obtained by the penalty-based wTS algorithm can reasonably well cover the Pareto front.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie SkłodowskaCurie grant agreement No. 734205 – H2020-MSCA-RISE-2016

Multi-objective polymer single screw extruder optimization

The optimal design of a polymer single screw extruder may involve various conflicting performance objectives and depends on operating and geometrical parameters. In this work, five bi-objective problems are analysed where one of the most relevant performance objectives, the mass output, is considered in all problems. For simplicity purposes, only the operating parameters are optimized being the geometrical parameters assumed to be fixed. The optimal solution set of each problem is compared with the corresponding two-dimensional projection of the Pareto front obtained when the six objectives are optimized simultaneously. A weighted Tchebycheff scalarization algorithm is implemented based on the simulated annealing method to obtain the Pareto front of the multi-objective optimisation problems.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie SkłodowskaCurie grant agreement No. 734205 – H2020-MSCA-RISE-2016

As revoltas árabes e a democracia no mundo

Desde Kant que sabemos como a natureza dos regimes importa para a segurança internacional e como os povos “republicanos” tendem a ser mais pacíficos do que aqueles que vivem sob regimes despóticos ou autoritários. Nesse sentido, pode dizer-se que o estudo das mudanças políticas e o acompanhamento da evolução dos regimes nas várias regiões do globo é crucial para a análise das tendências e das ameaças e riscos à segurança nacional, e como tal inserem-se na missão do Instituto da Defesa Nacional (IDN). Foi justamente por isso que o IDN lançou uma linha de investigação sobre este tema e que, no dia 26 de Abril de 2012, organizou um seminário internacional intitulado “As Revoltas Árabes e a Democracia no Mundo”, com painéis sobre transições democráticas, a situação no mundo árabe e a promoção da democracia. O seminário contou com a intervenção de altos funcionários, antigos responsáveis políticos e académicos especializados em processos de democratização e na análise do mundo árabe e do Médio Oriente. Alguns desses oradores deixaram-nos ou enviaram-nos contributos escritos. São precisamente esses contributos que aqui se reúnem

Polymer single screw extruder optimization using tchebycheff scalarization method and simulated annealing algorithm

The single screw extrusion optimal design involves the optimization of six criteria that can be efficiently handled by a weighted Tchebycheff scalarization method. The performance of the method has been analyzed for three different methods to generate weight vectors. The experimental results show that the tested strategies provide similar and reasonable solutions and supply a valuable procedure to identify good trade-offs between conflicting objectives.European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 734205- H2020-MSCA-RISE-2017. The work has also been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020, UIDB/00013/2020 and UIDP/00013/2020 of CMAT-U

Single screw extrusion optimization using the tchebycheff scalarization method

The optimal design of a single screw extrusion (SSE) is a very difficult task since it deals with several conflicting performance indices. Past research to find the optimal SSE design has been successfully conducted by optimization procedures, in particular by multi-objective optimization. Problems with two or more objectives have been addressed by multi-objective evolutionary algorithms that search for the whole set of promising solutions in a single run. Our approach has been guided by the bi-objective optimization problems, using a methodology based on the weighted Tchebycheff scalarization function. The numerical results show that the proposed methodology is able to produce satisfactory results with physical meaning.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020, UIDB/05256/2020 and UIDP/05256/2020, UIDB/00013/2020 and UIDP/00013/2020 of CMAT-UM, and the European project MSCA-RISE-2015, NEWEX, Reference 734205

Spatial and temporal variations of Cockle (Cerastoderma spp.) populations in two portuguese estuarine systems with low directed fishing pressure

Cockles are amongst the most exploited bivalve species in Portugal, playing an important ecological and socioeconomic role in coastal ecosystems. Two sympatric species of cockles, Cerastoderma edule (Linnaeus, 1758) and Cerastoderma glaucum (Bruguiere, 1789-1792) may co-occur in estuaries and coastal lagoons in mixed populations along the European Atlantic coast, namely in Portugal, France and the United Kingdom. The increasing importance of shellfish harvesting in Portugal requires a good knowledge of cockle stocks and temporal variability in stock levels to better inform sustainable management practices. Therefore, this study aimed at assessing spatial and temporal variations in cockle populations in two Portuguese estuarine systems where the species are exploited at low levels. Sampling was carried out using a clam dredge, covering the entire potential area of occurrence of cockles in the Tagus and Sado estuaries at around the same time of the year in each of the three sampling years (2015, 2018, and 2019). The abundance, spatial distribution and population structure of cockles were examined at each system. Moreover, several water and sediment parameters were measured to understand the influence of environmental conditions on the spatial distribution and abundance of cockles. The results obtained showed that cockles occur mostly in the intermediate areas of both estuarine systems and are more abundant in the Tagus estuary. Depth, average sediment grain size and the species Ruditapes philippinarum were the factors that better explained the probability of species occurrence. The population structure analysis indicated that natural mortality is constraining the cockle communities given the low abundance of adult individuals with marketable size in both estuaries. This study highlights the need for appropriate management measures to ensure the sustainability of these bivalve population stocks that have significant socioeconomic importance for local populations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biopolymer-based membranes associated with osteogenic growth peptide for guided bone regeneration

Barrier membranes for guided bone regeneration (GBR) mainly promote mechanical maintenance of bone defect space and induce osteopromotion. Additionally, biopolymer-based membranes may provide greater bioactivity and biocompatibility due to their similarity to extracellular matrix (ECM).In this study, biopolymers-based membranes from bacterial cellulose (BC) and collagen (COL) associated with osteogenic growth peptide (OGP(10–14)) were evaluated to determine in vitro osteoinductive potential in early osteogenesis; moreover, histological study was performed to evaluate the BC–COL OGP(10–14) membranes on bone healing after GBR in noncritical defects in rat femur. The results showed that the BC–COL and BC–COL OGP(10–14) membranes promoted cell proliferation and alkaline phosphatase activity in osteoblastic cell cultures. However, ECMmineralization was similar between cultures grown on BC OGP(10–14) and BC–COL OGP(10–14) membranes. In vivo results showed that all the membranes tested, including the peptide-free BC membrane, promoted better bone regeneration than control group. Furthermore, the BC–COL OGP(10–14) membranes induced higher radiographic density in the repaired bone than the other groups at 1, 4 and 16 weeks. Histomorpho-metric analyses revealed that the BC–COL OGP(10–14) induced higher percentage of bone tissue in the repaired area at 2 and 4 weeks than others membranes. In general, these biopolymer-based membranes might be potential candidates for bone regeneration applications

A comprehensive assessment of the transcriptome of cork oak (Quercus suber) through EST sequencing

Background: Cork oak (Quercus suber) is one of the rare trees with the ability to produce cork, a material widely used to make wine bottle stoppers, flooring and insulation materials, among many other uses. The molecular mechanisms of cork formation are still poorly understood, in great part due to the difficulty in studying a species with a long life-cycle and for which there is scarce molecular/genomic information. Cork oak forests are of great ecological importance and represent a major economic and social resource in Southern Europe and Northern Africa. However, global warming is threatening the cork oak forests by imposing thermal, hydric and many types of novel biotic stresses. Despite the economic and social value of the Q. suber species, few genomic resources have been developed, useful for biotechnological applications and improved forest management. Results: We generated in excess of 7 million sequence reads, by pyrosequencing 21 normalized cDNA libraries derived from multiple Q. suber tissues and organs, developmental stages and physiological conditions. We deployed a stringent sequence processing and assembly pipeline that resulted in the identification of ~159,000 unigenes. These were annotated according to their similarity to known plant genes, to known Interpro domains, GO classes and E.C. numbers. The phylogenetic extent of this ESTs set was investigated, and we found that cork oak revealed a significant new gene space that is not covered by other model species or EST sequencing projects. The raw data, as well as the full annotated assembly, are now available to the community in a dedicated web portal at http://www.corkoakdb.org. Conclusions: This genomic resource represents the first trancriptome study in a cork producing species. It can be explored to develop new tools and approaches to understand stress responses and developmental processes in forest trees, as well as the molecular cascades underlying cork differentiation and disease response.Peer Reviewe