Water Global Health Benefit: The Water Footprint of the Dietary Patterns and the Acceptability of a 100% Plant-Based Diet

Water is exhaustible but fundamental from the perspective of global health. Food choices seem to play a relevant impact on human water consumption. We assessed the water footprint of widespread dietary patterns, and we used a mix-methods approach. We administered an adapted version of a 17-item questionnaire to a sample of young subjects, aiming to assess the level of acceptability of the diet that showed the lowest water consumption. The 100% plant-based diet was the winner, but its acceptability was weak. Our findings support the current evidence promoting adherence to a low or non-animal-based diet, which favors human and environmental health

Flooding in the Digital Twin Earth: The Case Study of the Enza River Levee Breach in December 2017

The accurate delineation of flood hazard maps is a key element of flood risk management policy. Flood inundation models are fundamental for reproducing the boundaries of flood-prone areas, but their calibration is limited to the information available on the areas affected by inundation during observed flood events (typically fragmentary photo, video or partial surveys). In recent years, Earth Observation data have supported flood monitoring and emergency response (e.g., the Copernicus Emergency Service) thanks to the proliferation of available satellite sensors, also at high spatial resolution. Under this umbrella, the study investigates a levee breach that occurred in December 2017 along the Enza River, a right tributary of the Po River, that caused the inundation of a large area including Lentigione village. The flood event is simulated with a 2D hydraulic model using satellite images to calibrate the roughness coefficients. The results show that the processing and the timing of the high-resolution satellite imagery is fundamental for a reliable representation of the flooded area

Host - Bacterial Pathogen Communication: The Wily Role of the Multidrug Efflux Pumps of the MFS Family

<jats:p>Bacterial pathogens are able to survive within diverse habitats. The dynamic adaptation to the surroundings depends on their ability to sense environmental variations and to respond in an appropriate manner. This involves, among others, the activation of various cell-to-cell communication strategies. The capability of the bacterial cells to rapidly and co-ordinately set up an interplay with the host cells and/or with other bacteria facilitates their survival in the new niche. Efflux pumps are ubiquitous transmembrane transporters, able to extrude a large set of different molecules. They are strongly implicated in antibiotic resistance since they are able to efficiently expel most of the clinically relevant antibiotics from the bacterial cytoplasm. Besides antibiotic resistance, multidrug efflux pumps take part in several important processes of bacterial cell physiology, including cell to cell communication, and contribute to increase the virulence potential of several bacterial pathogens. Here, we focus on the structural and functional role of multidrug efflux pumps belonging to the Major Facilitator Superfamily (MFS), the largest family of transporters, highlighting their involvement in the colonization of host cells, in virulence and in biofilm formation. We will offer an overview on how MFS multidrug transporters contribute to bacterial survival, adaptation and pathogenicity through the export of diverse molecules. This will be done by presenting the functions of several relevant MFS multidrug efflux pumps in human life-threatening bacterial pathogens as <jats:italic>Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, Klebsiella pneumoniae</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>Shigella/E. coli, Acinetobacter baumannii.</jats:italic></jats:p&gt

A digital twin of the terrestrial water cycle : a glimpse into the future through high-resolution Earth observations

Climate change is profoundly affecting the global water cycle, increasing the likelihood and severity of extreme water-related events. Better decision-support systems are vital to accurately predict and monitor water-related environmental disasters and optimally manage water resources. These must integrate advances in remote sensing, in situ, and citizen observations with high-resolution Earth system modeling, artificial intelligence (AI), information and communication technologies, and high-performance computing. Digital Twin Earth (DTE) models are a ground-breaking solution offering digital replicas to monitor and simulate Earth processes with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution. Advances in Earth observation (EO) satellite technology are pivotal, and here we provide a roadmap for the exploitation of these methods in a DTE for hydrology. The 4-dimensional DTE Hydrology datacube now fuses high-resolution EO data and advanced modeling of soil moisture, precipitation, evaporation, and river discharge, and here we report the latest validation data in the Mediterranean Basin. This system can now be explored to forecast flooding and landslides and to manage irrigation for precision agriculture. Large-scale implementation of such methods will require further advances to assess high-resolution products across different regions and climates; create and integrate compatible multidimensional datacubes, EO data retrieval algorithms, and models that are suitable across multiple scales; manage uncertainty both in EO data and models; enhance computational capacity via an interoperable, cloud-based processing environment embodying open data principles; and harness AI/machine learning. We outline how various planned satellite missions will further facilitate a DTE for hydrology toward global benefit if the scientific and technological challenges we identify are addressed