Extracellular vesicles in cardiac repair and regeneration: Beyond stem-cell-based approaches.

The adult human heart poorly regenerate after injury due to the low self-renewal capability retained by adult cardiomyocytes. In the last two decades, several clinical studies have reported the ability of stem cells to induce cardiac regeneration. However, low cell integration and survival into the tissue has limited stem-cell-based clinical approaches. More recently, the release of paracrine mediators including extracellular vesicles (EV) has been recognized as the most relevant mechanism driving benefits upon cell-based therapy. In particular, EV have emerged as key mediators of cardiac repair after damage, in terms of reduction of apoptosis, resolution of inflammation and new blood vessel formation. Herein, mechanisms involved in cardiac damage and regeneration, and current applications of EV and their small non-coding RNAs (miRNAs) in regenerative medicine are discussed

Combining environmental niche models, multi-grain analyses, and species traits identifies pervasive effects of land use on butterfly biodiversity across Italy.

Understanding how species respond to human activities is paramount to ecology and conservation science, one outstanding question being how large-scale patterns in land use affect biodiversity. To facilitate answering this question, we propose a novel analytical framework that combines environmental niche models, multi-grain analyses, and species traits. We illustrate the framework capitalizing on the most extensive dataset compiled to date for the butterflies of Italy (106,514 observations for 288 species), assessing how agriculture and urbanization have affected biodiversity of these taxa from landscape to regional scales (3-48 km grains) across the country while accounting for its steep climatic gradients. Multiple lines of evidence suggest pervasive and scale-dependent effects of land use on butterflies in Italy. While land use explained patterns in species richness primarily at grains ≤12 km, idiosyncratic responses in species highlighted "winners" and "losers" across human-dominated regions. Detrimental effects of agriculture and urbanization emerged from landscape (3-km grain) to regional (48-km grain) scales, disproportionally affecting small butterflies and butterflies with a short flight curve. Human activities have therefore reorganized the biogeography of Italian butterflies, filtering out species with poor dispersal capacity and narrow niche breadth not only from local assemblages, but also from regional species pools. These results suggest that global conservation efforts neglecting large-scale patterns in land use risk falling short of their goals, even for taxa typically assumed to persist in small natural areas (e.g., invertebrates). Our study also confirms that consideration of spatial scales will be crucial to implementing effective conservation actions in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. In this context, applications of the proposed analytical framework have broad potential to identify which mechanisms underlie biodiversity change at different spatial scales

Photocatalysts for organics degradation

Organics degradation is one of the challenges of Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs), which are mainly employed for the removal of water and air pollutants [...

Optimization of pumping efficiency and divertor operation in DEMO

In the present work a sensitivity analysis of the pumping performance of a standard divertor design for two extreme dome cases (with and without) and different pumping port locations is performed. Such an investigation re-assesses the role of the divertor dome in the design of a DEMO divertor cassette. The non-linear neutral gas flow in the private flux and sub-divertor region is modeled based on the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method, which takes into account the intermolecular collisions as well as the interaction of the molecules with the stationary walls. For this specific configuration, three different pumping port locations, namely in the low and high field bottom sides of the sub-divertor and directly under the dome haven been chosen. It is shown that the optimum pumping port location is found to be directly under the dome, since the pumped particle flux is increased by a factor 2–3 compared to the one, where the port is located inside the low and high field side divertor “shoulders”, respectively. In addition, the divertor dome physically restricts the conductance between the private flux region and the main chamber, enabling the compression of the neutral gas. However, the dome has no direct influence on the macroscopic parameters as the number density and the temperature at the pumping port. Furthermore, it is shown that without the dome, a strong outflux of neutrals towards the plasma core and through the x-point and its vicinity can be expected. This outflux can be reduced by a factor of 2 by positioning the pumping port directly under the dome. Finally it is noted that in all the obtained calculations, the flow field remains homogeneous without the presence of vortices. This can be explained by the fact that the studied geometry does not include any high curvature surfaces, which promote the formation of such flow structures

Brookite, a sometimes under evaluated TiO2polymorph

Some of the advancements concerning the study of phase-pure brookite and, especially, brookite-containing TiO2 mixed phases are reviewed. Relevance is given to their prospective photocatalytic applications, where the (positive) effect of the presence of brookite has been demonstrated, especially when solar light is concerned. From the literature, it emerges that, besides the band gap determination, which still requires more detailed studies (band gap values in a wide range are reported), the roles of brookite-containing heterojunctions, of the surface properties (i.e. acidity, redox behaviour, and the presence of coordinatively unsaturated sites), of the particular crystalline structure and of brookite influence on the anatase to rutile transition are crucial for its applications in the field of (solar) photocatalysis and electrocatalysis, but also electrochemical applications (i.e. Li batteries). The need emerges for a deeper understanding of the physico-chemical phenomena underlying their (recently demonstrated) capacity of stabilizing photogenerated electron/hole pairs. In perspective, the development of green synthesis methods to tailor the surface and structural properties of phase-pure brookite and brookite-containing mixed phases could extend their photo- and electrochemical applications

Purification of recombinant hepatitis delta antigen expressed in E. coli cells

AbstractRecombinant DNA technology enables the massive production of recombinant hepatitis delta antigen (recHDAg) retaining immunological properties and transport functions. However, purification procedures of the recombinant delta antigen have, to date, not been described in the literature. We present a purification procedure allowing one to obtain highly purified recHDAg from bacterial cells expressing the hepatitis delta antigen

A Statistical Interpretation of Space and Classical-Quantum duality

By defining a prepotential function for the stationary Schr\"odinger equation we derive an inversion formula for the space variable $x$ as a function of the wave-function $\psi$. The resulting equation is a Legendre transform that relates $x$, the prepotential ${\cal F}$, and the probability density. We invert the Schr\"odinger equation to a third-order differential equation for ${\cal F}$ and observe that the inversion procedure implies a $x$-$\psi$ duality. This phenomenon is related to a modular symmetry due to the superposition of the solutions of the Schr\"odinger equation. We propose that in quantum mechanics the space coordinate can be interpreted as a macroscopic variable of a statistical system with $\hbar$ playing the role of a scaling parameter. We show that the scaling property of the space coordinate with respect to $\tau=\partial_{\psi}^2{\cal F}$ is determined by the ``beta-function''. We propose that the quantization of the inversion formula is a natural way to quantize geometry. The formalism is extended to higher dimensions and to the Klein-Gordon equation.Comment: 11 pages. Standard Latex. Final version to appear in Physical Review Letters. Revised and extended version. The formalism is extended to higher dimensions and to the Klein-Gordon equation. A possible connection with string theory is considered. The $x-\psi$ duality is emphasized by a minor change in the title. The new title is: Duality of $x$ and $\psi$ and a statistical interpretation of space in quantum mechanic