Eco-designing Aquaponics: A Case Study of an Experimental Production System in Belgium

Aquaponics is receiving a growing interest as an emerging technology that combines recirculating aquaculture practices and hydroponics to produce fish and vegetables. However, a proper eco-design is essential to limit the environmental burdens and to enhance the economic profitability. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) were here combined to estimate the environmental and economic impacts of a designed pilot indoor aquaponic system in Belgium. Results showed that energy consumption, infrastructure and water consumption represent the main critical issues to achieve both the environmental and economic sustainability of this aquaponic system

In-flight calibration system of imaging x-ray polarimetry explorer

The NASA/ASI Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, which will be launched in 2021, will be the first instrument to perform spatially resolved X-ray polarimetry on several astronomical sources in the 2-8 keV energy band. These measurements are made possible owing to the use of a gas pixel detector (GPD) at the focus of three X-ray telescopes. The GPD allows simultaneous measurements of the interaction point, energy, arrival time, and polarization angle of detected X-ray photons. The increase in sensitivity, achieved 40 years ago, for imaging and spectroscopy with the Einstein satellite will thus be extended to X-ray polarimetry for the first time. The characteristics of gas multiplication detectors are subject to changes over time. Because the GPD is a novel instrument, it is particularly important to verify its performance and stability during its mission lifetime. For this purpose, the spacecraft hosts a filter and calibration set (FCS), which includes both polarized and unpolarized calibration sources for performing in-flight calibration of the instruments. In this study, we present the design of the flight models of the FCS and the first measurements obtained using silicon drift detectors and CCD cameras, as well as those obtained in thermal vacuum with the flight units of the GPD. We show that the calibration sources successfully assess and verify the functionality of the GPD and validate its scientific results in orbit; this improves our knowledge of the behavior of these detectors in X-ray polarimetry

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' resources: focus on curated databases

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (www.isb-sib.ch) provides world-class bioinformatics databases, software tools, services and training to the international life science community in academia and industry. These solutions allow life scientists to turn the exponentially growing amount of data into knowledge. Here, we provide an overview of SIB's resources and competence areas, with a strong focus on curated databases and SIB's most popular and widely used resources. In particular, SIB's Bioinformatics resource portal ExPASy features over 150 resources, including UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, ENZYME, PROSITE, neXtProt, STRING, UniCarbKB, SugarBindDB, SwissRegulon, EPD, arrayMap, Bgee, SWISS-MODEL Repository, OMA, OrthoDB and other databases, which are briefly described in this article

Nanomedicine delivery: Does protein corona route to the target or off road?

Nanomedicine aims to find novel solutions for urgent biomedical needs. Despite this, one of the most challenging hurdles that nanomedicine faces is to successfully target therapeutic nanoparticles to cells of interest in vivo. As for any biomaterials, once in vivo, nanoparticles can interact with plasma biomolecules, forming new entities for which the name protein coronas (PCs) have been coined. The PC can influence the in vivo biological fate of a nanoparticle. Thus for guaranteeing the desired function of an engineered nanomaterial in vivo, it is crucial to dissect its PC in terms of formation and evolution within the body. In this contribution we will review the 'good' and 'bad' sides of the PC, starting from the scientific aspects to the technological applications

Interaction of nanoparticles with lipid membranes: a multiscale perspective

Freestanding lipid bilayers were challenged with 15 nm Au nanospheres either coated by a citrate layer or passivated by a protein corona. The effect of Au nanospheres on the bilayer morphology, permeability and fluidity presents strong differences or similarities, depending on the observation length scale, from the colloidal to the molecular domains. These findings suggest that the interaction between nanoparticles and lipid membranes should be conveniently treated as a multiscale phenomenon

Surfactant titration of nanoparticle-protein corona

Nanoparticles (NP), when exposed to biological fluids, are coated by specific proteins that form the so-called protein corona. While some adsorbing proteins exchange with the surroundings on a short time scale, described as a "dynamic" corona, others with higher affinity and long-lived interaction with the NP surface form a "hard" corona (HC), which is believed to mediate NP interaction with cellular machineries. In-depth NP protein corona characterization is therefore a necessary step in understanding the relationship between surface layer structure and biological outcomes. In the present work, we evaluate the protein composition and stability over time and we systematically challenge the formed complexes with surfactants. Each challenge is characterized through different physicochemical measurements (dynamic light scattering, ζ-potential, and differential centrifugal sedimentation) alongside proteomic evaluation in titration type experiments (surfactant titration). 100 nm silicon oxide (Si) and 100 nm carboxylated polystyrene (PS-COOH) NPs cloaked by human plasma HC were titrated with 3-[(3-Cholamidopropyl) dimethylammonio]-1-propanesulfonate (CHAPS, zwitterionic), Triton X-100 (nonionic), sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS, anionic), and dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB, cationic) surfactants. Composition and density of HC together with size and ζ-potential of NP-HC complexes were tracked at each step after surfactant titration. Results on Si NP-HC complexes showed that SDS removes most of the HC, while DTAB induces NP agglomeration. Analogous results were obtained for PS NP-HC complexes. Interestingly, CHAPS and Triton X-100, thanks to similar surface binding preferences, enable selective extraction of apolipoprotein AI (ApoAI) from Si NP hard coronas, leaving unaltered the dispersion physicochemical properties. These findings indicate that surfactant titration can enable the study of NP-HC stability through surfactant variation and also selective separation of certain proteins from the HC. This approach thus has an immediate analytical value as well as potential applications in HC engineering

On thermodynamics of biomolecule surface transformations

Biological surface science is receiving great and renewed attention owing the rising interest in applications of nanoscience and nanotechnology to biological systems, with horizons that range from nanomedicine and biomimetic photosynthesis to the unexpected effects of nanomaterials on health and environment. Biomolecule surface transformations are among the fundamental aspects of the field that remain elusive so far and urgently need to be understood to further the field. Our recent findings indicate that surface thermodynamics can give a substantial contribution toward this challenging goal. In the first part of the article, we show that biomolecule surface transformations can be framed by a general and simple thermodynamic model. Then, we explore its effectiveness by addressing some typical cases, including ligand–receptor surface binding, protein thin film machines, nanomechanical aspects of the biomolecule–nanoparticle interface and nanomechanical biosensors

The polyplex, protein corona, cell interplay: Tips and drawbacks

Polyplexes (PX) are soft materials, obtained by blending polycations and nucleic acids, designed for gene delivery applications. While much is known about the transfection properties of PX, their protein corona, the biomolecules interacting with colloids once in a biological environment, represents an underlooked parameter in gene transfection. In this study, linear and branched polyethylenimines (lPEI and bPEI), the golden standard among non-viral vectors, were selected and used throughout the work: their physicochemical properties and protein corona when complexed to DNA were studied and linked to the toxicity and transfection efficiency arisen upon their delivery to cells. Interestingly, lPEIDNA and bPEIDNA complexes were characterized by similar physicochemical features, but different biological behavior. In fact, the biological milieu where cells and PX interact greatly influences their size, stability and transfection abilities. Using PX as a soft material model system, we spotlighted structure-activity relationships and methodologies that can help interpret their biological behavior and guide future studies in the field

The impact of body-weight components on forced spirometry in healthy Italians

Many studies have investigated lung function in relation to age and height among Caucasians, however, most of these studies did not consider the individual components of body weight. The objective of the present study was to study the effect of body weight components [bone-free lean body mass (BF-LBM), bone mineral content (BMC), and fat mass (FM)] measured by dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) on the lung-function variables (FVC, FEV1, and PEF) and to derive prediction equations for these variables in healthy adult Italians. Dynamic spirometric tests and body composition analysis by DXA were performed on 58 nonsmoking males, mean age (+/-SE) 26.72 +/- 1.98 years and BMI 25.51 +/- 0.64 kg/m(2), and 60 nonsmoking females matched for age and BMI (29.61 +/- 1.65 years and 26.45 +/- 1.05 kg/m(2), respectively). Bivariate linear regression analysis showed the variables age, height, BF-LBM, BMC, and the interaction term BF-LBM*Height, but not weight and FM, to correlate significantly with lung-function variables for males and for females separately. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that sex, age, height, and BF-LBM*Height were significantly associated with FVC, FEV1, and PEF. The prediction equations developed for FVC, FEV1, and PEF on the basis of the independent variables i.e. sex, age (y), height (m), and BF-LBM*Height (kg . m) had a significantly higher cumulative correlation coefficient and a lower SEE compared with those based on age and height only. The present report suggests that the BF-LBM, expressed independently from height, can be considered for predicting lung-function variables