The Road to Bring FDCA and PEF to the Market

Biobased polymers and materials are desperately needed to replace fossil-based materials in the world’s transition to a more sustainable lifestyle. In this article, Avantium describes the path from invention towards commercialization of their YXY(®) plants-to-plastics Technology, which catalytically converts plant-based sugars into FDCA—the chemical building block for PEF (polyethylene furanoate). PEF is a plant-based, highly recyclable plastic, with superior performance properties compared to today’s widely used petroleum-based packaging materials. The myriad of topics that must be addressed in the process of bringing a new monomer and polymer to market are discussed, including process development and application development, regulatory requirements, IP protection, commercial partnerships, by-product valorisation, life cycle assessment (LCA), recyclability and circular economy fit, and end-of-life. Advice is provided for others considering embarking on a similar journey, as well as an outlook on the next, exciting steps towards large-scale production of FDCA and PEF at Avantium’s Flagship Plant and beyond

Morphophysiological Plasticity Of Plagiotropic Branches In Response To Change In The Coffee Plant Spacing Within Rows

Changes in spacing within rows may alter the morphology of the coffee plant by affecting the physiological constituents of its productivity. Even though some common plant responses to crop spacing variation are known, there is yet no scientific evidence that elucidates the effects of decreased spacing on the sourcesink relation in plagiotropic branches and, its association with both productivity and eco-physiological aspects of coffee leaves, mainly for new coffee cultivars in the Brazilian savannah. The aim of this work was to characterize the morphophysiological responses of Coffea arabica L. cultivars subjected to different spacing between plants within rows. Four Arabica coffee cultivars (Catuaí Vermelho IAC 144, Catuaí Amarelo IAC 62, Catuaí Amarelo IAC 32, and Tupi RN IAC 1669-13) were transplanted in January 2010. A row spacing of 0.40, 0.50, 0.60, 0.70, and 0.80 m was adopted between plants, maintaining a 3.80-m constant between rows. A randomized block design with four replicates was applied. During the experimental period, several morphophysiological characteristics of plagiotropic fruiting branches were evaluated in the months of April and December in 2013 and, in April 2014. The evaluation was conducted based on two canopy positions; canopy toward the rows, representing low exposure to light or toward the inter-row spacing, representing high light exposure. Leaf gas exchange, chlorophyll fluorescence, and photosynthetic pigments levels were minimally or not at all affected by changing either the coffee cultivars or plant spacing. During the first evaluation, the leaf-to-fruitratio linearly increased, regardless of the cultivar. Light-exposed branches showed higher content of carotenoids and chlorophyll a in leaves and lower leaf-to-fruit-ratio as compared to those within the plant canopy. A major reduction in the number of fruits per branch was observed which was closely related to a parallel decrease in the number of fruits per node but not in the number of fruiting nodes per branch. Although this response was largely cultivar-dependent, it also changed according to the branch position in the hedgerow. Our results suggest that all tested cultivars exhibit high morphophysiological plasticity and have the potential to grow under different plant spacing within rows.3763819383

Populism in the Communication Strategy of Lula and Bolsonaro: An Analysis of the Television Debates in Brazil’s 2022 General Election

The 2022 presidential election in Brazil involved two radically different candidates but with broad similarities in their populist discourse and communication strategies. The electoral campaign and the results polarized the country between the supporters of the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, and the incoming one, Lula da Silva. This article analyzes the two television debates that took place in the second round of the presidential election in October. The interventions of the candidates have been studied using the methodology of critical discourse analysis applied by Hawkins (2010). The goal is to discover the degree of populism present in the candidates’ discourse in the two debates studied. The results show evidence of the highly populist nature of the discourse of the two leaders in both television events. This characteristic, as well as other important aspects of the campaigns and the narrow margin of Lula’s eventual victory, may explain the level of polarization evident in the country. It may also be the reason behind the rejection of the election results by the followers of Bolsonaro and their protest against the change in president

Electron spin coherence in semiconductors: Considerations for a spin-based solid state quantum computer architecture

We theoretically consider coherence times for spins in two quantum computer architectures, where the qubit is the spin of an electron bound to a P donor impurity in Si or within a GaAs quantum dot. We show that low temperature decoherence is dominated by spin-spin interactions, through spectral diffusion and dipolar flip-flop mechanisms. These contributions lead to 1-100 $\mu$s calculated spin coherence times for a wide range of parameters, much higher than former estimates based on $T_{2}^{*}$ measurements.Comment: Role of the dipolar interaction clarified; Included discussion on the approximations employed in the spectral diffusion calculation. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Development and production of good manufacturing practice grade human embryonic stem cell lines as source material for clinical application

AbstractFrom 2006 to 2011, Roslin Cells Ltd derived 17 human embryonic stem cells (hESC) while developing (RCM1, RC-2 to -8, -10) and implementing (RC-9, -11 to -17) quality assured standards of operation in a facility operating in compliance with European Union (EU) directives and United Kingdom (UK) licensure for procurement, processing and storage of human cells as source material for clinical application, and targeted to comply with an EU Good Manufacturing Practice specification. Here we describe the evolution and specification of the facility, its operation and outputs, complementing hESC resource details communicated in Stem Cell Research Lab Resources

Avalanches in the Weakly Driven Frenkel-Kontorova Model

A damped chain of particles with harmonic nearest-neighbor interactions in a spatially periodic, piecewise harmonic potential (Frenkel-Kontorova model) is studied numerically. One end of the chain is pulled slowly which acts as a weak driving mechanism. The numerical study was performed in the limit of infinitely weak driving. The model exhibits avalanches starting at the pulled end of the chain. The dynamics of the avalanches and their size and strength distributions are studied in detail. The behavior depends on the value of the damping constant. For moderate values a erratic sequence of avalanches of all sizes occurs. The avalanche distributions are power-laws which is a key feature of self-organized criticality (SOC). It will be shown that the system selects a state where perturbations are just able to propagate through the whole system. For strong damping a regular behavior occurs where a sequence of states reappears periodically but shifted by an integer multiple of the period of the external potential. There is a broad transition regime between regular and irregular behavior, which is characterized by multistability between regular and irregular behavior. The avalanches are build up by sound waves and shock waves. Shock waves can turn their direction of propagation, or they can split into two pulses propagating in opposite directions leading to transient spatio-temporal chaos. PACS numbers: 05.70.Ln,05.50.+q,46.10.+zComment: 33 pages (RevTex), 15 Figures (available on request), appears in Phys. Rev.

Major histocompatibility complex class I associations in iron overload: evidence for a new link between the HFE H63D mutation, HLA‐A29, and non‐classical forms of hemochromatosis.

Immunogenetics. 1998 Apr;47(5):404-10. Major histocompatibility complex class I associations in iron overload: evidence for a new link between the HFE H63D mutation, HLA-A29, and non-classical forms of hemochromatosis. Porto G, Alves H, Rodrigues P, Cabeda JM, Portal C, Ruivo A, Justiça B, Wolff R, De Sousa M. Santo António General Hospital, Largo do Prof. Abel Salazar, no.1, P-4050 Porto, Portugal. Abstract The present study is an analysis of the frequencies of HFE mutations in patients with different forms of iron overload compared with the frequencies found in healthy subjects from the same region. The frequencies of HLA-A and -B antigens and HLA haplotypes were also analyzed in the same subjects. The study population included: 71 healthy individuals; 39 genetically and clinically well-characterized patients with genetic hemochromatosis (HH); and 25 patients with non-classical forms of iron overload (NCH), excluding secondary hemochromatosis. All subjects were HLA-typed and HFE-genotyped by the oligonucleotide ligation assay (OLA). The gene frequencies found for the C282Y and H63D mutations of HFE were respectively: 0.03 and 0.23 in healthy individuals, 0.86 and 0.04 in HH patients, and 0.08 and 0.48 in NCH patients. An expected significant association between HH and HLA-A3 was observed, which was found to be in linkage disequilibrium with the C282Y mutation. A new association was seen, however, between HLA-A29 and NCH, in linkage disequilibrium with the H63D mutation. Again as expected, the HLA-B antigen B7 was associated with HH in linkage disequilibrium with HLA-A3. In addition, the HLA-B antigen B44 was found to be associated with NCH but not in linkage disequilibrium with either A29 or the H63D mutation. In conclusion, a new association of the HFE H63D mutation with forms of hemochromatosis other than HH and a new association between the HLA phenotype A29 and the HFE H63D mutation were found in the same patients. These findings reinforce evidence for the involvement of the major histocompatibility class I in iron metabolism, supporting the notion of a physiological role for the immunological system in the regulation of iron load. PMID: 9510559 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE

Association Of Inflammation, Dyslipidemia, Obesity And Physical Activity Status In Children

The aim of this study was to verify the association between inflammatory biomarkers, dyslipidemia, obesity and physical activity status in 10-years old children. Ninety-four children participated in this study and were classified into eutrophic (n=36), overweight (n=34) or obese (n=24) according to their body mass index (BMI). The genic expression of interleukin 6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and chemokine C-C motif ligand 2 (CCL-2) mRNA; the serum concentration of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c) and triglycerides; BMI, percentage of body fat (% BF) and waist circumference; and the number of steps per day were determined. The expression of IL-6, TNF-α and CCL-2 were associated (p 0.05) between pro-inflammatory biomarkers and number of steps per day was found.222182

Electron spin as a spectrometer of nuclear spin noise and other fluctuations

This chapter describes the relationship between low frequency noise and coherence decay of localized spins in semiconductors. Section 2 establishes a direct relationship between an arbitrary noise spectral function and spin coherence as measured by a number of pulse spin resonance sequences. Section 3 describes the electron-nuclear spin Hamiltonian, including isotropic and anisotropic hyperfine interactions, inter-nuclear dipolar interactions, and the effective Hamiltonian for nuclear-nuclear coupling mediated by the electron spin hyperfine interaction. Section 4 describes a microscopic calculation of the nuclear spin noise spectrum arising due to nuclear spin dipolar flip-flops with quasiparticle broadening included. Section 5 compares our explicit numerical results to electron spin echo decay experiments for phosphorus doped silicon in natural and nuclear spin enriched samples.Comment: Book chapter in "Electron spin resonance and related phenomena in low dimensional structures", edited by Marco Fanciulli. To be published by Springer-Verlag in the TAP series. 35 pages, 9 figure