Copper Bioavailability and Leaching in Conventional and Organic Viticulture under Environmental Stress

The continuous use of Cu-based fungicides in viticulture has caused Cu accumulation in soils, which represents a major environmental and toxicological concern. The purpose of this study was to verify whether the organic management would be more resilient to temperature and moisture stresses in comparison to conventional practices. Two organic and two conventional vineyard soils, contrasting in pH, were exposed for six months to temperature stress (29 °C), moisture stress (10% water holding capacity—WHC), and combined stresses (29 °C—10% WHC). Main soil properties, Cu speciation, bioavailability, and leaching were monitored before and after 6 months’ incubation. Results confirm that the increase of temperature caused a decrease in both total organic carbon (TOC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) (up to 19% and 49%, respectively), a decrease in available ammonium, and an increase in nitrate. Moisture stress tends to mitigate some of these changes. Despite that, changes of Cu bioavailability and leaching were limited and rarely significant. Moreover, no regular trends between conventional and organic management could be observed. Changes in soil pH and total N (TN) appeared as the most influencing properties to regulate Cu behavior in vineyard soils. Calcareous soils were more resistant to environmental stresses compared to acid soils, regardless of the type of management (conventional or organic)

Comparative life cycle assessment study on environmental impact of oil production from micro-algae and terrestrial oilseed crops

In this study the LCA methodology is applied in order to satisfy two goals: i) to evaluate the hot spots in site-specific production chain of biodiesel from terrestrial and micro-algae feedstock; ii) to compare quantitatively, utilizing primary data, the impacts of the first generation in respect to the third generation bio-fuels. Results show that micro-algae are neither competitive yet with traditional oil crops nor with fossil fuel. The use of renewable technologies as photovoltaics and biogas self production might increase the competitiveness of micro-algae oil. Further investigations are however necessary to optimize their production chain and to increase the added value of co-products

Proglacial groundwater storage dynamics under climate change and glacier retreat

Proglacial aquifers are an important water store in glacierised mountain catchments that supplement meltwater‐fed river flows and support freshwater ecosystems. Climate change and glacier retreat will perturb water storage in these aquifers, yet the climate‐glacier‐groundwater response cascade has rarely been studied and remains poorly understood. This study implements an integrated modelling approach that combines distributed glacio‐hydrological and groundwater models with climate change projections to evaluate the evolution of groundwater storage dynamics and surface‐groundwater exchanges in a temperate, glacierised catchment in Iceland. Focused infiltration along the meltwater‐fed Virkisá River channel is found to be an important source of groundwater recharge and is projected to provide 14%–20% of total groundwater recharge by the 2080s. The simulations highlight a mechanism by which glacier retreat could inhibit river recharge in the future due to the loss of diurnal melt cycling in the runoff hydrograph. However, the evolution of proglacial groundwater level dynamics show considerable resilience to changes in river recharge and, instead, are driven by changes in the magnitude and seasonal timing of diffuse recharge from year‐round rainfall. The majority of scenarios simulate an overall reduction in groundwater levels with a maximum 30‐day average groundwater level reduction of 1 m. The simulations replicate observational studies of baseflow to the river, where up to 15% of the 30‐day average river flow comes from groundwater outside of the melt season. This is forecast to reduce to 3%–8% by the 2080s due to increased contributions from rainfall and meltwater runoff. During the melt season, groundwater will continue to contribute 1%–3% of river flow despite significant reductions in meltwater runoff inputs. Therefore it is concluded that, in the proglacial region, groundwater will continue to provide only limited buffering of river flows as the glacier retreats

Enzymatic and structural characterization of HAD5, an essential phosphomannomutase of malaria-causing parasites

The malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum is responsible for over 200 million infections and 400,000 deaths per year. At multiple stages during its complex life cycle, P. falciparum expresses several essential proteins tethered to its surface by glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchors, which are critical for biological processes such as parasite egress and reinvasion of host red blood cells. Targeting this pathway therapeutically has the potential to broadly impact parasite development across several life stages. Here, we characterize an upstream component of parasite GPI anchor biosynthesis, the putative phosphomannomutase (PMM) (EC 5.4.2.8), HAD5 (PF3D7_1017400). We confirmed the PMM and phosphoglucomutase activities of purified recombinant HAD5 by developing novel linked enzyme biochemical assays. By regulating the expression of HAD5 in transgenic parasites with a TetR-DOZI-inducible knockdown system, we demonstrated that HAD5 is required for malaria parasite egress and erythrocyte reinvasion, and we assessed the role of HAD5 in GPI anchor synthesis by autoradiography of radiolabeled glucosamine and thin layer chromatography. Finally, we determined the three-dimensional X-ray crystal structure of HAD5 and identified a substrate analog that specifically inhibits HAD5 compared to orthologous human PMMs in a time-dependent manner. These findings demonstrate that the GPI anchor biosynthesis pathway is exceptionally sensitive to inhibition in parasites and that HAD5 has potential as a specific, multistage antimalarial target

Human tumour-associated cell adhesion protein MN/CA IX: identification of M75 epitope and of the region mediating cell adhesion

MN/CA IX is a cell surface protein, strongly associated with several types of human carcinomas. It exerts activity of carbonic anhydrase and capacity of binding to cell surface receptors. In the present work, we used affinity purified MN/CA IX protein to demonstrate that the cells adhere to immobilized MN/CA IX and that the monoclonal antibody M75 abrogates cell attachment to MN/CA IX. Using synthetic oligopeptides, we identified M75 epitope and located it in the proteoglycan domain, which contains a sixfold tandem repeat of six amino acids GEEDLP. From phage display library of random heptapeptides we identified and chemically synthesized those which compete for the epitope with M75 and inhibit adhesion of cells to MN/CA IX. These heptapeptides might serve as lead compounds for drug design. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaig

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson

Measurement of the top quark-pair production cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at \sqrt{s}=7\TeV

A measurement of the production cross-section for top quark pairs(\ttbar) in $pp$ collisions at \sqrt{s}=7 \TeV is presented using data recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Events are selected in two different topologies: single lepton (electron $e$ or muon $\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least four jets, and dilepton ($ee$, $\mu\mu$ or $e\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least two jets. In a data sample of 2.9 pb-1, 37 candidate events are observed in the single-lepton topology and 9 events in the dilepton topology. The corresponding expected backgrounds from non-\ttbar Standard Model processes are estimated using data-driven methods and determined to be $12.2 \pm 3.9$ events and $2.5 \pm 0.6$ events, respectively. The kinematic properties of the selected events are consistent with SM \ttbar production. The inclusive top quark pair production cross-section is measured to be \sigmattbar=145 \pm 31 ^{+42}_{-27} pb where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The measurement agrees with perturbative QCD calculations.Comment: 30 pages plus author list (50 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, CERN-PH number and final journal adde

Measurement of the top quark pair cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV using final states with an electron or a muon and a hadronically decaying τ lepton

A measurement of the cross section of top quark pair production in proton-proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is reported. The data sample used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.05 fb -1. Events with an isolated electron or muon and a τ lepton decaying hadronically are used. In addition, a large missing transverse momentum and two or more energetic jets are required. At least one of the jets must be identified as originating from a b quark. The measured cross section, σtt-=186±13(stat.)±20(syst.)±7(lumi.) pb, is in good agreement with the Standard Model prediction