Natural variability of lotic Mediterranean ecosystems or wildfire perturbations: who will win?

This study evaluates the impacts of wildfires in lotic Mediterranean ecosystems. It was carried out at Monchique ridge after big wildfires occurred during 2002 and 2003. Deferential impacts were evaluated comparing historical results obtained before the wildfires (1999 and 2001), with the post fire ones (2006 and 2007). Physical and chemical parameters of the water, habitat morphology, diatoms, macrophytes, macroinvertebrates and fishes were evaluated at 10 collecting places, before and after wildfires. High recovering rates were observed to the vegetation, but it is still possible to found fire impacts over macrophytes and river morphology. Wildfires, contributed to canopy decrease and, consequently to the growth of plants that usually are controlled by shadow. As a result, vegetation biodiversity tend to increase. River banks tend also to be invaded by terrestrial plants. Higher post fires recover rates were observed to the more aquatic communities (diatoms, macroinvertebrates and fishes). For those communities, comparing spring situations before and after the fires no substantial differences were observed. Sometimes differences between consecutive years are even higher. So it can be concluded that magnitude of wildfire impacts is less than the natural inter-annual variability of Mediterranean rivers. Long-term effects of forest fires, resulting from large woody debries, were also detected by morphological alterations, like debries dams. Habitat diversity increase and impacts on aquatic communities are expected

IN SITU PRESERVATION AND RESTORATION OF ARCHITECTURAL TILES, MATERIALS AND PROCEDURES: RESULTS OF AN INTERNATIONAL SURVEY

In order to aid research, improve preservation actions and develop better options for future interventions it is important to know the preservation materials and procedures adopted throughout the past and especially the ones being adopted nowadays. A survey to specialists working in situ in preservation and restoration of glazed decorative tiles has been performed aiming at getting insight on their type of training, work portfolio, opinions, the current materials and procedures used in the diverse phases of a preservation intervention (diagnosis, cleaning, consolidation, bonding fragments and fixing of glazed layer, volumetric and chromatic reintegration, final coating, resetting of tiles and manufacture of replicas) and the criteria/factors that support the specialists choices

Volumetric and chromatic reintegration in conservation of in situ glazed tiles

Volumetric and chromatic reintegration is one of the most important but challenging treatments in conservation of in situ glazed tiles due to the need to protect them from water intrusion and further deterioration despise the demanding conditions and requirements needed in outdoor exposure. A set of six infill pastes based on aerial lime, hydraulic lime, aerial lime plus vinylic resin, epoxy resin and polyester resin binders was selected based on materials applied in previously reported interventions and the experience of professionals working in the field. The laboratory studies included the characterization of the infill pastes with and without chromatic reintegration/coating layer (SEM, MIP, porosity, water absorption, water vapour permeability, adhesion to the ceramic) and their behaviour after cure, artificial ageing (salt ageing, UV-Temp-RH cycles) and natural ageing. The results obtained allowed to formulate some considerations about these materials, their different characteristics and their performance when applied in the infill of architectural tile lacunae. The laboratory results have been compared with the performance of similar treatments surveyed on sites where they had been applied

The influence of climatic parameters on wood durability : a review [Resumo]

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Improving In-Plant Logistics Flow by Physical and Digital Pathways

The automotive industry is constantly using continuous improvement to leverage its growth and sustainability. The improvement of the intralogistics of component companies for the automotive industry is based on the same principles. The Milk-Run System (MRS) allows the inbound transportation of the raw materials containers to the production lines, as well as the return of finished product containers. Thus, it is important to improve the performance of existing vehicle routing system, according to customer demand orders and the assignment of the production line. The present study identified and examined the existing constraints and proposes the improvements to increase the performance of the existing inbound milk-run system. The system capacity and the routing have been redefined as well as the information need to an efficient management system. Since the production is not standardized, the software was developed to assist the management of the milk-run system. Its implementation showed that with one vehicle and four wagons all the production lines are properly assisted. The contributions of this study were the reduction in 15% of the milk-run lap time, the decrease of the number of milk-run laps, allowing the increase of the number of lines assisted by this intralogistics system, permitting the assignment of new tasks to the MRS operator during the idle time. Moreover, unnecessary laps, unwanted stops and exchange of packaging were eliminated.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities of short carbon chain unsaturated sucrose esters

A library of C3–C5 unsaturated 6-O-sucrose esters have been investigated for their antibacterial, antifungal, and cytotoxic activities. Most of the target compounds showed good inhibitory activity against a variety of clinically and food contaminant important microbial pathogens. In particular, 6-O-methacryloyl sucrose 2 and 1′,2,3,3′,4,4′,6′-hepta-O-acetyl-6-O-methacryloyl sucrose 9 were the most active bactericides against all the tested bacteria with minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) ranging between 0.24 and 1.40 μM. The compound 9 showed also the highest antifungal activity with MICs from 0.28 to 1.10 μM. The synthesized compounds possessed low cytotoxicity against human breast, lung, cervical, and hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines without showing toxicity for non-tumor liver cells. Thus, this library of short carbon chain unsaturated sucrose esters represent promising leads for the development of new generation of sucrose-based antimicrobial agents.This work has been supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through grant nos. PEst-C/EQB/ LA0006/2013 and PEst-OE/AGR/UI0690/2014. The authors thank Serbian Ministry of Education, Science, and Technological Development for financial support (grant number 173032).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dehydropeptide supramolecular hydrogels and nanostructures as potential peptidomimetic biomedical materials

Supramolecular peptide hydrogels are gaining increased attention, owing to their potential in a variety of biomedical applications. Their physical properties are similar to those of the extracellular matrix (ECM), which is key to their applications in the cell culture of specialized cells, tissue engineering, skin regeneration, and wound healing. The structure of these hydrogels usually consists of a di- or tripeptide capped on the N-terminus with a hydrophobic aromatic group, such as Fmoc or naphthalene. Although these peptide conjugates can offer advantages over other types of gelators such as cross-linked polymers, they usually possess the limitation of being particularly sensitive to proteolysis by endogenous proteases. One of the strategies reported that can overcome this barrier is to use a peptidomimetic strategy, in which natural amino acids are switched for non-proteinogenic analogues, such as D-amino acids, β-amino acids, or dehydroamino acids. Such peptides usually possess much greater resistance to enzymatic hydrolysis. Peptides containing dehydroamino acids, i.e., dehydropeptides, are particularly interesting, as the presence of the double bond also introduces a conformational restraint to the peptide backbone, resulting in (often predictable) changes to the secondary structure of the peptide. This review focuses on peptide hydrogels and related nanostructures, where α,β-didehydro-α-amino acids have been successfully incorporated into the structure of peptide hydrogelators, and the resulting properties are discussed in terms of their potential biomedical applications. Where appropriate, their properties are compared with those of the corresponding peptide hydrogelator composed of canonical amino acids. In a wider context, we consider the presence of dehydroamino acids in natural compounds and medicinally important compounds as well as their limitations, and we consider some of the synthetic strategies for obtaining dehydropeptides. Finally, we consider the future direction for this research area.This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the framework of the Strategic Funding of CQUM (UID/QUI/00686/2019). FCT, FEDER, PORTUGAL2020 and COMPETE2020 are also acknowledged for funding under research project PTDC/QUI-QOR/29015/2017 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029015)

Synthesis, characterization, antimicrobial and antitumor activities of sucrose Octa(N-ethyl)carbamate

Sucrose octa(N-ethyl)carbamate was synthesized directly from sucrose and ethyl isocyanate, and its structure was confirmed by various analytical methods, such as 1H and 13C NMR, FTIR, m.p., MS, and optical rotation. Its antibacterial, antifungal and cytotoxic activities were investigated. It exhibited strong inhibition against all bacteria tested, namely S. aureus (MIC 0.18±0.006), B. cereus (MIC 0.094±0.000), M. flavus (MIC 0.28±0.01), L. monocytogenes (MIC 0.18±0.006), P. aeruginosa (MIC 0.094±0.002), S. typhimurium (MIC 0.094±0.002), E. coli (MIC 0.18±0.006) and E. cloacae (MIC 0.18±0.006) and strong antifungal activity towards T. viride (MIC 0.09 ± 0.006), A. versicolor (MIC 0.18 ± 0.01), A. ochraceus (MIC 0.375 ± 0.01) and P. ochrochloron (MIC 0.375 ± 0.04). Furthermore, it showed moderate antitumor potential against human breast (GI50357.20±14.12), colon (GI50 332.43±11.19) and cervical (GI50 282.67±3.97) cell lines and, more important, without hepatotoxicity.This work has been supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through grants No. PEst- C/EQB/LA0006/2013 and PEst-OE/AGR/UI0690/2011. The authors thank to Serbian Ministry of Education and Science for financial support (grant No. 173032). The NMR spectrometers are part of The National NMR Facility, supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (RECI/BBBBQB/ 0230/2012).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio