First- and second-generation valorisation of wastes and residues occurring in the food supply chain

Despite the high potential to increase sustainability of food systems, wastes and by-products occurring in the food supply chain are currently only partially valorised at different value-added levels. First-generation valorisation strategies that aim at utilisation of complete material streams for production of animal feed, energy, compost and/or specific consumer applications are already widely implemented and experience further dissemination and/or development (e.g. biohydrogen/biohythane production) – either in the form of single processes or as part of cascade utilisations. Second-generation valorisation strategies comprise various forms of fractionised utilisation of material streams. They rely on integration of adapted recovery and conversion procedures for specific components in order to obtain sequentially different classes of products, e.g. fine chemicals, commodity products and biofuels. Such advanced strategies are particularly suitable for wastes and by-products occurring during industrial food processing. Valorisation of food by-products for functional food is an emerging trend

Body condition score (BCS) and metabolic status of shelter dogs

A group of 147 shelter dogs were weighted and assigned a body condition score (BCS) using a 9 point scale system, in order to evaluate the prevalence of obesity in the kennel. More than 60% of the animals showed a BCS³6 (overweight and obese) and this condition was mainly attributed to an excess of carbohydrates and fat in the diet. In 67/147 dogs, a blood sample was drawn and the effects of BCS, age and time spent in the shelter were evaluated on biochemical parameters. Obese dogs showed significantly higher levels of triglycerides (P<0.01), while increasing BCS determined only an increasing non significant trend on cholesterol values. Age influenced creatinine (P<0.05) and the oldest dogs scoring BCS³6 registered significant higher NEFA (P<0.05) and CK (P=0.01) levels. Time spent in the shelter did not affect any parameter. The dogs' metabolic condition reflects the need of taking more care of the quality of feed administered in the shelters to avoid the negative health effects caused by chronic obesity

Analgesia and/or anaesthesia during piglet castration&#8211;part I: efficacy of farm protocols in pain management

Pain alleviation associated with surgical castration of piglets is a debated welfare issue. The present study compares the effect of different protocols involving analgesia and/or anaesthesia or sedation suitable under field conditions, with the aim to alleviate pain due to castration in piglets. A randomised within-litter design, with 50 replicates, compared 7 treatments applied 10 min before castration: HAND: positive control, handling only; CTRL: negative control, physiological saline, i.m.; MEL: meloxicam, i.m.; AZA: azaperone, i.m.; PROC: local anaesthesia with procaine and adrenaline, subcutaneously; AZA-MEL: joint administration of azaperone and meloxicam; PROC-MEL: procaine and meloxicam. Efficacy of pain relief was assessed during a 180 min period after castration by serum cortisol and glycaemia, algometry and behaviour. CTRL, AZA, PROC and AZA-MEL piglets showed an increase in cortisol concentration 60 min after castration compared to HAND. Both groups with azaperone (AZA and AZA-MEL) developed concentrations even higher than CTRL (p .05). CRTL and PROC piglets reacted to the algometer at an average lower pressure than HAND (p =.03), differently to the other treatments that showed similar skin sensitivity to HAND (p >.05). No differences in glycaemia and behaviour were observed among treatments. The results suggest that using meloxicam alone might offer a promising option in reducing the expression of pain-related parameters in piglets after surgical castration, however, it appears more efficient when used alone than in association with the anaesthetic agents tested. Procaine administered alone and azaperone seems unsuited to the purpose considered.HIGHLIGHTS Meloxicam used alone is suggested for reducing the expression of pain-related parameters in piglets after surgical castration; When a protocol using procaine is used on the farm during piglets castration, the association with meloxicam reduces some pain-related indicators; Procaine administered alone and azaperone seems unsuited to manage pain after surgical castration of piglets

Multivariate statistical process monitoring using classical multidimensional scaling

A new Multivariate Statistical Process Monitoring (MSPM) system, which comprises of three main frameworks, is proposed where the system utilizes Classical Multidimensional Scaling (CMDS) as the main multivariate data compression technique instead of using the linearbased Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The conventional method which usually applies variance-covariance or correlation measure in developing the multivariate scores is found to be inappropriately used especially in modelling nonlinear processes, where a high number of principal components will be typically required. Alternatively, the proposed method utilizes the inter-dissimilarity scales in describing the relationships among the monitored variables instead of variance-covariance measure for the multivariate scores development. However, the scores are plotted in terms of variable structure, thus providing different formulation of statistics for monitoring. Nonetheless, the proposed statistics still correspond to the conceptual objective of Hotelling’s T2 and Squared Prediction Errors (SPE). The first framework corresponds to the original CMDS framework, whereas the second utilizes Procrustes Analysis (PA) functions which is analogous to the concept of loading factors in PCA for score projection. Lastly, the final framework employs dynamic mechanism of PA functions as an alternative for enhancing the procedures of the second approach. A simulated system of Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor with Recycle (CSTRwR) has been chosen for the demonstration and the fault detection results were comparatively analyzed to the outcomes of PCA on the grounds of false alarm rates, total number of detected cases and also total number of fastest detection cases. The last two performance factors are obtained through fault detection time. The overall outcomes show that the three CMDS-based systems give almost comparable performances to the linear PCA based monitoring systemwhen dealing the abrupt fault events, whereas the new systems have demonstrated significant improvement over the conventional method in detecting incipient fault cases. More importantly, this monitoring accomplishment can be efficiently executed based on lower compressed dimensional space compared to the PCA technique, thus providing much simpler solution. All of these evidences verified that the proposed approaches are successfully developed conceptually as well as practically for monitoring while complying fundamentally with the principles and technical steps of the conventional MSPM system.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Identification and visualization of multidimensional antigen-specific T-cell populations in polychromatic cytometry data.

An important aspect of immune monitoring for vaccine development, clinical trials, and research is the detection, measurement, and comparison of antigen-specific T-cells from subject samples under different conditions. Antigen-specific T-cells compose a very small fraction of total T-cells. Developments in cytometry technology over the past five years have enabled the measurement of single-cells in a multivariate and high-throughput manner. This growth in both dimensionality and quantity of data continues to pose a challenge for effective identification and visualization of rare cell subsets, such as antigen-specific T-cells. Dimension reduction and feature extraction play pivotal role in both identifying and visualizing cell populations of interest in large, multi-dimensional cytometry datasets. However, the automated identification and visualization of rare, high-dimensional cell subsets remains challenging. Here we demonstrate how a systematic and integrated approach combining targeted feature extraction with dimension reduction can be used to identify and visualize biological differences in rare, antigen-specific cell populations. By using OpenCyto to perform semi-automated gating and features extraction of flow cytometry data, followed by dimensionality reduction with t-SNE we are able to identify polyfunctional subpopulations of antigen-specific T-cells and visualize treatment-specific differences between them

Conventional therapies deplete Brain-Infiltrating adaptive immune cells in a Mouse Model of Group 3 Medulloblastoma implicating Myeloid Cells as favorable immunotherapy targets

Medulloblastoma is the most common childhood brain cancer. Mainstay treatments of radiation and chemotherapy have not changed in decades and new treatment approaches are crucial for the improvement of clinical outcomes. To date, immunotherapies for medulloblastoma have been unsuccessful, and studies investigating the immune microenvironment of the disease and the impact of current therapies are limited. Preclinical models that recapitulate both the disease and immune environment are essential for understanding immune-tumor interactions and to aid the identification of new and effective immunotherapies. Using an immune-competent mouse model of aggressive Myc-driven medulloblastoma, we characterized the brain immune microenvironment and changes induced in response to craniospinal irradiation, or the medulloblastoma chemotherapies cyclophosphamide or gemcitabine. The role of adaptive immunity in disease progression and treatment response was delineated by comparing survival outcomes in wildtype C57Bl/6J and in mice deficient in Rag1 that lack mature T and B cells. We found medulloblastomas in wildtype and Rag1-deficient mice grew equally fast, and that craniospinal irradiation and chemotherapies extended survival equally in wildtype and Rag1-deficient mice, suggesting that tumor growth and treatment response is independent of T and B cells. Medulloblastomas were myeloid dominant, and in wildtype mice, craniospinal irradiation and cyclophosphamide depleted T and B cells in the brain. Gemcitabine treatment was found to minimally alter the immune populations in the brain, resulting only in a depletion of neutrophils. Intratumorally, we observed an abundance of Iba1+ macrophages, and we show that CD45high cells comprise the majority of immune cells within these medulloblastomas but found that existing markers are insufficient to clearly delineate resident microglia from infiltrating macrophages. Ultimately, brain resident and peripheral macrophages dominate the brain and tumor microenvironment and are not depleted by standard-of-care medulloblastoma therapies. These populations therefore present a favorable target for immunotherapy in combination with front-line treatments

Erythroferrone as a sensitive biomarker to detect stimulation of erythropoiesis.

Erythroferrone (ERFE) is a glycoprotein hormone secreted by erythroblasts in response to erythropoietin stimulation. ERFE suppresses the hepatic synthesis of the master iron-regulatory hormone, hepcidin. The impact of erythropoiesis stimulation on ERFE secretion in humans is poorly understood. This paucity of information is due in part to the lack of available means for ERFE quantification in serum samples. The present study tested a new sensitive sandwich immunoassay for human ERFE. This assay was used to demonstrate that injection of various erythropoiesis stimulating agents (ESAs) increased the blood ERFE levels in healthy volunteers. After exogenous stimulation of erythropoiesis, ERFE increased up to 8-fold with a detection window of 13 days. The impact of one unit of blood withdrawal on erythropoiesis stimulation of ERFE was also tested. ERFE significantly increased after blood withdrawal in subjects injected with both iron and saline solution, suggesting that iron supplementation did not mask the ERFE increase after blood withdrawal. The effects of exercise-induced muscle damage on ERFE was assessed by comparing ERFE levels with creatine kinase levels in samples from subjects with heavy exercise loads, and determined that this was not a confounder. The ERFE assay is a sensitive means to investigate the connection between iron metabolism and erythropoiesis in humans, and to detect ESA abuse in the antidoping field

Identification and rejection of scattered neutrons in AGATA

Gamma rays and neutrons, emitted following spontaneous fission of 252Cf, were measured in an AGATA experiment performed at INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro in Italy. The setup consisted of four AGATA triple cluster detectors (12 36-fold segmented high-purity germanium crystals), placed at a distance of 50 cm from the source, and 16 HELENA BaF2 detectors. The aim of the experiment was to study the interaction of neutrons in the segmented high-purity germanium detectors of AGATA and to investigate the possibility to discriminate neutrons and gamma rays with the gamma-ray tracking technique. The BaF2 detectors were used for a time-of-flight measurement, which gave an independent discrimination of neutrons and gamma rays and which was used to optimise the gamma-ray tracking-based neutron rejection methods. It was found that standard gamma-ray tracking, without any additional neutron rejection features, eliminates effectively most of the interaction points due to recoiling Ge nuclei after elastic scattering of neutrons. Standard tracking rejects also a significant amount of the events due to inelastic scattering of neutrons in the germanium crystals. Further enhancements of the neutron rejection was obtained by setting conditions on the following quantities, which were evaluated for each event by the tracking algorithm: energy of the first and second interaction point, difference in the calculated incoming direction of the gamma ray, figure-of-merit value. The experimental results of tracking with neutron rejection agree rather well with Geant4 simulations