Using etam TM dige system for analysis of proteome changes in transformed E. Coli

Comunicaciones a congreso

Does paying pay off?

The ongoing degradation of ecosystems threaten future food production and the international community thus urgently has to plan for how to secure fundamental life-support services for the future, so called ecosystem services (ES). Examples of such ES are climate regulation, nutrient cycles, fresh water provision, etc.This report is focused on two distinct strategies to make land users in tropical rainforest areas continue to provide ecosystem services. The first approach, Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), is an economic instrument designed at global and national levels. Several PES schemes are currently implemented in a global context where increasing human demands for food, fibre and fuel are accelerating competition for land. The overall aim of the PES projects covered by this report is to lower the emission of green house gas on national and global levels and they are especially directed towards forest areas. The PES projects specify that specific rural groups are paid if they agree to protect, manage or restore the ecosystem service provisioning system within their forest territories. This report highlights that many PES initiatives are being implemented with a ‘conservation perspective’, rather than seeing ecosystem services as integrated with production and livelihoods. There are also alternative strategies to manage ecosystem services. In this report we put an emphasis on an approach where production and conservation are planned for within the same landscape and production systems. Many smallholders already integrate and maintain ecosystem services in their agricultural/forest production systems in a long-term perspective, while producing food, fibre and fuel for the households’ own consumption as well as for sale. In such a system, the local communities are totally dependent on the ecosystem services to re-generate conditions for their agricultural production and/or forest extraction. The focus in such farming-forestry systems, using little or no inputs, which are totally dependent on renewable resources, is on how to increase agricultural/forest production by supporting local ecosystem services, such as soil fertility and structure, pollination, micro climate, biological control of crop pests, etc. The ecosystem services functions, such as carbon sequestration, then emerge as a ‘by-product’ out of these production systems. Increased soil humus in the soil and biomass accumulation are other examples of such ‘by-products’. We want to illustrate potentials and challenges with the aforementioned two approaches to secure ecosystem provisions, and how they are articulated within their specific contexts. This report explores these two approaches by examining case-studies in tropical forest areas in Peru, Brazil, Tanzania and Vietnam, as well as the experiences of EU-designed PES schemes for subsidies/support so as to achieve environmental protection in Sweden

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

“But tractors can’t fly”

Agricultural interventions in South Africa have failed to deliver the promised poverty reduction for rural smallholders. Ecological economics, livelihoods studies, complex system methodology and discourse theory were used here to investigate the underlying reasons. The mismatch between local realities and programme management was found to be a central cause of failure. Lack of responsiveness to local realities within the programme resulted in tractors being sent to plough fields across a river with no bridge, leading locals to comment ‘but tractors can’t fly'. The neoliberal discourse in South African development policy was found to be a crucial factor behind such omissions

Monitoring of transcutaneous PO2 in the fetus and mother during normal labor

Peer Reviewe

Kall och halvvarm återvinning av tjärhaltiga beläggningsmassor - påverkan på omgivningsmiljö : uppföljning av provvägar och kontrollsträckor

I samband med vägunderhåll, förstärkning, ombyggnad och ledningsarbeten tas stora mängder asfaltbeläggningar bort från våra vägar och gator. Årligen återvinns ca 1,5-2 miljoner ton asfaltmassor till ny asfalt eller till obundna lager. Äldre asfaltbeläggningar kan innehålla stenkolstjära (vägtjära). I mer än 50 år och fram till och med 1973 användes vägtjära till bindemedel i bituminösa beläggningar. Sedan år 2002 klassas asfalt (bitumenblandningar) innehållande stenkolstjära som farligt avfall om halten av cancerogena ämnen överstiger 0,1 % i materialet. Stenkolstjära innehåller en rad ämnen som är hälso- eller miljöfarliga. I syfte att studera miljöpåverkan vid hantering, mellanlagring och återvinning av tjärhaltiga beläggningsmaterial har ett FoU-program initierats för 2001-2002. Projektet har behandlat följande områden: - Inventering, provtagning och bestämning av tjärinnehåll och PAH (polyaromatiska kolväten = Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) - Lakegenskaper - Återvinning - inkapsling genom inblandning av bindemedel - Omgivningspåverkan - Riktvärden för PAH - Rekommendationer för hantering, mellanlagring och återvinning av tjärhaltiga material Projektets primära syfte är att bedöma vilken miljöpåverkan tjärhaltiga material kan ge och om kall eller halvvarm återvinning är lämpliga metoder för återvinning av gamla beläggningsmassor innehållande stenkolstjära. Omgivningsstudierna skall hittills ses som en översiktlig kartläggning för att se om det föreligger akuta och allvarliga problem med tjärhaltiga beläggningsmaterial i äldre vägkonstruktioner eller vid återvinning, främst avseende omgivningspåverkan av PAH

Mellanlagring av asfalt : delrapport 4: utlakning från vägbeläggningsmaterial innehållande stenkolstjära

Föreliggande studie omfattar kolonnlakning av valda organiska ämnen från ett äldre vägbeläggningsmaterial av typen tjärindränkt grusmaterial, innehållande en totalhalt för gruppen 16-PAH av 5,3 g/kg. Sammantaget visar den nu genomförda undersökningen att de utlakade medelhalterna av summa cancerogena PAH är mycket höga och avsevärt överstiger föreslagna riktvärden för dessa PAH i grundvatten vid bensinstationer inom hela det undersökta L/S-intervallet (0–2,0). Medelhalten av summa övriga PAH överstiger föreslagna riktvärden i grundvatten vid bensinstationer i L/S-intervallet upp till cirka L/S 0,8, varefter denna halt minskar till under nämnda riktvärde i L/S-intervallet cirka 0,8–2,0. Generellt erhölls mycket större ackumulerade utlakade mängder av både summa cancerogena PAH och summa övriga PAH från det nu undersökta tjärinnehållande beläggningsmaterialet än från tidigare undersökta beläggningsmaterial. Vidare uppvisar de tre första (upp till ca L/S 0,8) av de fyra analyserade lakvattnen mycket hög akuttoxicitet om vattnen jämförs med grundvatten och mycket stor påverkan av punktkälla om de likställs med ytvatten. De högsta medelhalter som lakades ut av acetofenon låg i samma storleksnivå som tidigare maximalt har analyserats i lakvatten från beläggningsmaterial, men låg ändå under ett tidigare angivet utländskt gränsvärde i ytfiskevatten. Utlakade medelhalter av EGOM kan anses vara låga och förelåg i den under delen av det intervall som uppvisats från tidigare lakade beläggningsmaterial. Bensen, toluen, etylbensen, xylen och fenol låg alla under respektive detektionsgräns

Unleashing the Power of Very Small Data to Predict Acute Exacerbations of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Introduction: In this article, we explore to what extent it is possible to leverage on very small data to build machine learning (ML) models that predict acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD).Methods: We build ML models using the small data collected during the eHealth Diary telemonitoring study between 2013 and 2017 in Sweden. This data refers to a group of multimorbid patients, namely 18 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as the major reason behind previous hospitalisations. The telemonitoring was supervised by a specialised hospital-based home care (HBHC) unit, which also was responsible for the medical actions needed.Results: We implement two different ML approaches, one based on time-dependent covariates and the other one based on time-independent covariates. We compare the first approach with standard COX Proportional Hazards (CPH). For the second one, we use different proportions of synthetic data to build models and then evaluate the best model against authentic data.Discussion: To the best of our knowledge, the present ML study shows for the first time that the most important variable for an increased risk of future AECOPDs is "maintenance medication changes by HBHC". This finding is clinically relevant since a sub-optimal maintenance treatment, requiring medication changes, puts the patient in risk for future AECOPDs.Conclusion: The experiments return useful insights about the use of small data for ML.Funding Agencies|Medical Research Council of Southeast Sweden (FORSS) [FORSS-969385, FORSS-980999]; Swedens innovation agency Vinnova [2019-05402]</p