Lactic Acid Bacteria and Bifidobacteria with Potential to Design Natural Biofunctional Health-Promoting Dairy Foods

peer-reviewedConsumer interest in healthy lifestyle and health-promoting natural products is a major driving force for the increasing global demand of biofunctional dairy foods. A number of commercial sources sell synthetic formulations of bioactive substances for use as dietary supplements. However, the bioactive-enrichment of health-oriented foods by naturally occurring microorganisms during dairy fermentation is in increased demand. While participating in milk fermentation, lactic acid bacteria can be exploited in situ as microbial sources for naturally enriching dairy products with a broad range of bioactive components that may cover different health aspects. Several of these bioactive metabolites are industrially and economically important, as they are claimed to exert diverse health-promoting activities on the consumer, such as anti-hypertensive, anti-inflammatory, and anti-diabetic, anti-oxidative, immune-modulatory, anti-cholesterolemic, or microbiome modulation. This review aims at discussing the potential of these health-supporting bacteria as starter or adjunct cultures for the elaboration of dairy foods with a broad spectrum of new functional properties and added value.This work was funded by the JPI Food Processing for Health funded by the LONGLIFE Project and the APC Microbiome Institute, a Centre for Science and Technology (CSET) funded by the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), through the Irish Government’s National Development Plan. The authors are grateful to the University of León (León, Spain) for granting a Ph.D. fellowship to ER

AER Auditory Filtering and CPG for Robot Control

Address-Event-Representation (AER) is a communication protocol for transferring asynchronous events between VLSI chips, originally developed for bio-inspired processing systems (for example, image processing). The event information in an AER system is transferred using a highspeed digital parallel bus. This paper presents an experiment using AER for sensing, processing and finally actuating a Robot. The AER output of a silicon cochlea is processed by an AER filter implemented on a FPGA to produce rhythmic walking in a humanoid robot (Redbot). We have implemented both the AER rhythm detector and the Central Pattern Generator (CPG) on a Spartan II FPGA which is part of a USB-AER platform developed by some of the authors.Commission of the European Communities IST-2001-34124 (CAVIAR)Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC-2003-08164-C03-0

The contribution of sulfate ions and protons to the specific capacitance of microporous carbon monoliths

The monoliths studied in this work show large specific surface areas (up to 1600 m2 g-1), high densities (up to 1.17 g cm-3) and high electrical conductivities (up to 9.5 S cm-1). They are microporous carbons with pore sizes up to 1.3 nm but most of them below 0.75 nm. They also show oxygen functionalities. The electrochemical behavior of the monoliths is studied in three-electrode cells with aqueous H2SO4 solution as electrolyte. This work deals with the contribution of the sulfate ions and protons to the specific capacitance of carbon monoliths having different surface areas and different contents of oxygen groups. Protons contribute with a pseudocapacitance (up to 152 F g-1) in addition to the double layer capacitance. Sulfate ions contribute with a double layer capacitance only. At the double layer, the capacitance of the sulfate ions (up to 291 F g-1) is slightly higher than that of protons (up to 251 F g-1); both capacitances increase as the surface area increases. The preference of protons to be electroadsorbed at the double layer and the broader voltage window of these ions account for their higher contribution (70 %) to the double layer capacitance.Financial support through the projects MAT2011-25198, MP 1004 and PROMETEO/2009/047 is gratefully acknowledged. V.B. thanks MINECO for R&C contract

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO INTEGRATE A GIS-BASED ANALYSIS INTO THE DESIGN OF CULTURAL ITINERARIES IN THE FRAMEWORK OF AN INTEGRATED PLAN FOR TERRITORY

Abstract. The historical concept of heritage, which mostly comprised physical architectural and archaeological evidences, has been extended to the surrounding landscape in the last decades. This tendency has been corroborated by a series of International Charters and the European Landscape Convention of 2000. Landscape, understood as the perceptible part of territory that supports the contingencies throughout history, is subject to protection, management and planning. However, some inherent aspects of territory have been disregarded because of the frantic enlargement of cities throughout the twentieth century at the expense of the rural areas. Territorial heritage, which is fundamental to cultural landscape formation, is currently considered a strategic resource able to guarantee self-sustaining development of peri-urban and rural zones. In many cases, urban investments and planning associated to the enlargement of the metropolitan areas have overlooked this fruitful territorial heritage, making cultural landscapes illegible. This is the case of the cultural landscapes in the buffer zones of the archaeological sites, which are part of a diffuse territorial heritage that requires to be assessed by means of some innovative approaches. Cultural itineraries are presented as a landscape architecture strategy for valorising territorial heritage. Well-targeted design of these itineraries can also contribute to restore the dynamics of cultural landscape formation and to regenerate peri-urban and rural areas by promoting its self-sustaining development. To that end, the conceptualisation and hypotheses posed by some authors of the Società dei Territorialisti/e are used as references. A work methodology to design cultural itineraries is suggested in line with the presumptions of an integrated plan for territory aimed to valorise the territorial heritage. This paper explores in which way a GIS-based analysis can be integrated into the design of a landscape architecture like the cultural itinerary

AER Building Blocks for Multi-Layer Multi-Chip Neuromorphic Vision Systems

A 5-layer neuromorphic vision processor whose components communicate spike events asychronously using the address-eventrepresentation (AER) is demonstrated. The system includes a retina chip, two convolution chips, a 2D winner-take-all chip, a delay line chip, a learning classifier chip, and a set of PCBs for computer interfacing and address space remappings. The components use a mixture of analog and digital computation and will learn to classify trajectories of a moving object. A complete experimental setup and measurements results are shown.Unión Europea IST-2001-34124 (CAVIAR)Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC-2003-08164-C0

CLA-producing adjunct cultures improve the nutritional value of sheep cheese fat

[EN]The influence of the autochthonous CLA-producing Lactobacillus plantarum TAUL 1588 and Lactobacillus casei subsp. casei SS 1644 strains and the ripening time on the fatty acid (FA) content and sensory characteristics of sheep cheese were investigated. Three cheese types with different cultures and the control cheese were produced in duplicate and ripened for 8 months. 86 individual FA were determined by gas chromatography. Ripening time (2, 90, 180 and 240 days) did not have a significant effect (P >.05) on the FA content. However, the presence of both Lactobacillus CLA-producing strains led to a decrease of the saturated FA content and to 1.30, 1.19 and 1.27 times higher levels of vaccenic acid, CLA and omega-3, respectively, when compared to the control cheese. This combination allowed obtaining sheep milk cheeses with a healthier FA content, without appreciable changes on sensory characteristics. This work could be a promising approach to increase the bioactive fatty acid content of cheeses.SIThe authors are grateful to the University of León (León, Spain) for granting a PhD fellowship to Erica Renes Bañuelos. Pilar Gómez-Cortés was subsidized with a Juan de la Cierva research contract from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. The authors also wish to acknowledge the Consortium for Ovine Promotion (Villalpando, Zamora, Castilla-León, Spain). The authors thank to F.J. Zorita for his technical assistance

Developmental effects and genotoxicity of ten water disinfection by-products in zebrafish

Disinfection by-products are contaminants produced during drinking water disinfection. Several DBPs have been implicated in a variety of toxic effects, mainly carcinogenic and genotoxic effects. Moreover, DBPs exposure has also been associated with an increased risk of developmental effects. In this study, the developmental toxicity and genotoxicity of 10 DBPs (4 trihalomethanes [THMs], 5 haloacetic acids [HAAs] and sodium bromate) in the zebrafish embryo model were evaluated. Embryos exposed for 72 hours were observed for different endpoints such as growth, hatching success, malformations and lethality. THMs exposure resulted in adverse developmental effects and a significant reduced tail length. Two HAAs, tribromoacetic acid and dichloroacetic acid, along with sodium bromate were found to cause a significant increase in malformation rate. Chloroform,chlorodibromomethane and sodium bromate produced a weak induction of DNA damage to whole embryos. However, developmental effects occurred at a range of concentrations (20 100 μg/mL)several orders of magnitude above the levels that can be attained in fetal blood in humans exposed to chlorinated water. In conclusion, the teratogenic and genotoxic activity observed by some DBPs in zebrafish reinforce the view that there is a weak capacity of disinfection products to cause developmental effects at environmentally relevant concentrations

Direct Magnetic Evidence, Functionalization, and Low-Temperature Magneto-Electron Transport in Liquid-Phase Exfoliated FePS3

Magnetism and the existence of magnetic order in a material is determined by its dimensionality. In this regard, the recent emergence of magnetic layered van der Waals (vdW) materials provides a wide playground to explore the exotic magnetism arising in the two-dimensional (2D) limit. The magnetism of 2D flakes, especially antiferromagnetic ones, however, cannot be easily probed by conventional magnetometry techniques, being often replaced by indirect methods like Raman spectroscopy. Here, we make use of an alternative approach to provide direct magnetic evidence of few-layer vdW materials, including antiferromagnets. We take advantage of a surfactant-free, liquid-phase exfoliation (LPE) method to obtain thousands of few-layer FePS3 flakes that can be quenched in a solvent and measured in a conventional SQUID magnetometer. We show a direct magnetic evidence of the antiferromagnetic transition in FePS3 few-layer flakes, concomitant with a clear reduction of the Néel temperature with the flake thickness, in contrast with previous Raman reports. The quality of the LPE FePS3 flakes allows the study of electron transport down to cryogenic temperatures. The significant through-flake conductance is sensitive to the antiferromagnetic order transition. Besides, an additional rich spectra of electron transport excitations, including secondary magnetic transitions and potentially magnon-phonon hybrid states, appear at low temperatures. Finally, we show that the LPE is additionally a good starting point for the mass covalent functionalization of 2D magnetic materials with functional molecules. This technique is extensible to any vdW magnetic familyE.B. acknowledges funds from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación in Spain (RTI2018-096075-A-C22, RYC2019- 028429-I). E.M.P. thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2020-116661RB-I00) and Comunidad de Madrid (P2018/NMT-4367). M.G.H. and A.C.-G. acknowledge funds from European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Graphene Core3-Grant agreement no. 881603 Graphene-based disruptive technologies), EU FLAGERA through the project To2Dox (JTC-2019-009), and Comunidad de Madrid through the project CAIRO-CM project (Y2020/NMT-6661). A.C.-G. also acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 755655, ERC-StG 2017 project 2D-TOPSENSE) and the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain) through the project PID2020-115566RB-I00. M.L.R.G. acknowledges support by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through Research Project PID 2020- 113753RB-100. The National Centre for Electron Microscopy (ELECMI National Singular Scientific Facility) is also acknowledge for provision of access to corrected aberration microscopy facilities. CzechNanoLab Research Infrastructure supported by MEYS CR (LM2018110) is acknowledge

Factors of the epidemiological triad that influence the persistence of human papilloma virus infection in women with systemic lupus erythematosus

We studied the epidemiologic triad-related factors influencing human papilloma virus (HPV) persistence in Mexican women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Patients aged ?18 years with SLE (American College of Rheumatology criteria), with and without HPV persistence, were selected. Groups were analyzed by (1) host: clinical disease characteristics; (2) agent: (I) infectious (prevalence, incidence, HPV genotype and co-infections (?2 HPV genotypes or mycoplasmas)), (II) chemical (contraceptives and immunosuppressive drugs) and (III) physical (vitamin D deficiency) and (3) environment. A total of 121 SLE patients were selected over a two-year period. (1) Host: mean age 45.8 years and disease duration 12.7 years. (2) Agent: (I) infectious. HPV infection prevalence in the second sample was 26.4%, high-risk HPV genotypes 21.5% and co-infections 7.4%. HPV infection incidence was 13.2%, persistence 13.2% and clearance 15.7%. (II) Chemical: use of oral hormonal contraceptives 5% and immunosuppressive treatment 97.5%. (III) Physical: Vitamin D levels were similar in both groups. (3) Environment: (I) natural. A total of 60.6% of patients were residents of Puebla City. (II) Social: The mean education level was 10.9. Poverty levels were: III degree 52.4%, IV degree 28% and II degree 17%. (III) Cultural behavioral: Onset of sexual life was 20.5 years, 10% had ?3 sexual partners and 51.2% were postmenopausal. In conclusion, no factor of the epidemiologic triad was associated with HPV infection prevalence. © The Author(s) 2018