Discerning natural and anthropogenic organic matter inputs to salt marsh sediments of Ria Formosa lagoon (South Portugal)

Sedimentary organic matter (OM) origin and molecular composition provide useful information to understand carbon cycling in coastal wetlands. Core sediments from threors' Contributionse transects along Ria Formosa lagoon intertidal zone were analysed using analytical pyrolysis (Py-GC/MS) to determine composition, distribution and origin of sedimentary OM. The distribution of alkyl compounds (alkanes, alkanoic acids and alkan-2-ones), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), lignin-derived methoxyphenols, linear alkylbenzenes (LABs), steranes and hopanes indicated OM inputs to the intertidal environment from natural-autochthonous and allochthonous-as well as anthropogenic. Several n-alkane geochemical indices used to assess the distribution of main OM sources (terrestrial and marine) in the sediments indicate that algal and aquatic macrophyte derived OM inputs dominated over terrigenous plant sources. The lignin-derived methoxyphenol assemblage, dominated by vinylguaiacol and vinylsyringol derivatives in all sediments, points to large OM contribution from higher plants. The spatial distributions of PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons) showed that most pollution sources were mixed sources including both pyrogenic and petrogenic. Low carbon preference indexes (CPI > 1) for n-alkanes, the presence of UCM (unresolved complex mixture) and the distribution of hopanes (C-29-C-36) and steranes (C-27-C-29) suggested localized petroleum-derived hydrocarbon inputs to the core sediments. Series of LABs were found in most sediment samples also pointing to domestic sewage anthropogenic contributions to the sediment OM.EU Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate fellowship (FUECA, University of Cadiz, Spain)EUEuropean Commission [FP7-ENV-2011, 282845, FP7-534 ENV-2012, 308392]MINECO project INTERCARBON [CGL2016-78937-R]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Alcohol’s Influence on Violent Deaths

We have performed a descriptive, retrospective and longitudinal study to determine both the characteristics of the individuals involved in a violent death as well as the circumstances surrounding the event that took place in the province of Lugo (Spain) during the time period between 2007 and 2009. Data was achieved from archives that belong to the Institute of Legal Medicine of Galicia’s territorial branch in Lugo. Alcohol is a psychoactive substance that is very commonly used worldwide. It is the most frequently used psychoactive substance in our country. It has been integrated in the Western World’s cultural model of drug ingestion, coming to be considered a “partner in crime”. The association between crime and alcohol had been established many years ago. Alcohol is known to increase the possibility or to be the direct cause of criminal conduct. In this study, we found that it is also involved in situations in which people die in an unnatural manner. A total of eighty-four cases of death associated with alcohol, representing 17.75% of all violent deaths, were reported in our study. The most commonly found profile consists in middle-aged males that suffer an accidental death during the weekend

The use of spatial intensity distribution analysis to examine G protein-coupled receptor oligomerization

Spatial Intensity Distribution Analysis (SpIDA) is a new approach for detecting protein oligomerization states that can be applied not only to live cells but also fixed cells and native tissue. This approach is based on the generation of pixel-integrated fluorescence intensity histograms from laser scanning fluorescence microscopy images. These histograms are then fit with super-Poissonian distribution functions to obtain density maps and quantal brightness values of the fluorophore that are used to determine the proportions of monomer and dimers/oligomers of the fluorophore-tagged protein. In this chapter we describe SpIDA and highlight its advantages compared to other biochemical or biophysical approaches. We provide guidelines that should be useful to readers who wish to perform SpIDA measurements and describe the application of SpIDA as a post-acquisition imaging histogram analysis software tool to investigate the oligomeric state of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) at the surface of mammalian cells in order to define the steady-state proportion of monomeric and dimeric/oligomeric forms and how this may be regulated by cellular challenges such as ligand treatment