Diagnosis of the building stock using Energy Performance Certificates for urban energy planning in Mediterranean compact cities. Case of study: The city of València in Spain.

[EN] This research aims to diagnose the energy performance of buildings in València and identify areas where energy efficiency can be improved. The energy performance results of all 129,487 EPCs in the city were mapped and compared to socioeconomic variables to gain insights into the reasons behind the results. The study reveals that the city¿s building stock has poor energy performance, attributed to the lack of building standards during the city¿s expansion in the 1960s and 1970s. The worst energy performances are observed in the peripheral districts, particularly in the city¿s northern half, where low-income and low-renting rates are common, resulting in reduced investment capacity for individuals to retrofit their homes. To promote quick dissemination of measures to retrofit households, they must be adequate, economical, and replicable, avoiding social, administrative, and economic barriers. The study highlights the importance of EPCs as an objective tool to diagnose the energy efficiency of a city¿s building stock. Policymakers can use the findings to identify areas that require improvements and evaluate the appropriate actions to improve the building stock¿s energy performance. This study presents significant potential to reduce buildings¿ energy demand and achieve climate goals through EPCs.This article is an extended and updated version of a paper originally presented at the 17th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES 2022) held in Paphos, Cyprus, over the period 6th to 10th November 2022 (denoted then as paper SDEWES2022.00306 Assessment of Buildings¿ Energy Efficiency over the Years at a City-wide Level: the Case of Valencia). This project has received funding from the European Union¿s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101075582. The Spanish public administration partly supported this work under the grant PURPOSED project (ref: PID2021-128822OB-I00), financed by the Spanish State Investigation Agency. The Catedra ¿ de Transicion ¿ Energ¿etica Urbana (Las Naves-VCiE-UPV) also supported this work. Thanks to Mireia Roncero Tarazona for creating the maps in this article.Manso-Burgos, Á.; Ribó-Pérez, DG.; Van As, J.; Montagud- Montalvá, C.; Royo, R. (2023). Diagnosis of the building stock using Energy Performance Certificates for urban energy planning in Mediterranean compact cities. Case of study: The city of València in Spain. Energy Conversion and Management: X. 20:1-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecmx.2023.1004501182

Silvopastoral systems as a tool for territorial sustainability and biodiversity

Rural and livestock population evolution in the inner north of Portugal has demonstrated a great regression with consequences for environment and nature conservation. In this context, and taking into account that pastoral activity has shaped the natural areas of mountain territories since its beginning and that territories are currently part of Natura 2000 network, rethinking the importance of such activity has become vital. The constraints affecting daily tasks performed by shepherds and livestock breeders as well as the installed social segregation are a strong limitation. However, current research developed in the context of nature conservation has demonstrated the importance of the landscape mosaic promoted by grazing in the preservation of priority habitats. In this way, it is urgent to assess the issue of shepherds and livestock breeders’ image in terms of their roles, relationships and concerns, as well as to assess pastoralism socioeconomics in regard to self-consumption, market and rural self-sufficiency. In this perspective, this work presents an analysis of the adaptation of grazing to current times, perceiving its limitations and success potential.This work is supported by European Structural and Investment Funds, FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) [Project No. 006971 (UID/SOC/04011)], and national funds, through FCT, Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under project UID/SOC/04011/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Proteomic comparisons of opaque and transparent variants of <i>Streptococcus pneumoniae</i> by two dimensional-differential gel electrophoresis

Streptococcus pneumoniae (the pneumococcus) is a human pathogen, accounting for massive global morbidity and mortality. Although asymptomatic colonization of the nasopharynx almost invariably precedes disease, the critical determinants enabling pneumococcal progression from this niche to cause invasive disease are poorly understood. One mechanism proposed to be central to this transition involves opacity phase variation, whereby pneumococci harvested from the nasopharynx are typically transparent, while those simultaneously harvested from the blood are opaque. Here, we used two dimensional-differential gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) to compare protein expression profiles of transparent and opaque variants of 3 pneumococcal strains, D39 (serotype 2), WCH43 (serotype 4) and WCH16 (serotype 6A) in vitro. One spot comprising a mixture of capsular polysaccharide biosynthesis protein and other proteins was significantly up-regulated in the opaque phenotype in all 3 strains; other proteins were differentially regulated in a strain-specific manner. We conclude that pneumococcal phase variation is a complex and multifactorial process leading to strain-specific pathogenicity.Melissa H. Chai, Florian Weiland, Richard M. Harvey, Peter Hoffmann, Abiodun D. Ogunniyi, James C. Pato

Value added utilization of by-product electric furnace ferronickel slag as construction materials: A review

This paper reviews the potential use of electric furnace ferronickel slag (FNS) as a fine aggregate and binder in Portland cement and geopolymer concretes. It has been reported that the use of FNS as a fine aggregate can improve the strength and durability properties of concrete. Use of some FNS aggregates containing reactive silica may potentially cause alkali-silica reaction (ASR) in Portland cement concrete. However, the inclusion of supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) such as fly ash and blast furnace slag as partial cement replacement can effectively mitigate the ASR expansion. When finely ground FNS is used with cement, it shows pozzolanic reaction, which is similar to that of other common SCMs such as fly ash. Furthermore, 20% FNS powder blended geopolymer showed greater strength and durability properties as compared to 100% fly ash based geopolymers. The utilization of raw FNS in pavement construction is reported as a useful alternative to natural aggregate. Therefore, the use of by-product FNS in the construction industry will be a valuable step to help conservation of natural resources and add sustainability to infrastructures development. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the available results on the effects of FNS in concrete as aggregate and binder, and provides some recommendations for future research in this field

Staphylococcus aureus infection dynamics

Staphylococcus aureus is a human commensal that can also cause systemic infections. This transition requires evasion of the immune response and the ability to exploit different niches within the host. However, the disease mechanisms and the dominant immune mediators against infection are poorly understood. Previously it has been shown that the infecting S. aureus population goes through a population bottleneck, from which very few bacteria escape to establish the abscesses that are characteristic of many infections. Here we examine the host factors underlying the population bottleneck and subsequent clonal expansion in S. aureus infection models, to identify underpinning principles of infection. The bottleneck is a common feature between models and is independent of S. aureus strain. Interestingly, the high doses of S. aureus required for the widely used "survival" model results in a reduced population bottleneck, suggesting that host defences have been simply overloaded. This brings into question the applicability of the survival model. Depletion of immune mediators revealed key breakpoints and the dynamics of systemic infection. Loss of macrophages, including the liver Kupffer cells, led to increased sensitivity to infection as expected but also loss of the population bottleneck and the spread to other organs still occurred. Conversely, neutrophil depletion led to greater susceptibility to disease but with a concomitant maintenance of the bottleneck and lack of systemic spread. We also used a novel microscopy approach to examine abscess architecture and distribution within organs. From these observations we developed a conceptual model for S. aureus disease from initial infection to mature abscess. This work highlights the need to understand the complexities of the infectious process to be able to assign functions for host and bacterial components, and why S. aureus disease requires a seemingly high infectious dose and how interventions such as a vaccine may be more rationally developed

Joint sequencing of human and pathogen genomes reveals the genetics of pneumococcal meningitis.

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a common nasopharyngeal colonizer, but can also cause life-threatening invasive diseases such as empyema, bacteremia and meningitis. Genetic variation of host and pathogen is known to play a role in invasive pneumococcal disease, though to what extent is unknown. In a genome-wide association study of human and pathogen we show that human variation explains almost half of variation in susceptibility to pneumococcal meningitis and one-third of variation in severity, identifying variants in CCDC33 associated with susceptibility. Pneumococcal genetic variation explains a large amount of invasive potential (70%), but has no effect on severity. Serotype alone is insufficient to explain invasiveness, suggesting other pneumococcal factors are involved in progression to invasive disease. We identify pneumococcal genes involved in invasiveness including pspC and zmpD, and perform a human-bacteria interaction analysis. These genes are potential candidates for the development of more broadly-acting pneumococcal vaccines

Alignment of the ALICE Inner Tracking System with cosmic-ray tracks

37 pages, 15 figures, revised version, accepted by JINSTALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment devoted to investigating the strongly interacting matter created in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC energies. The ALICE ITS, Inner Tracking System, consists of six cylindrical layers of silicon detectors with three different technologies; in the outward direction: two layers of pixel detectors, two layers each of drift, and strip detectors. The number of parameters to be determined in the spatial alignment of the 2198 sensor modules of the ITS is about 13,000. The target alignment precision is well below 10 micron in some cases (pixels). The sources of alignment information include survey measurements, and the reconstructed tracks from cosmic rays and from proton-proton collisions. The main track-based alignment method uses the Millepede global approach. An iterative local method was developed and used as well. We present the results obtained for the ITS alignment using about 10^5 charged tracks from cosmic rays that have been collected during summer 2008, with the ALICE solenoidal magnet switched off.Peer reviewe

Four whole-istic aspects of schistosome granuloma biology: fractal arrangement, internal regulation, autopoietic component and closure

This paper centers on some whole-istic organizational and functional aspects of hepatic Schistosoma mansoni granuloma, which is an extremely complex system. First, it structurally develops a collagenic topology, originated bidirectionally from an inward and outward assembly of growth units. Inward growth appears to be originated from myofibroblasts derived from small portal vessel around intravascular entrapped eggs, while outward growth arises from hepatic stellate cells. The auto-assembly of the growth units defines the three-dimensional scaffold of the schistosome granulomas. The granuloma surface irregularity and its border presented fractal dimension equal to 1.58. Second, it is internally regulated by intricate networks of immuneneuroendocrine stimuli orchestrated by leptin and leptin receptors, substance P and Vasoactive intestinal peptide. Third, it can reach the population of ± 40,000 cells and presents an autopoietic component evidenced by internal proliferation (Ki-67+ Cells), and by expression of c-Kit+ Cells, leptin and leptin receptor (Ob-R), granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF-R), and erythropoietin (Epo-R) receptors. Fourth, the granulomas cells are intimately connected by pan-cadherins, occludin and connexin-43, building a state of closing (granuloma closure). In conclusion, the granuloma is characterized by transitory stages in such a way that its organized structure emerges as a global property which is greater than the sum of actions of its individual cells and extracellular matrix components