751 research outputs found
Will fish be part of future healthy and sustainable diets?
First paragraph: The adoption of healthy and sustainable diets and food systems is recognised as a means to address the global challenge of malnutrition and poor-quality diets, and unprecedented environmental damage from food production and consumption.1 Sustainable diets have also been recognised as a key strategy to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Reducing consumption of animal-source foods is frequently presented as key to improving the sustainability of food systems.2 Fish and seafood can have a lower environmental impact and in many cases are considered more efficient than terrestrial animal production (albeit with wide variation) depending on the type of production or capture method,3 yet remain largely absent, or insufficiently articulated in the sustainable diets literature, rendering their future role in healthy diets unclear.4 This absence of specific consideration of fish and seafood extends to food security literature, in which the role of fish remains under-recognised and undervalued.5 Legitimate concerns exist regarding the environmental sustainability of fisheries and aquaculture systems; however, we argue that an overemphasis on the so-called doomsday portrayal of fish—which often dominates literature and the broader media—masks the myriad of positive contributions of the fisheries sector to nutrition and sustainability and limits its scope in contributing to healthy and sustainable food systems
Chiral Alcohols from Alkenes and Water: Directed Evolution of a Styrene Hydratase
Enantioselective synthesis of chiral alcohols through asymmetric addition of water across an unactivated alkene is a highly sought-after transformation and a big challenge in catalysis. Herein we report the identification and directed evolution of a fatty acid hydratase from Marinitoga hydrogenitolerans for the highly enantioselective hydration of styrenes to yield chiral 1-arylethanols. While directed evolution for styrene hydration was performed in the presence of heptanoic acid to mimic fatty acid binding, the engineered enzyme displayed remarkable asymmetric styrene hydration activity in the absence of the small molecule activator. The evolved styrene hydratase provided access to chiral alcohols from simple alkenes and water with high enantioselectivity (>99 : 1 e.r.) and could be applied on a preparative scale
Experimental study of helical milling on CFRP (carbon fibre reinforced polymer) for the hole making process
Generate borehole by helical milling process may be used effectively since accurate location of the hole may be secured by means of the feed screw graduations. Fiber delamination which is the main defect occurred during hole making process on carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) were investigate throughout an experimental study. Effects of thrust force (Fz), delamination factor (Fd) and surface roughness are evaluated. Objective of the experiment are to find best cutting parameter and tool design suitable to performed helical milling operation on CFRP. Two types of end mill with 4 flutes were used and results are evaluated. It was found that tool design 2-1 has higher performance on CFRP
Hole making process of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) using end mill cutting tool
This paper presents an alternative way of producing a hole by using a helical milling concept on a carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP). Delamination is a major problem associated with making a hole by drilling on the CFRP. This study focused on helical milling technique using a vertical machining center in order to produce a hole. Various levels of cutting parameter such as cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut have been chosen to observe the effect of trust force, delamination and surface roughness. The result will be used to determine on which cutting parameters give the best hole quality that will achieved by this new approached
Correlation Between Anti-cyclic Citrullinated Peptide Antibodies and the Severity of Clinical Manifestation, Laboratory Manifestation, and Radiological Joint Destruction in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients
Background. The second generation anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide test (CCP2) displays sensitivity comparable to that of rheumatoid factor (RF) (approximately 80%) but with superior specificity (98%) . Several observations have indicated that early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with positive anti-CCP may develop a more erosive disease than those without anti-CCP.Objective. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the correlation between anti-CCP antibodies and clinical and laboratory parameters and radiological joint destruction in RA patients.Methods. We studied 31 patients with RA fulfilling the 1987 revised criteria of American College of Rheumatology in Rheumatology Clinic of Saiful Anwar General Hospital, Malang, Indonesia. Clinical parameters were collected such as age, sex, visual analog scale,disease duration and diseases activity score (DAS28-3(CRP)). Laboratory parameters were WBC, hemoglobin, platelet count, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and Creactive protein. Analyzed autoantibody profiles were RF and anti-CCP (ELISA methode). Radiological jointdestruction was evaluated from bilateral postero-anterior manus x ray (Sharp score).Results. Anti-CCP antibodies were detected in 48.4% of RA patients with mean antibody concentration was 291.24±143.67 (range 16-523.8) units. Anti CCP level was significantly correlated with duration of RA (month) (p=0.04, r=0.371), RF level (p=0.002, r=0.542) andSharp score (p=0.048, r=0.358), but was not significantly correlated with other clinical and laboratory parameters.Conclusion. Anti-CCP level was correlated with duration of disease, RF, and Sharp score
Treatment of landfill leachate using ASBR combined with zeolite adsorption technology
Sanitary landfilling is the most common way to dispose solid urban waste; however, improper landfill management may pose serious environmental threats through discharge of high strength polluted wastewater also known as leachate. The treatment of landfill leachate to fully reduce the negative impact on the environment, is nowadays a challenge. In this study, an aerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR) was proposed for the treatment of locally obtained real landfill leachate with initial ammoniacal nitrogen and chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration of 1800 and 3200 mg/L, respectively. ASBR could remove 65 % of ammoniacal nitrogen and 30 % of COD during seven days of treatment time. Thereafter, an effective adsorbent, i.e., zeolite was used as a secondary treatment step for polishing the ammoniacal nitrogen and COD content that is present in leachate. The results obtained are promising where the adsorption of leachate by zeolite further enhanced the removal of ammoniacal nitrogen and COD up to 96 and 43 %, respectively. Furthermore, this combined biological–physical treatment system was able to remove heavy metals, i.e. aluminium, vanadium, chromium, magnesium, cuprum and plumbum significantly. These results demonstrate that combined ASBR and zeolite adsorption is a feasible technique for the treatment of landfill leachate, even considering this effluent’s high resistance to treatment
Quantum key distribution in terms of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state: multi-key generation
In this paper, we develop a quantum key distribution protocol based on the
Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states (GHZs). The particles are exchanged among
the users in blocks through two steps. In this protocol, for three-particle
GHZs three keys can be simultaneously generated. The advantage of this is that
the users can select the most suitable key for communication. The protocol can
be generalized to users to provide keys. The protocol has two levels
for checking the eavesdroppers. Moreover, we discuss the security of the
protocol against different attacks.Comment: 10 Page, no figures. Comments are most welcom
Fully Trainable and Interpretable Non-Local Sparse Models for Image Restoration
Non-local self-similarity and sparsity principles have proven to be powerful
priors for natural image modeling. We propose a novel differentiable relaxation
of joint sparsity that exploits both principles and leads to a general
framework for image restoration which is (1) trainable end to end, (2) fully
interpretable, and (3) much more compact than competing deep learning
architectures. We apply this approach to denoising, jpeg deblocking, and
demosaicking, and show that, with as few as 100K parameters, its performance on
several standard benchmarks is on par or better than state-of-the-art methods
that may have an order of magnitude or more parameters.Comment: ECCV 202
Atherosclerotic plaque destabilization in Mice: A comparative study
Atherosclerosis-Associated diseases are the main cause ofmortality and morbidity in western societies. The progression of atherosclerosis is a dynamic process evolving from early to advanced lesions thatmay become rupture-prone vulnerable plaques. Acute coronary syndromes are the clinical manifestation of life-Threatening thrombotic events associated with high-risk vulnerable plaques. Hyperlipidemic mouse models have been extensively used in studying the mechanisms controlling initiation and progression of atherosclerosis. However, the understanding of mechanisms leading to atherosclerotic plaque destabilization has been hampered by the lack of proper animalmodelsmimicking this process. Although various mouse models generate atherosclerotic plaques with histological features of human advanced lesions, a consensus model to study atherosclerotic plaque destabilization is still lacking. Hence, we studied the degree and features of plaque vulnerability in different mouse models of atherosclerotic plaque destabilization and find that the model based on the placement of a shear stress modifier in combination with hypercholesterolemia represent with high incidence the most human like lesions compared to the other models
Beta-Lactam Infusion in Severe Sepsis (BLISS): a prospective, two-centre, open-labelled randomised controlled trial of continuous versus intermittent beta-lactam infusion in critically ill patients with severe sepsis
This study aims to determine if continuous infusion (CI) is associated with better clinical and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) outcomes compared to intermittent bolus (IB) dosing in critically ill patients with severe sepsis.
This was a two-centre randomised controlled trial of CI versus IB dosing of beta-lactam antibiotics, which enrolled critically ill participants with severe sepsis who were not on renal replacement therapy (RRT). The primary outcome was clinical cure at 14 days after antibiotic cessation. Secondary outcomes were PK/PD target attainment, ICU-free days and ventilator-free days at day 28 post-randomisation, 14- and 30-day survival, and time to white cell count normalisation.
A total of 140 participants were enrolled with 70 participants each allocated to CI and IB dosing. CI participants had higher clinical cure rates (56 versus 34 %, p = 0.011) and higher median ventilator-free days (22 versus 14 days, p MIC than the IB arm on day 1 (97 versus 70 %, p < 0.001) and day 3 (97 versus 68 %, p < 0.001) post-randomisation. There was no difference in 14-day or 30-day survival between the treatment arms.
In critically ill patients with severe sepsis not receiving RRT, CI demonstrated higher clinical cure rates and had better PK/PD target attainment compared to IB dosing of beta-lactam antibiotics. Continuous beta-lactam infusion may be mostly advantageous for critically ill patients with high levels of illness severity and not receiving RRT
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