The impact of zinc oxide particle morphology as an antimicrobial and when incorporated in poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) films for food packaging and food contact surfaces applications

In this work, zinc oxide (ZnO) micron and nano sized-particles with different morphologies were synthesized by aqueous precipitation and evaluated as antimicrobial agents against foodborne pathogens. The most effective bactericide system was selected to prepare active poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) films by three different methods (i) direct melt-mixing, (ii) melt-mixing of preincorporated ZnO into PHBV18 (18 mol% valerate content) fiber mats made by electrospinning, and, (iii) as a coating of the annealed electrospun PHBV18/ZnO fiber mats over compression molded PHBV. Results showed that ZnO successfully improved the thermal stability of the PHBV18, being the preincorporation method the most efficient in mitigating the negative impact that the PHBV18 had on the thermal stability, barrier and optical properties of the PHBV films. Similar behavior was found for the coating structure although this film showed effective and prolonged antibacterial activity against Listeria monocytogenes. This study highlights the suitability of the PHBV/ZnO nanostructures for active food packaging and food contact surface applications.This work was financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MAT2012-38947-C02-01 and AGL2015-63855-C2-1-R). J.L. Castro-Mayorga is supported by the Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (Colciencias) of Colombian Government. M. J. Fabra is recipient of a Ramon y Cajal contract from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.Peer reviewe

Sacrospinous ligament suspension with transobturator mesh versus sacral colpopexy for genital prolapse

OBJECTIVE: To compare the safety and efficacy of abdominal sacral colpopexy and sacrospinous ligament suspension with the use of vaginal mesh for apical prolapse. METHOD: This retrospective study was conducted from 2005 to 2012 and included 89 women with apical prolapse who underwent surgery. Assessments included pre- and postoperative Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification (POP-Q) stage. Rates of objective cure and immediate/late complications were compared. RESULTS: In total, 41 of the 89 women underwent sacrospinous ligament suspension, and 48 of the women underwent abdominal sacral colpopexy. A total of 40.4% of the women had vault prolapse (p=0.9361). Most of them had no complications (93.2%) (p=0.9418). Approximately 30% of the women had late complications; local pain was the main symptom and was found only in women who underwent the abdominal procedure (25.6%) (p=0.001). Only the women who were submitted to the vaginal procedure had mesh exposure (18.4%). The objective success rate and the rate of anterior vaginal prolapse (p=0.2970) were similar for both techniques. CONCLUSION: Sacrospinous ligament suspension was as effective and had a similar objective success rate as abdominal sacral colpopexy for the treatment of apical prolapse. Sacrospinous ligament suspension performed with the use of vaginal mesh in the anterior compartment was effective in preventing anterior vaginal prolapse after surgery

Activation of lactate receptor HCAR1 down-modulates neuronal activity in rodent and human brain tissue.

Lactate can be used by neurons as an energy substrate to support their activity. Evidence suggests that lactate also acts on a metabotropic receptor called HCAR1, first described in the adipose tissue. Whether HCAR1 also modulates neuronal circuits remains unclear. In this study, using qRT-PCR, we show that HCAR1 is present in the human brain of epileptic patients who underwent resective surgery. In brain slices from these patients, pharmacological HCAR1 activation using a non-metabolized agonist decreased the frequency of both spontaneous neuronal Ca <sup>2+</sup> spiking and excitatory post-synaptic currents (sEPSCs). In mouse brains, we found HCAR1 expression in different regions using a fluorescent reporter mouse line and in situ hybridization. In the dentate gyrus, HCAR1 is mainly present in mossy cells, key players in the hippocampal excitatory circuitry and known to be involved in temporal lobe epilepsy. By using whole-cell patch clamp recordings in mouse and rat slices, we found that HCAR1 activation causes a decrease in excitability, sEPSCs, and miniature EPSCs frequency of granule cells, the main output of mossy cells. Overall, we propose that lactate can be considered a neuromodulator decreasing synaptic activity in human and rodent brains, which makes HCAR1 an attractive target for the treatment of epilepsy

Differential contributions of subthalamic beta rhythms and 1/f broadband activity to motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease.

Excessive beta oscillatory activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is linked to Parkinson's Disease (PD) motor symptoms. However, previous works have been inconsistent regarding the functional role of beta activity in untreated Parkinsonian states, questioning such role. We hypothesized that this inconsistency is due to the influence of electrophysiological broadband activity -a neurophysiological indicator of synaptic excitation/inhibition ratio- that could confound measurements of beta activity in STN recordings. Here we propose a data-driven, automatic and individualized mathematical model that disentangles beta activity and 1/f broadband activity in the STN power spectrum, and investigate the link between these individual components and motor symptoms in thirteen Parkinsonian patients. We show, using both modeled and actual data, how beta oscillatory activity significantly correlates with motor symptoms (bradykinesia and rigidity) only when broadband activity is not considered in the biomarker estimations, providing solid evidence that oscillatory beta activity does correlate with motor symptoms in untreated PD states as well as the significant impact of broadband activity. These findings emphasize the importance of data-driven models and the identification of better biomarkers for characterizing symptom severity and closed-loop applications

Soil organisms in organic and conventional cropping systems.

Apesar do crescente interesse pela agricultura orgânica, são poucas as informações de pesquisa disponíveis sobre o assunto. Assim, num Argissolo Vermelho-Amarelo distrófico foram comparados os efeitos de sistemas de cultivo orgânico e convencional, para as culturas do tomate (Lycopersicum esculentum) e do milho (Zea mays), sobre a comunidade de organismos do solo e suas atividades. As populações de fungos,bactérias e actinomicetos, determinadas pela contagem de colônias em meio de cultura, foram semelhantes para os dois sistemas de produção. A atividade microbiana, avaliada pela evolução de CO2, manteve-se superior no sistema orgânico, sendo que em determinadas avaliações foi o dobro da evolução verificada no sistema convencional. O número de espécimes de minhoca foi praticamente dez vezes maior no sistema orgânico. Não foi observada diferença na taxa de decomposição de matéria orgânica entre os dois sistemas. De modo geral, o número de indivíduos de microartrópodos foi superior no sistema orgânico do que no sistema convencional, refletindo no maior índice de diversidade de Shannon. As maiores populações de insetos foram as da ordem Collembola, enquanto para os ácaros a maior população foi a da superfamília Oribatuloidea. Indivíduos dos grupos Aranae, Chilopoda, Dyplopoda, Pauropoda, Protura e Symphyla foram ocasionalmente coletados e de forma similar entre os sistemas

Professionalism, Golf Coaching and a Master of Science Degree: A commentary

As a point of reference I congratulate Simon Jenkins on tackling the issue of professionalism in coaching. As he points out coaching is not a profession, but this does not mean that coaching would not benefit from going through a professionalization process. As things stand I find that the stimulus article unpacks some critically important issues of professionalism, broadly within the context of golf coaching. However, I am not sure enough is made of understanding what professional (golf) coaching actually is nor how the development of a professional golf coach can be facilitated by a Master of Science Degree (M.Sc.). I will focus my commentary on these two issues

Low Complexity Regularization of Linear Inverse Problems

Inverse problems and regularization theory is a central theme in contemporary signal processing, where the goal is to reconstruct an unknown signal from partial indirect, and possibly noisy, measurements of it. A now standard method for recovering the unknown signal is to solve a convex optimization problem that enforces some prior knowledge about its structure. This has proved efficient in many problems routinely encountered in imaging sciences, statistics and machine learning. This chapter delivers a review of recent advances in the field where the regularization prior promotes solutions conforming to some notion of simplicity/low-complexity. These priors encompass as popular examples sparsity and group sparsity (to capture the compressibility of natural signals and images), total variation and analysis sparsity (to promote piecewise regularity), and low-rank (as natural extension of sparsity to matrix-valued data). Our aim is to provide a unified treatment of all these regularizations under a single umbrella, namely the theory of partial smoothness. This framework is very general and accommodates all low-complexity regularizers just mentioned, as well as many others. Partial smoothness turns out to be the canonical way to encode low-dimensional models that can be linear spaces or more general smooth manifolds. This review is intended to serve as a one stop shop toward the understanding of the theoretical properties of the so-regularized solutions. It covers a large spectrum including: (i) recovery guarantees and stability to noise, both in terms of $\ell^2$-stability and model (manifold) identification; (ii) sensitivity analysis to perturbations of the parameters involved (in particular the observations), with applications to unbiased risk estimation ; (iii) convergence properties of the forward-backward proximal splitting scheme, that is particularly well suited to solve the corresponding large-scale regularized optimization problem

Anisotropic flow of charged hadrons, pions and (anti-)protons measured at high transverse momentum in Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=2.76\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76 TeV

The elliptic, $v_2$, triangular, $v_3$, and quadrangular, $v_4$, azimuthal anisotropic flow coefficients are measured for unidentified charged particles, pions and (anti-)protons in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ TeV with the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Results obtained with the event plane and four-particle cumulant methods are reported for the pseudo-rapidity range $|\eta|<0.8$ at different collision centralities and as a function of transverse momentum, $p_{\rm T}$, out to $p_{\rm T}=20$ GeV/$c$. The observed non-zero elliptic and triangular flow depends only weakly on transverse momentum for $p_{\rm T}>8$ GeV/$c$. The small $p_{\rm T}$ dependence of the difference between elliptic flow results obtained from the event plane and four-particle cumulant methods suggests a common origin of flow fluctuations up to $p_{\rm T}=8$ GeV/$c$. The magnitude of the (anti-)proton elliptic and triangular flow is larger than that of pions out to at least $p_{\rm T}=8$ GeV/$c$ indicating that the particle type dependence persists out to high $p_{\rm T}$.Comment: 16 pages, 5 captioned figures, authors from page 11, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/186