Process design and sustainability in the production of bioethanol from lignocellulosic materials

Background: Bioethanol is produced mainly from sugar cane and corn. In the last years it has been subject of debate due to the effects in food prices and land use change. The use of lignocellulosic materials for bioethanol production, such as agroindustry, forestry and municipal residues, wood or dendroenergetic species, has been proposed as a sustainable way for producing this biofuel. The design of a sustainable process for producing bioethanol requires a methodological approach whereby economical, environmental and social criteria are systematically integrated from the early stages of process design. Results: Until now a methodology for guiding the design of a sustainable process for bioethanol production is not available, and there are just a few studies on this subject. Moreover, with the recent global concerns on climate change, developed technologies have been confronted with additional requirements to validate their sustainability. In this sense, the inclusion of sustainability criteria on process design becomes necessary for defining a systematic methodology to select the most appropriate operations in the process stages to achieve a sustainable bioethanol production. Conclusions: A description of the stages for the production of bioethanol from lignocellulosic materials is provided in this review and the main findings in relation to the more important sustainability indicators are presented

CXCR2 deficient mice display macrophage-dependent exaggerated acute inflammatory responses

CXCR2 is an essential regulator of neutrophil recruitment to inflamed and damaged sites and plays prominent roles in inflammatory pathologies and cancer. It has therefore been highlighted as an important therapeutic target. However the success of the therapeutic targeting of CXCR2 is threatened by our relative lack of knowledge of its precise in vivo mode of action. Here we demonstrate that CXCR2-deficient mice display a counterintuitive transient exaggerated inflammatory response to cutaneous and peritoneal inflammatory stimuli. In both situations, this is associated with reduced expression of cytokines associated with the resolution of the inflammatory response and an increase in macrophage accumulation at inflamed sites. Analysis using neutrophil depletion strategies indicates that this is a consequence of impaired recruitment of a non-neutrophilic CXCR2 positive leukocyte population. We suggest that these cells may be myeloid derived suppressor cells. Our data therefore reveal novel and previously unanticipated roles for CXCR2 in the orchestration of the inflammatory response

Acute health effects after accidental exposure to styrene from drinking water in Spain

OBJECTIVES: We studied subjective health symptoms in a population accidentally exposed to high styrene concentrations in drinking tap water. The contamination occurred during the reparation of a water tank. METHODS: Residents of 27 apartments in two buildings using the contaminated water were contacted. A questionnaire on subjective symptoms was administered to 84 out of 93 persons living in the apartments at the time of the accident. Styrene concentration was measured in samples of water collected two days after the accident. The means of exposure associated with appearance of symptoms were examined through case-control analyses. RESULTS: Styrene in water reached concentrations up to 900 μg/L. Symptoms were reported by 46 persons (attack rate 55 %). The most frequent symptoms were irritation of the throat (26%), nose (19%), eyes (18%) and the skin (14%). General gastrointestinal symptoms were observed with 11% reporting abdominal pain and 7% diarrhea. The factors most strongly associated with symptoms were drinking tap water (OR = 7.8, 95% CI 1.3–48), exposure to vapors from the basement (OR = 10.4, 2.3–47) and eating foods prepared with tap water (OR = 8.6, 1.9–40). All residents in the ground floor reported symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: This accidental contamination led to very high styrene concentrations in water and was related to a high prevalence of subjective symptoms of the eyes, respiratory tract and skin. Similar exposures have been described in workers but not in subjects exposed at their residence. Various gastrointestinal symptoms were also observed in this population probably due to a local irritative effect

Low validity of self-report in identifying recent mental health diagnosis among U.S. service members completing Pre-Deployment Health Assessment (PreDHA) and deployed to Afghanistan, 2007: a retrospective cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since 1998, the U.S. Armed Forces has used the mandatory Pre-Deployment Health Assessment (PreDHA) screening questionnaire as a means of assessing the health and suitability of U.S. service members for deployment. Limited data exists to quantify the validity of the self-reported PreDHA. This study was conducted to assess the validity of self-reporting in PreDHA to identify deployed service members who have had a recent mental health disorder diagnosis.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A retrospective cohort study was conducted on 15,195 U.S. service members deployed in support of combat and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan. The Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS), the DoD's longitudinal medical surveillance database, was queried to identify cases among the cohort with a recent diagnosis of a pertinent mental health disorder and to obtain those subjects' responses to the PreDHA.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of the study cohort, 11,179 (73.6%) subjects had a PreDHA available within the DMSS at the time of analysis. A total of 615 subjects (4.0%) had one or more mental health disorder diagnoses during the pre-deployment period. Out the 615 subjects with diagnosed mental health disorders, 465 had a PreDHA. Among these, only 224, not quite half, answered in the affirmative to the PreDHA question: <it>"During the past year, have you sought counseling or care for your mental health?"</it></p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study demonstrates that the self-reported PreDHA has low validity for identifying service members with diagnosed mental health disorders. The development of electronic decision-support systems which automatically screen electronic health records to identify high-risk service members may prove a valuable component of improved pre-deployment screening processes.</p

Climate Change and American Bullfrog Invasion: What Could We Expect in South America?

BACKGROUND: Biological invasion and climate change pose challenges to biodiversity conservation in the 21(st) century. Invasive species modify ecosystem structure and functioning and climatic changes are likely to produce invasive species' range shifts pushing some populations into protected areas. The American Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) is one of the hundred worst invasive species in the world. Native from the southeast of USA, it has colonized more than 75% of South America where it has been reported as a highly effective predator, competitor and vector of amphibian diseases. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We modeled the potential distribution of the bullfrog in its native range based on different climate models and green-house gases emission scenarios, and projected the results onto South America for the years of 2050 and 2080. We also overlaid projected models onto the South American network of protected areas. Our results indicate a slight decrease in potential suitable area for bullfrog invasion, although protected areas will become more climatically suitable. Therefore, invasion of these sites is forecasted. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: We provide new evidence supporting the vulnerability of the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot to bullfrog invasion and call attention to optimal future climatic conditions of the Andean-Patagonian forest, eastern Paraguay, and northwestern Bolivia, where invasive populations have not been found yet. We recommend several management and policy strategies to control bullfrog invasion and argue that these would be possible if based on appropriate articulation among government agencies, NGOs, research institutions and civil society

Carboxypeptidase-M is regulated by lipids and CSFs in macrophages and dendritic cells and expressed selectively in tissue granulomas and foam cells

Granulomatous inflammations, characterized by the presence of activated macrophages (MAs) forming epithelioid cell (EPC) clusters, are usually easy to recognize. However, in ambiguous cases the use of a MA marker that expresses selectively in EPCs may be needed. Here, we report that carboxypeptidase-M (CPM), a MA-differentiation marker, is preferentially induced in EPCs of all granuloma types studied, but not in resting MAs. As CPM is not expressed constitutively in MAs, this allows utilization of CPM-immunohistochemistry in diagnostics of minute granuloma detection when dense non-granulomatous MAs are also present. Despite this rule, hardly any detectable CPM was found in advanced/active tubercle caseous disease, albeit in early tuberculosis granuloma, MAs still expressed CPM. Indeed, in vitro both the CPM-protein and -mRNA became downregulated when MAs were infected with live mycobacteria. In vitro, MA-CPM transcript is neither induced remarkably by interferon-γ, known to cause classical MA activation, nor by IL-4, an alternative MA activator. Instead, CPM is selectively expressed in lipid-laden MAs, including the foam cells of atherosclerotic plaques, xanthomatous lesions and lipid pneumonias. By using serum, rich in lipids, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or VLDL, CPM upregulation could be reproduced in vitro in monocyte-derived MAs both at transcriptional and protein levels, and the increase is repressed under lipid-depleted conditions. The microarray analyses support the notion that CPM induction correlates with a robust progressive increase in CPM gene expression during monocyte to MA maturation and dendritic cell (DC) differentiation mediated by granulocyte–MA-colony-stimulating factor+IL-4. M-CSF alone also induced CPM. These results collectively indicate that CPM upregulation in MAs is preferentially associated with increased lipid uptake, and exposure to CSF, features of EPCs, also. Therefore, CPM-immunohistochemistry is useful for granuloma and foam MA detections in tissue sections. Furthermore, the present data offer CPM for the first time to be a novel marker and cellular player in lipid uptake and/or metabolism of MAs by promoting foam cell formation

Regulation of the Na+/K+-ATPase Ena1 Expression by Calcineurin/Crz1 under High pH Stress: A Quantitative Study

[EN] Regulated expression of the Ena1 Na+-ATPase is a crucial event for adaptation to high salt and/or alkaline pH stress in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. ENA1 expression is under the control of diverse signaling pathways, including that mediated by the calcium-regulatable protein phosphatase calcineurin and its downstream transcription factor Crz1. We present here a quantitative study of the expression of Ena1 in response to alkalinization of the environment and we analyze the contribution of Crz1 to this response. Experimental data and mathematical models substantiate the existence of two stress-responsive Crz1-binding sites in the ENA1 promoter and estimate that the contribution of Crz1 to the early response of the ENA1 promoter is about 60%. The models suggest the existence of a second input with similar kinetics, which would be likely mediated by high pH-induced activation of the Snf1 kinase.This work was supported by grants BFU2011-30197-C3-01, BFU2014-54591-C2-1-P and EUI2009-04147 (SysMo2) to JA. (Ministry of Industry and Competitivity, Spain, and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional [FEDER]). JA is the recipient of an Ajut 2014SGR-4 award (Generalitat de Catalunya). DC was recipient of a predoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Petrezsélyová, S.; López-Malo, M.; Canadell, D.; Roque, A.; Serra-Cardona, A.; Marques Romero, MC.; Vilaprinyó, E.... (2016). Regulation of the Na+/K+-ATPase Ena1 Expression by Calcineurin/Crz1 under High pH Stress: A Quantitative Study. PLoS ONE. 11(6):e0158424-e0158424. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158424Se0158424e015842411

Study of Bc+B_c^+ decays to the K+K−π+K^+K^-\pi^+ final state and evidence for the decay Bc+→χc0π+B_c^+\to\chi_{c0}\pi^+

A study of $B_c^+\to K^+K^-\pi^+$ decays is performed for the first time using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment in $pp$ collisions at centre-of-mass energies of $7$ and $8$ TeV. Evidence for the decay $B_c^+\to\chi_{c0}(\to K^+K^-)\pi^+$ is reported with a significance of 4.0 standard deviations, resulting in the measurement of $\frac{\sigma(B_c^+)}{\sigma(B^+)}\times\mathcal{B}(B_c^+\to\chi_{c0}\pi^+)$ to be $(9.8^{+3.4}_{-3.0}(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.8(\mathrm{syst}))\times 10^{-6}$. Here $\mathcal{B}$ denotes a branching fraction while $\sigma(B_c^+)$ and $\sigma(B^+)$ are the production cross-sections for $B_c^+$ and $B^+$ mesons. An indication of $\bar b c$ weak annihilation is found for the region $m(K^-\pi^+)<1.834\mathrm{\,Ge\kern -0.1em V\!/}c^2$, with a significance of 2.4 standard deviations.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2016-022.html, link to supplemental material inserted in the reference

Mechanisms of initiation and reversal of drug-seeking behavior induced by prenatal exposure to glucocorticoids

We would like to thank the members of the Neuroscience Research Domain at ICVS for all the helpful discussions and suggestions. We are especially thankful to the animal facility caretakers, and to Drs Sara Silva, António Melo and Ana Paula Silva and Dieter Fischer for their helpStress and exposure to glucocorticoids (GC) during early life render individuals vulnerable to brain disorders by inducing structural and chemical alterations in specific neural substrates. Here we show that adult rats that had been exposed to in utero GCs (iuGC) display increased preference for opiates and ethanol, and are more responsive to the psychostimulatory actions of morphine. These animals presented prominent changes in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), a key component of the mesolimbic reward circuitry; specifically, cell numbers and dopamine (DA) levels were significantly reduced, whereas DA receptor 2 (Drd2) mRNA expression levels were markedly upregulated in the NAcc. Interestingly, repeated morphine exposure significantly downregulated Drd2 expression in iuGC-exposed animals, in parallel with increased DNA methylation of the Drd2 gene. Administration of a therapeutic dose of L-dopa reverted the hypodopaminergic state in the NAcc of iuGC animals, normalized Drd2 expression and prevented morphine-induced hypermethylation of the Drd2 promoter. In addition, L-dopa treatment promoted dendritic and synaptic plasticity in the NAcc and, importantly, reversed drug-seeking behavior. These results reveal a new mechanism through which drug-seeking behaviors may emerge and suggest that a brief and simple pharmacological intervention can restrain these behaviors in vulnerable individuals.This work was supported by the Institute for the Study of Affective Neuroscience (ISAN). AJR, BC and MC were supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) fellowship

Two Major Medicinal Honeys Have Different Mechanisms of Bactericidal Activity

Honey is increasingly valued for its antibacterial activity, but knowledge regarding the mechanism of action is still incomplete. We assessed the bactericidal activity and mechanism of action of Revamil® source (RS) honey and manuka honey, the sources of two major medical-grade honeys. RS honey killed Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa within 2 hours, whereas manuka honey had such rapid activity only against B. subtilis. After 24 hours of incubation, both honeys killed all tested bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, but manuka honey retained activity up to higher dilutions than RS honey. Bee defensin-1 and H2O2 were the major factors involved in rapid bactericidal activity of RS honey. These factors were absent in manuka honey, but this honey contained 44-fold higher concentrations of methylglyoxal than RS honey. Methylglyoxal was a major bactericidal factor in manuka honey, but after neutralization of this compound manuka honey retained bactericidal activity due to several unknown factors. RS and manuka honey have highly distinct compositions of bactericidal factors, resulting in large differences in bactericidal activity