Sustainability performance assessment with intuitionistic fuzzy composite metrics and its application to the motor industry

The performance assessment of companies in terms of sustainability requires to find a balance between multiple and possibly conflicting criteria. We here rely on composite metrics to rank a set of companies within an industry considering environmental, social and corporate governance criteria. To this end, we connect intuitionistic fuzzy sets and composite programming to propose novel composite metrics. These metrics allow to integrate important environmental, social and governance principles with the gradual membership functions of fuzzy set theory. The main result of this paper is a sustainability assessment method to rank companies within a given industry. In addition to consider multiple objectives, this method integrates two important social principles such as maximum utility and fairness. A real-world example is provided to describe the application of our sustainability assessment method within the motor industry. A further contribution of this paper is a multicriteria generalization of the concept of magnitude of a fuzzy number

Partial trisomy 13q22-qter associated to leukoencephalopathy and late onset generalised epilepsy

The partial trisomy 13q.22 is an uncommon chromosomopathy. We present a case with a partial trisomic component 13q22 and a monosomic component 5p15 from paternal origin. This patient developed early menopause and major neurological disorders as leukoencephalopathy, late onset generalised epilepsy and stroke. She also had fatty acids disturbances and their potential relation to the neurological disorders and early menopause is discussed. The presented case illustrates the phenotype of 13q22-qter in adult age and reaffirms the importance of studying the karyotype of any patient with seizures or leukoencephalopathy particularly when there are associated other clinical features including stroke at a young age, fatty acids disturbances, microcephaly, hypotelorism, short neck, hemangiomata, short fingers or distal swell in thumbs

Inverse Malthusianism and Recycling Economics: The Case of the Textile Industry

[EN] The current use of natural resources in the textile industry leads us to introduce a new economic concept called inverse Malthusianism describing a context in which population grows linearly and resource consumption grows exponentially. Inverse Malthusianism implies an exponential increase in environmental impact that recycling may contribute to reduce. Our main goal is to extend the analysis of materials selection under the principle of equimarginality proposed by Jevons. As a first result, we show the particular circumstances under which policies excluding recycled supplies are never optimal. We also aim to overcome the difficulties of reducing environmental aspects to monetary units. To this end, we propose a multicriteria approach to solve the conventional-recycled materials dilemma considering not only economic but also environmental criteria. Then, we allow producers to enrich their decision-making process with relevant information about the environmental impact of materials selection. Although we use examples of the textile industry to illustrate our results, most of the insights in this paper can be extended to other industries.Salas-Molina, F.; Pla Santamaría, D.; Vercher-Ferrandiz, ML.; Reig-Mullor, J. (2020). Inverse Malthusianism and Recycling Economics: The Case of the Textile Industry. Sustainability. 12(14):1-20. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145861S1201214Chapagain, A. K., Hoekstra, A. Y., Savenije, H. H. G., & Gautam, R. (2006). The water footprint of cotton consumption: An assessment of the impact of worldwide consumption of cotton products on the water resources in the cotton producing countries. Ecological Economics, 60(1), 186-203. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.11.027Esteve-Turrillas, F. A., & de la Guardia, M. (2017). Environmental impact of Recover cotton in textile industry. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 116, 107-115. doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2016.09.034McInerney, J. (1976). THE SIMPLE ANALYTICS OF NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMICS. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 27(1), 31-52. doi:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1976.tb00964.xRomero, C. (2012). Short communication. Economics of natural resources: in search of a unified theoretical framework. Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research, 10(1), 29. doi:10.5424/sjar/2012101-329-11Sandin, G., & Peters, G. M. (2018). Environmental impact of textile reuse and recycling – A review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 184, 353-365. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.02.266Leal Filho, W., Ellams, D., Han, S., Tyler, D., Boiten, V. J., Paço, A., … Balogun, A.-L. (2019). A review of the socio-economic advantages of textile recycling. Journal of Cleaner Production, 218, 10-20. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.01.210Hotelling, H. (1931). The Economics of Exhaustible Resources. Journal of Political Economy, 39(2), 137-175. doi:10.1086/254195Solow, R. M. (1974). Intergenerational Equity and Exhaustible Resources. The Review of Economic Studies, 41, 29. doi:10.2307/2296370Thampapillai, D. J. (1985). Trade-offs for conflicting social objectives in the extraction of finite energy resources. International Journal of Energy Research, 9(2), 179-192. doi:10.1002/er.4440090209Stahel, W. R. (2016). The circular economy. Nature, 531(7595), 435-438. doi:10.1038/531435aGeissdoerfer, M., Savaget, P., Bocken, N. M. P., & Hultink, E. J. (2017). The Circular Economy – A new sustainability paradigm? Journal of Cleaner Production, 143, 757-768. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.12.048Ayres, R. U. (1997). Metals recycling: economic and environmental implications. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 21(3), 145-173. doi:10.1016/s0921-3449(97)00033-5Ljungberg, L. Y. (2007). Materials selection and design for development of sustainable products. Materials & Design, 28(2), 466-479. doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2005.09.006Garcia-Bernabeu, A., Hilario-Caballero, A., Pla-Santamaria, D., & Salas-Molina, F. (2020). A Process Oriented MCDM Approach to Construct a Circular Economy Composite Index. Sustainability, 12(2), 618. doi:10.3390/su12020618Scott, A. D. (1953). Notes on User Cost. The Economic Journal, 63(250), 368. doi:10.2307/2227129Romero, C. (1997). Multicriteria decision analysis and environmental economics: An approximation. European Journal of Operational Research, 96(1), 81-89. doi:10.1016/s0377-2217(96)00118-xLaitala, K., Klepp, I., & Henry, B. (2018). Does Use Matter? Comparison of Environmental Impacts of Clothing Based on Fiber Type. Sustainability, 10(7), 2524. doi:10.3390/su10072524Materials Sustainability Indexhttps://msi.higg.orgAlcott, B. (2005). Jevons’ paradox. Ecological Economics, 54(1), 9-21. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.03.020Roy, J. (2000). The rebound effect: some empirical evidence from India. Energy Policy, 28(6-7), 433-438. doi:10.1016/s0301-4215(00)00027-6Cambra‐Fierro, J., & Ruiz‐Benitez, R. (2009). Advantages of intermodal logistics platforms: insights from a Spanish platform. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 14(6), 418-421. doi:10.1108/1359854091099518

New decision rules under strict uncertainty and a general distance-based approach

Strict uncertainty implies a complete lack of knowledge about the probabilities of possible future states of the world. However, there is complete information about the set of alternatives under consideration, the set of future states, and the scalar evaluation of choosing every alternative if a given state occurs. The principle of insufficient reason by Laplace, the maximin rule by Wald, the Hurwicz criterion, or the minimax regret criterion by Savage are examples of decision rules under strict uncertainty. Within the context of strict uncertainty, moderate pessimism implies the existence of a decision-maker who cautiously assumes that the most favorable state will not occur when the action has been taken with no conjecture being made about the other states. The criterion of moderate pessimism proposed by Ballestero implies the use of the inverse of the range of evaluation for each state as a weight system. In this paper, we extend the notion of moderate pessimism under strict uncertainty to solve some of its limitations. First, we propose a new domination analysis that avoids removing dominated alternatives that are still relevant in the final ranking of alternatives. Second, we propose additional score functions using the inverse of the standard deviation and the mean absolute deviation instead of the range of evaluations for each future state to reduce the impact of the possible existence of outliers in the decision table. This partial result is later generalized through the concept of average deviation of a given order. Finally, we show that all the mentioned decision rules are special cases of a general ranking method based on the Minkowski distance function. We illustrate the use of distance-based decision rules through an application in the context of portfolio selection

Female upper reproductive tract harbors endogenous microbial profiles

The vaginal milieu is known to have an active microbiome (>90% of Lactobacillus), but the microbial composition of the upper reproductive tract is not well established, especially in the Fallopian tubes. The first studies on the Fallopian tubes from women diagnosed with a benign disease or for prophylaxis suggest that this site supports an endogenous microbiome. However, today we lack the knowledge of the microbial composition in Fallopian tubes in the non-diseased conditions (as collecting samples from these sites may hamper the tissue and future fertility). Our study includes 24 fertile women with benign uterine pathology submitted to abdominal hysterectomy or tubal ligation at Hospital Universitario Virgen de Arrixaca Murcia, which endometrial and Fallopian tube samples were collected between January and July 2019. After DNA extraction, “Ion 16S Metagenomics Kit” (Ion S5™ System) was used to exploit the V5 to V9 regions of the 16S rRNA gene. Primary data analysis was performed with Torrent Suite™ Software v5.12.1 and advanced analysis using Ion Reporter™ software v5.18.0.2. In our study, distinct microbial community profiles in the Fallopian tubes confirm that this genital tract site harbors an endogenous microbiome and in big part is shared with the endometrial microbial profile (69% of the detected taxa). Nevertheless, 17 bacterial taxa were exclusively detected in the Fallopian tubes that included Enhydrobacter, Granulicatella, Haemophilus, Rhizobium, Alistipes y Paracoccus, among others, while 10 were found only in the endometrium, including Klebsiella, Olsenella, Oscillibacter and Veillonella (FDR <0.05). Regarding the endometrium samples, our study shows that method collection has an influence in results, where there is a Lactobacillus-dominance in fertile women with samples obtained transcervically while Acinetobacter, Arthrobacter, Coprococcus, Methylobacterium, Prevotella, Roseburia, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus were less abundant in patients which samples are collected by methods with lower vaginal and cervical contamination. Although upper reproductive tract is a low microbial biomass site, our results suggest that this upper reproductive site supports an endogenous microbiome that could be characteristic of each individual

Live Attenuated African Swine Fever Viruses as Ideal Tools to Dissect the Mechanisms Involved in Cross-Protection

African swine fever (ASF) has become the major threat for the global swine industry. Furthermore, the epidemiological situation of African swine fever virus (ASFV) in some endemic regions of Sub-Saharan Africa is worse than ever, with multiple virus strains and genotypes currently circulating in a given area. Despite the recent advances on ASF vaccine development, there are no commercial vaccines yet, and most of the promising vaccine prototypes available today have been specifically designed to fight the genotype II strains currently circulating in Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Previous results from our laboratory have demonstrated the ability of BA71∆CD2, a recombinant LAV lacking CD2v, to confer protection against homologous (BA71) and heterologous genotype I (E75) and genotype II (Georgia2007/01) ASFV strains, both belonging to same clade (clade C). Here, we extend these results using BA71∆CD2 as a tool trying to understand ASFV cross-protection, using phylogenetically distant ASFV strains. We first observed that five out of six (83.3%) of the pigs immunized once with 106 PFU of BA71∆CD2 survived the tick-bite challenge using Ornithodoros sp. soft ticks naturally infected with RSA/11/2017 strain (genotype XIX, clade D). Second, only two out of six (33.3%) survived the challenge with Ken06.Bus (genotype IX, clade A), which is phylogenetically more distant to BA71∆CD2 than the RSA/11/2017 strain. On the other hand, homologous prime-boosting with BA71∆CD2 only improved the survival rate to 50% after Ken06.Bus challenge, all suffering mild ASF-compatible clinical signs, while 100% of the pigs immunized with BA71∆CD2 and boosted with the parental BA71 virulent strain survived the lethal challenge with Ken06.Bus, without almost no clinical signs of the disease. Our results confirm that cross-protection is a multifactorial phenomenon that not only depends on sequence similarity. We believe that understanding this complex phenomenon will be useful for designing future vaccines for ASF-endemic areas.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Identification of Promiscuous African Swine Fever Virus T-Cell Determinants Using a Multiple Technical Approach

The development of subunit vaccines against African swine fever (ASF) is mainly hindered by the lack of knowledge regarding the specific ASF virus (ASFV) antigens involved in protection. As a good example, the identity of ASFV-specific CD8+ T-cell determinants remains largely unknown, despite their protective role being established a long time ago. Aiming to identify them, we implemented the IFNγ ELISpot as readout assay, using as effector cells peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from pigs surviving experimental challenge with Georgia2007/1. As stimuli for the ELISpot, ASFV-specific peptides or full-length proteins identified by three complementary strategies were used. In silico prediction of specific CD8+ T-cell epitopes allowed identifying a 19-mer peptide from MGF100-1L, as frequently recognized by surviving pigs. Complementarily, the repertoire of SLA I-bound peptides identified in ASFV-infected porcine alveolar macrophages (PAMs), allowed the characterization of five additional SLA I-restricted ASFV-specific epitopes. Finally, in vitro stimulation studies using fibroblasts transfected with plasmids encoding full-length ASFV proteins, led to the identification of MGF505-7R, A238L and MGF100-1L as promiscuously recognized antigens. Interestingly, each one of these proteins contain individual peptides recognized by surviving pigs. Identification of the same ASFV determinants by means of such different approaches reinforce the results presented here.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Credit risk in European banks: The bright side of the internal ratings based approach

This paper investigates the accuracy of internal rating based (IRB) models in measuring credit risk. We contribute to the growing debate on the current prudential regulatory framework by investigating the use of validated IRB models in promoting efficient risk management practices. Our empirical analysis is based on a novel panel data set of 177 Western European banks observed from 2008 to 2015, in the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis. We find that IRB banks were able to curb the increase in credit risk driven by the macroeconomic slowdown better than banks under the standardized approach. This suggests that the introduction of the internal ratings based approach by Basel II has promoted the adoption of stronger risk management practices among banks, as meant by the regulators

Deletion Mutants of the Attenuated Recombinant ASF Virus, BA71ΔCD2, Show Decreased Vaccine Efficacy

African swine fever (ASF) has become the major threat to the global swine industry. Lack of available commercial vaccines complicates the implementation of global control strategies. So far, only live attenuated ASF viruses (ASFV) have demonstrated solid protection efficacy at the experimental level. The implementation of molecular techniques has allowed the generation of a collection of deletion mutants lacking ASFV-specific virulence factors, some of them with promising potential as vaccine candidates against the pandemic genotype II ASFV strain currently circulating in Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania. Despite promising results, there is room for improvement, mainly from the biosafety point of view. Aiming to improve the safety of BA71∆CD2, a cross-protective recombinant live attenuated virus (LAV) lacking the ASFV CD2v gene (encoding β-glucuronidase as a reporter gene) available in our laboratory, three new recombinants were generated using BA71∆CD2 as a template: the single mutant BA71∆CD2 f, this time containing the fluorescent mCherry reporter gene instead of CD2v, and two double recombinants lacking CD2v and either the lectin gene (EP153R) or the uridine kinase (UK) gene (DP96R). Comparative in vivo experiments using BA71∆CD2 f, BA71∆CD2DP96R and BA71∆CD2EP153R recombinant viruses as immunogens, demonstrated that deletion of either DP96R or EP153R from BA71∆CD2 f decreases vaccine efficacy and does not improve safety. Our results additionally confirm ASFV challenge as the only available method today to evaluate the protective efficacy of any experimental vaccine. We believe that understanding the fine equilibrium between attenuation and inducing protection in vivo deserves further study and might contribute to more rational vaccine designs in the future