Use of satellite images for broad-scale modelling of conservation areas for wolves in the Carpathian Mountains, central Europe

This study analysed the spatial structure of the Carpathian Mountains, in Central Europe, considering it a unit that extends across national boundaries, and assessing the suitability of areas were wolves could be conserved. Physical characteristics of the area were extracted from NOAA-AVHRR NDVI. A set of 9 images from different periods of the year was used to parameterise the phenological variability of the area. Digital maps of road networks, human settlements and a DEM were integrated in a GIS. Locations of wolf presence were used to extract “optimal” environmental characteristics that served as reference for estimating the degree of suitability over the whole area. Results show that most of the Carpathian Mountains are highly suitable for the wolf and that highly suitable areas are actually inhabited by the present population of wolf. These are also the area most phenologically stable

Attendance to Massive Open On-line Courses: Towards a Solution to Track on-line Recorded Lectures Viewing

Massive open on-line courses (MOOC) suchas those by edX.org are digital courses where thousands students are dispersed across the Internet. This new variant for distance learning opens many new challenges including the need to verify the real vision of recorded lectures same as we control the physical presence of scholars in a traditional classroom. We review here a precursor study on the effectiveness of the new Pinvox system (i.e., “Personal Identification Number by Voice”), that aims to ensure“on-line attendance”by confirming that a particular student has actually listened to and watched a complete video lecture

Early detection of biochemically occult autonomous thyroid nodules

Objective: Autonomously functioning thyroid areas may be associated with subclinical or overt hyperthyroidism, but may exist even in the presence of normal TSH. This study was aimed at comparing the rate of autonomously functioning areas and their cardiac sequelae in patients with nodular goitre studied with the usual and a novel approach. Design and methods: In total 490 adult outpatients with thyroid nodular goitre, living in a mild iodine-deficient area, were selected in our referral centre for thyroid diseases from 2009 to 2014 on the basis of a suspicion of thyroid functional autonomy. They were divided in three groups according to a non-conventional approach (excessive response to thyroxine treatment: group 1) or conventional approach (low/normal TSH with clinical suspicion or low TSH: groups 2 and 3). All patients of the study with the suspicion of thyroid functional autonomy underwent thyroid scan with radioactive iodine (I131) uptake (RAIU). Results: The percentage of confirmed thyroid functional autonomy was 319/490, being significantly higher in group 3 than in groups 1 and 2 (81.5 vs 64.7 vs 52.6%; chi-square P < 0.0001). However, the diagnosis with non-conventional approach was made at a significant earlier age (P < 0.0001). Cardiac arrhythmias as well as atrial fibrillation were similarly detected by conventional and non-conventional approaches (chi-square test: P = 0.2537; P = 0.8425). Conclusions: The hyper-responsiveness to thyroxine treatment should induce the suspicion of thyroid functional autonomy at an early stage, allowing to detect autonomous functioning areas in apparently euthyroid patients

Innovative strategy for polyhydroxyalkanoates recovery from mixed microbial cultures. Effects of aqueous phase and solvent extraction on polymer properties

This work aimed to investigate various methods of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) extraction and to optimize the recovery in the view of reducing solvents’ use and waste. The extraction tests were applied on PHA-rich biomass collected at the end of the accumulation step, conducted both at pilot and lab scale. PHA-rich biomass obtained from the lab scale process was produced from synthetic feedstock (mixture of acetic and propionic acids), while fermented organic waste was used for PHA production at pilot scale. In the extraction tests, different solutions of NaOH, also in combination with a surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate, SDS), were used to recover the polymer from the non-polymeric cellular material (NPCM). Different times (3, 6 and 24 h) and concentrations (0.05 – 1 M) were tested, evaluating also the effect of adding SDS (0.1 % w/v). As a benchmark, solvent extraction with chloroform and oxidation with NaClO were also conducted. Finally, extracted samples were characterized through several techniques: DSC, TGA, GC-FID, capillary viscosimetry. Alkaline treatment at short times and low concentrations resulted to be more efficient in terms of purity (85 – 99 % w/w PHA) and recovery (higher than 80 % w/w), than higher concentration. On the other hand, the presence of SDS had dramatic effects on the recovery (lower than 50 % w/w) and also on the molecular weight, which was two folds lower than that obtained from alkaline extraction. Overall, extraction with aqueous phase reagents had no effects on thermal properties, which resulted to be in the range of those reported in literature

Inflammatory Responses and Barrier Function of Endothelial Cells Derived from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Several studies have reported endothelial cell (EC) derivation from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). However, few have explored their functional properties in depth with respect to line-to-line and batch-to-batch variability and how they relate to primary ECs. We therefore carried out accurate characterization of hiPSC-derived ECs (hiPSC-ECs) from multiple (non-integrating) hiPSC lines and compared them with primary ECs in various functional assays, which included barrier function using real-time impedance spectroscopy with an integrated assay of electric wound healing, endothelia-leukocyte interaction under physiological flow to mimic inflammation and angiogenic responses in in vitro and in vivo assays. Overall, we found many similarities but also some important differences between hiPSC-derived and primary ECs. Assessment of vasculogenic responses in vivo showed little difference between primary ECs and hiPSC-ECs with regard to functional blood vessel formation, which may be important in future regenerative medicine applications requiring vascularization. In this article, Orlova and colleagues show that hiPSC-ECs have similar features to primary ECs but also show some differences. hiPSC-ECs exhibited higher barrier function, lower expression of pro-inflammatory adhesive receptors, and more stringent stromal cell requirements. Importantly, healthy control CD31+ hiPSC-ECs showed high consistency between different batches and lines, forming a good basis for disease modeling applications

Grain size reduction strategies on Eurofer

One of the options currently taken into account for the realization of the first DEMO reactor is the "water-cooled blanket". This option implies a minimum irradiation temperature for the blanket material in the range of 280–350 °C. In addition to the DBTT (Ductile to Brittle Transition Temperature) shift due to the DPA (displacement per atom) damage under irradiation, also the issue of the increased embrittlement due to He production must be taken into account. This issue appears even more detrimental and less manageable because the DBBT shift due to the Helium production does not saturate with the dose, as it results from previous works reported in literature. The experimental results and the difference in behaviour between ODS (Oxide Dispersion Strengthened Steels) RAFM (Reduced Activation Ferritic Martensitic) and other FM (Ferritic Martensitic) alloys (EM10, P91) showed that it is possible to improve the resistance to He embrittlement by both intra-granular precipitation of Y-Ti oxides and by decreasing the grain size at the same time. Nevertheless, anyway, the multiplication of the grain boundaries increases the dilution of He on grain surface, delaying the formation of He bubbles on grain boundaries and, therefore, the susceptibility to the He embrittlement. Several grain size reduction strategies have then been investigated on EUROFER both at the austenitization stage, on the PAGS (Prior Austenite Grain Size), and at the tempering stage, on the tempered martensite. The microstructural observations have been carried out by means of SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy). Also the effect of grain size reduction on the toughness of the material will be taken into account; The DBTTs resulting from impact tests on KLST specimens will be shown. The outcomes of the microstructural observations, as well as the preliminary mechanical characterization (impact tests) will be discussed in this paper. Keywords: EUROFER 97, RAFM steels, Microstructure, Multiple normalization, Asymmetric rolling, Recrystallization, KLS

Polyhydroxyalkanoates production by mixed microbial cultures in sequencing batch reactors operated under different feeding conditions

The production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) by mixed microbial cultures (MMC) requires a multistage process, whereby the microbial selection of PHA-storing microorganisms plays a key role on the overall performance. A strategy to favor the microbial selection consists in the alternance of excess (feast phase) and absence (famine phase) of the external carbon source. In this work, three runs of a lab-scale Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) operated under different working conditions for the establishment of the feast and famine (F/F) regime were analyzed. A fixed organic loading rate of 4.25 gCOD (Chemical Oxygen Demand)/L d, and a fixed cycle length of 12 h were applied to the SBR. The F/F regime consisted of fully aerobic dynamic (ADF) or aerobic/anoxic (AE/ANOX) conditions. Results showed an intracellular PHA content as high as 40 ± 2 (%, w/w) when ADF conditions were applied with the organic feeding solution made of acetate (85 % on COD basis) and propionic (15%) acids. The hydroxyvalerate content in the stored polymer increased (from 25 ± 1 to 41 ± 3, % w/w) by increasing the propionic fraction (up to 35%) in the feeding solution. The AE/ANOX condition resulted in a lower PHA-storing ability which warrants further investigations

Machine learning supported next-maintenance prediction for industrial vehicles

Industrial and construction vehicles require tight periodic maintenance operations. Their schedule depends on vehicle characteristics and usage. The latter can be accurately monitored through various on-board devices, enabling the application of Machine Learning techniques to analyze vehicle usage patterns and design predictive analytics. This paper presents a data-driven application to automatically schedule the periodic maintenance operations of industrial vehicles. It aims to predict, for each vehicle and date, the actual remaining days until the next maintenance is due. Our Machine Learning solution is designed to address the following challenges: (i) the non-stationarity of the per-vehicle utilization time series, which limits the effectiveness of classic scheduling policies, and (ii) the potential lack of historical data for those vehicles that have recently been added to the fleet, which hinders the learning of accurate predictors from past data. Preliminary results collected in a real industrial scenario demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution on heterogeneous vehicles. The system we propose here is currently under deployment, enabling further tests and tunings

Tissue-specific deregulation of selected HDACs characterizes ALS progression in mouse models: pharmacological characterization of SIRT1 and SIRT2 pathways

Acetylation homeostasis is thought to play a role in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and treatment with inhibitors of histone deacetylases has been considered a potential and attractive therapeutic approach, despite the lack of a thorough study of this class of proteins. In this study, we have considerably extended previous knowledge on the expression of 13 histone deacetylases in tissues (spinal cord and muscle) from mice carrying two different ALS-linked SOD1 mutations (G93A-SOD1 and G86R-SOD1). We have then focused on class III histone deacetylases SIRT1 and SIRT2 that are considered relevant in neurodegenerative diseases. SIRT1 decreases in the spinal cord, but increases in muscle during the progression of the disease, and a similar expression pattern is observed in the corresponding cell models (neuroblastoma and myoblasts). SIRT2 mRNA expression increases in the spinal cord in both G93A-SOD1 and G86R-SOD1 mice but protein expression is substantially unchanged in all the models examined. At variance with other sirtuin modulators (sirtinol, AGK2 and SRT1720), the well-known SIRT1 inhibitor Ex527 has positive effects on survival of neuronal cells expressing mutant SOD1, but this effect is neither mediated by SIRT1 inhibition nor by SIRT2 inhibition. These data call for caution in proposing sirtuin modulation as a target for treatment