Exploration of scalable industrial platforms for the commercial production of active molecules from microalgae cell walls

Food, nutraceutical, cosmeceutical, pharmaceutical and biomedical industries are putting significant effort into looking for new natural ingredients [1,2]. Microalgae have been recognised as potential sources of high-value chemicals, with most attention focused on antioxidants, pigments and specialty oils [3]. An under-exploited group of biochemicals produced by microalgae are extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) with hyaluronan (HA) representing one of them. Current industrial production methodologies for HA leave opportunities for the establishment of improved routes with higher molecular mass, enhanced biophysical properties, lower production costs and non-bacterial nor animal origins as key unique selling points. At present, incumbent platforms are either based upon Streptococcus spp. (pathogen) bacterial fermentation, modified (GM) Bacillus subtilis or derived from animal tissues. Furthermore, the extraction of various economically exploitable cell components from microalgal biomass is at the core of a successful microalgal biorefinery approach, and it remains a current bottleneck for the economic feasibility of microalgal biotechnological processes [4]. Cell disruption is often required to break down the hard and complicated microalgal cell walls in order to retrieve microalgal constituents such as proteins, lipids, and polysaccharides. Viral enzymes may play a beneficial role in this scenario and might be used to facilitate genetic engineering by overcoming the cell wall barrier or for biorefinery purposes. This project's hypothesis was that it was feasible for microalgae to produce HA. The objectives included investigating a stress-induced platform for the possible production of HA, learning how Chlorovirus/C. varibilis infection leads to HA formation, improving the HA production for the latter platform and looking into intriguing enzymes that can break down polysaccharides. This PhD project focused on exploring, characterizing and developing new platforms in order to achieve profitable industrial production of valuable compounds from microalgae and identify viral enzymes that could help with the processing of Chlorella cells for multiple applications. Two platforms were successfully explored for the production of valuable polysaccharides, and multiple enzymes were identified, produced, characterised and evaluated for Chlorella cell wall digestion to enable possible biorefinery approaches of a non-domesticated Chlorella vulgaris strain

Climate change adaptation cycle for pilot projects development in small municipalities: The northwestern Italian regions case study

More than half of the European population live in small and medium size municipalities, where climate adaptation planning is an under-researched topic within the climate change field. Many constraints might hinder the implementation of adaptation pilot projects due to lack of economic, knowledge, and technical available resources. Local institutions find difficulties in building a coherent local adaptation planning and design processes with international and national frameworks. In this context, this article proposes a methodology based on the available international frameworks to support the small communities with the aim to implement adaptation pilot projects within different sectors. In doing so, this paper tests a climate change adaptation cycle for pilot projects development in small municipalities; the first in Italy for small municipalities under 20.000 inhabitants. The proposed methodology could lead local adaptation initiatives in climate change risk assessment by supporting the research communities in developing a coherent vision for the local territories and to identify proper oriented measures to enhance demonstrative pilot projects and to increase the level of resilience in small municipalities, avoiding maladaptation

02/10/1995 - Hightlights Of The Week Ahead.pdf

Previous results indicate that fibers in ribbons are sometimes affected by systematic birefringence superimposed on the random one, their relative weights depending on fiber position in the ribbon. We report new theoretical and experimental results on stress distribution in ribbons, which is shown to depend on thermal and mechanical properties of the common coating. Numerical simulations are based on the theory of elasticity and the finite-element method (FEM). Polarization dispersion measurements vs. temperature match very well with numerical results, and indicate that central fibers in the ribbon exhibit significantly larger birefringence than lateral ones

Leptospira seroprevalence in colombian dairy herds

Leptospirosis in cattle has important economic effects on the infected farms. Moreover, livestock farming is considered a major occupational risk factor for the transmission of Leptospira infection to humans. A survey was performed to determine the overall and within-herd seroprevalence and mapping of different Leptospira serovars in dairy cattle from farms located in some municipalities of the Colombian department of Boyacá. Nine hundred and fifty-nine animals, from 20 unvaccinated and one vaccinated herd, were included in the study. Anti-Leptospira serum antibodies were detected by the microscopic agglutination test (MAT). Only one herd was seronegative. Overall seroprevalence to at least one serovar of Leptospira was 24.1% for unvaccinated animals and 62.3% for animals from the vaccinated herd. A very high within-herd seroprevalence (>60%) was present in 20% of the unvaccinated herds. The presence in the vaccinated herd of 20/398 animals showing high titers, between 1000 and 4000, to at least one serovar of Leptospira suggest that some animals could have been infected. Moreover, due to the presence of seronegative animals, a failure of vaccination immunity or the presence of unvaccinated animals in the vaccinated herd cannot be excluded. In all farms, domestic animals other than cattle were present. Considering the farming practices occurring on dairy farms in the study area, higher hygienic standards and stricter biosecurity measures are suggested

Parallel implementation of the SHYFEM (System of HydrodYnamic Finite Element Modules) model

This paper presents the message passing interface (MPI)-based parallelization of the three-dimensional hydrodynamic model SHYFEM (System of HydrodYnamic Finite Element Modules). The original sequential version of the code was parallelized in order to reduce the execution time of high-resolution configurations using state-of-the-art high-performance computing (HPC) systems. A distributed memory approach was used, based on the MPI. Optimized numerical libraries were used to partition the unstructured grid (with a focus on load balancing) and to solve the sparse linear system of equations in parallel in the case of semi-to-fully implicit time stepping. The parallel implementation of the model was validated by comparing the outputs with those obtained from the sequential version. The performance assessment demonstrates a good level of scalability with a realistic configuration used as benchmark

A Decentralized and Proactive Architecture based on the Cyber Physical System Paradigm for Smart Transmission Grids Modelling, Monitoring and Control

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Correction to: Long-term results after stapled hemorrhoidopexy: a survey study with mean follow-up of 12 years

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Effects of Extracorporeal Magnetic Stimulation in Fecal Incontinence.

Background: Fecal incontinence (FI) is a common condition that has devastating consequences for patients' QOL. In some patients, the conventional functional pelvic floor electrical stimulation has been effective but is an invasive and embarrassing treatment. The object of the study was to evaluate the feasibility of functional extracorporeal magnetic stimulation (FMS) in strengthening the pelvic floor muscles without an anal plug and the embarrassment of undressing. Materials and Methods: Thirty patients (26 female and 4 males) with FI were enrolled. All patients were assessed during a specialized coloproctology evaluation followed by endoanal ultrasonography and anorectal manometry. All patients underwent an FMS treatment once weekly for 8 weeks. Patients' outcome was assessed by the Cleveland Clinic Fecal Incontinence Score (CCFIS) and by the fecal incontinence QOL questionnaire (FIQL). Results: After 8 weeks, the number of solid and liquid stool leakage per week was significantly reduced (p<0.05) with a significant improvement of the CCFIS and of the FIQL (p<0.05). Moreover, the authors recorded a missed recruitment of the agonist and antagonists' defecation muscles. Conclusion: FMS is a safe, non-invasive and painless treatment for FI. It could be recommended for selected patients with non-surgical FI to ensure a rapid clinical improvement

The M3A multi-sensor buoy network of the Mediterranean Sea

International audienceA network of three multi-sensor timeseries stations able to deliver real time physical and biochemical observations of the upper thermocline has been developed for the needs of the Mediterranean Forecasting System during the MFSTEP project. They follow the experience of the prototype M3A system that was developed during the MFSPP project and has been tested during a pilot pre-operational period of 22 months (2000?2001). The systems integrate sensors for physical (temperature, salinity, turbidity, current speed and direction) as well as optical and chemical observations (dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a, PAR, nitrate). The south Aegean system (E1-M3A) follows a modular design using independent mooring lines and collects biochemical data in the upper 100 m and physical data in the upper 500 m of the water column. The south Adriatic buoy system (E2-M3A) uses similar instrumentation but on a single mooring line and also tests a new method of pumping water samples from relatively deep layers, performing analysis in the protected ''dry'' environment of the buoy interior. The Ligurian Sea system (W1-M3A) is an ideal platform for air-sea interaction processes since it hosts a large number of meteorological sensors while its ocean instrumentation, with real time transmission capabilities, is confined in the upper 50 m layer. Despite their different architecture, the three systems have common sampling strategy, quality control and data management procedures. The network operates in the Mediterranean Sea since autumn 2004 collecting timeseries data for calibration and validation of the forecasting system as well for process studies of regional dynamics