Molecular and microbiological insights on the enrichment procedures for the isolation of petroleum degrading bacteria and fungi

Autochthonous bioaugmentation, by exploiting the indigenous microorganisms of the contaminated environment to be treated, can represent a successful bioremediation strategy. In this perspective, we have assessed by molecular methods the evolution of bacterial and fungal communities during the selective enrichment on different pollutants of a soil strongly polluted by mixtures of aliphatic and polycyclic hydrocarbons. Three consecutive enrichments were carried out on soil samples from different soil depths (0\u20131, 1\u20132, 2\u20133 m), and analyzed at each step by means of high-throughput sequencing of bacterial and fungal amplicons biomarkers. At the end of the enrichments, bacterial and fungal contaminants degrading strains were isolated and identified in order to (i) compare the composition of enriched communities by culture-dependent and culture-independent molecular methods and to (ii) obtain a collection of hydrocarbon degrading microorganisms potentially exploitable for soil bioremediation. Molecular results highlighted that for both bacteria and fungi the pollutant had a partial shaping effect on the enriched communities, with paraffin creating distinct enriched bacterial community from oil, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons generally overlapping; interestingly neither the soil depth or the enrichment step had significant effects on the composition of the final enriched communities. Molecular analyses well-agreed with culture-dependent analyses in terms of most abundant microbial genera. A total of 95 bacterial and 94 fungal strains were isolated after selective enrichment procedure on different pollutants. On the whole, isolated bacteria where manly ascribed to Pseudomonas genus followed by Sphingobacterium, Bacillus, Stenothrophomonas, Achromobacter, and Serratia. As for fungi, Fusarium was the most abundant genus followed by Trichoderma and Aspergillus. The species comprising more isolates, such as Pseudomonas putida, Achromobacter xylosoxidans and Ochromobactrum anthropi for bacteria, Fusarium oxysporum and Fusarium solani for fungi, were also the dominant OTUs assessed in Illumina

Multiparametric Echocardiography Scores for the Diagnosis of Cardiac Amyloidosis

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to investigate the accuracy of a broad range of echocardiographic variables to develop multiparametric scores to diagnose CA in patients with proven light chain (AL) amyloidosis or those with increased heart wall thickness who had amyloid was suspected. We also aimed to further characterize the structural and functional changes associated with amyloid infiltration. BACKGROUND: Cardiac amyloidosis (CA) is a serious but increasingly treatable cause of heart failure. Diagnosis is challenging and frequently unclear at echocardiography, which remains the most often used imaging tool. METHODS: We studied 1,187 consecutive patients evaluated at 3 referral centers for CA and analyzed morphological, functional, and strain-derived echocardiogram parameters with the aim of developing a score-based diagnostic algorithm. Cardiac amyloid burden was quantified by using extracellular volume measurements at cardiac magnetic resonance. RESULTS: A total of 332 patients were diagnosed with AL amyloidosis and 339 patients with transthyretin CA. Concentric remodeling and strain-derived parameters displayed the best diagnostic performance. A multivariable logistic regression model incorporating relative wall thickness, E wave/e' wave ratio, longitudinal strain, and tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion had the greatest diagnostic performance in AL amyloidosis (area under the curve: 0.90; 95% confidence interval: 0.87 to 0.92), whereas the addition of septal apical-to-base ratio yielded the best diagnostic accuracy in the increased heart wall thickness group (area under the curve: 0.80; 95% confidence interval: 0.85 to 0.90). CONCLUSIONS: Specific functional and structural parameters characterize different burdens of CA deposition with different diagnostic performances and enable the definition of 2 scores that are sensitive and specific tools with which diagnose or exclude CA

Catching MPC Cheaters: Identification and Openability

Secure multi-party computation (MPC) protocols do not completely prevent malicious parties from cheating or disrupting the computation. We augment MPC with three new properties to discourage cheating. First is a strengthening of identifiable abort, called completely identifiable abort, where all parties who do not follow the protocol will be identified as cheaters by each honest party. The second is completely identifiable auditability, which means that a third party can determine whether the computation was performed correctly (and who cheated if it was not). The third is openability, which means that a distinguished coalition of parties can recover the MPC inputs. We construct the first (efficient) MPC protocol achieving these properties. Our scheme is built on top of the SPDZ protocol (Damgard et al., Crypto 2012), which leverages an offline (computation-independent) pre-processing phase to speed up the online computation. Our protocol is optimistic, retaining online SPDZ efficiency when no one cheats. If cheating does occur, each honest party performs only local computation to identify cheaters. Our main technical tool is a new locally identifiable secret sharing scheme (as defined by Ishai, Ostrovsky, and Zikas (TCC 2012)) which we call commitment enhanced secret sharing or CESS. The work of Baum, Damgard, and Orlandi (SCN 2014) introduces the concept of auditability, which allows a third party to verify that the computation was executed correctly, but not to identify the cheaters if it was not. We enable the third party to identify the cheaters by augmenting the scheme with CESS. We add openability through the use of verifiable encryption and specialized zero-knowledge proofs

A model of management academics' intentions to influence values

Business schools face increased criticism for failing in the teaching of management studies to nurture their students’ values. Assuming that individual academics play an important role in shaping the value-related influence of business schools, I model management academics’ intentions to influence values. The suggested model encompasses academics’ economic and social values as internal variables, as well as perceived support for attempting to influence values and academic tenure as social and structural variables. A test with empirical data from 1,254 management academics worldwide reveals that perceived external support is most relevant for explaining intentions. Moreover, academics’ social values, but not their economic ones, contribute to an explanation of their intentions to influence values. The results reveal how important it is for academics to believe that their colleagues, higher education institutions, and other stakeholders support their value-related behavioral intentions

Economics education and value change: The role of program-normative homogeneity and peer influence

In the light of corporate scandals and the recent financial crisis, there has been an increased interest in the impact of business education on the value orientations of graduates. Yet our understanding of how students' values change during their time at business school is limited. In this study,weinvestigate the effects of variations in the normative orientations of economics programs. We argue that interaction among economics students constitutes a key mechanism of value socialization, the effects of which are likely to vary across more-or-less normatively homogeneous economics programs. In normatively homogeneous programs, students are particularly likely to adopt economics values as a result of peer interaction. We specifically explore changes in power, hedonism, and self-direction values in a 2-year longitudinal study of economics students (N 5 197) in a normatively homogeneous and two normatively heterogeneous economics programs. As expected, for students in a normatively homogeneous economics program, interaction with peers was linked with an increase in power and hedonism values, and a decrease in self-direction values. Our findings highlight the interplay between program normative homogeneity and peer interaction as an important factor in value socialization during economics education and have important practical implications for business school leaders

LAR-ABC, a representation of architectural geometry. From concept of spaces, to design of building fabric, to construction simulation

This paper discusses the application of LAR (Linear Algebraic Representation) scheme to the architectural design process. LAR is a novel representation scheme for geometric design of curves, surfaces and solids, using simple, general and well founded concepts from algebraic topology (Dicarlo et al., Comput Aided Des 46:269–274, 2014). LAR supports all topological incidence structures, including enumerative (images), decompositive (meshes) and boundary (CAD) representations. It is dimension-independent, and not restricted to regular complexes. Furthermore, LAR enjoys a neat mathematical format, being based on chains, the domains of discrete integration, and cochains, the discrete prototype of differential forms, so naturally integrating the geometric shape with the supported physical properties. The LAR representation find his roots in the design language PLaSM (Paoluzzi et al., ACM Trans. Graph 14(3):266–306, 1995; Paoluzzi, Geometric programming for computer aided design. Wiley, Chichester 2003), and is being embedded in Python and Javascript, providing the designer with powerful and simple tools for a geometric calculus of shapes. In this paper we introduce the motivation of this approach, discussing how it compares to other mixed-dimensionality representations of geometry and is supported by open-source software projects. We also discuss simple examples of use

Genomics for the environment: the hidden power of bacteria

Plants harbor a plethora of microorganisms with which they mutually interact, so to be considered as ‘super-organisms’. Plants are able to shape their associated microbiome and to recruit microbes useful for nutrition, growth and defense from pathogens and adverse environmental conditions. The genomics of plant associated microorganisms is then an emerging field with highly important outcomes for agriculture and, in general, for green biotechnologies. In the last years, an increasing number of genomes from plant-associated microorganisms have been sequenced, discovering an extraordinary number of genes potentially useful for biotechnology applications. This presentation will review some of the relevant application of plant associated bacterial genomics and will focus on the exploration of the genome of the plant symbiont Sinorhizobium meliloti for genes relevant for the adaptation to heavy metal polluted soil. Heavy-metal tolerance in bacteria is indeed a widespread phenotype; in particular nickel tolerance has been characterized as depending on the nre system, which employs a Ni/H+ antiporter (NreB) to pump nickel out from the cell. An orthologous of nreB gene was found in Sinorhizobium meliloti by genome scanning. The evolutionary origin of this gene and its functions have been extensively studied and a perspective for its potential biotechnology applications will be reviewed

Thin membranes based on FBG sensors for real-time sub-bandage pressure monitoring

This work focuses on the manufacturing and testing of a new device for medical bandage monitoring. Excessive pressure exerted from the compression bandage can block the blood flow of the patient, causing different medical complications to the skin, nerves, and circulatory system. On the contrary, if the pressure applied is low, the therapy is not effective. The utility, therefore, arises from a device capable of quantitatively indicating the correct adjustment of the bandage. The technological demonstrators developed consist of a polyurethane elastomeric shell with a thin composite supporting core. Fiber Bragg grating sensors (FBGSs) embedded within this core permit the detection of the subbandage pressure applied during compression therapy. The two prototypes were applied under arm bandages to evaluate their capability to transmit the applied pressure to the embedded FBGS. We demonstrated the ability to monitor the bandaging action by measuring the level of pressure exerted with the rounds of bandages. Moreover, the thin membranes permit the monitoring of the heartbeat of the patient, giving feedback about blood irrotation. The device developed is, therefore, promising to improve the results of compression therapy