Compliance with EAT–Lancet dietary guidelines would reduce global water footprint but increase it for 40% of the world population

The EAT–Lancet Commission has proposed a global benchmark diet to guide the shift towards healthy and sustainable dietary patterns. Yet it is unclear whether consumers’ choices are convergent with those guidelines. Applying an advanced statistical analysis, we mapped the diet gap of 15 essential foods in 172 countries from 1961 to 2018. We found that countries at the highest level of development have an above-optimal consumption of animal products, fats and sugars but a sub-optimal consumption of legumes, nuts and fruits. Countries suffering from limited socio-economic progress primarily rely on carbohydrates and starchy roots. Globally, a gradual change towards healthy and sustainable dietary targets can be observed for seafood, milk products, poultry and vegetable oils. We show that if all countries adopted the EAT–Lancet diet, the water footprint would fall by 12% at a global level but increase for nearly 40% of the world’s population

Charting out the future agricultural trade and its impact on water resources

International agricultural trade triggers inter-dependency among distant countries, not only in economic terms but also under an environmental perspective. Agricultural trade has been shown to drive environmental threats pertaining to biodiversity loss and depletion and pollution of freshwater resources. Meanwhile, trade can also encourage production where it is most efficient, hence minimizing the use of natural resources required by agriculture. In this study, we provide a country-level assessment of the future international trade for 6 primary crops and 3 animal products composing 70% of the human diet caloric content. We set up four variegate socio-economic scenarios with different level of economic developments, diets habits, population growth dynamics, and levels of market liberalization. Results show that the demand of agricultural goods and the correspondent trade flow will increase with respect to current levels by 10–50% and 74–178% by 2050, respectively. The largest increase in the amount of traded goods is expected under the Economic Optimism scenario that will see an average trade flow of 2830 kcal/cap/day (i.e., nearly doubling the current per-capita flow). Most of the increase will be driven by the trade of crops for animal feeding, particularly maize will be the most traded crop. The trade networks architecture in 2050 and 2080 will be very different from the one we actually know, with a clear shift of the trade pole from the Western toward the Eastern economies. The dramatic changes of global food-sources and trade patterns will jeopardize the water resources of new regions while exacerbating the pressure in those areas that will continue serving food also in the future. In spite of this, trade may annually save around 40–60 m3 of water per person, compared to a situation where countries are self-sufficient

Prediction of new scientific collaborations through multiplex networks

The establishment of new collaborations among scientists fertilizes the scientific environment, fostering novel discoveries. Understanding the dynamics driving the development of scientific collaborations is thus crucial to characterize the structure and evolution of science. In this work, we leverage the information included in publication records and reconstruct a categorical multiplex networks to improve the prediction of new scientific collaborations. Specifically, we merge different bibliographic sources to quantify the prediction potential of scientific credit, represented by citations, and common interests, measured by the usage of common keywords. We compare several link prediction algorithms based on different dyadic and triadic interactions among scientists, including a recently proposed metric that fully exploits the multiplex representation of scientific networks. Our work paves the way for a deeper understanding of the dynamics driving scientific collaborations, and validates a new algorithm that can be readily applied to link prediction in systems represented as multiplex networks. © 2021, The Author(s)

International corporations trading Brazilian soy are keystone actors for water stewardship

Transnational corporations play a major, but poorly constrained, role in reallocating global water resources. Here, we couple high-resolution, company-specific trade data with hydrological and crop models to estimate the virtual water trade of the top 9 transnational corporations that trade Brazilian soy. We identify 4429 virtual water flows connecting 1620 Brazilian municipalities with the top-10 soy importing countries and find that the total virtual water flow increased from 43 billion m3 to 100 billion m3 between 2004 and 2018. We find that the largest soy traders displace on average twice as much virtual water as top-importing countries, excluding China. For example, in 2018 one transnational corporation exported 15 Gm3, almost tripling the Netherlands’s virtual water import (the second largest importer at about 5 Gm3). Our findings highlight the importance of transnational corporations for achieving water stewardship and sustainable supply chains to support water resource security at municipal and international scales

The Role of PARP Inhibitors in the Ovarian Cancer Microenvironment: Moving Forward From Synthetic Lethality

PARP inhibitors (PARPi) have shown promising clinical results and have revolutionized the landscape of ovarian cancer management in the last few years. While the core mechanism of action of these drugs has been largely analyzed, the interaction between PARP inhibitors and the microenvironment has been scarcely researched so far. Recent data shows a variety of mechanism through which PARPi might influence the tumor microenvironment and especially the immune system response, that might even partly be the reason behind PARPi efficacy. One of many pathways that are affected is the cGAS-cGAMP-STING; the upregulation of STING (stimulator of interferon genes), produces more Interferon ϒ and pro inflammatory cytokines, thus increasing intratumoral CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. Upregulation of immune checkpoints such as PD1-PDL1 has also been observed. Another interesting mechanism of interaction between PARPi and microenvironment is the ability of PARPi to kill hypoxic cells, as these cells show an intrinsic reduction in the expression and function of the proteins involved in HR. This process has been defined “contextual synthetic lethality”. Despite ovarian cancer having always been considered a poor responder to immune therapy, data is now shedding a new light on the matter. First, OC is much more heterogenous than previously thought, therefore it is fundamental to select predictive biomarkers for target therapies. While single agent therapies have not yielded significant results on the long term, influencing the immune system and the tumor microenvironment via the concomitant use of PARPi and other target therapies might be a more successful approach

Who will dominate the global fossil fuel trade?

Fossil fuels are not distributed evenly throughout the world, and hence the countries rely heavily on international trade to secure energy supply. Characterization of the energy trade network is needed to conduct long-term assessments of energy security. This study proposes a modeling framework to assess the evolution of energy trade under current conditions as well as under future scenarios up to 2050. The total trade of each country is estimated with trade predictive models (TPMs) using key variables. Subsequently, a matrix-balancing method (RAS) is used to estimate the annual bilateral trades. The projected energy trade network in 2050 varies under each shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) of the future, with annual fossil fuel global trades among countries ranging between 538 and 215 EJ. Canada, USA, Venezuela, and China are projected to dominate the global trade network, with Canada-USA remaining the most dominant fossil fuel trade link up to 2050

Immuno-Metabolism and Microenvironment in Cancer: Key Players for Immunotherapy

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have changed therapeutic algorithms in several malignancies, although intrinsic and secondary resistance is still an issue. In this context, the dysregulation of immuno-metabolism plays a leading role both in the tumor microenvironment (TME) and at the host level. In this review, we summarize the most important immune-metabolic factors and how they could be exploited therapeutically. At the cellular level, an increased concentration of extracellular adenosine as well as the depletion of tryptophan and uncontrolled activation of the PI3K/AKT pathway induces an immune-tolerant TME, reducing the response to ICIs. Moreover, aberrant angiogenesis induces a hypoxic environment by recruiting VEGF, Treg cells and immune-suppressive tumor associated macrophages (TAMs). On the other hand, factors such as gender and body mass index seem to affect the response to ICIs, while the microbiome composition (and its alterations) modulates both the response and the development of immune-related adverse events. Exploiting these complex mechanisms is the next goal in immunotherapy. The most successful strategy to date has been the combination of antiangiogenic drugs and ICIs, which prolonged the survival of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), while results from tryptophan pathway inhibition studies are inconclusive. New exciting strategies include targeting the adenosine pathway, TAMs and the microbiota with fecal microbiome transplantation

Metal-organic frameworks meet polymer brushes: enhanced crystalline film growth induced by macromolecular primers

We used poly-(3-sulfopropylmethacrylate) brushes as macromolecular 3D primers to promote heterogeneous nucleation and growth of archetypal ZIF-8 MOF thin films. The enhancement can be understood in terms of a high preconcentration of Zn2+ ions in the polymer brush; this leads to a rapid increase of nucleation sites in the primer.Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicada