Opportunities and Threats of Green Building Design for ABC Engineers, Kansas City

“If your next project is not a green building, one that is certified by a national third-party rating system, it will be functionally outdated the day it’s completed and very likely to underperform the market as time passes.” according to real estate expert, Charles Lockwood. (Yudelson 2008, 27). The ‘Green’ building revolution has presented a unique opportunity for Consulting Engineering firms specializing in mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) design, such as ABC Engineers, to capture premium revenue for a limited timeframe. Capitalizing on this opportunity brings challenges that should be strategically planned for to optimize profitability. ‘Green’ building design is a buzz word and is being promoted as an ecologically beneficial concept in the architectural, engineering, and construction industry, but will become the standard expectation in the future. Projected revenues associated with ‘Green’ building design in this project illustrates the potential quick rise and fall of this market segment, therefore a plan of action should be implemented in a timely fashion. The plan must take into account the risks and Legal concerns directly drawn from case studies and professional experiences that can be applied to ‘Green’ building design. Establishing the competitive advantage of being experts at ‘Green’ building designs could assure capturing additional revenue that would otherwise be lost to other engineering firms. The main risks to having this competitive advantage are related to new legal responsibilities for the professional engineer when working to implement cutting edge green systems, identifying new products, and meeting energy performance criteria. Information included in this field project provides the Principals of ABC Engineers in Kansas City background information to create an applied marketing and business plan for the Green Building opportunities that present themselves in the target market

Application of evidence-based methods to construct mechanism-driven chemical assessment frameworks

The workshop titled “Application of evidence-based methods to construct mechanism-driven chemical assessment frameworks” was co-organized by the Evidence-based Toxicology Collaboration and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and hosted by EFSA at its headquarters in Parma, Italy on October 2 and 3, 2019. The goal was to explore integration of systematic review with mechanistic evidence evaluation. Participants were invited to work on concrete products to advance the exploration of how evidence-based approaches can support the development and application of adverse outcome pathways (AOP) in chemical risk assessment. The workshop discussions were centered around three related themes: 1) assessing certainty in AOPs, 2) literature-based AOP development, and 3) integrating certainty in AOPs and non-animal evidence into decision frameworks. Several challenges, mostly related to methodology, were identified and largely determined the workshop recommendations. The workshop recommendations included the comparison and potential alignment of processes used to develop AOP and systematic review methodology, including the translation of vocabulary of evidence-based methods to AOP and vice versa, the development and improvement of evidence mapping and text mining methods and tools, as well as a call for a fundamental change in chemical risk and uncertainty assessment methodology if to be conducted based on AOPs and new approach methodologies (NAM). The usefulness of evidence-based approaches for mechanism-based chemical risk assessments was stressed, particularly the potential contribution of the rigor and transparency inherent to such approaches in building stakeholders’ trust for implementation of NAM evidence and AOPs into chemical risk assessment

Prevalence of prenatal zinc deficiency and its association with socio-demographic, dietary and health care related factors in Rural Sidama, Southern Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Several studies witnessed that prenatal zinc deficiency (ZD) predisposes to diverse pregnancy complications. However, scientific evidences on the determinants of prenatal ZD are scanty and inconclusive. The purpose of the present study was to assess the prevalence and determinants of prenatal ZD in Sidama zone, Southern Ethiopia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A community based, cross-sectional study was conducted in Sidama zone in January and February 2011. Randomly selected 700 pregnant women were included in the study. Data on potential determinants of ZD were gathered using a structured questionnaire. Serum zinc concentration was measured using Atomic Absorption Spectrometry. Statistical analysis was done using logistic regression and linear regression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mean serum zinc concentration was 52.4 (+/-9.9) μg/dl (95% CI: 51.6-53.1 μg/dl). About 53.0% (95% CI: 49.3-56.7%) of the subjects were zinc deficient. The majority of the explained variability of serum zinc was due to dietary factors like household food insecurity level, dietary diversity and consumption of animal source foods. The risk of ZD was 1.65 (95% CI: 1.02-2.67) times higher among women from maize staple diet category compared to <it>Enset </it>staple diet category. Compared to pregnant women aged 15-24 years, those aged 25-34 and 35-49 years had 1.57 (95% CI: 1.04-2.34) and 2.18 (95% CI: 1.25-3.63) times higher risk of ZD, respectively. Women devoid of self income had 1.74 (95% CI: 1.11-2.74) time increased risk than their counterparts. Maternal education was positively associated to zinc status. Grand multiparas were 1.74 (95% CI: 1.09-3.23) times more likely to be zinc deficient than nulliparas. Frequency of coffee intake was negatively association to serum zinc level. Positive association was noted between serum zinc and hemoglobin concentrations. Altitude, history of iron supplementation, maternal workload, physical access to health service, antenatal care and nutrition education were not associated to zinc status.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>ZD is of public health concern in the area. The problem must be combated through a combination of short, medium and long-term strategies. This includes the use of household based phytate reduction food processing techniques, agricultural based approaches and livelihood promotion strategies.</p

The potential of urinary metabolites for diagnosing multiple sclerosis

A definitive diagnostic test for multiple sclerosis (MS) does not exist; instead physicians use a combination of medical history, magnetic resonance imaging, and cerebrospinal fluid analysis (CSF). Significant effort has been employed to identify biomarkers from CSF to facilitate MS diagnosis; however none of the proposed biomarkers have been successful to date. Urine is a proven source of metabolite biomarkers and has the potential to be a rapid, non-invasive, inexpensive, and efficient diagnostic tool for various human diseases. Nevertheless, urinary metabolites have not been extensively explored as a source of biomarkers for MS. Instead, we demonstrate that urinary metabolites have significant promise for monitoring disease-progression, and response to treatment in MS patients. NMR analysis of urine permitted the identification of metabolites that differentiate experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE)-mice (prototypic disease model for MS) from healthy and MS drug-treated EAE mice

Rational engineering of recombinant picornavirus capsids to produce safe, protective vaccine antigen

Foot-and-mouth disease remains a major plague of livestock and outbreaks are often economically catastrophic. Current inactivated virus vaccines require expensive high containment facilities for their production and maintenance of a cold-chain for their activity. We have addressed both of these major drawbacks. Firstly we have developed methods to efficiently express recombinant empty capsids. Expression constructs aimed at lowering the levels and activity of the viral protease required for the cleavage of the capsid protein precursor were used; this enabled the synthesis of empty A-serotype capsids in eukaryotic cells at levels potentially attractive to industry using both vaccinia virus and baculovirus driven expression. Secondly we have enhanced capsid stability by incorporating a rationally designed mutation, and shown by X-ray crystallography that stabilised and wild-type empty capsids have essentially the same structure as intact virus. Cattle vaccinated with recombinant capsids showed sustained virus neutralisation titres and protection from challenge 34 weeks after immunization. This approach to vaccine antigen production has several potential advantages over current technologies by reducing production costs, eliminating the risk of infectivity and enhancing the temperature stability of the product. Similar strategies that will optimize host cell viability during expression of a foreign toxic gene and/or improve capsid stability could allow the production of safe vaccines for other pathogenic picornaviruses of humans and animals

Enteric Microbiome Metabolites Correlate with Response to Simvastatin Treatment

Although statins are widely prescribed medications, there remains considerable variability in therapeutic response. Genetics can explain only part of this variability. Metabolomics is a global biochemical approach that provides powerful tools for mapping pathways implicated in disease and in response to treatment. Metabolomics captures net interactions between genome, microbiome and the environment. In this study, we used a targeted GC-MS metabolomics platform to measure a panel of metabolites within cholesterol synthesis, dietary sterol absorption, and bile acid formation to determine metabolite signatures that may predict variation in statin LDL-C lowering efficacy. Measurements were performed in two subsets of the total study population in the Cholesterol and Pharmacogenetics (CAP) study: Full Range of Response (FR), and Good and Poor Responders (GPR) were 100 individuals randomly selected from across the entire range of LDL-C responses in CAP. GPR were 48 individuals, 24 each from the top and bottom 10% of the LDL-C response distribution matched for body mass index, race, and gender. We identified three secondary, bacterial-derived bile acids that contribute to predicting the magnitude of statin-induced LDL-C lowering in good responders. Bile acids and statins share transporters in the liver and intestine; we observed that increased plasma concentration of simvastatin positively correlates with higher levels of several secondary bile acids. Genetic analysis of these subjects identified associations between levels of seven bile acids and a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), rs4149056, in the gene encoding the organic anion transporter SLCO1B1. These findings, along with recently published results that the gut microbiome plays an important role in cardiovascular disease, indicate that interactions between genome, gut microbiome and environmental influences should be considered in the study and management of cardiovascular disease. Metabolic profiles could provide valuable information about treatment outcomes and could contribute to a more personalized approach to therapy

Statistical HOmogeneous Cluster SpectroscopY (SHOCSY): an optimized statistical approach for clustering of ¹H NMR spectral data to reduce interference and enhance robust biomarkers selection.

We propose a novel statistical approach to improve the reliability of (1)H NMR spectral analysis in complex metabolic studies. The Statistical HOmogeneous Cluster SpectroscopY (SHOCSY) algorithm aims to reduce the variation within biological classes by selecting subsets of homogeneous (1)H NMR spectra that contain specific spectroscopic metabolic signatures related to each biological class in a study. In SHOCSY, we used a clustering method to categorize the whole data set into a number of clusters of samples with each cluster showing a similar spectral feature and hence biochemical composition, and we then used an enrichment test to identify the associations between the clusters and the biological classes in the data set. We evaluated the performance of the SHOCSY algorithm using a simulated (1)H NMR data set to emulate renal tubule toxicity and further exemplified this method with a (1)H NMR spectroscopic study of hydrazine-induced liver toxicity study in rats. The SHOCSY algorithm improved the predictive ability of the orthogonal partial least-squares discriminatory analysis (OPLS-DA) model through the use of "truly" representative samples in each biological class (i.e., homogeneous subsets). This method ensures that the analyses are no longer confounded by idiosyncratic responders and thus improves the reliability of biomarker extraction. SHOCSY is a useful tool for removing irrelevant variation that interfere with the interpretation and predictive ability of models and has widespread applicability to other spectroscopic data, as well as other "omics" type of data

Metabolomic analysis of human disease and its application to the eye

Metabolomics, the analysis of the metabolite profile in body fluids or tissues, is being applied to the analysis of a number of different diseases as well as being used in following responses to therapy. While genomics involves the study of gene expression and proteomics the expression of proteins, metabolomics investigates the consequences of the activity of these genes and proteins. There is good reason to think that metabolomics will find particular utility in the investigation of inflammation, given the multi-layered responses to infection and damage that are seen. This may be particularly relevant to eye disease, which may have tissue specific and systemic components. Metabolomic analysis can inform us about ocular or other body fluids and can therefore provide new information on pathways and processes involved in these responses. In this review, we explore the metabolic consequences of disease, in particular ocular conditions, and why the data may be usefully and uniquely assessed using the multiplexed analysis inherent in the metabolomic approach

The cerebrospinal fluid proteome in HIV infection: change associated with disease severity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Central nervous system (CNS) infection is a nearly universal feature of untreated systemic HIV infection with a clinical spectrum that ranges from chronic asymptomatic infection to severe cognitive and motor dysfunction. Analysis of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has played an important part in defining the character of this evolving infection and response to treatment. To further characterize CNS HIV infection and its effects, we applied advanced high-throughput proteomic methods to CSF to identify novel proteins and their changes with disease progression and treatment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>After establishing an <it>accurate mass and time </it>(AMT) tag database containing 23,141 AMT tags for CSF peptides, we analyzed 91 CSF samples by LC-MS from 12 HIV-uninfected and 14 HIV-infected subjects studied in the context of initiation of antiretroviral therapy and correlated abundances of identified proteins a) within and between subjects, b) with all other proteins across the entire sample set, and c) with "external" CSF biomarkers of infection (HIV RNA), immune activation (neopterin) and neural injury (neurofilament light chain protein, NFL). We identified a mean of 2,333 +/- 328 (SD) peptides covering 307 +/-16 proteins in the 91 CSF sample set. Protein abundances differed both between and within subjects sampled at different time points and readily separated those with and without HIV infection. Proteins also showed inter-correlations across the sample set that were associated with biologically relevant dynamic processes. One-hundred and fifty proteins showed correlations with the external biomarkers. For example, using a threshold of cross correlation coefficient (Pearson's) ≤ -0.3 and ≥0.3 for potentially meaningful relationships, a total of 99 proteins correlated with CSF neopterin (43 negative and 56 positive correlations) and related principally to neuronal plasticity and survival and to innate immunity. Pathway analysis defined several networks connecting the identified proteins, including one with amyloid precursor protein as a central node.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Advanced CSF proteomic analysis enabled the identification of an array of novel protein changes across the spectrum of CNS HIV infection and disease. This initial analysis clearly demonstrated the value of contemporary state-of-the-art proteomic CSF analysis as a discovery tool in HIV infection with likely similar application to other neurological inflammatory and degenerative diseases.</p