Environmental impact assessment of boatbuilding process with ocean plastic

Ocean ecosystems are suffering from plastic pollution. To prevent further damage, the 3Rs approach suggests reducing, reusing, and recycling waste. Current solutions include developing waste management systems, public awareness, and waste collection projects to reduce and recycle. However, reuse of reclaimed plastic is limited. This study is as part of an ocean-cleaning campaign. The manufacturing process to produce optimists using ocean plastic was evaluated and compared with conventional boat building as baseline. The environmental impact is higher than the baseline due to more material- and energy-intensive processes. However, adapting processes and integrating recycled materials is necessary for more sustainable and circular production systems

In vitro and in vivo effects of 3-bromopyruvate against Echinococcus metacestodes

International audienceAbstractWhile searching for novel anti-echinococcosis drugs, we have been focusing on glycolysis which is relied on by Echinococcus for energy production and intermediates for other metabolic processes. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential therapeutic implication of glycolytic inhibitors on Echinococcus. Our results demonstrate that at an initial concentration of 40 μM, all inhibitors of glycolysis used in the current experiment [3-bromopyruvate (3-BrPA), ornidazole, clorsulon (CLS), sodium oxamate and 2,6-dihydroxynaphthalene (NA-P2)] show considerable in vitro effects against Echinococcus granulosus protoscoleces and Echinococcus multilocularis metacestodes. Among them, 3-BrPA exhibited the highest activity which was similar to that of nitazoxanide (NTZ) and more efficacious than albendazole (ABZ). The activity of 3-BrPA was dose dependent and resulted in severe ultrastructural destructions, as visualized by electron microscopy. An additional in vivo study in mice infected with E. multilocularis metacestodes indicates a reduction in parasite weight after the twice-weekly treatment of 25 mg/kg 3-BrPA for 6 weeks, compared to that of the untreated control. In particular, in contrast to ABZ, the administration of 25 mg/kg 3-BrPA did not cause toxicity to the liver and kidney in mice. Similarly, at the effective dose against Echinococcus larvae, 3-BrPA showed no significant toxicity to human hepatocytes. Taken together, the results suggest that interfering with the glycolysis of the parasite may be a novel chemotherapeutical option and 3-BrPA, which exhibited a remarkable activity against Echinococcus, may be a promising potential drug against cystic echinococcosis (CE) and alveolar echinococcosis (AE)

Robust inference with GhostKnockoffs in genome-wide association studies

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have been extensively adopted to depict the underlying genetic architecture of complex diseases. Motivated by GWASs' limitations in identifying small effect loci to understand complex traits' polygenicity and fine-mapping putative causal variants from proxy ones, we propose a knockoff-based method which only requires summary statistics from GWASs and demonstrate its validity in the presence of relatedness. We show that GhostKnockoffs inference is robust to its input Z-scores as long as they are from valid marginal association tests and their correlations are consistent with the correlations among the corresponding genetic variants. The property generalizes GhostKnockoffs to other GWASs settings, such as the meta-analysis of multiple overlapping studies and studies based on association test statistics deviated from score tests. We demonstrate GhostKnockoffs' performance using empirical simulation and a meta-analysis of nine European ancestral genome-wide association studies and whole exome/genome sequencing studies. Both results demonstrate that GhostKnockoffs identify more putative causal variants with weak genotype-phenotype associations that are missed by conventional GWASs

Germplasm Evaluation of an Eurasia Steppe Native Specie--Sheepgrass (\u3cem\u3eLeymus chinensis\u3c/em\u3e)

Sheepgrass (Leymus chinensis (Trin.) Tzvel) is an advantageous perennial native grass in China and other northern Eurasian countries having steppe. As an important forage grass of great value in animal husbandry, sheepgrass is well known for its abundant foliage, high palatability and high nutritive content. Sheepgrass is also valuable in grassland restoration and conservation since it is a perennial grass with a rhizome network to fix the soil and can survive well in stressful environments. Terefore, the collection, evaluation and utilization of sheepgrass are necessary for protecting grassland biodiversity, for establishing artificial pasture, restoring degraded grassland, and the development of forage industry and animal husbandry in Eurasia’s native steppe. Here, we reviewed our previous studies on the collection, evaluation of phenotypic diversity for germplasm resources, distribution and domestication of wild sheepgrass, and application of sheepgrass new varieties

Computational and experimental demonstrations of one-pot tandem catalysis for electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction to methane

Electroreduction of carbon dioxide to hydrocarbons and oxygenates on copper involves reduction to a carbon monoxide adsorbate followed by further transformation to hydrocarbons and oxygenates. Simultaneous improvement of these processes over a single reactive site is challenging due to the linear scaling relationship of the binding strength of key intermediates. Herein, we report improved electroreduction of carbon dioxide by exploiting a one-pot tandem catalysis mechanism based on computational and electrochemical investigations. By constructing a well-defined copper-modified silver surface, adsorbed carbon monoxide generated on the silver sites is proposed to migrate to surface copper sites for the subsequent reduction to methane, which is consistent with insights gained from operando attenuated total reflectance surface enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopic investigations. Our results provide a promising approach for designing carbon dioxide electroreduction catalysts to enable one-pot reduction of products beyond carbon monoxide and formate

Oxygen induced promotion of electrochemical reduction of CO₂ via co-electrolysis

Harnessing renewable electricity to drive the electrochemical reduction of CO₂ is being intensely studied for sustainable fuel production and as a means for energy storage. Copper is the only monometallic electrocatalyst capable of converting CO₂ to value-added products, e.g., hydrocarbons and oxygenates, but suffers from poor selectivity and mediocre activity. Multiple oxidative treatments have shown improvements in the performance of copper catalysts. However, the fundamental underpinning for such enhancement remains controversial. Here, we combine reactivity, in-situ surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and computational investigations to demonstrate that the presence of surface hydroxyl species by co-electrolysis of CO₂ with low concentrations of O₂ can dramatically enhance the activity of copper catalyzed CO2 electroreduction. Our results indicate that co-electrolysis of CO₂ with an oxidant is a promising strategy to introduce catalytically active species in electrocatalysis

Oxygen induced promotion of electrochemical reduction of CO₂ via co-electrolysis

Harnessing renewable electricity to drive the electrochemical reduction of CO₂ is being intensely studied for sustainable fuel production and as a means for energy storage. Copper is the only monometallic electrocatalyst capable of converting CO₂ to value-added products, e.g., hydrocarbons and oxygenates, but suffers from poor selectivity and mediocre activity. Multiple oxidative treatments have shown improvements in the performance of copper catalysts. However, the fundamental underpinning for such enhancement remains controversial. Here, we combine reactivity, in-situ surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and computational investigations to demonstrate that the presence of surface hydroxyl species by co-electrolysis of CO₂ with low concentrations of O₂ can dramatically enhance the activity of copper catalyzed CO2 electroreduction. Our results indicate that co-electrolysis of CO₂ with an oxidant is a promising strategy to introduce catalytically active species in electrocatalysis