Thermodynamics and Turbomachinery of the Oxyfuel Naki Cycles

The increasing amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere causes continuing climate change. The Kyoto Protocol was agreed by a majority of governments around the world to address this challenge. Its aim is to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by a substantial amount compared to the 1990 emissions. One promising way is to reduce the emissions of CO2 using CCS (carbon dioxide capture and storage) in power generation and in some industrial plants which produce high quantities of this greenhouse gas. The capture of CO2 can be accomplished by different methods like oxyfuel cycles, precombustion systems, and postcombustion system. To realize one alternative to capture CO2 Prof. Nebojsa Nakicenovic of IIASA (International Institutefor Applied Systems Analysis) proposed an oxyfuel cycle. This so-called Naki cycle which is, in principle, a closed cycle gas turbine with recuperative heat exchanger uses CO2 as the working fluid. The pressure rise is accomplished in liquid state by a pump. Hence, the working fluid has to be condensed after being cooled down in the recuperative heat exchanger. To investigate the thermodynamic cycle efficiency and feasibility of turbomachinery this work was carried out. In this work three different variants of the so-called Naki cycle (Naki I, Naki II, and Naki III) wer studied. The cycles were modeled in the simulation software IPSEpro in which the thermodynamic invetigation of these cycles was conducted. The thermodynamic evaluation of Naki I was performed using coal dust (pure carbon) as fuel. In the investigation of Naki II, two different fuels were compared. Thse are methane and syngas from coal gasification. The evaluation of Naki III was carried out using methane. With the thermodynamic data, a first dimensioning of the turbomachinery was possible. In the termodynamic evaluation some parameters (for example turbine inlet temperature and pressure or mass flows) were chosen so that feasible turbomachinery dimensions could be expected. For the most promising cycle, Naki II, a possible turbomachinery design was described in detail (espeially the high-pressure turbine). Lastly a rough economic evaluation of all three variants of the Naki cycle was carried out. The results of this evaluation give an overview of costs related to the capture of CO2. Each variant of the Naki cycle was compared with a reference plant without CO2 capture. These comparisons lead to mitigation costs (i.e., the costs for one tonne CO2 avoided by a Naki power plant in comparison to a reference plant)

Is Wortmannin-Induced Reorganization of the trans-Golgi Network the Key to Explain Charasome Formation?

Wortmannin, a fungal metabolite and an inhibitor of phosphatidylinositol-3 (PI3) and phosphatidylinositol-4 (PI4) kinases, is widely used for the investigation and dissection of vacuolar trafficking routes and for the identification of proteins located at multivesicular bodies (MVBs). In this study, we applied wortmannin on internodal cells of the characean green alga Chara australis. Wortmannin was used at concentrations of 25 and 50 M which, unlike in other cells, arrested neither constitutive, nor wounding-induced endocytosis via coated vesicles. Wortmannin caused the formation of “mixed compartments” consisting of MVBs and membranous tubules which were probably derived from the trans-Golgi network (TGN) and within these compartments MVBs fused into larger organelles. Most interestingly, wortmannin also caused pronounced changes in the morphology of the TGNs. After transient hypertrophy, the TGNs lost their coat and formed compact, three-dimensional meshworks of anastomosing tubules containing a central core. These meshworks had a size of up to 4 m and a striking resemblance to charasomes, which are convoluted plasma membrane domains, and which serve to increase the area available for transporters. Our findings indicate that similar mechanisms are responsible for the formation of charasomes and the wortmannin-induced reorganization of the TGN. We hypothesize that both organelles grow because of a disturbance of clathrin-dependent membrane retrieval due to inhibition of PI3 and/or PI4 kinases. This leads to local inhibition of clathrin-mediated endocytosis during charasome formation in untreated cells and to inhibition of vesicle release from the TGN in wortmannin-treated cells, respectively. The morphological resemblance between charasomes and wortmannin-modified TGN compartments suggests that homologous proteins are involved in membrane curvature and organelle architecture.P 22957-B20P 27536-B16(VLID)194545

Increased serum neurofilament light chain concentration indicates poor outcome in Guillain-Barré syndrome

BACKGROUND Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an autoimmune disease that results in demyelination and axonal damage. Five percent of patients die and 20% remain significantly disabled on recovery. Recovery is slow in most cases and eventual disability is difficult to predict, especially early in the disease. Blood or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers that could help identify patients at risk of poor outcome are required. We measured serum neurofilament light chain (sNfL) concentrations from blood taken upon admission and investigated a correlation between sNfL and clinical outcome. METHODS Baseline sNfL levels in 27 GBS patients were compared with a control group of 22 patients with diagnoses not suggestive of any axonal damage. Clinical outcome parameters for GBS patients included (i) the Hughes Functional Score (HFS) at admission, nadir, and discharge; (ii) the number of days hospitalised; and (iii) whether intensive care was necessary. RESULTS The median sNfL concentration in our GBS sample on admission was 85.5 pg/ml versus 9.1 pg/ml in controls. A twofold increase in sNfL concentration at baseline was associated with an HFS increase of 0.6 at nadir and reduced the likelihood of discharge with favourable outcome by a factor of almost three. Higher sNfL levels upon admission correlated well with hospitalisation time (rs = 0.69, p < 0.0001), during which transfer to intensive care occurred more frequently at an odds ratio of 2.4. Patients with baseline sNfL levels below 85.5 pg/ml had a 93% chance of being discharged with an unimpaired walking ability. CONCLUSIONS sNfL levels measured at hospital admission correlated with clinical outcome in GBS patients. These results represent amounts of acute axonal damage and reflect mechanisms resulting in disability in GBS. Thus, sNfL may serve as a convenient blood-borne biomarker to personalise patient care by identifying those at higher risk of poor outcome

PRKAR1A mutation causing pituitary-dependent Cushing disease in a patient with Carney complex

“Disclaimer: this is not the definitive version of record of this article. This manuscript has been accepted for publication inEuropean Journal of Endocrinology, but the version presented here has not yet been copy-edited, formatted or proofed. Consequently, Bioscientifica accepts no responsibility for any errors or omissions it may contain. The definitive version is now freely available at https://doi.org/10.1530/EJE-17-0227 2017.

Immunosenescence in Neurological Diseases—Is There Enough Evidence?

The aging of the immune system has recently attracted a lot of attention. Immune senescence describes changes that the immune system undergoes over time. The importance of immune senescence in neurological diseases is increasingly discussed. For this review, we considered studies that investigated cellular changes in the aging immune system and in neurological disease. Twenty-six studies were included in our analysis (for the following diseases: multiple sclerosis, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia). The studies differed considerably in terms of the patient groups included and the cell types studied. Evidence for immunosenescence in neurological diseases is currently very limited. Prospective studies in well-defined patient groups with appropriate control groups, as well as comprehensive methodology and reporting, are essential prerequisites to generate clear insights into immunosenescence in neurological diseases

UniversAAL - an Open and Consolidated AAL Platform

Due to the demographic development towards an ageing society AAL technologies will play an important role in the future. There has been a lot of work done in the field of AAL, but most of the project outcomes are proprietary and thus impossible to be combined. Accordingly, there is a need for an universal and open platform, which can be used as a starting point for further developments or just as an integration and standardization tool. For future service platform related research projects reference use cases as well as a reference tool set and framework would help to ensure a reusable and expandable platform, which is wide spread and therefore ensures a quality of service. The aim of the universAAL project is to combine the advantages and strengths of still ongoing or already finished research projects to create an universally applicable platform. The focus thereby is on interoperability and standardization to ensure a broad range of applicability and to develop an open platform that will make it technically feasible and economically viable to develop AAL applications. There are two tools for spreading the outcomes and ideas of the project planned: On the one hand the establishment of a store providing plug-and-play AAL applications and services that support multiple execution platforms and can be deployed to various devices and users, and on the other hand the AAL Open Association (AALOA) with the mission to create a platform for identifying key research topics in AAL, and to reach agreement on prioritization of these and to design, develop, evaluate and standardize a common service platform for AAL

Dissecting the subcellular membrane proteome reveals enrichment of H+ (co-)transporters and vesicle trafficking proteins in acidic zones of Chara internodal cells.

The Characeae are multicellular green algae with very close relationship to land plants. Their internodal cells have been the subject of numerous (electro-)physiological studies. When exposed to light, internodal cells display alternating bands of low and high pH along their surface in order to facilitate carbon uptake required for photosynthesis. Here we investigated for the first time the subcellular membrane protein composition of acidic and alkaline regions in internodal cells of Chara australis R. Br. using MS-proteomics. The identified peptides were annotated to Chara unigenes using a custom-made Chara database generated from a transcriptome analysis and to orthologous Arabidopsis genes using TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource) database. Apart from providing the first public-available, functionally-annotated sequence database for Chara australis, the proteome study, which is supported by immunodetection, identified several membrane proteins associated with acidic regions that contain a high density of specific plasma membrane (PM) invaginations, the charasomes, which locally increase the membrane area to overcome diffusion limitation in membrane transport. An increased abundance of PM H+ ATPases at charasomes is consistent with their role in the acidification of the environment, but the characean PM H+ ATPase sequence suggests a different regulation compared to higher plant PM H+ ATPases. A higher abundance of H+ co-transporters in the charasome-rich, acidic regions possibly reflects enhanced uptake of ions and nutrients. The increase in mitochondrial proteins confirms earlier findings about the accumulation of cortical mitochondria in the acidic zones. The significant enrichment of clathrin heavy chains and clathrin adaptor proteins as well as other proteins involved in trafficking indicate a higher activity of membrane transport in the charasome-rich than in charasome-poor areas. New and unexpected data, for instance the upregulation and abundance of vacuolar transporters correlating with the charasome-rich, acidic cell regions account for new perspectives in the formation of charasomes