Biomass residue valorisation into activated charcoal - Efficiency tests on bacteria and pesticides

Le développement des activités de recherche sur les charbons actifs en Afrique, entre dans le cadre de la valorisation de la biomasse pour produire de nouveaux matériaux, et permet d’accompagner scientifiquement les processus de dépollution et le développement industriel. Les charbons actifs (CA) sont des matériaux carbonés obtenus suite à des étapes de pyrolyse et d’activation qui leur confèrent de bonnes capacités d’adsorption sur des polluants. Le développement et la vulgarisation des CA utilisés seuls ou en complément, dans une chaîne de dépollution des eaux est une piste prometteuse pour l’Afrique qui les a jusqu’ici peu exploités malgré la disponibilité de matières premières nécessaires à leur fabrication. Cet examen présente dans une première étape, la méthode développée au Laboratoire Biomasse Energie et Biocarburants (LBEB) pour synthétiser de nouveaux CA issus de résidus de biomasse comme les coques d’arachide et les coques de coco. Dans une deuxième étape, l’article présente les protocoles mis en place pour caractériser et analyser les porosités et les surfaces spécifiques des CA, à l’origine de l’adsorption des polluants. Enfin, des résultats d’essais sur des dérivés proches des pesticides et des bactéries de type E. coli sont effectués pour tester l’efficacité des charbons actifs synthétisés

Investigating the Effect of Emoji in Opinion Classification of Uzbek Movie Review Comments

Opinion mining on social media posts has become more and more popular. Users often express their opinion on a topic not only with words but they also use image symbols such as emoticons and emoji. In this paper, we investigate the effect of emoji-based features in opinion classification of Uzbek texts, and more specifically movie review comments from YouTube. Several classification algorithms are tested, and feature ranking is performed to evaluate the discriminative ability of the emoji-based features.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, 3 table

Projecting terrestrial biodiversity intactness with GLOBIO 4

Scenario-based biodiversity modelling is a powerful approach to evaluate how possible future socio-economic developments may affect biodiversity. Here, we evaluated the changes in terrestrial biodiversity intactness, expressed by the mean species abundance (MSA) metric, resulting from three of the shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) combined with different levels of climate change (according to representative concentration pathways [RCPs]): a future oriented towards sustainability (SSP1xRCP2.6), a future determined by a politically divided world (SSP3xRCP6.0) and a future with continued global dependency on fossil fuels (SSP5xRCP8.5). To this end, we first updated the GLOBIO model, which now runs at a spatial resolution of 10 arc-seconds (~300 m), contains new modules for downscaling land use and for quantifying impacts of hunting in the tropics, and updated modules to quantify impacts of climate change, land use, habitat fragmentation and nitrogen pollution. We then used the updated model to project terrestrial biodiversity intactness from 2015 to 2050 as a function of land use and climate changes corresponding with the selected scenarios. We estimated a global area-weighted mean MSA of 0.56 for 2015. Biodiversity intactness declined in all three scenarios, yet the decline was smaller in the sustainability scenario (-0.02) than the regional rivalry and fossil-fuelled development scenarios (-0.06 and -0.05 respectively). We further found considerable variation in projected biodiversity change among different world regions, with large future losses particularly for sub-Saharan Africa. In some scenario-region combinations, we projected future biodiversity recovery due to reduced demands for agricultural land, yet this recovery was counteracted by increased impacts of other pressures (notably climate change and road disturbance). Effective measures to halt or reverse the decline of terrestrial biodiversity should not only reduce land demand (e.g. by increasing agricultural productivity and dietary changes) but also focus on reducing or mitigating the impacts of other pressures.Peer reviewe

Identification and Functional Analysis of Antifungal Immune Response Genes in Drosophila

Essential aspects of the innate immune response to microbial infection appear to be conserved between insects and mammals. Although signaling pathways that activate NF-κB during innate immune responses to various microorganisms have been studied in detail, regulatory mechanisms that control other immune responses to fungal infection require further investigation. To identify new Drosophila genes involved in antifungal immune responses, we selected genes known to be differentially regulated in SL2 cells by microbial cell wall components and tested their roles in antifungal defense using mutant flies. From 130 mutant lines, sixteen mutants exhibited increased sensitivity to fungal infection. Examination of their effects on defense against various types of bacteria and fungi revealed nine genes that are involved specifically in defense against fungal infection. All of these mutants displayed defects in phagocytosis or activation of antimicrobial peptide genes following infection. In some mutants, these immune deficiencies were attributed to defects in hemocyte development and differentiation, while other mutants showed specific defects in immune signaling required for humoral or cellular immune responses. Our results identify a new class of genes involved in antifungal immune responses in Drosophila

Oficio al Intendente de Venezuela

se publicó la ley deTrascribe el decreto expedido por el Libertador, con fecha 5 del corriente, por el cual se declaran libres los esclavos que se hayan introducido en la clase de sirvientes domésticos, desde el dia en que se publicó la ley deUniversidad Simon Bolivar - Bolivariu

Molecular characterisation of non‐absorptive and absorptive enterocytes in human small intestine

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Perturbation of differentiation of the crypt‐villus axis of the human small intestine is associated with several intestinal disorders of clinical importance. At present, differentiation of small intestinal enterocytes in the crypt‐villus axis is not well characterised. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Expression profiling of microdissected enterocytes lining the upper part of crypts or the middle of villi was performed using the Affymetrix X3P arrays and several methods for confirmation. RESULTS: A total of 978 differentially expressed sequences representing 778 unique UniGene IDs were found and categorised into four functional groups. In enterocytes lining the upper part of crypts, cell cycle promoting genes and transcription/translation related genes were predominantly expressed, whereas in enterocytes lining the middle of villi, high expression of cell cycle inhibiting genes, metabolism related genes, and vesicle/transport related genes was found. CONCLUSION: Two types of enterocytes were dissected at the molecular level, the non‐absorptive enterocyte located in the upper part of crypts and the absorptive enterocyte found in the middle of villi. These data improve our knowledge about the physiology of the crypt‐villus architecture in human small intestine and provide new insights into pathophysiological phenomena, such as villus atrophy, which is clinically important