Biofuel Legislative and Policy Framework and Sustainable Development: From Perspectives of Developing Countries

Biofuel development has a strategic significance in various fields, including national energy security, climate change mitigation, environmental conservation and protection, as well as agricultural revival and rural development. The production and trade of biofuels have entered a new era of global growth, with both the scale of the industry and the number of countries involved reaching unprecedented levels. Developing countries have advantages over developed countries in biofuel production, as many of them have apparent relative availability of land and feedstocks, as well as good climate conditions in that biomass production potential is much higher and production costs can be lower. However, a biofuel expansion in these countries raises concerns about potential added environmental and socio-economic pressures. A massive scale-up in the production and use of biofuels could speed up deforestation and biodiversity loss, and possibly accelerate climate change, while creating a distortion on the traditional agricultural market and the emerging agro-energy market, and increasing the concentration of economic wealth. Against this background, the central aim of this thesis is to collate a variety of guidance, legislation and policies relevant to the regulation of biofuels in developing countries, to provide a comprehensive and coherent legislative and policy framework for these countries. As the rise of the biofuel economy has linked together many complicated environmental and social-legal relations in various topics, it is impossible to regulate biofuels within a single legal regime. In envisaging the legislative and policy framework for biofuel sustainability, it is necessary to consider and balance various values and interests from at least four legal areas, namely biotechnology development and diffusion, the environment, agro-energy economy, as well as trade liberalization on the biofuel market. Within the interdisciplinary regulatory framework, the biofuel industry in developing countries would not lead to a scenario in which it provided a solution to one specific problem/legal area, while creating many more in other legal areas. As a result, this regulatory framework will help policy makers to ensure that environmental and socio-economic sustainability considerations are taken into account in the production, promotion and consumption of biofuels, with a view to minimizing risks of negative impacts and maximizing benefits in the Global South, and in turn to benefit developing countries and the whole world in the immediate and long term

Construction of New Genetically Engineered Vaccine Strain for O-type Foot-and-Mouth Disease of Pig

Foot-and-mouth disease is an acute and highly contagious viral infectious disease. Although the foot and mouthdisease vaccine has been applied in some parts of the world since the beginning of the 20th century, the currentepidemic of foot and mouth disease in the world is still serious and constitutes an obstacle to the trade of animal andanimal products in the world. The porcine pseudorabies virus gene deletion strain PRV TK-/ gE-/ LacZ +, which isconstructed by our laboratory, has the advantages of good safety, large capacity and high recombination effi ciency. Inthis study, the artifi cial O-type foot-and-mouth disease P1 gene as an antigen gene, UbiP1 fused with ubiquitin (Ub)as another antigen gene to enhance cellular immunity, and then shRNA designed for FMD 3B gene and porcine IFN-[gamma] with antiviral and immune-regulatory eff ects. The two functional genes were constructed in turn to constructa transfer vector with four functional genes. The transfer vector was transfected into TK-/ gE- / LacZ+ cells with PRVdeletion vector, and the plasmids were purifi ed and identifi ed. The recombinant pseudorabies virus, which containsthe six functional genes of P1 gene, UbiP1, shRNA and IFN-γ, was obtained, which laid the foundation for furtherconstruction of new genetically engineered vaccine

Astrocytic expression of aldehyde dehydrogenase family 1 member L1

Astrocytes are the most numerous cell population of glia in the central nervous system. This study mainly focused on the astrocytic expression of aldehyde dehydrogenase family 1 member L1 (ALDH1L1) under physiological and pathological conditions. Brain sections from 3 control humans, 3 multiple sclerosis patients, 5 control mice, and 15 mice intoxicated with cuprizone were applied. Immunohistochemical and immunofluorescent staining was performed to analyze the expression of ALDH1L1 by astrocytes. The results indicated a dynamic regulation of ALDH1L1 in both the healthy and diseased CNS

Least squares-based iterative identification methods for linear-in-parameters systems using the decomposition technique

By extending the least squares-based iterative (LSI) method, this paper presents a decomposition-based LSI (D-LSI) algorithm for identifying linear-in-parameters systems and an interval-varying D-LSI algorithm for handling the identification problems of missing-data systems. The basic idea is to apply the hierarchical identification principle to decompose the original system into two fictitious sub-systems and then to derive new iterative algorithms to estimate the parameters of each sub-system. Compared with the LSI algorithm and the interval-varying LSI algorithm, the decomposition-based iterative algorithms have less computational load. The numerical simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms work quite well

Influence of Personality Characteristics and Psychological Intervention on Treatment Satisfaction of Juvenile Orthodontic Patients

Orthodontics is the correction and treatment of malocclusion deformity caused by a variety of reasons. Malocclusion malformation has a direct impact on people’s facial features, while likely to cause some diseases involving the mouth in the long-term life. For adolescents, malocclusion has a great physical and mental impact. This article first have a simple overview of malocclusion deformity and orthodontic treatment, analysis of youth physical and mental development characteristics and adolescent personality traits. Through the way of completely random sampling, eighty teenage orthodontic patients can be divided into two groups, respectively as the control group and psychological intervention group. Though survey assessment after several stages treatment, explore impact on the psychological intervention in patients with juvenile orthodontic treatment satisfaction degree

Updated roles of cGAS-STING signaling in autoimmune diseases

Natural immunity, the first line for the body to defense against the invasion of pathogen, serves as the body’s perception of the presence of pathogens depends on nucleic acid recognition mechanisms. The cyclic GMP-AMP synthase-stimulator of the interferon gene (cGAS-STING) signaling pathway is considered an essential pattern recognition and effector pathway in the natural immune system and is mainly responsible for recognizing DNA molecules present in the cytoplasm and activating downstream signaling pathways to generate type I interferons and some other inflammatory factors. STING, a crucial junction protein in the innate immune system, exerts an essential role in host resistance to external pathogen invasion. Also, STING, with the same character of inflammatory molecules, is inseparable from the body’s inflammatory response. In particular, when the expression of STING is upregulated or its related signaling pathways are overactivated, the body may develop serious infectious disorders due to the generation of excessive inflammatory responses, non-infectious diseases, and autoimmune diseases. In recent years, accumulating studies indicated that the abnormal activation of the natural immune cGAS-STING signaling pathway modulated by the nucleic acid receptor cGAS closely associated with the development and occurrence of autoimmune diseases (AID). Thereof, to explore an in-depth role of STING and its related signaling pathways in the diseases associated with inflammation may be helpful to provide new avenues for the treatment of these diseases in the clinic. This article reviews the activation process of the cGAS-STING signaling pathways and its related important roles, and therapeutic drugs in AID, aiming to improve our understanding of AID and achieve better diagnosis and treatment of AID