ECF FARMSYSTEMS: a Circular Economy Business Model Case

ECF is a very Small-and-Medium sized Enterprise which operates an aquaponic urban farm o Aquaponic food production is an industrial symbiosis within its own operations, exchanging material flows between the aquaculture and the hydroponic one. This may be considered as a co-product recovery business model pattern § The circularity is retained within ECF’s own operations and there is little value exchange among parties other than commercial ones o Socio-demographic factors such as growing population, growing urbanisation, alongside environmental ones such as competition for arable land, biodiversity loss, over-fishing, agro-chemicals in food production and others are the contextual drivers for aquaponics as a successful CEBM. o Characteristics of ECF’s industrial symbiosis/co-product recovery CEBM pattern: § Enables ECF to deliver its value proposition, namely to offer resource-efficient food on a B2B basis as an urban farm as well as a high level of transparency through story-telling around sourcing for its customers § Technology and know-how play a role in achieving the symbiosis § A significant socio-environmental impact is achieved through displacement of food miles and inherent resource-efficiency of aquaponics § Fish feed faces its own sustainability challenges; to be answered if ECF is to aspire to greater circularity § ECF as a successful pioneer of aquaponic farms is leveraging its know-how to design, plan and build turnkey farms for 3rd parties, thereby demonstrating the replicability of the CEBM. o Support for traditional (unsustainable) farming and fishing (including fuel subsidies) is impacting the competitiveness of aquaponics, as is the lack of transparency on ‘food miles’. o Whereas urban communities wish to become greener, urban farming such as aquaponics faces many planning and permissioning hurdles, despite growing demand from B2B and B2C consumer

REHAU AG + CO (& POLYSECURE GMBH): A Circular Economy Business Model Case

This report looks into the Circular Economy Business Model (CEBM) of Rehau AG’s window solutions division. This is, within the Rehau group, the business unit which manufactures PVC profiles which are used, later by their customers, to frame window glass in domestic and commercial buildings. The case-study has examined internal and external operations related to PVC profile production, usage and recycling; interviews with relevant managers took place. Given sustainability and cost considerations surrounding PVC, Rehau practices a circular sourcing CEBM involving the whole value-chain in particular downstream actors such as customers and recyclers. o PVC profiles are delivered to its customers, the window manufacturers, from whom it recovers the cuttings (the “post-industrial” waste / resource). This is financially incentivised and enables Rehau to melt, re-granulate and re-extrude, i.e. use as a secondary raw material in a circular sourcing process. o Due to a long-standing landfill ban in Germany of PVC, the recovery and recycling of “post-consumer” waste, is a well-organised business, in which, take-back of end-oflife PVC window frames, is financially incentivised. The recycler shreds, melts and regranulates this resource into a PVC-recyclate, i.e. a secondary raw material. Rehau, and other PVC extruders, are keen to purchase this recyclate since it is some 20% cheaper than virgin PVC. Apart from mild discolouring, properties of virgin PVC are practically maintained in the recyclate. o Rehau has innovated by introducing glass-fibre to reinforce PVC and thereby dispense with steel content in window profiles. Such glass-fibre PVC (GF-PVC) window profiles present a number of advantages in terms of lightness, thermal insulation and cost of installation. To recover this new type of PVC, a specific tracing and sorting technology has been implemented in cooperation with a technology provider. Indeed, Polysecure GmbH’s tracer-based sorting approach is an enabling technology which, thanks to a micrometric marker powder, is physically bonded to the raw material on a permanent basis, and enables identification and sorting at End-of-Life. Thus a glass-fibre PVC recyclate can be generated as a new pure segregated secondary raw material fractio

VAUDE: A Circular Business Model Innovation Journey

2021-12-1

Socially Responsible Investment und umweltorientiertes Venture Capital

Socially Responsible Investors are concerned about social, ethical and especially environmental issues in enterprises. They invest mostly through investment vehicles officially labelled SRI funds, or if not, then with clear mandates to their investment managers to invest responsibly. The investment universe of such funds and managers is usually limited to publicly-listed enterprises. Yet innovation and especially those in the environment sector occur in young, non-quoted companies. Venture Capital can play a vital role in financing innovations in environmental and clean energy technologies. This is a departure from traditional Venture Capital and is seen as such by the investment community, thereby withholding allocations to such Venture Capital initiatives. Who better then, than Socially Responsible Investors to provide capital to environment-oriented VC funds

Twitter vs. Facebook : réseaux et discours de l'extrême droite

Participation du projet Listic au Sprint Datapol organisé par Sciences Po : http://www.medialab.sciences-po.fr/projets/datapol/Explorer les discours et les sources du débat de l'extrême droite au sein de Twitter et de Facebook. Mettre en perspective les logiques qui structurent l'activité de l'extrême droite via une analyse de réseaux

Twitter vs. Facebook : réseaux et discours de l'extrême droite

Participation du projet Listic au Sprint Datapol organisé par Sciences Po : http://www.medialab.sciences-po.fr/projets/datapol/Explorer les discours et les sources du débat de l'extrême droite au sein de Twitter et de Facebook. Mettre en perspective les logiques qui structurent l'activité de l'extrême droite via une analyse de réseaux

Optimization of Routine Testing for MET Exon 14 Splice Site Mutations in NSCLC Patients

International audienc

Dominance hierarchy arising from the evolution of a complex small RNA regulatory network

International audienceThe prevention of fertilization through self-pollination (or pollination by a close relative) in the Brassicaceae plant family is determined by the genotype of the plant at the self-incompatibility locus (S locus). The many alleles at this locus exhibit a dominance hierarchy that determines which of the two allelic specificities of a heterozygous genotype is expressed at the phenotypic level. Here, we uncover the evolution of how at least 17 small RNA (sRNA)-producing loci and their multiple target sites collectively control the dominance hierarchy among alleles within the gene controlling the pollen S-locus phenotype in a self-incompatible Arabidopsis species. Selection has created a dynamic repertoire of sRNA-target interactions by jointly acting on sRNA genes and their target sites, which has resulted in a complex system of regulation among alleles

Simple gene signature to assess murine fibroblast polarization

International audienceAbstract We provide an original multi-stage approach identifying a gene signature to assess murine fibroblast polarization. Prototypic polarizations (inflammatory/fibrotic) were induced by seeded mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) with TNFα or TGFß1, respectively. The transcriptomic and proteomic profiles were obtained by RNA microarray and LC-MS/MS. Gene Ontology and pathways analysis were performed among the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and proteins (DEPs). Balb/c mice underwent daily intradermal injections of HOCl (or PBS) as an experimental murine model of inflammation-mediated fibrosis in a time-dependent manner. As results, 1456 and 2215 DEGs, and 289 and 233 DEPs were respectively found in MEFs in response to TNFα or TGFß1, respectively . Among the most significant pathways, we combined 26 representative genes to encompass the proinflammatory and profibrotic polarizations of fibroblasts. Based on principal component analysis, this signature deciphered baseline state, proinflammatory polarization, and profibrotic polarization as accurately as RNA microarray and LC-MS/MS did. Then, we assessed the gene signature on dermal fibroblasts isolated from the experimental murine model. We observed a proinflammatory polarization at day 7, and a mixture of a proinflammatory and profibrotic polarizations at day 42 in line with histological findings. Our approach provides a small-size and convenient gene signature to assess murine fibroblast polarization

Brief report : High MET overexpression does not predict the presence of MET exon 14 splice mutations in NSCLC : results from the IFCT Predict.amm study

CERVOXY CLINInternational audienceIntroductionMET proto-oncogene (MET) exon 14 splice site (METex14) mutations were recently described in NSCLC and has been reported to correlate with efficacy of MET tyrosine kinase inhibitors. High diversity of these alterations makes them hard to detect by DNA sequencing in clinical practice. Because METex14 mutations induce increased stabilization of the MET receptor, it is anticipated that these mutations are associated with MET overexpression. We aim to determine whether NSCLC with high MET overexpression could define a subset of patients with a high rate of METex14 mutations.MethodsFrom The French Cooperative Thoracic Intergroup PREDICT.amm cohort of 843 consecutive patients with a treatment-naive advanced NSCLC who were eligible for a first-line therapy, 108 NSCLC samples with high MET overexpression defined by an immunochemistry score 3+ were tested for METex14 mutations using fragment length analysis combined with optimized targeted next-generation sequencing. MET copy number analysis was also derived from the sequencing data.ResultsMETex14 mutations were detected in two patients (2.2%) who also displayed a TP53 mutation and a PIK3CA mutation, respectively. An MET gene copy number increase was observed in seven additional patients (7.7%). Next-generation sequencing analysis revealed inactivating mutations in TP53 (52.7%) and PTEN (1.1%), and oncogenic mutations in KRAS (28.6%), EGFR (7.7%), PIK3CA (4.4%), BRAF (4.4%), NRAS (2.2%), GNAS (1.1%), and IDH1 (1.1%).ConclusionsThe rate of METex14 mutations in NSCLC with high MET overexpression was similar to that found in unselected NSCLC. Moreover, we observed a high frequency of driver alterations in other oncogenes. Consequently these findings do not support the use of MET immunohistochemistry as a surrogate marker for METex14 mutations