The aim of this work was to compare the performance of microbial fuel cell (MFC) fitted with alternative, low cost membranes (AMs). Lab scale single chamber MFCs were loaded with sulphate-reducing ...inocula as biocatalyst and leachate from dark fermentation of organic wastes as substrate. The MFCs were fitted with either hybrid membrane made of agar and Nafion MH, agar membrane M6 (6% agar), agar membrane M2 (2% agar) or the control Nafion 117 membrane (NF-117).
We found that the internal resistances (Rint) were generally low for all the cells. The lowest Rint corresponded to alternative membranes M6 and MH with a value ca. 90 Ω. So, results of Rint tend to favour the AMs. The costs of these membranes were only 2.5–6% of the cost of the NF-117 one. However, the powers delivered by MFC fitted with AMs were 4–40% (weighed average 28%) of the power of the cell fitted with the conventional NF-117. In spite of the reduced power, the AMs still exhibited a higher Power/Cost ratio (0.9–4.4. mW/US$) than that of the NF membrane (0.23 mW/US$.)
We should highlight that the AMs do not require the conditioning treatment with hazardous chemicals typical of NF-117. Therefore, there is another competitive edge of AMs in the form of avoided costs of chemicals and hazardous waste disposal.
•We compared the performance of MFC fitted with alternative, low cost membranes (AMs).•Tested AMs were: hybrid MH (agar and Nafion), 6 and 2% agar membranes M2 and M6.•Lowest Rint corresponded to M6 and MH with values ca. 90 Ω.•Costs of these membranes were only 2.5–6% of that of the Nafion one.•In spite of lower power the AMs had a Power/Cost 5–80-fold of that of Nafion.•AMs did not require treatment with hazardous chemicals typical of Nafion.
One of the highlights of green chemistry is the development of techniques and procedures with low environmental impact. In the last years, deep eutectic solvents (DES) have become an important ...alternative to conventional organic solvents. For a period ionic liquids have provoked remarkable interest, but they have been displaced by DES because they show easier preparation methods, lower prices, many of them are biodegradable and compatible with biological systems. In addition, they show adjustable physicochemical properties, high thermal stability, low volatility and are compatible with water. In this paper is reviewed the state of the art of the use of DES paying special attention to the role of reaction media in organic synthesis.
Deep eutectic solvents are an interesting alternative to conventional solvents, both as a reaction medium and for many processes and technologies used in chemistry and related sciences. They are easily prepared, versatile, many of them can be obtained from renewable sources and can be designed and adapted for specific processes. For all these reasons, they have been studied intensively in recent years and their interest is constantly growing. This paper reviews some of the most prominent applications and which are the fields of interest that may be a focus of applications in the near future.
In this paper we examine foreign location choices of the top 100 US multinational corporations (MNCs) in 1980 and 2000. We first ask whether there has been a change in MNC foreign location choice in ...this two-decade period. Second, we explore the underlying reasons of location change by focusing on country-level factors, accounting for firm-, industry- and regional-level explanations. Our findings suggest, first, that the extent of MNCs' activities around the globe is more extensive than assumed by regionalists' arguments and well beyond Ohmae's TRIAD, but still less widespread than claimed by the globalists - the two main traditions within the globalization-regionalization debate. Second, we uncover an interesting de-location pattern in this period. Third, we develop an integrative framework where both economic and institutional-cultural arguments are shown to influence MNCs' foreign location choice in different ways. We conclude with a discussion of our findings, and provide suggestions for future research.
•Edible chitosan coatings with Roselle extract and cinnamon to preserve strawberry.•Aqueous extracts of Roselle and the cinnamon essential oil inhibited fungal growth.•Edible coatings and cold ...storage increased the postharvest life of strawberry.
The antifungal effect of chitosan edible coatings (ChEC) functionalized with cinnamon essential oil and aqueous extract of Roselle calyces on Colletotrichum fragariae growth and physical-chemical, physiological and nutraceutical features of strawberries at 5 and 20 °C were evaluated. ChEC was characterized with respect to its water vapor permeability (WVP) and mechanical properties. Results indicated that C. fragariae grew from the third day in strawberries stored at 20 °C, whilst at 5 °C disease symptoms were observed after 10 days in fruit inoculated and treated with ChEC after 24 h. The weight loss was reduced 15 times and firmness was higher by 33% in fruit treated with ChEC and stored at 5 °C. The antioxidant capacity of strawberries increased at the end of the storage only in control group. In conclusion, ChEC can be an effective technology for preserving quality strawberries for 17 days at 5 °C.
Akt kinase plays a central role in cell growth, metabolism, and tumorigenesis. The TRAF6 E3 ligase orchestrates IGF-1-mediated Akt ubiquitination and activation. Here, we show that Akt ubiquitination ...is also induced by activation of ErbB receptors; unexpectedly, and in contrast to IGF-1 induced activation, the Skp2 SCF complex, not TRAF6, is a critical E3 ligase for ErbB-receptor-mediated Akt ubiquitination and membrane recruitment in response to EGF. Skp2 deficiency impairs Akt activation, Glut1 expression, glucose uptake and glycolysis, and breast cancer progression in various tumor models. Moreover, Skp2 overexpression correlates with Akt activation and breast cancer metastasis and serves as a marker for poor prognosis in Her2-positive patients. Finally, Skp2 silencing sensitizes Her2-overexpressing tumors to Herceptin treatment. Our study suggests that distinct E3 ligases are utilized by diverse growth factors for Akt activation and that targeting glycolysis sensitizes Her2-positive tumors to Herceptin treatment.
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► Distinct E3 ligases regulate Akt ubiquitination, activation, and cancer development ► Skp2 regulates Akt-mediated cancer glycolysis and tumorigenesis ► Skp2 serves as a marker for poor prognosis in Her2-positive patients ► Targeting glycolysis sensitizes Her2-positive tumors to Herceptin treatment
Activation of aerobic glycolysis and tumor growth by EGF requires ubiquitination of Akt by the E3 ligase Skp2. Inhibiting Skp2 synergizes with herceptin to increase its effectiveness in mouse models of breast cancer.
Although a 3-arm DOTA construct, which has three carboxylic acids, h has been applied for conjugation to many peptides, we investigated if a 4-arm DOTA construct conjugated to peptides improves ...chemical properties for melanoma imaging of the melanocortin 1 receptor compared to 3-arm DOTA-conjugated peptides.
Specific activities, radiolabeling efficiencies, and partition coefficients were evaluated using 111In-labeled 3-arm and 4-arm DOTA-α-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (MSH). For assessment of MC1-R affinity and accumulation in tumor cells in vitro, B16-F1 melanoma and/or 4T1 breast cancer cells were incubated with 111In-labeled 3-arm and 4-arm DOTA-α-MSH with and without α-MSH as a substrate. The stability was evaluated using mouse liver homogenates and plasma. Biological distribution and whole-body single photon emission computed tomography imaging of 111In-labeled 3-arm and 4-arm DOTA-α-MSH were obtained using B16-F1 melanoma-bearing mice.
Specific activities and radiolabeling efficiencies of both radiotracers were about 1.2 MBq/nM and 90-95%, respectively. The partition coefficients were -0.28 ± 0.03 for 111In-labeled 3-arm DOTA-α-MSH and -0.13 ± 0.04 for 111In-labeled 4-arm DOTA-α-MSH. Although accumulation was significantly inhibited by α-MSH in B16-F1 cells, the inhibition rate of 111In-labeled 4-arm DOTA-α-MSH was lower than that of 111In-labeled 3-arm DOTA-α-MSH. 111In-labeled 4-arm DOTA-α-MSH was taken up early into B16-F1 cells and showed higher accumulation than 111In-labeled 3-arm DOTA-α-MSH after 10 min of incubation. Although these stabilities were relatively high, the stability of 111In-labeled 4-arm DOTA-α-MSH was higher than that of 111In-labeled 3-arm DOTA-α-MSH. Regarding biological distribution, 111In-labeled 4-arm DOTA-α-MSH showed significantly lower average renal accumulation (1.38-fold) and significantly higher average melanoma accumulation (1.32-fold) than 111In-labeled 3-arm DOTA-α-MSH at all acquisition times. 111In-labeled 4-arm DOTA-α-MSH showed significantly higher melanoma-to-kidney, melanoma-to-blood, and melanoma-to-muscle ratios than 111In-labeled 3-arm DOTA-α-MSH.
The 4-arm DOTA construct has better chemical properties for peptide radiotracers than the 3-arm DOTA construct.
There is an increasing interest in developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems to process and interpret electronic health records (EHRs). Natural language processing (NLP) powered by pretrained ...language models is the key technology for medical AI systems utilizing clinical narratives. However, there are few clinical language models, the largest of which trained in the clinical domain is comparatively small at 110 million parameters (compared with billions of parameters in the general domain). It is not clear how large clinical language models with billions of parameters can help medical AI systems utilize unstructured EHRs. In this study, we develop from scratch a large clinical language model-GatorTron-using >90 billion words of text (including >82 billion words of de-identified clinical text) and systematically evaluate it on five clinical NLP tasks including clinical concept extraction, medical relation extraction, semantic textual similarity, natural language inference (NLI), and medical question answering (MQA). We examine how (1) scaling up the number of parameters and (2) scaling up the size of the training data could benefit these NLP tasks. GatorTron models scale up the clinical language model from 110 million to 8.9 billion parameters and improve five clinical NLP tasks (e.g., 9.6% and 9.5% improvement in accuracy for NLI and MQA), which can be applied to medical AI systems to improve healthcare delivery. The GatorTron models are publicly available at: https://catalog.ngc.nvidia.com/orgs/nvidia/teams/clara/models/gatortron_og .
We recently discovered an inherited cancer syndrome caused by BRCA1-Associated Protein 1 (BAP1) germline mutations, with high incidence of mesothelioma, uveal melanoma and other cancers and very high ...penetrance by age 55. To identify families with the BAP1 cancer syndrome, we screened patients with family histories of multiple mesotheliomas and melanomas and/or multiple cancers. We identified four families that shared an identical BAP1 mutation: they lived across the US and did not appear to be related. By combining family histories, molecular genetics, and genealogical approaches, we uncovered a BAP1 cancer syndrome kindred of ~80,000 descendants with a core of 106 individuals, whose members descend from a couple born in Germany in the early 1700s who immigrated to North America. Their descendants spread throughout the country with mutation carriers affected by multiple malignancies. Our data show that, once a proband is identified, extended analyses of these kindreds, using genomic and genealogical studies to identify the most recent common ancestor, allow investigators to uncover additional branches of the family that may carry BAP1 mutations. Using this knowledge, we have identified new branches of this family carrying BAP1 mutations. We have also implemented early-detection strategies that help identify cancers at early-stage, when they can be cured (melanomas) or are more susceptible to therapy (MM and other malignancies).
The objective of this study was to evaluate performance of a co-treatment method of industrial acid mine drainage (I-AMD) and municipal wastewater (MWW) by dual-chamber microbial fuel cells (DC-MFC). ...Sewage sludge and MWW were used as inoculum-fuel in anodic chamber. I-AMD was fed to the cathode side of the chamber. A 100 Ω resistor was used to externally connect the anode to the cathode (DC-MFC-A). A second cell was operated at the open circuit potential (DC-MFC-B). In both cells, the efficiency of organic matter removal was ~15% and the wastewater alkalinity was reduced by more than 50% in both cells. On the other hand, the physicochemical characteristics and composition of I-AMD were modified. The pH increased from 2.50 to 4.12 ± 0.6. The SO42− concentration was reduced ca. 20 and 8% for the DC-MFC-A and DC-MFC-B, respectively. NO3− Concentration decreased in both cells by >90%. Different heavy metals (HMs) and metalloid removal values were observed in the cells: 42, 84, 71, 77, 55 and 42% for Cd, Cu, Fe, Al, Pb and As, respectively. Finally, a maximum volumetric power of 14,000 mW/m3 was reached by DC-MFC-A. The DC-MFCs achieved simultaneous treatment of MWW, partial neutralization of I-AMD, HMs removal, and bioelectricity generation. Hence, DC-MFCs seem to be an encouraging alternative for bioremediation of both MWW and I-AMD.
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•Actual acid mine drainage and wastewater were co-treated by microbial fuel cells.•After 120 h, the pH of actual acid mine drainage increased from 2.50 up to 4.12.•High nitrates removal was observed (>90%) from actual acid mine drainage.•A maximum volumetric power of 14,000 mW/m3 was harvested using a hazardous effluent.•Cd, Cu, Fe, Al, Pb and As were removed by 42, 84, 71, 77, 55 and 42%, respectively.
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