Essential oils (EOs) have been long recognized for their antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, insecticidal and antioxidant properties. They are widely used in medicine and the food industry for ...these purposes. The increased interest in alternative natural substances is driving the research community to find new uses and applications of these substances. EOs and their components show promising activities against many food-borne pathogens and spoilage microorganisms when tested in vitro. In food systems, higher concentrations of EOs are needed to exert similar antibacterial effects as those obtained in in vitro assays. The use of combinations of EOs and their isolated components are thus new approaches to increase the efficacy of EOs in foods, taking advantage of their synergistic and additive effects. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview on the antimicrobial efficacy of these combinations. A survey of the methods used for the determination of the interactions and mechanisms involved in the antimicrobial activities of these combinations are also reported.
Servitization and Industry 4.0 are considered two of the most recent trends transforming industrial companies. Servitization is mainly focused on adding value to the customer (demand-pull) while ...Industry 4.0 is frequently related to adding value to manufacturing process (technology-push). Although some scholars address them as complementary concepts, the literature lacks evidences about what are the interfaces and connection between the two trends. Thus, we aim to develop a conceptual framework that connects Servitization and Industry 4.0 concepts from a business model innovation (BMI) perspective. Our framework is based on three Servitization levels (i.e. smoothing, adapting and substituting) and three levels of digitization (i.e. low, moderate and high levels). We show that matching these levels results in nine possible configurations classified in manual, digital and industry 4.0-related services, which can focus on smoothing, adapting or substituting services. We use reported cases from the literature to support and illustrate these configurations. We also discuss different levels of complexity for the implementation of these configurations. The study hence provides a foundation for the growing research on the interface between Servitization and Industry 4.0.
•We explore the integration of servitization types and digitization levels.•The highest level of digitization considers the Industry 4.0-related technologies.•Servitization types can be offered in three levels: manual, digital and industry 4.0.•Industry 4.0-related services add value for customers and for internal processes.
Abstract Adequate energy intake is essential for reproduction. While we have known for decades that feed restriction inhibits gonadotropin-releasing hormone/luteinizing hormone (GnRH/LH) secretion, ...the central mechanisms that govern this reduction during undernutrition remain to be fully elucidated. The past few years, we have focused on examining central mechanisms whereby chronic feed restriction in young sheep results in the inhibition of LH secretion. This presentation will focus on our current understanding of how feed restriction impacts kisspeptin/neurokinin B/dynorphin (KNDy) neurons in young sheep and will give a glimpse into our next few years as we examine how input to KNDy neurons could play a key role in regulating reproduction during undernutrition.
Ferredoxin/flavodoxin‐NADPH reductases (FPRs) catalyze the reversible electron transfer between NADPH and ferredoxin/flavodoxin. The Acinetobacter sp. Ver3 isolated from high‐altitude Andean lakes ...contains two isoenzymes, FPR1ver3 and FPR2ver3. Absorption spectra of these FPRs revealed typical features of flavoproteins, consistent with the use of FAD as a prosthetic group. Spectral differences indicate distinct electronic arrangements for the flavin in each enzyme. Steady‐state kinetic measurements show that the enzymes display catalytic efficiencies in the order of 1–6 μm−1·s−1, although FPR1ver3 exhibited higher kcat values compared to FPR2ver3. When flavodoxinver3 was used as a substrate, both reductases exhibited dissimilar behavior. Moreover, only FPR1ver3 is induced by oxidative stimuli, indicating that the polyextremophile Ver3 has evolved diverse strategies to cope with oxidative environments.
Extremophilic microorganisms are an invaluable source of new biomolecules with unique characteristics. The genome of Acinetobacter sp. Ver3 isolated from high‐altitude Andean lakes encodes two ferredoxin/flavodoxin‐NADP+ oxidoreductases, FPR1ver3 and FPR2ver3, which display kinetic and spectroscopic characteristics similar to other prokaryotic FPRs and contribute to the bacterial protection against oxidative stress.
The shortcomings of native peptides as pharmaceuticals have been long known: short duration of action, lack of receptor selectivity, lack of oral bioavailability. However medicinal chemistry offers ...solutions to the first two limitations and oral bioavailability issues have been addressed with novel routes of administration (e.g. intranasal, inhalation) and injectable depot formulations. The principal issue for peptide drugs has been a short duration of action, widely assumed to be due to proteolysis. While proteolysis is a problem for native peptide structures, modification of the peptide structure by acylation, PEGylation, unnatural amino acids or restricted conformation can largely remove this issue. However rapid clearance from the blood into the urine remains an issue for even proteolytically stable molecules. Medicinal chemistry approaches here have been peptide modifications to slow release from the injection site (hydrophobic, hydrophilic, self-associating depots), PEGylation, fatty acid acylation, and the like. Medicinal chemistry approaches used in successful peptide pharmaceuticals using unnatural amino acids to achieve depot formation are highlighted in this review.
Feed efficiency represents the cumulative efficiency with which the pig utilizes dietary nutrients for maintenance, lean gain and lipid accretion. It is closely linked with energy metabolism, as the ...oxidation of carbon-containing components in the feed drive all metabolic processes. While much is known about nutrient utilization and tissue metabolism, blending these subjects into a discussion on feed efficiency has proven to be difficult. For example, while increasing dietary energy concentration will almost certainly increase feed efficiency, the correlation between dietary energy concentration and feed efficiency is surprisingly low. This is likely due to the plethora of non-dietary factors that impact feed efficiency, such as the environment and health as well as individual variation in maintenance requirements, body composition and body weight. Nonetheless, a deeper understanding of feed efficiency is critical at many levels. To individual farms, it impacts profitability. To the pork industry, it represents its competitive position against other protein sources. To food economists, it means less demand on global feed resources. There are environmental and other societal implications as well. Interestingly, feed efficiency is not always reported simply as a ratio of body weight gain to feed consumed. This review will explain why this arithmetic calculation, as simple as it initially seems, and as universally applied as it is in science and commerce, can often be misleading due to errors inherent in recording of both weight gain and feed intake. This review discusses the importance of feed efficiency, the manner in which it can be measured and reported, its basis in biology and approaches to its improvement. It concludes with a summary of findings and recommendations for future efforts.
Architectural tactics enable stakeholders to achieve cyber-resilience requirements. They permit systems to react, resist, detect, and recover from cyber incidents. This paper presents an approach to ...generate source code for architectural tactics typically used in safety and mission-critical systems. Our approach extensively relies on the use of the Event-B formal method and the EventB2Java code generation plugin of the Rodin platform. It leverages the modeling of architectural tactics in the Event-B formal language and uses a set of EventB2Java transformation rules to generate certified code implementations for the said tactics. Since resilience requirements are statements about a system over time, and because of the fact that the Event-B language does not provide (native) support for the writing of temporal specifications, we have implemented a novel Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) extension for Event-B . We support several architectural tactics for availability, performance, and security. The generated code is certified in the following sense: discharging proof obligations in Rodin - the platform we use for writing the Event-B models - attests to the soundness of the architectural tactics modelled in Event-B , and the soundness of the translation encoded by the EventB2Java tool attests to the code correctness. Finally, we demonstrate the usability of our resilience validation approach with the aid of an Autonomous Vehicle System. It further helped us increase our confidence in the soundness of our Event-B LTL extension.
This paper investigates the relationship between individuals' attitudes towards fairness and their views about tax compliance in developing countries. It argues that individuals’ attitudes regarding ...fairness shape their views about paying taxes and their ethical stances regarding tax evasion. Using survey data for 18 major cities in Latin America, we find that individuals who are highly sensitive to fairness are less likely to consider paying taxes as a civic duty and more likely to justify tax evasion. These attitudes toward tax compliance are not inelastic. We also find evidence that individualst argues about reciprocity and merit mediate the effect of fairness on personal views about tax compliance. Finally, this paper shows that the heuristics people use to explain their position in the income distribution make them sensitive to inequality, and it affects their tax morale. These findings help us better understand the concept of reciprocity and provide valuable lessons on the urgent task of expanding fiscal capacity to promote economic growth and inequality in developing countries.
Recent progress in interpreting comprehensive genetic and epigenetic profiles for human cellular states has contributed new insights into the developmental origins of disease, elucidated novel ...signalling pathways and enhanced drug discovery programs. A similar comprehensive approach to decoding the epigenetic readouts from chemical challenges in vivo would yield new paradigms for monitoring and assessing environmental exposure in model systems and humans.
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