The toxicity of ibuprofen and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) was evaluated individually and in binary combination on two photosynthetic organisms, the green alga
Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata
, ...representative of aquatic environments, and the monocotyledonous
Sorghum bicolor
, for terrestrial ecosystems. Both non-target organisms showed different sensitivities to pollutants. The alga was more affected than the plant to each compound assayed, whether separately or mixed in EC
50
proportion, and PFOA was more toxic to both bioindicators. An analysis of toxic chemical interactions covering the whole range of effect levels was conducted using the Combination Index method and indicated that synergism could be expected at low effect levels in higher plants, while for algae this type of interaction predominated at higher effect levels. Ecological risk assessment was performed by calculating the Hazard Quotient as the ratio between the measured environmental concentration and the predicted no-effect concentration, using our EC
50
data derived from the mixture of pollutants. Acute hazard was found in the terrestrial compartment (soil or sediments). In the light of the data reported, we conclude that risk evaluation should include toxicological information on compound interactions that exert a toxic effect on non-target organisms.
An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of feeding reduced crude protein (CP) diets to Ross × Ross 708 male broilers while providing adequate essential amino acid (AA) concentrations on ...growth performance, nitrogen (N) and ammonia output, and carcass characteristics from d 1 to 33 post hatch. Birds received 1 of 6 dietary treatments (10 replicate pens per treatment) varying in CP content. Diet 1 (control) was formulated with DL-Met, L-Lys, and L-Thr (23.2, 20.7, and 19.1% CP) in the starter (1–14 d of age), grower (15–25 d of age), and finisher (26–33 d of age) periods, respectively. Dietary L-Val, Gly (only in starter period), L-Ile, L-Arg, and L-Trp were sequentially supplemented in the order of limitation in Diets 2 through 6. Dietary CP was reduced gradually across the dietary treatments resulting in a CP reduction in Diets 1 to 6 by 3.4, 3.4, and 2.3% points in the starter, grower, and finisher periods, respectively. At d 14, 25, and 33 posthatch, feed conversion decreased (P < 0.05) with L-Val addition (Diet 2) and increased (P < 0.01) with L-Val to L-Trp addition (Diet 6) to the control. Dietary treatments did not alter weights and yields of carcass, breast, drum, or thighs. Dietary CP reduction with added L-Val (Diet 2), L-Val to L-Arg (Diet 5), or L-Val to L-Trp (Diet 6) increased abdominal fat (P < 0.01) compared with control. Nitrogen excretion (g/bird; P = 0.003) and equilibrium ammonia concentration (mg/kg; P = 0.041) at day 33 reduced by 16% and 48% respectively in birds fed reduced-CP diets with L-Val to L-Trp (Diet 6) compared with control-fed birds. This study indicated that sequential addition of supplemental AA in the order of limitation from DL-Met to L-Arg allowed reduction of dietary CP beyond 2%-point without depressing growth performance and meat yield of broilers from day 1 to 33 while reducing nitrogen excretion and ammonia emissions.
The health crisis caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 disease has devastated the worldwide hospitality sector. The current situation has led many countries to implement drastic rules to stop the ...spread of the virus. According to the Spanish health authority decisions need to be made in the context of uncertainty and lack of knowledgeable experiences through a gradual and asymmetric de-escalation process planned in four phases. Although the vast majority of studies refer to economic risks and impacts on tourist flows and economic income, few of them explicitly investigates safety and health measures that hotel managers should implement to their customers. Over a population of 12,740 hotels, 823 Spanish hotel managers have been involved in a participatory study. With the aim of assessing the actions taken to stop the spread of the virus, empirical research was implemented. A model presented four variables and 13 indicators which have been previously tested among hotel managers in the tourism sector. Five conclusions are drawn from the hypotheses: (1) Mass testing surveillance in customers and employees should be quick, affordable, and homogeneous throughout the European Union. (2) Training measures need to be taken by both public authorities and the private sector to reach a knowledgeable crisis management team with high commitment to the customer's health and safety. (3) Protocols established by public authorities should be observed and adjusted gradually not only in hotels but also in tourist arrivals. (4) Healthy measures need to be periodically updated. (5) Each hotel should set up a surveillance process to guarantee the safety to their customers.
Consumption of high-fat diets (HFD) has been associated with neuronal plasticity deficits and cognitive disorders linked to the alteration of glutamatergic disorders in the hippocampus. As young ...individuals are especially vulnerable to the effects of nutrients and xenobiotics on cognition, we studied the effect of chronic consumption of saturated (SOLF) and unsaturated oil-enriched foods (UOLF) on: i) spatial memory; ii) hippocampal synaptic transmission and plasticity; and iii) gene expression of glutamatergic receptors and hormone receptors in the hippocampus of adolescent and adult mice. Our results show that both SOLF and UOLF impair spatial short-term memory. Accordingly, hippocampal synaptic plasticity mechanisms underlying memory, and gene expression of NMDA receptor subunits are modulated by both diets. On the other hand, PPARγ gene expression is specifically down-regulated in adolescent SOLF individuals and up-regulated in adult UOLF mice.
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•Spontaneous alternation is modulated by diets enriched either in saturated (SOLF) or in unsaturated fatty acids (UOLF).•SOLF and UOLF impair hippocampal glutamatergic transmission in a different manner.•SOLF and UOLF modulate the expression of the hippocampal glutamate receptors Grin2A and Grin2B, as well as of PPARϒ.
Even though sacred scriptures emphasize the key role that Creation and respect for living creatures play in all religions, the so-called religious schools seem to show little interest in putting this ...sacred mandate into effect. To shed light on this subject, this work investigates the role of teachers in the process, focusing on their environmental competencies. Our hypotheses are tested through a structural equation model on a sample of 214 biology and religion teachers from 118 Catholic schools in Spain who voluntary participated in a survey. The research findings confirm that it is crucial that environmental competencies are developed in teachers to enable the greening of schools. Theoretical and practical implications for defining the job training of teachers in religious schools are drawn from the study.
The aim of the current study was to evaluate the influence of HFD on the functionality of LepR by quantifying phosphorylated levels of 705Tyr-STAT3 in hippocampus astrocytes from mice that consumed ...an HFD either during the juvenile or the adult period.
Five- and eight-week-old male mice, fed during 8 weeks with either control chow or HFD, received a single dose of leptin and their brains were prepared for immunofluorescence to identify double-positive GFAP/p705Tyr-STAT3 cells.
HFD intake led to increased pSTAT3 immunoreactivity in GFAP+ cells in the CA1/CA3 hippocampus areas. The effect was observed both in adolescent and adult mice. Leptin increased pSTAT3 immunoreactivity in control animals but was devoid of effect in HFD mice. HFD itself has no effect on the number of GFAP+ cells.
Our data show that regular intake of HFD enhances STAT3 signaling in CA1/CA3 astrocytes, an effect that could be linked to the increase of leptin triggered by HFD. The increase of pSTAT3 might be integral to homeostatic mechanisms aimed at maintaining hippocampus function.
Some important eye diseases, like macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy, can induce changes visible on the retina, for example as lesions. Segmentation of lesions or extraction of textural ...features from the fundus images are possible steps towards automatic detection of such diseases which could facilitate screening as well as provide support for clinicians. For the task of detecting significant features, retinal blood vessels are considered as being interference on the retinal images. If these blood vessel structures could be suppressed, it might lead to a more accurate segmentation of retinal lesions as well as a better extraction of textural features to be used for pathology detection. This work proposes the use of sparse representations and dictionary learning techniques for retinal vessel inpainting. The performance of the algorithm is tested for greyscale and RGB images from the DRIVE and STARE public databases, employing different neighbourhoods and sparseness factors. Moreover, a comparison with the most common inpainting family, diffusion-based methods, is carried out. For this purpose, two different ways of assessing the quality of the inpainting are presented and used to evaluate the results of the non-artificial inpainting, i.e. where a reference image does not exist. The results suggest that the use of sparse-based inpainting performs very well for retinal blood vessels removal which will be useful for the future detection and classification of eye diseases.
•The performance of sparse-based inpainting for retinal vessel removal was explored.•A way to assess inpainting methods in non-artificial applications is established.•Different configurations of the sparse-based inpainting were tested and evaluated.•RGB-separated inpainting and RGB-jointly inpainting were compared.•An objective comparison of inpainting methods was carried out.
The achievement of microarcsecond relative astrometry in the near-infrared, with ground-based extremely large telescopes (ELTs) requires an extremely careful calibration strategy. In this paper we ...address the removal of optical distortions originating from the ELT's first light instrument MICADO and its adaptive optics system MAORY by means of a Warm Astrometric calibration Mask (WAM). The results of the test campaign on small spatial scales (1.5 mm) of a prototype mask has confirmed the manufacturing precision down to ∼50 nm/1 mm scale, leading to a relative precision of δ ∼ 5 10−5. The assessed manufacturing precision indicates that an astrometric relative precision of δ ∼ 5 10 − 5 = 50 as 1 ″ , corresponding to the MICADO astrometric requirement, is in principle achievable, reaching microarcsecond near-infrared astrometry on an ELT. The impact of ∼20 nm, (peak to valley) error residuals on position of the pinholes of the mask is tolerable at a calibration level as confirmed by ray tracing simulations of realistic MICADO distortion patterns affected by mid spatial frequencies (MSFs) residuals. Here we demonstrate that the MICADO astrometric precision of 50 as over 1″ field of view is also achievable in the presence of a MSFs pattern and manufacturing errors of the WAM, found by fitting the distorted WAM pattern seen through the instrument with a 10th order Legendre polynomial.
In a growing concern of water and energy availability decrease, the sustainable growth of Jatropha curcas L. may be a feasible and complementary alternative within the local non-conventional energies ...field. This study emphasizes the idea of using reclaimed water agriculture implemented as a complementary local energy option. The main goal of this work focuses on monitoring the environmental affections and feasibility of treated water reuse for J. curcas L. irrigation. Two parcels were irrigated with two different water qualities: well groundwater (WG) and reclaimed water (RW). Differences were found in terms of nitrate, ammonia, sulphate, chloride, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), chemical oxygen demand (COD) and metals concentrations between the two irrigation water qualities. However, after one year of study, no significant differences in the leaves composition were measured with the exception of Fe (WG=85.17 and RW=102.63mg/kg) and Mn (WG=83.98 and RW=43.51mg/kg). The statistical analysis shows no significant differences in height, collar diameter and crown diameter (WG=142.4, 5.7 and 157.1cm; RW=143.5, 5.4 and 154.7cm, respectively). So far the aquifer water quality was only slightly affected in terms of total nitrogen (NT) after irrigation when rainfall took place. DOC and COD in groundwater were always below 5 and 15mg/L, respectively. As a conclusion, wastewater reuse for irrigation does not provide a negative effect in J. curcas L. feasibility, becoming an alternative option in the renewable energy field. An environmental monitoring is necessary to guarantee a sustainable management.
In this paper, we discuss the most significant application opportunities and outline the challenges in real-time and energy-efficient management of the distributed resources available in mobile ...devices and at the Internet-to-Data Center. We also present an energy-efficient adaptive scheduler for Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC) that operates at the edge of a vehicular network, connected to the served Vehicular Clients (VCs) through an Infrastructure-to-Vehicular (I2V) over multiple Foglets (Fls). The scheduler optimizes the energy by leveraging the heterogeneity of Fls, where the Fl provider shapes the system workload by maximizing the task admission rate over data transfer and computation. The presented scheduling algorithm demonstrates that the resulting adaptive scheduler allows scalable and distributed implementation.
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