•Community ecology and dynamics in bioreactors in WWTPs are complex processes.•Progress in ecology, molecular biology, immobilization, bioreactor design are reviewed.•Emerging research facilitates ...novel applications in bioaugmented bioreactors.•Bioaugmentation should ultimately be assessed by data from field implementation.
Bioaugmentation (the process of adding selected strains/mixed cultures to wastewater reactors to improve the catabolism of specific compounds, e.g. refractory organics, or overall COD) is a promising technique to solve practical problems in wastewater treatment plants, and enhance removal efficiency. The potential of this option can now be enhanced in order to take advantage of important advances in the fields of microbial ecology, molecular biology, immobilization techniques and advanced bioreactor design. Reports on bioaugmentation in WWT show the difficulties in evaluating the potential parameters involved, leading frequently to inconclusive outcomes. Many studies have been carried out on the basis of trial-and-error approaches, and it has been reported that reactors bioaugmented with pure cultures often fail to perform as well as the pure cultures under laboratory conditions. As an interesting technical challenge, the feasibility of bioaugmentation should ultimately be assessed by data from field implementation, and this review highlights several promising areas to explore in the future.
Today, food safety and quality are some of the main concerns of consumer and health agencies around the world. Our current lifestyle and market globalization have led to an increase in the number of ...people affected by food poisoning. Foodborne illness and food poisoning have different origins (bacteria, virus, parasites, mold, contaminants, etc.), and some cases of food poisoning can be traced back to chemical and natural toxins. One of the toxins targeted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is the biogenic amine histamine. Biogenic amines (BAs) in food constitute a potential public health concern due to their physiological and toxicological effects. The consumption of foods containing high concentrations of biogenic amines has been associated with health hazards. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of food poisoning cases associated with BAs in food, mainly in relation to histamines in fish. We need to gain a better understanding of the origin of foodborne disease and how to control it if we expect to keep people from getting ill. Biogenic amines are found in varying concentrations in a wide range of foods (fish, cheese, meat, wine, beer, vegetables, etc.), and BA formation is influenced by different factors associated with the raw material making up food products, microorganisms, processing, and conservation conditions. Moreover, BAs are thermostable. Biogenic amines also play an important role as indicators of food quality and/or acceptability. Hence, BAs need to be controlled in order to ensure high levels of food quality and safety. All of these aspects will be addressed in this review.
In this article, we study the full one-loop SUSY contributions to the lepton flavor violating Higgs decay harrowrighttaumu, within the context of the supersymmetric inverse seesaw model. We assume ...that both the right-handed neutrino masses, M sub()R and their supersymmetric partner masses, m sub(nu)R are not far from the interesting scriptO(TeV) energy scale, and we work with scenarios with large neutrino Yukawa couplings that transmit large lepton flavor violating effects. By exploring the behavior with the most relevant parameters, mainly M sub()R m sub(nu)Rand the trilinear sneutrino coupling A sub(nu), we will look for regions of the parameter space where the enhancement of BR(harrowrighttaumu) is large enough to reach values at the percent level, which could explain the excess recently reported by CMS and ATLAS at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
An important task at future colliders is the measurement of the triple Higgs coupling. Depending on its size relative to the Standard Model (SM) value, certain collider options result in a higher ...experimental accuracy. Within the framework of Two Higgs Doublet Models (2HDM) types I and II we investigate the allowed ranges for all triple Higgs couplings involving at least one light, SM-like Higgs boson. We take into account theoretical constraints (unitarity, stability), experimental constraints from direct Higgs-boson searches, measurements of the SM-like Higgs-boson properties, flavor observables and electroweak precision data. We find that the SM-type triple Higgs coupling w.r.t. its SM value,
λ
hhh
/
λ
SM
, can range between
∼
-
0.5
and
∼
1.5
. Depending on which value is realized, the HL-LHC can compete with, or is clearly inferior to the ILC. We find the coupling
λ
hhH
between
∼
-
1.5
and
∼
1.5
. Triple Higgs couplings involving two heavy Higgs bosons,
λ
hHH
,
λ
hAA
and
λ
h
H
+
H
-
can reach values up to
O
(
10
)
, roughly independent of the 2HDM type. This can lead to potentially strongly enhanced production of two Higgs-bosons at the HL-LHC or high-energy
e
+
e
-
colliders.
In this paper we consider a Higgs boson with mass and other properties compatible with those of the recently discovered Higgs particle at the LHC, and explore the possibility of new Higgs leptonic ...decays, beyond the standard model, with the singular feature of being lepton flavor violating (LFV). We study these LFV Higgs decays, H arrow right l sub(k)l sub(m) , within the context of the inverse seesaw model (ISS) and consider the most generic case where three additional pairs of massive right-handed singlet neutrinos are added to the standard model particle content. We require in addition that the input parameters of this ISS model are compatible with the present neutrino data and other constraints, like perturbativity of the neutrino Yukawa couplings. We present a full one-loop computation of the BR(H arrow right l sub(k)l sub(m) ) rates for the three possible channels, l sub(k)l sub(m) = mu tau, etau, e mu , and analyze in full detail the predictions as functions of the various relevant ISS parameters. We study in parallel the correlated one-loop predictions for the radiative decays, l sub(m) arrow right l sub(k) gamma , within this same ISS context, and require full compatibility of our predictions with the present experimental bounds for the three radiative decays, mu arrow right e gamma , tau arrow right mu gamma , and tau arrow right e gamma . After exploring the ISS parameter space we conclude on the maximum allowed LFV Higgs decay rates within the ISS.
Raman spectroscopy data have been compared to different traditional methodologies such as protein solubility, apparent viscosity, water holding capacity, instrumental texture methods, dimethylamine ...content, peroxide values, and fatty acid composition commonly used to determine quality in fish and meat muscle treated under different conditions of handling, processing and storage through the changes of proteins, water and lipids of muscle food. It has been shown that Raman spectroscopy data are related to the results obtained with these traditional quality methods and could be used to evaluate muscle food quality. In addition, Raman spectroscopy provides structural information about the changes of proteins, water and lipids of muscle food that occur during the deterioration. Raman spectroscopy can also be used for determining muscle food identification. Besides, this spectroscopy technique has several advantages compared to traditional methods since it is a direct and non-invasive technique which requires small portions of sample.
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•The role of technical parameters in PCL and PLA-based electrospun fibres is assessed.•The procedure to obtain membranes with under and above-µm-sized fibres has been set.•The ...differential effect of these diameters on drug release has been explored.
The main electrospinning parameters, i.e., polymer concentration in the injectable solution, solvents used and their proportion, flow rate, voltage and distance to collector were herein systematically modified to analyse their particular influence in fibres diameter of electrospun membranes of poly(lactic acid), polycaprolactone and their mixture. As a result of this analysis, the procedures to obtain membranes of these polymers and blend with under- and above-micron-sized fibres were established, in which the solvents ratio (chloroform/methanol and dichloromethane/dimethylformamide) and voltage were found to play the major role. Moreover, the plausible differential effect of these fibres diameters (0.8 and 1.8 µm) in the controlled release of a molecule of interest was explored, using bovine serum albumin (BSA), proving that the most effective configuration for BSA release among those studied was the PLA-PCL combination in membranes of above-micron fibres diameter.
Abstract Understanding the mechanisms responsible for carbon nanotube (CNT) internalisation into live cells is considered critical both from a fundamental point of view and for further engineering of ...CNT-based delivery systems to intracellular targets. While several studies are focused on the development of such CNT-based delivery systems, attempts to systematically elucidate the cellular uptake mechanisms of CNTs are still rather limited. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the cellular internalisation of chemically functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes ( f -MWCNTs) in the presence of different well-known cellular uptake inhibitors. Our data reveal how f -MWCNTs are able to translocate across cell membranes of both phagocytic and non-phagocytic cell lines. We have evidenced that at least 30–50% of f -MWCNTs are taken up by cells through an energy-independent mechanism. This characteristic makes nanotubes loaded with therapeutic or diagnostic cargos extremely interesting as the release of active molecules directly into the cytoplasm increase their biological activity and therapeutic efficacy.
Ultra High-Pressure Homogenization treatments at 300 MPa with inlet temperatures (Ti) of 55, 65, 75 and 85 °C were applied to commercial Ultra High Temperature treated whole milk inoculated with ...Bacillus cereus, Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus sporothermodurans, Bacillus coagulans, Geobacillus stearothermophilus and Bacillus subtilis spores in order to evaluate the inactivation level achieved. Ultra High-Pressure Homogenization conditions at 300 MPa with Ti = 75 and 85 °C were capable of a spore inactivation of ∼5 log CFU/mL. Furthermore, under these processing conditions, commercial sterility (evaluated as the complete inactivation of the inoculated spores) was obtained in milk, with the exception of G. stearothermophilus and B. subtilis treated at 300 MPa with Ti = 75 °C. The results showed that G. stearothermophilus and B. subtilis have higher resistance to the Ultra High-Pressure Homogenization treatments applied than the other microorganisms inoculated and that a treatment performed at 300 MPa with Ti = 85 °C was necessary to completely inactivate these microorganisms at the spore level inoculated (∼1 × 106 CFU/mL). Besides, a change in the resistance of B. licheniformis, B. sporothermodurans, G. stearothermophilus and B. subtilis spores was observed as the inactivation obtained increased remarkably in treatments performed with Ti between 65 and 75 °C. This study provides important evidence of the suitability of UHPH technology for the inactivation of spores in high numbers, leading to the possibility of obtaining commercially sterile milk.
•Sterility can be achieved at UHPH conditions of 300 MPa with Ti = 85 °C in milk.•UHPH treatments at 300 MPa with Ti = 75 and 85 °C produce a ∼5 log CFU/mL reduction.•Differences in the UHPH resistance was observed in the spores inoculated.•Bacillus subtilis and Geobacillus stearothermophilus presented the highest resistance.
Food security is high on the global policy agenda. Demand for food is increasing as populations grow and gain wealth to purchase more varied and resource-intensive diets. There is increased ...competition for land, water, energy, and other inputs into food production. Climate change poses challenges to agriculture, particularly in developing countries (1), and many current farming practices damage the environment and are a major source of greenhouse gases (GHG). In an increasingly globalized world, food insecurity in one region can have widespread political and economic ramifications (2).
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