•Bio-refineries are an adequate framework to process organic waste materials.•Spent coffee grounds can be completely utilized in a bio-refinery to obtain high-value products.•A full set of high value ...products, biofuels and bioenergy can be obtained in a SCG bio-refinery.•Significant challenges still exist to develop and implement waste based bio-refineries.
Although normally seen as a problem, current policies and strategic plans concur that if adequately managed, waste can be a source of the most interesting and valuable products, among which metals, oils and fats, lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses, tannins, antioxidants, caffeine, polyphenols, pigments, flavonoids, through recycling, compound recovery or energy valorization, following the waste hierarchy. Besides contributing to more sustainable and circular economies, those products also have high commercial value when compared to the ones obtained by currently used waste treatment methods. In this paper, it is shown how the bio-refinery framework can be used to obtain high value products from organic waste. With spent coffee grounds as a case study, a sequential process is used to obtain first the most valuable, and then other products, allowing proper valorization of residues and increased sustainability of the whole process. Challenges facing full development and implementation of waste based bio-refineries are highlighted.
Aims. We develop a method for membership assignment in stellar clusters using only photometry and positions. The method is aimed to be unsupervised, data driven, model free, and to rely on as few ...assumptions as possible. Methods. The approach followed in this work for membership assessment is based on an iterative process, principal component analysis, clustering algorithm, and kernel density estimations. The method, UPMASK, is able to take into account arbitrary error models. An implementation in R was tested on simulated clusters that covered a broad range of ages, masses, distances, reddenings, and also on real data of cluster fields. Results. Running UPMASK on simulations showed that the method effectively separates cluster and field populations. The overall spatial structure and distribution of cluster member stars in the colour-magnitude diagram were recovered under a broad variety of conditions. For a set of 360 simulations, the resulting true positive rates (a measurement of purity) and member recovery rates (a measurement of completeness) at the 90% membership probability level reached high values for a range of open cluster ages (107.1 − 109.5 yr), initial masses (0.5 − 10 × 103M⊙) and heliocentric distances (0.5 − 4.0 kpc). UPMASK was also tested on real data from the fields of open cluster Haffner 16 and of the closely projected clusters Haffner 10 and Czernik 29. These tests showed that even for moderate variable extinction and cluster superposition, the method yielded useful cluster membership probabilities and provided some insight into their stellar contents. The UPMASK implementation will be available at the CRAN archive.
Stingrays are thought to play important ecological roles in coral reef ecosystems. However, little is known about juvenile stingray movement patterns and habitat use in coral reefs. This study used ...active acoustic telemetry to determine fine-scale diel movement patterns and habitat use of juvenile cowtail stingrays (Pastinachus ater) in a coral reef flat environment. Seven cowtail stingrays (4 males and 3 females) were manually tracked between April and December 2016. Each individual was tracked over 2 days, generating a total of 14 active tracks ranging from 4.91 to 9 h. Specimens moved at an average speed of 2.44 m min-1 ± 0.87 SE, with minimum distances travelled ranging from 546 to 1446 m. Tracking data showed that juvenile cowtail stingrays move in response to tidal cycles, moving faster and in straighter pathways during incoming and outgoing tides. Juvenile cowtail stingrays also showed a strong affinity to sand flat areas and mangrove edge areas. These areas provide food resources and potential refuges for juvenile rays to avoid predators. Coral reef flats were identified as secondary refuge for juveniles during the lowest tides. Future research is necessary to fully unveil the major drivers of juvenile cowtail stingray seasonal and ontogenetic movement patterns and habitat use within coral reef flat environments. This information is important to establish a full understanding of juvenile cowtail stingray ecology, but could also improve management and conservation policies.
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are a heterogeneous group of natural particles that are relevant to the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. These endogenous vesicles have certain properties that allow ...them to survive in the extracellular space, bypass biological barriers and deliver their biologically active molecular cargo to recipient cells. Moreover, EVs can be bioengineered to increase their stability, bioactivity, presentation to acceptor cells and capacity for on-target binding at both cell-type-specific and tissue-specific levels. Bioengineering of EVs involves the modification of the donor cell before EV isolation or direct modification of the EV properties after isolation. The therapeutic potential of native EVs and bioengineered EVs has been only minimally explored in the context of cardiovascular diseases. Efforts to harness the therapeutic potential of EVs will require innovative approaches and a comprehensive integration of knowledge gathered from decades of research into molecular-compound delivery. In this Review, we outline the endogenous properties of EVs that make them natural delivery agents as well as the features that can be improved by bioengineering. We also discuss the therapeutic applications of native and bioengineered EVs to cardiovascular diseases and examine the opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed to advance this research area, with an emphasis on clinical translation.
A stricter definition of a deep eutectic solvent (DES) is urgent, so that it may become a sound basis for further developments in this field. This communication aims at contributing to deepening the ...understanding of eutectic and deep eutectic mixtures concerning their definition, thermodynamic nature and modelling. The glut of literature on DES applications should be followed by a similar effort to address the fundamental questions on their nature. This hopefully would contribute to correct some widespread misconceptions, and help to establish a stringent definition of what a DES is. DES are eutectic mixtures for which the eutectic point temperature should be lower to that of an ideal liquid mixture. To identify and characterize them, their phase diagrams should be known, in order to compare the real temperature depression to that predicted if ideality is assumed, and to define composition ranges for which they are in the liquid state at operating temperatures. It is also shown that hydrogen bonding between the DES components should not be used to define or characterize a DES, since this would describe many ideal mixtures. The future of deep eutectic solvents is quite promising, and we expect that this work will contribute to the efficient design and selection of the best DES for a given application, and to model properties and phase equilibria without which the process design is impractical.
Sustainable production of renewable energy is being hotly debated globally since it is increasingly understood that first generation biofuels, primarily produced from food crops and mostly oil seeds ...are limited in their ability to achieve targets for biofuel production, climate change mitigation and economic growth. These concerns have increased the interest in developing second generation biofuels produced from non-food feedstocks such as microalgae, which potentially offer greatest opportunities in the longer term. This paper reviews the current status of microalgae use for biodiesel production, including their cultivation, harvesting, and processing. The microalgae species most used for biodiesel production are presented and their main advantages described in comparison with other available biodiesel feedstocks. The various aspects associated with the design of microalgae production units are described, giving an overview of the current state of development of algae cultivation systems (photo-bioreactors and open ponds). Other potential applications and products from microalgae are also presented such as for biological sequestration of CO
2, wastewater treatment, in human health, as food additive, and for aquaculture.
B-lymphocyte-induced maturation protein-1 (Blimp1), is an evolutionarily conserved transcriptional regulator originally described as a repressor of gene transcription. Blimp1 crucially regulates ...embryonic development and terminal differentiation in numerous cell lineages, including immune cells. Initial investigations of Blimp1's role in immunity established its non-redundant role in lymphocytic terminal effector differentiation and function. In B cells, Blimp1 drives plasmablast formation and antibody secretion, whereas in T cells, Blimp1 regulates functional differentiation, including cytokine gene expression. These studies established Blimp1 as an essential transcriptional regulator that promotes efficient and controlled adaptive immunity. Recent studies have also demonstrated important roles for Blimp1 in innate immune cells, specifically myeloid cells, and Blimp1 has been established as an intrinsic regulator of dendritic cell maturation and T cell priming. Emerging studies have determined both conserved and unique functions of Blimp1 in different immune cell subsets, including the unique direct activation of the
gene transcription in B cells and a conserved antagonism with BCL6 in B cells, T cells, and myeloid cells. Moreover, polymorphisms associated with the gene encoding Blimp1 (
) have been linked to numerous chronic inflammatory conditions in humans. Blimp1 has been shown to regulate target gene expression by either competing with other transcription factors for binding to the target loci, and/or by recruiting various chromatin-modifying co-factors that promote suppressive chromatin structure, such as histone de-acetylases and methyl-transferases. Further, Blimp1 function has been shown to be essentially dose and context-dependent, which adds to Blimp1's versatility as a regulator of gene expression. Here, we review Blimp1's complex roles in immunity and highlight specific gaps in the understanding of the biology of this transcriptional regulator, with a major focus on aspects that could foster the description and understanding of novel pathways regulated by Blimp1 in the immune system.
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