Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a long-term condition in which the kidneys do not work correctly. It has a high prevalence and represents a serious hazard to human health and estimated to affects ...hundreds of millions of people. Diabetes and hypertension are the two principal causes of CKD. The progression of CKD is characterized by the loss of renal cells and their replacement by extracellular matrix (ECM), independently of the associated disease. Thus, one of the consequences of CKD is glomerulosclerosis and tubulointerstitial fibrosis caused by an imbalance between excessive synthesis and reduced breakdown of the ECM. There are many molecules and cells that are associated with progression of renal fibrosis e.g. angiotensin II (Ang II). Therefore, in order to understand the biopathology of renal fibrosis and for the evaluation of new treatments, the use of animal models is crucial such as: surgical, chemical and physical models, spontaneous models, genetic models and in vitro models. However, there are currently no effective treatments for preventing the progression of renal fibrosis. Therefore it is essential to improve our knowledge of the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the progress of renal fibrosis in order to achieve a reversion/elimination of renal fibrosis.
The global scale-up in demand for animal protein is the most notable dietary trend of our time. Antimicrobial consumption in animals is threefold that of humans and has enabled large-scale animal ...protein production. The consequences for the development of antimicrobial resistance in animals have received comparatively less attention than in humans. We analyzed 901 point prevalence surveys of pathogens in developing countries to map resistance in animals. China and India represented the largest hotspots of resistance, with new hotspots emerging in Brazil and Kenya. From 2000 to 2018, the proportion of antimicrobials showing resistance above 50% increased from 0.15 to 0.41 in chickens and from 0.13 to 0.34 in pigs. Escalating resistance in animals is anticipated to have important consequences for animal health and, eventually, for human health.
Abstract
Background
Rising antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a threat to modern medicine, and increasing international mobility facilitates the spread of AMR. Infections with resistant organisms have ...higher morbidity and mortality, are costlier to treat, result in longer hospital stays and place a greater burden on health systems than infections caused by susceptible organisms. Here we review the role of travel in the international dissemination of AMR and consider actions at the levels of travelers, travel medicine practitioners and policymakers that would mitigate this threat.
Results
Resistant pathogens do not recognize international borders; travelers to areas with high AMR prevalence are likely to be exposed to resistant bacteria and return to their home countries colonized. Medical tourists go between health facilities with drastically different rates of AMR, potentially transmitting highly resistant strains.
Drug-resistant bacteria have been found in every continent; however, differences between countries in the prevalence of AMR depend on multiple factors. These include levels of antibiotic consumption (including inappropriate use), access to clean water, adequate sanitation, vaccination coverage, the availability of quality healthcare and access to high-quality medical products.
Conclusions
Travelers to areas with high levels of AMR should have vaccines up to date, be aware of ways of treating and preventing travelers’ diarrhea (other than antibiotic use) and be informed on safe sexual practices. The healthcare systems of low- and middle-income countries require investment to reduce the transmission of resistant strains by improving access to clean water, sanitation facilities and vaccines. Efforts are needed to curb inappropriate antibiotic use worldwide. In addition, more surveillance is needed to understand the role of the movement of humans, livestock and food products in resistance transmission. The travel medicine community has a key role to play in advocating for the recognition of AMR as a priority on the international health agenda.
Key policy recommendations
AMR is a threat to modern medicine, and international travel plays a key role in the spread of highly resistant strains. It is essential that this is addressed at multiple levels. Individual travelers can reduce antibiotic consumption and the likelihood of infection. Travelers should have up-to-date vaccines and be informed on methods of preventing and treating travelers’ diarrhea, other than use of antibiotics and on safe sexual practices, such as condom use. Healthcare facilities need to be aware of the travel history of patients to provide appropriate treatment to those who are at high risk of exposure and to prevent further spread. Internationally, in countries without reliable and universal access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene, investment is needed to reduce the emergence and spread of resistance and ensure the antimicrobials available are of assured quality. High-income countries must ensure their use of antimicrobials is appropriate to reduce selection for AMR. Surveillance across all countries is needed to monitor and respond to this emerging threat.
Optical backbone networks, characterized by using optical fibers as a transmission medium, constitute the fundamental infrastructure employed today by network operators to deliver services to users. ...As network capacity is one of the key factors influencing optical network performance, it is important to comprehend its limitations and have the capability to estimate its value. In this context, we revisit the concept of capacity from various perspectives, including channel capacity, link capacity, and network capacity, thus providing an integrated view of the problem within the framework of the backbone tier. Hence, we review the fundamental concepts behind optical networks, along with the basic physical phenomena present in optical fiber transmission, and provide methodologies for estimating the different types of capacities, mainly using simple formulations. In particular, we propose a method to evaluate the network capacity that relies on the optical reach to account for physical layer aspects, in conjunction with capacitated routing techniques for traffic routing. We apply this method to three reference networks and obtain capacities ranging from tens to hundreds of terabits/s. Whenever possible, we also compare our results with published experimental data to understand how they relate.
A novel hybrid composite material, PMo10V2@MIL-101 was prepared by the encapsulation of the tetra-butylammonium (TBA) salt of the vanadium-substituted phosphomolybdate PMo10V2O40(5-) (PMo10V2) into ...the porous metal-organic framework (MOF) MIL-101(Cr). The materials characterization by powder X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectra and scanning electron microscopy confirmed the preparation of the composite material without disruption of the MOF porous structure. Pyrolytic graphite electrodes modified with the original components (MIL-101(Cr), PMo10V2), and the composite material PMo10V2@MIL-101 were prepared and their electrochemical responses were studied by cyclic voltammetry. Surface confined redox processes were observed for all the immobilized materials. MIL-101(Cr) showed one-electron reduction process due to chromium centers (Cr(III) → Cr(II)), while PMo10V2 presented five reduction processes: the peak at more positive potentials is attributed to two superimposed 1-electron vanadium reduction processes (V(V) → V(IV)) and the other four peaks to Mo-centred two-electron reduction processes (Mo(VI) → Mo(V)). The electrochemical behavior of the composite material PMo10V2@MIL-101 showed both MIL-101(Cr) and PMo10V2 redox features, although with the splitting of the two vanadium processes and the shift of the Mo- and Cr- centered processes to more negative potentials. Finally, PMo10V2@MIL-101 modified electrode showed outstanding enhanced vanadium-based electrocatalytic properties towards ascorbic acid oxidation, in comparison with the free PMo10V2, as a result of its immobilization into the porous structure of the MOF. Furthermore, PMo10V2@MIL-101 modified electrode showed successful simultaneous detection of ascorbic acid and dopamine.
In long-term emergency operations such as refugee camps, humanitarian aid faces logistical and budgetary limitations. Thus far, the energy systems that supply these operations are designed with ...little insight on demand needs, leading to the deployment of standardized fossil-dependent solutions which, albeit presenting low investment costs, are pollutant and often inefficient.
This work applies a multi-disciplinary methodology to develop an energy demand modelling framework for Tier 0 refugee camps, and assesses the implementation of alternative power supply systems. It does so by not only focusing on its techno-economic feasibility, but equally through investigating the challenges on adoption in the specific context of refugee camps, by undertaking interviews with relevant stakeholders in the humanitarian sector. The modelling application has been performed for the Mantapala refugee camp, in Zambia, enabling the comparison of different combinations of power supply systems against current diesel-based solutions, using HOMER software.
Results show that the implementation of hybrid renewable energy systems is viable, both technically and economically, with energy costs being reduced up to 50%, with paybacks lower than five years. However, from the interviews performed, some non-technical constraints that may hinder the adoption of these systems in refugee camps were identified, such as uncertainty, lack of funding and difficulties on risk-sharing collaborations. As such, a discussion focused on possible strategies that may help overcome these barriers is presented.
•Most refugees lack reliable, clean, safe, and cost-efficient energy access.•The methodology for assessing energy demand in refugee camps is developed.•Suitable Renewable supply systems are investigated, after interviews with experts.•Techno-economic modelling of hybrid renewable supply systems shows 50% cost savings.•Adoption of such systems still faces social and financial barriers.
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•Very high selectivities for CO2/CH4 separation were obtained.•13CO2 ssNMR and DFT computational methods provided molecular insights.•Selectivity depends on the CO2 reaction and on ...interaction with chemisorbed species.•Gibbs energies from DFT/cluster calculations agree with the observed CO2 adsorption properties.•Primary amines give a compromise of high selectivity and good working capacity.
The separation of CO2/CH4 gas mixtures on mesoporous SBA-15 functionalized with primary, secondary and tertiary amines, and a diamine (primary and secondary), was studied by gas adsorption, solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) and electronic structure density functional theory (DFT) techniques to evaluate the possible application of amine functionalized mesoporous silicas in the purification of natural or biogas sources. High pressure adsorption, up to 10 bar, showed a strong selective interaction of CO2 with primary amine, secondary amine and diamine that give separation selectivities up to 25, 3300 and 15000, respectively, due to the chemisorption of CO2. Notably, not all amines are saturated at pressures below 40 kPa, as demonstrated by the 13C ssNMR spectra with variable 13CO2 pressure. Furthermore, ssNMR and DFT results indicated that physisorbed CO2 interacts with the formed chemisorbed species, providing a possible explanation for the high selectivity observed even beyond the saturation of amines. Reaction Gibbs energies of CO2 with the amines estimated by DFT computational methods are in excellent agreement with observed differences in the experimental Henry’s constants, selectivities and phase diagrams. Preliminary assessment of the materials for possible application on cyclic separation by pressure modulation indicated that although secondary amine and diamine originate very high selectivities, they are not very suitable for applications because of the lower working capacities (below 1.3 mmol g−1). The material functionalized with primary amine presents a better compromise between the high selectivity for separation and a good working capacity (about 2 mmol g−1).
The difficult job of fighting fires and the nearly impossible task to stop a wildfire without great casualties requires an imperative implementation of proactive strategies. These strategies must ...decrease the number of fires, the burnt area and create better conditions for the firefighting. In this line of action, the Portuguese Institute of Nature and Forest Conservation defined a fire break network (FBN), which helps controlling wildfires. However, these fire breaks are efficient only if they are correctly maintained, which should be ensured by the local authorities and requires verification from the national authorities. This is a fastidious task since they have a large network of thousands of hectares to monitor over a full year. With the increasing quality and frequency of the Earth Observation Satellite imagery with Sentinel-2 and the definition of the FBN, a semi-automatic remote sensing methodology is proposed in this article for the detection of maintenance operations in a fire break. The proposed methodology is based on a time-series analysis, an object-based classification and a change detection process. The change detection is ensured by an artificial neural network, with reflectance bands and spectral indices as features. Additionally, an analysis of several bands and spectral indices is presented to show the behaviour of the data during a full year and in the presence of a maintenance operation. The proposed methodology achieved a relative error lower than 4% and a recall higher than 75% on the detection of maintenance operations.
High-resolution population grids built from historical census data can ease the analyses of geographical population changes, at the same time also facilitating the combination of population data with ...other GIS layers to perform analyses on a wide range of topics. This article reports on experiments with a hybrid spatial disaggregation technique that combines the ideas of dasymetric mapping and pycnophylactic interpolation, using modern machine learning methods to combine different types of ancillary variables, in order to disaggregate historical census data into a 200 m resolution grid. We specifically report on experiments related to the disaggregation of historical population counts from three different national censuses which took place around 1900, respectively in Great Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The obtained results indicate that the proposed method is indeed highly accurate, outperforming simpler disaggregation schemes based on mass-preserving areal weighting or pycnophylactic interpolation. The best results were obtained using modern regression methods (i.e., gradient tree boosting or convolutional neural networks, depending on the case study), which previously have only seldom been used for spatial disaggregation.
Accurate identification of Plasmodium infections in community surveys is essential to successful malaria control. Microscopy and rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are the main techniques used to diagnose ...malaria in field-based surveys. While microscopy is still considered the gold standard, RDTs are growing in popularity as they allow for rapid and inexpensive diagnosis. Using data from a prevalence survey conducted in north-western Angola in 2010, the authors aimed to compare the performance of microscopy and RDTs in identifying Plasmodium falciparum infections, using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) as the gold standard.
Results from 3,307 subjects (1,225 preschool-aged children (zero to five year olds), 1,134 school-aged children (six to 15 year olds) and 948 mothers/caregivers (>15 years of age)), tested for P. falciparum infections, were utilized. The sensitivity, specificity, positive, and negative predictive values (PPV and NPV) of microscopy and Paracheck-Pf® were compared using the McNemar's test and the weighted generalized score Chi-squared test for paired data.
The prevalence of P. falciparum infections determined by PCR and microscopy was 15.9% and by Paracheck- Pf® was 16.3%. Compared to microscopy, Paracheck-Pf® had significantly higher sensitivity (72.8% versus 60%), specificity (94.3% versus 92.5%), PPV (70.7% versus 60%) and NPV (94.8% versus 92.5%). Both tests had significantly lower sensitivity in mothers (36.8% for microscopy and 43.7% for Paracheck-Pf®) than in their children (68.4% in zero to five years-old and 60.6% in six to 15 years-old for microscopy and 80.4% in zero to five year-olds and 76.5% in six to 15 year-olds for Paracheck-Pf®).
Both microscopy and RDTs performed suboptimally when compared to PCR. False negativity could be associated with the low parasite density profile of the samples. False positivity may be related to the well-described limitations of those techniques such as level of expertise of microscopists or persistent antigenicity from previous infections in the case of RDTs. Nevertheless, RDTs had enhanced performance comparatively to microscopy in detecting malaria infections, favouring their use in community cross-sectional malaria surveys, where expert performance of microscopy is hard to accomplish.
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