Bioelectrochemical processes are emerging as one of the most efficient and sustainable technologies for wastewater treatment. Their application for industrial wastewater treatment is still low due to the high toxicity and difficulty of biological treatment for industrial effluents. This is especially relevant in pharmaceutical industries, where different solvents, active pharma ingredients (APIs), extreme pH, and salinity usually form a lethal cocktail for the bacterial community in bioreactors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe gut microbiota is widely implicated in host health and disease, inspiring translational efforts to implement our growing body of knowledge in clinical settings. However, the need to characterize gut microbiota by its genomic content limits the feasibility of rapid, point-of-care diagnostics. The microbiota produces a diverse array of xenobiotic metabolites that disseminate into tissues, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that may be excreted in breath.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Many insect-borne pathogens appear to manipulate the odors of their hosts in ways that influence vector behaviors. In our prior work, we identified characteristic changes in volatile emissions of cultured Plasmodium falciparum parasites in vitro and during natural human falciparum malaria. In the current study, we prospectively evaluate the reproducibility of these findings in an independent cohort of children in Blantyre, Malawi.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroducion: Fungal melanin is an underexplored natural biomaterial of great biotechnological interest in different areas. This study investigated the physical, chemical, electrochemical, and metal-binding properties of melanin extracted from the metallotolerant black fungus strain IRTA-M2-F10.
Materials And Methods: Specific inhibitory studies with tricyclazole and biochemical profiling of whole cells by synchrotron radiation-based Fourier-transform infrared spectral microscopy (SR-FTIRM) were performed.
Microbial electrosynthesis (MES) constitutes a bioelectrochemical process where bacteria uptake electrons extracellularly from a polarized electrode to incorporate them into their anabolic metabolism. However, the efficiency of current MES reactor designs can be lower than expected due to limitations regarding electron transfer and mass transport. One of the most promising bioreactor configurations to overcome these bottlenecks is the Microbial Electrochemical Fluidized Bed Reactor (ME-FBR).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSore throat is one of the most common complaints encountered in the ambulatory clinical setting. Rapid, culture-independent diagnostic techniques that do not rely on pharyngeal swabs would be highly valuable as a point-of-care strategy to guide outpatient antibiotic treatment. Despite the promise of this approach, efforts to detect volatiles during oropharyngeal infection have yet been limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In patients undergoing high-risk surgery, it is recommended to titrate fluid administration using stroke volume or a dynamic variable of fluid responsiveness (FR). However, this strategy usually requires the use of a hemodynamic monitor and/or an arterial catheter. Recently, it has been shown that variations of central venous pressure (ΔCVP) during an alveolar recruitment maneuver (ARM) can predict FR and that there is a correlation between CVP and peripheral venous pressure (PVP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Ethical questions are poorly investigated specifically in radiation oncology. The objective of the study was to identify and understand the main ethical issue in radiation oncology.
Materials And Methods: A quantitative analysis was based on the answers to a questionnaire of 200 professionals from 22 radiation oncology departments.
Introduction: Vasopressor infusions are essential in treating and preventing intraoperative hypotension. Closed-loop vasopressor therapy outperforms clinicians when the target is set at a mean arterial pressure (MAP) baseline, but little is known on the performance metrics of closed-loop vasopressor infusions when systolic arterial pressure (SAP) is the controlled variable. Methods: Patients undergoing intermediate- to high-risk abdominal surgery were included in this prospective cohort feasibility study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Starkly highlighted by the current COVID-19 pandemic, infectious diseases continue to have an outsized impact on human health worldwide. Diagnostic testing for infection can be challenging due to resource limitations, time constraints, or shortcomings in the accuracy of existing diagnostics. Rapid, simple diagnostics are highly desirable.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSARS-CoV-2 infection is diagnosed through detection of specific viral nucleic acid or antigens from respiratory samples. These techniques are relatively expensive, slow, and susceptible to false-negative results. A rapid noninvasive method to detect infection would be highly advantageous.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile the world awaits a widely available COVID-19 vaccine, availability of testing is limited in many regions and can be further compounded by shortages of reagents, prolonged processing time and delayed results. One approach to rapid testing is to leverage the volatile organic compound (VOC) signature of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Detection dogs, a biological sensor of VOCs, were utilized to investigate whether SARS-CoV-2 positive urine and saliva patient samples had a unique odor signature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Acute kidney injury (AKI) occurs frequently after liver transplant surgery and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. While the impact of intraoperative hypotension (IOH) on postoperative AKI has been well demonstrated in patients undergoing a wide variety of non-cardiac surgeries, it remains poorly studied in liver transplant surgery. We tested the hypothesis that IOH is associated with AKI following liver transplant surgery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSARS-CoV-2 infection is diagnosed through detection of specific viral nucleic acid or antigens from respiratory samples. These techniques are relatively expensive, slow, and susceptible to false-negative results. A rapid non-invasive method to detect infection would be highly advantageous.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF•Experimental Set-up allows to polarize several working electrodes at the same time.•Chronoamperometry can be performed simultaneously with a potentiostat.•The physicochemical and biological conditions in each working electrode will be exactly the same.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEuphorbia lathyris was proposed about fifty years ago as a potential agroenergetic crop. The tremendous amounts of triterpenes present in its latex has driven investigations for transforming this particular biological fluid into an industrial hydrocarbon source. The huge accumulation of terpenes in the latex of many plant species represent a challenging question regarding cellular homeostasis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBreath collection and analysis can be used to discover volatile biomarkers in a number of infectious and non-infectious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, lung cancer, and liver disease. This protocol describes a reproducible method for sampling breath in children and then stabilizing breath samples for further analysis with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The goal of this method is to establish a standardized protocol for the acquisition of breath samples for further chemical analysis, from children aged 4-15 years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe quality of packaged dried foods depends on storage conditions and is determined largely by the initial gas composition inside and the transference through the container. The aim of this work was to analyze the O₂ and CO₂ concentrations within the internal atmosphere of the packaging. In this study, dried apricots and raisins were packaged in glass jars and polypropylene trays thermosealed with different polymers, and stored at 5, 15, 25, and 35 °C.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this report, we present a post hoc analysis from two observational cohorts, comparing the global breath volatile profile captured when using polymer sampling bags (mixed breath) versus Bio-VOC™ (alveolar breath). The cohorts were originally designed to characterize the breath volatile profiles of Malawian children with and without uncomplicated falciparum malaria. Children aged 3-15 years were recruited from ambulatory pediatric centers in Lilongwe, Malawi.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe evaluated the effect of haemolysis, bilirubin, lipemia, hyperglycemia and natremia on mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration (MCHC) measured by XN 2000 (Sysmex). Our evaluation had shown than correction is necessary for haemolysis and lipemia but not for icterus. There were not possible to reproduce variation of MCHC with hyperglycemia or variation of natremia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci
October 2018
Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) instruments provide researchers and clinicians with a vast amount of information on sample composition, thus these instruments are seen as gold standard in breath analysis research. However, there are many factors that can confound the data measured by GC-MS instruments. These factors will make interpretation of GC-MS data unreliable for breath analysis research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe previously showed that thioether levels in the exhaled breath volatiles of volunteers undergoing controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) with P. falciparum increase as infection progresses. In this study, we show that thioethers have diurnal cyclical increasing patterns and their levels are significantly higher in P.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The aim of this work is to verify the use of radiochromic film in the quality assurance (QA) of volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) lung stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) plans and compare the results with those obtained using an ion chamber array.
Materials And Methods: QA was performed for 14 plans using a two-dimensional-array seven29 and EBT3 film. Dose values per session ranged between 7.
The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), is a worldwide pest of stored grains. Using "Y"-tube olfactometry we studied the response of T. castaneum to odors from simulated wheat infestations containing conspecifics, and infestations containing the lesser grain borer, Rhyzopertha dominica (F.
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