Strongly ROS-Correlated, Time-Dependent, and Selective Antiproliferative Effects of Synthesized Nano Vesicles on BRAF Mutant Melanoma Cells and Their Hyaluronic Acid-Based Hydrogel Formulation.

Cutaneous metastatic melanoma (CMM) is the most aggressive form of skin cancer with a poor prognosis. Drug-induced secondary tumorigenesis and the emergency of drug resistance worsen an already worrying scenario, thus rendering urgent the development of new treatments not dealing with mutable cellular processes. Triphenyl phosphonium salts (TPPSs), in addiction to acting as cytoplasmic membrane disruptors, are reported to be mitochondria-targeting compounds, exerting anticancer effects mainly by damaging their membranes and causing depolarization, impairing mitochondria functions and their DNA, triggering oxidative stress (OS), and priming primarily apoptotic cell death.

Synthesized -Triphenyl Phosphonium-Based Nano Vesicles Have Potent and Selective Antibacterial Effects on Several Clinically Relevant Superbugs.

The increasing emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogens due to antibiotic misuse translates into obstinate infections with high morbidity and high-cost hospitalizations. To oppose these MDR superbugs, new antimicrobial options are necessary. Although both quaternary ammonium salts (QASs) and phosphonium salts (QPSs) possess antimicrobial effects, QPSs have been studied to a lesser extent.

Innovation Efficiency, Productive Performance and Undesirable Outputs across European Regions: Are there any missing links?

We introduce an analytical methodological framework that links knowledge generation efficiency with economic efficiency and the corresponding environmental impact for 199 European Regions during 2000-2018, using a benchmarking approach and especially a chain network DEA technique. A clear trade-off between knowledge generation efficiency and productive performance emerges. European regions which exhibit high innovation efficiency enjoy higher overall performance compared to their counterparts.

Technoeconomic assessment for the viable exploitation of biomass residues by an innovative pyrolysis-anaerobic digestion processing plant.

In Greece, there is no organized practice in agricultural and animal wastes management. Their exploitation is still set aside, due mainly to economic reasons and lack of incentives for their efficient utilization. Therefore, in the present work a technoeconomic assessment for the environmentally friendly useful exploitation of biomass residues produced in the Prefectures of Ilia and Achaia (Western Greece) for the generation of energy by an integrated anaerobic digestion (AD)-pyrolysis processing plant was carried out.

Antifungal activity of cyclopaldic acid from Antarctic against phytopathogenic fungi.

Unlabelled: Plant pathogens cause great economic losses in agriculture. To reduce damage, chemical pesticides have been frequently used, but these compounds in addition to causing risks to the environment and health, its continuous use has given rise to resistant phytopathogens, threatening the efficiency of control methods. One alternative for such a problem is the use of natural products with high antifungal activity and low toxicity.

Clean-Up of Heavy Metals from Contaminated Soil by Phytoremediation: A Multidisciplinary and Eco-Friendly Approach.

Pollution from heavy metals is one of the significant environmental concerns facing the world today. Human activities, such as mining, farming, and manufacturing plant operations, can allow them access to the environment. Heavy metals polluting soil can harm crops, change the food chain, and endanger human health.

Assessing temporal variability of lake turbidity and trophic state of European lakes using open data repositories.

Water turbidity is one of the more important water quality parameters that is strictly linked with the productivity of the lake and is commonly used as an indicator of the trophic state. However, limited field data availability across wide geographic gradients may hinder the conduction of large scale longitudinal studies. In this study, time series of lake turbidity and trophic state index (TSI) between 2002 and 2012 were obtained from the Copernicus Lake Water products to create a large longitudinal dataset of lake variables for 22 European lakes.

Trends of lake temperature, mixing depth and ice cover thickness of European lakes during the last four decades.

Lakes are particularly vulnerable ecosystems to global warming. Surface temperature of most lakes in the world has significantly increased. Here, we analysed time-series of water temperature, mixing-depth, and ice depth of 51 European lakes over the last four decades.

Electrospun and 3D printed polymeric materials for one-stage critical-size long bone defect regeneration inspired by the Masquelet technique: Recent Advances.

Critical-size long bone defects represent one of the major causes of fracture non-union and remain a significant challenge in orthopaedic surgery. Two-stage procedures such as a Masquelet technique demonstrate high level of success however their main disadvantage is the need for a second surgery, which is required to remove the non-resorbable cement spacer and to place the bone graft into the biological chamber formed by the 'induced membrane'. Recent research efforts have therefore been dedicated towards the design, fabrication and testing of resorbable implants that could mimic the biological functions of the cement spacer and the induced membrane.

Biochemical Μethane potential of most promising agricultural residues in Northern and Southern Greece.

Greece produces significant amounts of residual biomass due to its intense agricultural and agro-industrial sector. The anaerobic digestion process has been frequently considered as the best environmental and economic solution for energy recovery from different biodegradable waste such as agricultural waste, livestock manure, agro-industrial waste, as well as for their co-digestion. The aim of this study was the assessment of biochemical methane potential (BMP) of biomass feedstocks representative of Northern and Southern Greece, which are available during the fall/winter and spring/summer seasons, through the implementation of BMP assays.

Responses of different facets of aquatic plant diversity along environmental gradients in Mediterranean streams: Results from rivers of Greece.

Aquatic and riparian plants play a crucial role in the functioning of riverine ecosystems. Hence, analyzing multiple facets of plant diversity could be extremely useful for assessing the ecological integrity of lotic ecosystems. The main objective of this study was to investigate the response of multiple facets of aquatic plant diversity, such as species richness, taxonomic distinctness and compositional dissimilarity, to environmental factors (i.

The future for Mediterranean wetlands: 50 key issues and 50 important conservation research questions.

Unlabelled: Wetlands are critically important for biodiversity and human wellbeing, but face a range of challenges. This is especially true in the Mediterranean region, where wetlands support endemic and threatened species and remain integral to human societies, but have been severely degraded in recent decades. Here, in order to raise awareness of future challenges and opportunities for Mediterranean wetlands, and to inform proactive research and management, we identified (a) 50 key issues that might affect Mediterranean wetlands between 2020 and 2050, and (b) 50 important research questions that, if answered, would have the greatest impact on the conservation of Mediterranean wetlands between 2020 and 2050.

Bis-Tridendate Ir(III) Polymer-Metallocomplexes: Hybrid, Main-Chain Polymer Phosphors for Orange-Red Light Emission.

In this work, hybrid polymeric bis-tridentate iridium(III) complexes bearing derivatives of terpyridine (tpy) and 2,6-di(phenyl) pyridine as ligands were successfully synthesized and evaluated as red-light emitters. At first, the synthesis of small molecular bis-tridendate Ir(III) complexes bearing alkoxy-, methyl-, or hydroxy-functionalized terpyridines and a dihydroxyphenyl-pyridine moiety was accomplished. Molecular complexes bearing two polymerizable end-hydroxyl groups and methyl- or alkoxy-decorated terpyridines were copolymerized with difluorodiphenyl-sulphone under high temperature polyetherification conditions.

Predictability analysis of the Pound's Brexit exchange rates based on Google Trends data.

During the last decade, the use of online search traffic data is becoming popular in examining, analyzing, and predicting human behavior, with Google Trends being a popular tool in monitoring and analyzing the users' online search patterns in several research areas, like health, medicine, politics, economics, and finance. Towards the direction of exploring the Sterling Pound's predictability, we employ Google Trends data from the last 5 years (March 1st, 2015 to February 29th, 2020) and perform predictability analysis on the Pound's exchange rates to Euro and Dollar. The period selected includes the 2016 UK referendum as well as the actual Brexit day (January 31st, 2020), with the analysis aiming at analyzing the Pound's relationships with Google query data on Pound-related keywords and topics.

Hydromorphology as a controlling factor of macrophytes assemblage structure and functional traits in the semi-arid European Mediterranean streams.

Macrophytes have a crucial impact on stream functioning. However, there is a significant gap of knowledge about how hydromorphological fluctuations affect their structural and functional responses in southern Mediterranean streams. In this study, we investigated the impact of hydromorphology on macrophyte stream assemblages in Cyprus and analysed their structural and functional responses.

Assessment of the Eutrophication-Related Environmental Parameters in Two Mediterranean Lakes by Integrating Statistical Techniques and Self-Organizing Maps.

During the last decades, Mediterranean freshwater ecosystems, especially lakes, have been under severe pressure due to increasing eutrophication and water quality deterioration. In this article, we compared the effectiveness of different data analysis methods by assessing the contribution of environmental parameters to eutrophication processes. For this purpose, principal components analysis (PCA), cluster analysis, and a self-organizing map (SOM) were applied, using water quality data from two transboundary lakes of North Greece.

Biosurfactants produced by Scheffersomyces stipitis cultured in sugarcane bagasse hydrolysate as new green larvicides for the control of Aedes aegypti, a vector of neglected tropical diseases.

Biosurfactants are microbial metabolites with possible applications in various industrial sectors that are considered ecofriendly molecules. In recent years, some studies identified these compounds as alternatives for the elimination of vectors of tropical diseases, such as Aedes aegypti. The major bottlenecks of biosurfactant industrial production have been the use of conventional raw materials that increase production costs as well as opportunistic or pathogenic bacteria, which restrict the application of these biomolecules.

Gaze and motor behavior of people with PD during obstacle circumvention.

The aim of this study was to analyze the motor and visual strategies used when walking around (circumvention) an obstacle in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), in addition to the effects of dopaminergic medication on these strategies. To answer the study question, people with PD (15) and neurologically healthy individuals (15 - CG) performed the task of obstacle circumvention during walking (5 trials of unobstructed walking and obstacle circumvention). The following parameters were analyzed: body clearance (longer mediolateral distance during obstacle circumvention of the center of mass -CoM- to the obstacle), horizontal distance (distance of the CoM at the beginning of obstacle circumvention to the obstacle), circumvention strategy ("lead-out" or "lead-in" strategy), spatial-temporal of each step, and number of fixations, the mean duration of the fixations and time of fixations according to areas of interest.

The income elasticity of Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) revisited: A meta-analysis of studies for restoring Good Ecological Status (GES) of water bodies under the Water Framework Directive (WFD).

The income elasticity of Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) is ambiguous and results from meta-analyses are disparate. This may be because the environmental good or service to be valued is very broadly defined or because the income measured in individual studies suffers from extensive non-reporting or miss reporting. The present study carries out a meta-analysis of WTP to restore Good Ecological Status (GES) under the Water Framework Directive (WFD).

Assessing the Contribution of the Environmental Parameters to Eutrophication with the Use of the "PaD" and "PaD2" Methods in a Hypereutrophic Lake.

Lake Pamvotis (Greece) is a shallow hypereutrophic lake with a natural tendency to eutrophication. Several restoration measures were applied, but with no long-term success. To examine the causes for this an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was created in order to simulate the chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) levels and to investigate the role of the associated environmental parameters.

Predicting protein complexes from weighted protein-protein interaction graphs with a novel unsupervised methodology: Evolutionary enhanced Markov clustering.

Objective: Proteins are considered to be the most important individual components of biological systems and they combine to form physical protein complexes which are responsible for certain molecular functions. Despite the large availability of protein-protein interaction (PPI) information, not much information is available about protein complexes. Experimental methods are limited in terms of time, efficiency, cost and performance constraints.

How efficient are Greek hospitals? A case study using a double bootstrap DEA approach.

The purpose of this study was to measure Greek hospital performance using different input-output combinations, and to identify the factors that influence their efficiency thus providing policy makers with valuable input for the decision-making process. Using a unique dataset, we estimated the productive efficiency of each hospital through a bootstrapped data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. In a second stage, we explored, using a bootstrapped truncated regression, the impact of environmental factors on hospitals' technical and scale efficiency.