Mitochondrial DNA Alterations in Glioblastoma (GBM)

Glioblastoma (GBM) is an extremely aggressive tumor originating from neural stem cells of the central nervous system, which has high histopathological and genomic diversity. Mitochondria are cellular organelles associated with the regulation of cellular metabolism, redox signaling, energy generation, regulation of cell proliferation, and apoptosis. Accumulation of mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) leads to mitochondrial dysfunction that plays an important role in GBM pathogenesis, favoring abnormal energy and reactive oxygen species production and resistance to apoptosis and to chemotherapeutic agents. The present review summarizes the known mitochondrial DNA alterations related to GBM, their cellular and metabolic consequences, and their association with diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.     

Flow Biocatalysis: A Challenging Alternative for the Synthesis of APIs and Natural Compounds

Biocatalysts represent an efficient, highly selective and greener alternative to metal catalysts in both industry and academia. In the last two decades, the interest in biocatalytic transformations has increased due to an urgent need for more sustainable industrial processes that comply with the principles of green chemistry. Thanks to the recent advances in biotechnologies, protein engineering and the Nobel prize awarded concept of direct enzymatic evolution, the synthetic enzymatic toolbox has expanded significantly. In particular, the implementation of biocatalysts in continuous flow systems has attracted much attention, especially from industry. The advantages of flow chemistry enable biosynthesis to overcome well-known limitations of “classic” enzymatic catalysis, such as time-consuming work-ups and enzyme inhibition, as well as difficult scale-up and process intensifications. Moreover, continuous flow biocatalysis provides access to practical, economical and more sustainable synthetic pathways, an important aspect for the future of pharmaceutical companies if they want to compete in the market while complying with European Medicines Agency (EMA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and green chemistry requirements. This review focuses on the most recent advances in the use of flow biocatalysis for the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), pharmaceuticals and natural products, and the advantages and limitations are discussed.     

Configurations of project management practices to enhance the performance of open innovation R&D projects

This study contributes to the current discussion related to the execution challenges of open innovation projects in R&D with the lens of project management, especially considering the type of external partner as a contingent factor. It fosters the discussion of the configuration of practices in a contingent project management approach in comparison to the traditional best practice approach. For that, we conducted a qualitative fuzzy-set comparative analysis of 50 open innovation projects in R&D. By looking at configurations, we found combinations of practices related to high performance, when treated as a non-independent variable. In this configuration view, practices negatively associated with high performance in previous studies, are part of a combination of practices to achieve high performance in R&D projects. This study contributes to fostering the configurational perspective to project management associated with the idea that one size does not fit all.     

Enhancement of biohydrogen production in industrial wastewaters with vinasse pond consortium using lignin-mediated iron nanoparticles

The aim of this work was the enhancement of biohydrogen production by an anaerobic bacterial consortium with incorporation of lignin-mediated iron nanoparticles in the fermentation medium. Lignin magnetic nanoparticles (LMNP), identified as magnetite by XRD, exhibited spherical shape and average particle size of 8.6 nm, while lignin non-magnetic nanoparticles (LNMNP) exhibited high agglomeration and an amorphous nature in TEM and XRD, respectively. The fermentation medium (pH 7) was composed of 88% soft drink wastewater (SDW) and 12% corn steep liquor (CSL) and supplemented with NaHCO₃ (1.0 g/L) and cysteine-HCl (0.5 g/L). Under optimal conditions, BioH₂ production was 17.67 ± 0.54 mL, after 48 h of fermentation at 37 °C. Addition of LMNP and LNMNP increased BioH₂ production in 91.0 and 74.3%, respectively. Additionally, 200 mg/L of LMNP and LNMNP in the fermentation medium improved the BioH₂ yields (mL H₂/g COD_removed) in 2.8- and 2.3-fold, respectively.     

A Hermite polynomial algorithm for detection of lesions in lymphoma images

Pattern Analysis and Applications - There are different types of lesions that can be investigated with the hematoxylin–eosin staining protocol. Lymphoma is a type of malignant disease which...     

Analysis of cancer in histological images: employing an approach based on genetic algorithm

Pattern Analysis and Applications - The analysis of histological images is based on visual assessment of tissues by specialists using an optical microscopy. This task can be time-consuming and...     

Joining Paths and Dividing Paths： Juiz de Fora, Brazil

The aim of this paper is to present the urban history of Juiz de Fora, a city with some 500,000 inhabitants in southeastern Brazil, and discuss how strategic decisions about the planning and construction of roads and highways can determine ways of life in a city. While paths may integrate landholdings and territories, they may also segregate communities and environments, causing deep rifts in the fabric of urban and land areas. The growth of Juiz de Fora is particularly marked by the construction of paths. This article reviews the local urban history from the establishment of paths in the city, to an analysis of the major impact and benefits they have had, notably on the local economy and demographics, as well as on the conservation of the local environment： Issues that are frequently relegated to a secondary role in the cost-benefit analysis of the city＇s planning decisions. After analysis of the case study, the authors concluded that citizens should be included on the agenda of the city, from spectators to actors of daily urban life.     

Vertex component analysis: a fast algorithm to unmix hyperspectral data

Given a set of mixed spectral (multispectral or hyperspectral) vectors, linear spectral mixture analysis, or linear unmixing, aims at estimating the number of reference substances, also called endmembers, their spectral signatures, and their abundance fractions. This paper presents a new method for unsupervised endmember extraction from hyperspectral data, termed vertex component analysis (VCA). The algorithm exploits two facts: (1) the endmembers are the vertices of a simplex and (2) the affine transformation of a simplex is also a simplex. In a series of experiments using simulated and real data, the VCA algorithm competes with state-of-the-art methods, with a computational complexity between one and two orders of magnitude lower than the best available method.