95 research outputs found
Nanoparticulation of BCG-CWS for application to bladder cancer therapy
No full textThe Mycobacterium bovis Bacille Calmette-Guerin cell wall skeleton (BCG-CWS) could be used to replace live BCG as a bladder cancer drug. However, because BCG-CWS is poorly soluble, has a strong-negative charge, very high molecular weight and heterogeneity in size of tens of mu m, it cannot be used in such an application. We report herein on the development of a novel packaging method that permits BCG-CWS to be encapsulated into 166 nm-sized lipid particles. The BCG-CWS encapsulated nano particle (CWS-NP) has a high uniformity and can be easily dispersed. Thus, it has the potential for use as a packaging method that would advance the scope of applications of BCG-CWS as a bladder cancer drug. In a functional evaluation, CWS-NP was efficiently taken up by mouse bladder tumor (MBT-2) cells in vitro and inhibited tumor growth in mice bearing MBT-2 tumors. Moreover, intravesically administered CWS-NP showed significant antitumor effects in a rat model with naturally developed bladder cancer. An enhancement in Th1 differentiation by CWS-NP was also confirmed in human T cells. In conclusion, CWS-NP represents a promising delivery system for BCG-CWS for clinical development as a potent bladder cancer drug. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved
Mechanism responsible for the antitumor effect of BCG-CWS using the LEEL method in a mouse bladder cancer model
No full textWe previously reported on the development of a water soluble formulation of the cell wall skeleton of BCG (BCG-CWS), a major immune active center of BCG, by encapsulating it into a nanoparticle (CWS-NP). The CWS-NP allowed us to clarify the machinery associated with the BCG mediated anti-bladder tumor effect, especially the roles of bladder cancer cells and dendritic cells (DCs) in the initial step, which remains poorly understood. We show herein that the internalization of BCG-CWS by bladder cancer cells, but not DCs, is indispensable for the induction of an antitumor effect against bladder cancer. Tumor growth was significantly inhibited in mice that had been inoculated with mouse bladder cancer (MBT-2) cells containing internalized BCG-CWS. On the other hand, the internalization of BCG-CWS by DCs had only a minor effect on inducing an antitumor effect against MBT-2 tumors. This was clarified for the first time by using the CWS-NP. This finding provides insights into our understanding of the role of bladder cancer cells and DCs in BCG therapy against bladder cancer. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
The contribution shift of ammonia-oxidizing archaea and bacteria to ammoxidation under Ag-NPs/SWCNTs/PS-NPs stressors in constructed wetlands
No full textAmmonia-oxidizing microorganisms (AOMs, archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB)) are primarily responsible for the ammoxidation in constructed wetlands (CWs). However, little is known about evaluating the response of AOA and AOB to engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) and quantifying the shift of their contribution to ammoxidation. Herein, we operated a series of CWs exposing to silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs), single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), and polystyrene nano-sized plastics (PS-NPs) with the wastewater-accumulating concentration of ENMs for 180 days. The results showed that the abundance of AOA amoA gene in situ was far lower than that of AOB, while the abundance ratio of AOA to AOB increased by 15 folds after 180-day experiment. Using DNA stable isotope probing (DNA-SIP) experiment, we found that the active AOB microbiota varied substantially but the AOA was more stable across different groups. Furthermore, the co-occurrence analysis proved that ENMs stress increased the negative coexistence pattern of AOA and AOB; predictive functional profiling showed that the ENMs enhanced the functional advantage of AOA by inhibiting AOB (mainly hydroxylamine oxidation process). Finally, the contribution of AOA increased under exposing to SWCNTs (18.35%), PS-NPs (24.92%), and Ag-NPs (32.14%) compared with control group (0.03%) for 180 days. Despite this, AOB was still the primary executant of ammoxidation in CWs. Overall, in our study, the differences in activities and contributions of AOMs were quantified in CWs, and a significantly negative coexistence relationship between AOA and AOB was revealed when exposed to emerging nanomaterials.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Sanitary Engineerin
Estimating the Safety Effects of Congestion Warning Systems using Carriageway Aggregate Data
No full textIs it possible to use just aggregate carriageway data for the evaluation of congestion warning systems (CWS) in large networks—or any system affecting traffic safety for that matter? In this paper, two hypotheses related to this question are tested. The first hypothesis is that it can be done by comparing large-scale congestion patterns on road stretches with and without CWS. The underlying rationale is that heterogeneous congestion patterns with many disturbances, frequent wide moving jams, and large speed differences result in more potentially unsafe traffic conditions than more homogeneous congestion patterns. The second hypothesis is that it is possible to compare differences in average (maximum) deceleration distributions into congestion waves between road stretches with and without CWS. Both hypotheses have been tested for similar bottlenecks with similar demand patterns and the results suggest the first hypothesis must be rejected. Although the idea seems plausible (CWS result in more homogeneous congestion patterns) there were too many confounding factors in the data to make the case. However, persuasive evidence was found for the second hypothesis. Statistically significant differences were found between (maximum) deceleration distributions on road stretches with and without CWS that suggest CWS do—as expected—contribute positively to traffic safety. It thus seems to be possible to monitor safety effects using just average speeds. However, the method is limited to providing relative comparisons. Furthermore, to fully rule out the effects of unobserved factors, more evidence and validation with microscopic data are needed.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Transport and Plannin
Metal uptake in northern laboratory-scale wetlands treating synthetic mine drainage
No full textConstructed wetlands (CWs) have been employed as passive treatment systems for metal contaminated mine drainage in Canada. However, relatively few CWs have been documented in northern environments and further studies are needed to understand the metal removal mechanisms in wetlands operating under cold climates, with short growing seasons. The goal of this study was to evaluate the performance of laboratory-scale CWs for the removal of Cd, Cu, Se and Zn, as well as to evaluate Cu uptake in two northern plant species (Carex aquatilis and Juncus balticus). Eight laboratory-scale wetlands were constructed using local materials, including locally harvested plant species and microorganisms, and operated under northern summer conditions for ten weeks. The CWs had a three-day retention time and were fed continuously with synthetic influent containing Cd, Cu, Fe, Se, and Zn, at concentrations predicted at mine closure. Average removal efficiencies of 96%, 99%, 79%, and 97% were observed for Cd, Cu, Se, and Zn respectively. There were no significant differences in plant growth between the CW treatments, or any evidence of increasing Cu uptake with increasing availability in either northern plant species. Our study suggests that CWs could operate as successful passive treatment solutions in a northern environment, at least during the summer months. However, further studies are required to examine potential contaminant uptake in a suite of northern plant species and examine the efficacy of CWs under winter conditions.Peer reviewe
Co-operative Schools: building communities in the 21st century
No full textThe recent progress of ‘co-operative schools’ both confirms and disrupts many assumptions surrounding contemporary compulsory schooling. The term itself refers to an eclectic array of schools, both primary and secondary, of which there were, by June 2012, almost 300 in England that have adopted co-operative values, in terms of governance, pedagogy and curriculum, and come together as a movement. They have emerged from within a fissiparous ecology of education which has given rise to new schools and networks, including academy schools, converter academies, free schools, trust schools and specialised schools. In this article the author argues that these changes have all offered opportunities for co-operative alternatives to be established
Automated quality-control filters for undetected rainfall in citizen rain gauge data
No full textFlooding in cities, known as Urban Pluvial Flooding (UPF), causes disruption of society, damage to cities and inconvenience for people. Cities are expected to become more vulnerable to UPF due to more frequent and more intense extreme rainfall events with high spatial variability as result of climate change. Additionally increasing urbanisation results in more impervious surfaces, inducing shorter response times of the drainage systems. A high spatial and temporal resolution of the urban rainfall network is required to forecast UPF. Professional rain gauge networks do not provide this necessary resolution. A strategy to increase this density is to use rainfall data obtained from Citizen Weather Stations (CWSs). The downside of CWS networks is the low quality of measurements compared to professional measurements. This is caused by the use of lower quality sensor, web-platform processes , set-up of the weather station, stability of data transfer and cleaning of the CWS. Undetected Rainfall (UR) is one of the errors found in rain gauge data of a CWS network. An UR error is an incorrect zero rainfall value in the rainfall data, meaning that rainfall did occur at the gauge but it was not detected. A quality-control system that creates a more reliable CWS network is required to facilitate UPF forecasting. The aim of this research is to take a first step towards a quality-control system by developing and testing different automatic quality-control filters that flag for UR errors in rainfall data of a CWS network.For this research 753 CWSs in the Rotterdam-The Hague region are used. They were obtained from Netatmo weathermap and give a density of 1 CWSs per 5.93 km2. This is not a uniform density because more CWSs are located in densely populated areas. The availability of the CWSs grew from 369 to 668, measuring at least once per day between October 2015 and October 2017. Two filters are developed to identify UR errors in CWS rainfall data. The first filter is the CWS filter which uses neighbouring CWSs within a radius of 8 kilometre to find the UR errors. The second filter is the radar filter, which identifies UR errors using the overlying radar pixel. The performances of these filters are tested by artificially placing zeros at 10% of the rainfall sequences of 10-min rainfall data from four automatic KNMI gauge datasets within the study area. Both filters are applied on these datasets and evaluated using confusion matrices. Finally, the two filters are applied on the 753 CWS rainfall datasets for a period between October 2016 and October 2017.<br/
Self-efficacy in parents of young children who stutter
No full textParental self-efficacy (PSE) is defined as a parents perceptions of his/her ability to be confident and competent in the domain of parenting. The purpose of the current exploratory study was to examine the PSE of mothers of children who stutter (CWS; N = 13), and compare these perceptions with parents of children with speech sound disorders (N = 21) and with no disorder (N = 90). Results indicated significant relationships between the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (PSOC) Total Score and treatment participation, and the PSOC Satisfaction subscale and treatment effectiveness among mothers of CWS. Findings suggest that having a CWS does not relate to poorer perceptions of parenting abilities. Results hold implications for future research and clinical implications on PSE in mothers of children who stutter
Metal uptake in northern constructed wetlands
No full textConstructed wetlands (CWs) have been employed as passive treatment systems for metal contaminated mine drainage in Canada. However, relatively few CWs have been documented in northern environments and further studies are needed to understand the metal removal mechanisms in wetlands operating under cold climates, with short growing seasons. The goal of this study was to evaluate the performance of laboratory-scale CWs for the removal of Cd, Cu, Se and Zn, as well as, to evaluate Cu and Se uptake in two northern plant species (Carex aquatilis and Juncus balticus). Eight laboratory-scale wetlands were constructed using local materials, including locally harvested plant species and microorganisms and operated under northern summer conditions for 10 weeks. The CWs were fed continuously with synthetic influent containing Cd, Cu, Fe, Se and Zn at concentrations predicted at mine closure. Average removal efficiencies of 96%, 99%, 79% and 97% were observed for Cd, Cu, Se and Zn respectively. There were no significant differences in plant establishment or growth between our CW treatments, or any evidence of increasing Cu uptake with increasing contaminant availability in either northern plant species. Increased belowground uptake of Se was observed at the higher influent concentration in the Pit treatment. However, overall our study suggests that uptake of contaminants by these two northern species is very minor (<0.06% Cu and <0.11% Se, except for C. aquatilis in one treatment <0.2% Cu and <0.4 % Se) and likely does not pose a risk to the surrounding environment. We conclude that CWs could operate as successful passive treatment solutions in a northern environment, at least during the summer months, pending further studies on winter treatment. Further studies are required to examine seasonal metal removal rates in relation to rates of sulfate reduction, carbon consumption, metal precipitation and sorption. In addition, potential contaminant uptake and the influence of functional plant characteristics on metal removal in a suite of northern plant species would further assist in the development of large-scale long-term northern CWs.Peer reviewe
Performance of photobioreactor, constructed wetland and anaerobic membrane bioreactor in treating antibiotic resistant bacteria in the Barapullah drain, New Delhi, India
No full textLimitless usage of antibiotics has led antibiotic resistance to be one of the largest threats to world health and development. In this study, the concentrations of Extended spectrum betalactamase Escherichia coli and carbapenem resistant Escherichia Coli was assessed in a major drain in New Delhi, India. The performance of Anaerobic membrane bioreactor, photobioreactor and constructed wetlands in treating ESBL-E.coli and CRE-E.coli was evaluated. The results showed ESBL-E.coli and CRE-E.coli removal efficiencies of 99.82% and 99.69% for AnMBR, 99.62% and 99.86% for PBR and 98.1-99.3% for constructed wetlands respectively. Log10 reduction values of 2.7-3 for AnMBR, 2.8-3.2 for PBR and 1.82.3 for CWs was achieved in this study. Coupling micro-aeration with AnMBR improved the removal efficiency by 36-46%. A quantitative microbial risk assessment showed probability of infection by Enterotoxigenic E.coli (ETEC O55) post treatment to be reduced below 10-18% for AnMBR and PBR and below 20-35% for CWs. Treated effluents accounted for a high reduction in the total DALYs pppy by 63% for PBR, followed by 41.6% for AnMBR and 12.5% for CWS. ESBL-E. coli and CRE-E.coli counts decreased below the monitoring level of 103-105 for unrestricted irrigation and 104-105 for restricted irrigation as declared by WHO. Treated water was not recommended for direct consumption due to higher risk above 10%. This study exhibits the potential of these efficient and sustainable technologies in treating antibiotic resistant bacteria. CIE5050-09 Additional Graduation WorkLOTUS-H
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