Evidence of nanobacterial-like structures in calcified human arteries and cardiac valves

Mechanisms mediating vascular calcification remain incompletely understood. Nanometer scale objects hypothesized to be a type of bacteria (nanobacteria) are associated with calcified geological specimens, human kidney stones, and psammona bodies in ovarian cancer. Experiments were designed to evaluate human vascular tissue for the presence of similar nanometer-scale objects. Calcified human aneurysms (n = 8), carotid plaques (n = 2), femoral arterial plaques (n = 2), and cardiac valves (n = 2) and noncalcified aneurysms from patients with bicuspid aortic valve disease (n = 2) were collected as surgical waste from the Heart Hospital of Austin, Austin, Texas, and Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Whole mounts or adjacent sections from each specimen were examined by electron microscopy, stained for calcium phosphate, or stained with a commercially available antibody (8D10). Filtered (0.2 microm) homogenates of aneurysms were cultured and costained with 8D10 antibody followed by PicoGreen to detect DNA or incubated with [3H]uridine. Staining for calcium phosphate was heterogeneously distributed within all calcified tissues. Immunological staining with 8D10 was also heterogeneously distributed in areas with and without calcium phosphate. Analysis of areas with positive immunostaining identified spheres ranging in size from 30 to 100 nm with a spectral pattern of calcium and phosphorus (high-energy dispersive spectroscopy). Nanosized particles cultured from calcified but not from noncalcified aneurysms were recognized by a DNA-specific dye and incorporated radiolabeled uridine, and, after decalcification, they appeared via electron microscopy to contain cell walls. Therefore, nanometer-scale particles similar to those described as nanobacteria isolated from geological specimens and human kidney stones can be visualized in and cultured from calcified human cardiovascular tissue.     

Human infants and baboons show the same pattern of handedness for a communicative gesture

To test the role of gestures in the origin of language, we studied hand preferences for grasping or pointing to objects at several spatial positions in human infants and adult baboons. If the roots of language are indeed in gestural communication, we expect that human infants and baboons will present a comparable difference in their pattern of laterality according to task: both should be more right-hand/left-hemisphere specialized when communicating by pointing than when simply grasping objects. Our study is the first to test both human infants and baboons on the same communicative task. Our results show remarkable convergence in the distribution of the two species' hand biases on the two kinds of tasks: In both human infants and baboons, right-hand preference was significantly stronger for the communicative task than for grasping objects. Our findings support the hypothesis that left-lateralized language may be derived from a gestural communication system that was present in the common ancestor of baboons and humans.     

Closing the phosphorus cycle in a food system: insights from a modelling exercise

Mineral phosphorus (P) used to fertilise crops is derived from phosphate rock, which is a finite resource. Preventing and recycling mineral P waste in the food system, therefore, are essential to sustain future food security and long-term availability of mineral P. The aim of our modelling exercise was to assess the potential of preventing and recycling P waste in a food system, in order to reduce the dependency on phosphate rock. To this end, we modelled a hypothetical food system designed to produce sufficient food for a fixed population with a minimum input requirement of mineral P. This model included representative crop and animal production systems, and was parameterised using data from the Netherlands. We assumed no import or export of feed and food. We furthermore assumed small P soil losses and no net P accumulation in soils, which is typical for northwest European conditions. We first assessed the minimum P requirement in a baseline situation, that is 42% of crop waste is recycled, and humans derived 60% of their dietary protein from animals (PA). Results showed that about 60% of the P waste in this food system resulted from wasting P in human excreta. We subsequently evaluated P input for alternative situations to assess the (combined) effect of: (1) preventing waste of crop and animal products, (2) fully recycling waste of crop products, (3) fully recycling waste of animal products and (4) fully recycling human excreta and industrial processing water. Recycling of human excreta showed most potential to reduce P waste from the food system, followed by prevention and finally recycling of agricultural waste. Fully recycling P could reduce mineral P input by 90%. Finally, for each situation, we studied the impact of consumption of PA in the human diet from 0% to 80%. The optimal amount of animal protein in the diet depended on whether P waste from animal products was prevented or fully recycled: if it was, then a small amount of animal protein in the human diet resulted in the most sustainable use of P; but if it was not, then the most sustainable use of P would result from a complete absence of animal protein in the human diet. Our results apply to our hypothetical situation. The principles included in our model however, also hold for food systems with, for example, different climatic and soil conditions, farming practices, representative types of crops and animals and population densities.     

Determining the level of total nitrogen in wastes from the microbiological industry]

Optimization of the Kjeldahl method for determination of total nitrogen in the objects of microbial synthesis was performed in regard to biomass of the benzylpenicillin-producing culture, activated sludge and certain organic compounds. Mathematical processing of the data was carried out, which showed that the difference in the mean values for the five tested conditions of mineralization was insignificant. The method is useful in assaying the final and intermediate products as well as the waste in biotechnological production.     

The use of low-quality water on the transport and transformation of waste water in irrigation soils

Waste water use for agricultural production in the semi-arid and arid climate areas is increasingly regarded as a solution for water shortage. Still today many questions remain unanswered about the mid- and long-term effect of irrigation by waste water on plant, soil and human health. In this paper the effect of the use of waste water on the soil hydraulic properties, the solute transport and transformation behaviour is being studied conducting steady state and non-steady state waste water application treatments on undisturbed soil columns and a field plot. Detailed spatial and temporal information on the propagation of water and solute is obtained using tensiometers, soil solute extraction and time domain reflectometry probes. The experimental data are processed using the HYDRUS-2D modeling tool. After calibration, the model is used in a predictive way as to simulate the mid- and long-term effects of the use of treated waste water as irrigation water.     

Human research tissue banks: the ATRA Project for establishing a human research tissue bank in switzerland

A large number of experiments in biomedical research are carried out on tissues, but, even though the results should be applicable to humans, these tissues are mainly of animal origin. The difficulty encountered in obtaining human organs and tissues is an acknowledged problem: not enough human tissues are available to meet research needs. We are introducing the ATRA Project, with the purpose of supporting progress in biomedical research in Switzerland through the establishment of one or more human tissue banks, which will be able to find, treat, preserve and supply human material. Where similar projects have already been launched, concerns have been expressed that donation for research purposes might compete with donation for transplantation, but most organs and tissues are in any case non-transplantable. Surplus surgical tissue is considered "sanitary waste", and must be treated according to specific regulations for collection, packaging, transport, treatment and disposal. A human tissue bank would not only abate the costs of treating sanitary waste, but would actually turn what is now considered waste into a resource which could be used to save human and animal lives.     

Carbon and life cycle implications of thermal recovery from the organic fractions of municipal waste

Purpose

The aim of this research was to determine the optimum way of recovering energy from the biodegradable fractions of municipal waste. A part-life cycle study was carried out on the following wastes: paper, food waste, garden waste, wood, non-recyclable mixed municipal waste and refuse-derived fuel. The energy recovery processes considered were incineration, gasification, combustion in dedicated plant, anaerobic digestion and combustion in a cement kiln.

Methods

The life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out using WRATE, an LCA tool designed specifically for waste management studies. Additional information on waste composition, waste collection and the performance of the energy recovery processes was obtained from a number of UK-based sources. The results take account of the energy displaced by the waste to energy processes and also the benefits obtained by the associated recycling of digestates, metals and aggregates as appropriate.

Results and discussion

For all the waste types considered the maximum benefits in terms of climate change and non-renewable resource depletion would be achieved by using the waste in a cement kiln as a substitute fuel for coal. When considering the impacts in terms of human toxicity, aquatic ecotoxicity, acidification and eutrophication, direct combustion with energy recovery was the best option. The results were found to be highly sensitive to the efficiency of the energy recovery process and the conventional fuel displaced by the recovered energy.

Conclusions and recommendations

This study has demonstrated that LCA can be used to determine the benefits and burdens associated with recovering energy from municipal waste fractions. However, the findings were restricted by the lack of reliable data on the performance of waste gasification and anaerobic digestion systems and on the burdens arising from collecting the wastes. It is recommended that further work is carried out to address these data gaps.     

Object discrimination by pigeons: effects of object color and shape

Can nonhuman animals attend to visual stimuli as whole, coherent objects? We investigated this question by adapting for use with pigeons a task in which human participants must report whether two visual attributes belong to the same object (one-object trial) or to different objects (two-object trial). We trained pigeons to discriminate a pair of differently colored shapes that had two targets either on a single object or on two different objects. Each target equally often appeared on the one-object and two-object stimuli; therefore, a specific target location could not serve as a discriminative cue. The pigeons learned to report whether the two target dots were located on a single object or on two different objects; follow-up tests demonstrated that this ability was not entirely based on memorization of the dot patterns and locations. Additional tests disclosed predominate stimulus control by the color, but not by the shape of the two objects. These findings suggest that human psychophysical methods are readily applicable to the study of object discrimination by nonhuman animals.     

Assessing the Sustainability of the Lithuanian Hazardous Waste Management System

Human activities generate waste, whose amounts tend to increase as the demand for quality of life becomes greater and greater. Hazardous waste (HW) generally makes up only about 1% of all waste in Europe; nevertheless, it presents a serious risk to the ecosystem and human health unless managed and treated safely. Several countries of the European Union (EU) report treatment rates of HW in excess of 40%; the others export a large portion of it. Notwithstanding that lots of efforts have been made to properly identify, treat, recycle, store, transport, and dispose of HW, this is still a hot topic faced by the governments of many EU countries. The objective of this article is to present a sustainable indicators system to assist in the implementation of a modern and sustainable hazardous waste management (HWM) system in Lithuania. The specific goals are (1) to promote the development of a comprehensive monitoring and enforcement system for timely implementation of HWM rules and other related pieces of legislation and (2) to assist in the implementation of training and awareness of the programs of HWM in support of the development of background data for policy making, including improvement of a hazardous waste identification scheme. The emphasis is put on preventing future discharges of HW by promoting the actions that will result in avoidance, recycling, or recovery of the otherwise hazardous waste.     

Viewer-centered object representation in the human visual system revealed by viewpoint aftereffects

Are there neurons representing specific views of objects in the human visual system? A visual selective adaptation method was used to address this question. After visual adaptation to an object viewed either 15 or 30 degrees from one side, when the same object was subsequently presented near the frontal view, the perceived viewing directions were biased in a direction opposite to that of the adapted viewpoint. This aftereffect can be obtained with spatially nonoverlapping adapting and test stimuli, and it depends on the global representation of the adapting stimuli. Viewpoint aftereffects were found within, but not across, categories of objects tested (faces, cars, wire-like objects). The magnitude of this aftereffect depends on the angular difference between the adapting and test viewing angles and grows with increasing duration of adaptation. These results support the existence of object-selective neurons tuned to specific viewing angles in the human visual system.     

Mind perception: real but not artificial faces sustain neural activity beyond the N170/VPP

Faces are visual objects that hold special significance as the icons of other minds. Previous researchers using event-related potentials (ERPs) have found that faces are uniquely associated with an increased N170/vertex positive potential (VPP) and a more sustained frontal positivity. Here, we examined the processing of faces as objects vs. faces as cues to minds by contrasting images of faces possessing minds (human faces), faces lacking minds (doll faces), and non-face objects (i.e., clocks). Although both doll and human faces were associated with an increased N170/VPP from 175-200 ms following stimulus onset, only human faces were associated with a sustained positivity beyond 400 ms. Our data suggest that the N170/VPP reflects the object-based processing of faces, whether of dolls or humans; on the other hand, the later positivity appears to uniquely index the processing of human faces--which are more salient and convey information about identity and the presence of other minds.     

Associations between Schistosomiasis and the Use of Human Waste as an Agricultural Fertilizer in China

Background

Human waste is used as an agricultural fertilizer in China and elsewhere. Because the eggs of many helminth species can survive in environmental media, reuse of untreated or partially treated human waste, commonly called night soil, may promote transmission of human helminthiases.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We conducted an open cohort study in 36 villages to evaluate the association between night soil use and schistosomiasis in a region of China where schistosomiasis has reemerged and persisted despite control activities. We tested 2,005 residents for Schistosoma japonicum infection in 2007 and 1,365 residents in 2010 and interviewed heads of household about agricultural practices each study year. We used an intervention attributable ratio framework to estimate the association between night soil use and S. japonicum infection. Night soil use was reported by half of households (56% in 2007 and 46% in 2010). Village night soil use was strongly associated with human S. japonicum infection in 2007. We estimate cessation of night soil use would lead to a 49% reduction in infection prevalence in 2007 (95% CI: 12%, 71%). However, no association between night soil and schistosomiasis was observed in 2010. These inconsistent findings may be due to unmeasured confounding or temporal shifts in the importance of different sources of S. japonicum eggs on the margins of disease elimination.

Conclusions/Significance

The use of untreated or partially treated human waste as an agricultural fertilizer may be a barrier to permanent reductions in human helminthiases. This practice warrants further attention by the public health community.     

Impact of Fertilizing with Raw or Anaerobically Digested Sewage Sludge on the Abundance of Antibiotic-Resistant Coliforms,Antibiotic Resistance Genes,and Pathogenic Bacteria in Soil and on Vegetables at Harvest

The consumption of crops fertilized with human waste represents a potential route of exposure to antibiotic-resistant fecal bacteria. The present study evaluated the abundance of bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes by using both culture-dependent and molecular methods. Various vegetables (lettuce, carrots, radish, and tomatoes) were sown into field plots fertilized inorganically or with class B biosolids or untreated municipal sewage sludge and harvested when of marketable quality. Analysis of viable pathogenic bacteria or antibiotic-resistant coliform bacteria by plate counts did not reveal significant treatment effects of fertilization with class B biosolids or untreated sewage sludge on the vegetables. Numerous targeted genes associated with antibiotic resistance and mobile genetic elements were detected by PCR in soil and on vegetables at harvest from plots that received no organic amendment. However, in the season of application, vegetables harvested from plots treated with either material carried gene targets not detected in the absence of amendment. Several gene targets evaluated by using quantitative PCR (qPCR) were considerably more abundant on vegetables harvested from sewage sludge-treated plots than on vegetables from control plots in the season of application, whereas vegetables harvested the following year revealed no treatment effect. Overall, the results of the present study suggest that producing vegetable crops in ground fertilized with human waste without appropriate delay or pretreatment will result in an additional burden of antibiotic resistance genes on harvested crops. Managing human exposure to antibiotic resistance genes carried in human waste must be undertaken through judicious agricultural practice.     

Animals,Archetypes, and Popular Culture: Tales from the Tabloid Press

Abstract

This paper characterizes the portrayal of animals and human-animal relations in one genre of American popular culture—the “supermarket” tabloid press. A total of 789 animal-related stories and photographs in 82 issues of four tabloid magazines were analyzed according to theme. The items fell into nine categories in which animals were portrayed as objects of affection, saviors, threats, victims, things to be used, sex objects, imaginary and mythological beings, surrogate humans, and objects of wonder. It is argued that these themes represent archetypes reflecting the roles that animals have had in human cultural and psychological life since the historical origins of our species.     

History in the Gene: Negotiations Between Molecular and Organismal Anthropology

In the advertising discourse of human genetic database projects, of genetic ancestry tracing companies, and in popular books on anthropological genetics, what I refer to as the anthropological gene and genome appear as documents of human history, by far surpassing the written record and oral history in scope and accuracy as archives of our past. How did macromolecules become “documents of human evolutionary history”? Historically, molecular anthropology, a term introduced by Emile Zuckerkandl in 1962 to characterize the study of primate phylogeny and human evolution on the molecular level, asserted its claim to the privilege of interpretation regarding hominoid, hominid, and human phylogeny and evolution vis-à-vis other historical sciences such as evolutionary biology, physical anthropology, and paleoanthropology. This process will be discussed on the basis of three key conferences on primate classification and evolution that brought together exponents of the respective fields and that were held in approximately ten-years intervals between the early 1960s and the 1980s. I show how the anthropological gene and genome gained their status as the most fundamental, clean, and direct records of historical information, and how the prioritizing of these epistemic objects was part of a complex involving the objectivity of numbers, logic, and mathematics, the objectivity of machines and instruments, and the objectivity seen to reside in the epistemic objects themselves.     

Twin peaks: the draft human genome sequence

Once thought to be impossible or a waste of resources, the initial high-volume stages of sequencing the human genome have been completed.     

The content in soil and the mobility of artificial radionuclides in the region of the regional radioactive waste storage situation

The objects of researches are the soil and wild vegetation in the region of the radioactive waste storage situation. In result of monitoring it was recognized 137Cs unlike 90Sr did not spread out of storage territory in spite of trench destruction and migration of radionuclides with surface and ground waters. The forms of 137Cs, 90Sr and natural radionuclide 226Ra in soils and coefficients of 90Sr accumulation for the different kinds of plants growing at the territory of storage and 50-m zone around it were researched. The low specific activities of mobile forms of 90Sr were recognized for samples of soils selected from lowland by the terrace. The considerable differences were found for specific activities of radionuclides for different soil layers. Essential irregularity of soil surface and vegetation contamination at the test points disposed at a short distances from each other also was found. The interpretation of obtained results is presented.     

Model for inactivation and disposal of infectious human immunodeficiency virus and radioactive waste in a BL3 facility

A method is described for autoclaving low levels of solid infectious, radioactive waste. The method permits steam penetration to inactivate biologic waste, while any volatile radioactive compounds generated during the autoclave process are absorbed. Inactivation of radiolabeled infectious waste has been problematic because the usual sterilization techniques result in unacceptable radiation handling practices. If autoclaved under the usual conditions, there exists a high probability of volatilization or release of radioisotopes from the waste. This results in the radioactive contamination of the autoclave and the laboratory area where steam is released from the autoclave. Our results provide a practical method to inactivate and dispose of infectious radioactive waste. For our research, Bacillus pumilus spore strips and vaccinia virus were used as more heat-resistant surrogates of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). These surrogates were used because HIV is difficult to grow under most conditions and is less heat tolerant than the surrogates. In addition, B. pumilus has defined cell death values, whereas such values have not been established for HIV. Both B. pumilus and vaccinia virus are less hazardous to work with. The autoclave method is time efficient and can be performed by laboratory personnel with minimal handling of the waste. Furthermore, waste site handlers are able to visually inspect the solid waste containers and ascertain that inactivation procedures have been implemented.