A scale‐down mimic for mapping the process performance of centrifugation,depth and sterile filtration

In the production of biopharmaceuticals disk‐stack centrifugation is widely used as a harvest step for the removal of cells and cellular debris. Depth filters followed by sterile filters are often then employed to remove residual solids remaining in the centrate. Process development of centrifugation is usually conducted at pilot‐scale so as to mimic the commercial scale equipment but this method requires large quantities of cell culture and significant levels of effort for successful characterization. A scale‐down approach based upon the use of a shear device and a bench‐top centrifuge has been extended in this work towards a preparative methodology that successfully predicts the performance of the continuous centrifuge and polishing filters. The use of this methodology allows the effects of cell culture conditions and large‐scale centrifugal process parameters on subsequent filtration performance to be assessed at an early stage of process development where material availability is limited. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2016;113: 1934–1941. © 2016 The Authors. Biotechnology and Bioengineering Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Balancing economic costs and ecological outcomes of passive and active restoration in agricultural landscapes: the case of Brazil

Forest restoration requires strategies such as passive restoration to balance financial investments and ecological outcomes. However, the ecological outcomes of passive restoration are traditionally regarded as uncertain. We evaluated technical and legal strategies for balancing economic costs and ecological outcomes of passive versus active restoration in agricultural landscapes. We focused in the case of Brazil, where we assessed the factors driving the proportion of land allocated to passive and active restoration in 42 programs covering 698,398 hectares of farms in the Atlantic Forest, Atlantic Forest/cerrado ecotone and Amazon; the ecological outcomes of passive and active restoration in 2955 monitoring plots placed in six restoration programs; and the legal framework developed by some Brazilian states to balance the different restoration approaches and comply with legal commitments. Active restoration had the highest proportion of land allocated to it (78.4%), followed by passive (14.2%) and mixed restoration (7.4%). Passive restoration was higher in the Amazon, in silviculture, and when remaining forest cover was over 50 percent. Overall, both restoration approaches showed high levels of variation in the ecological outcomes; nevertheless, passively restored areas had a smaller percentage canopy cover, lower species density, and less shrubs and trees (dbh > 5 cm). The studied legal frameworks considered land abandonment for up to 4 years before deciding on a restoration approach, to favor the use of passive restoration. A better understanding of the biophysical and socioeconomic features of areas targeted for restoration is needed to take a better advantage of their natural regeneration potential.     

Biodiversity and ecosystem stability across scales in metacommunities

Although diversity–stability relationships have been extensively studied in local ecosystems, the global biodiversity crisis calls for an improved understanding of these relationships in a spatial context. Here, we use a dynamical model of competitive metacommunities to study the relationships between species diversity and ecosystem variability across scales. We derive analytic relationships under a limiting case; these results are extended to more general cases with numerical simulations. Our model shows that, while alpha diversity decreases local ecosystem variability, beta diversity generally contributes to increasing spatial asynchrony among local ecosystems. Consequently, both alpha and beta diversity provide stabilising effects for regional ecosystems, through local and spatial insurance effects respectively. We further show that at the regional scale, the stabilising effect of biodiversity increases as spatial environmental correlation increases. Our findings have important implications for understanding the interactive effects of global environmental changes (e.g. environmental homogenisation) and biodiversity loss on ecosystem sustainability at large scales.     

2015 年江苏省医药产业发展报告

江苏省作为传统医药大省,是全国医药产业发展的重要组成部分。通过资料查询,从产业规模与体系、研发创新、产业潜能、人 才队伍、科研机构和专利发明等多方位,分析江苏省医药产业发展现状,并与其他医药产业重点省份进行比较,揭示目前全省医药产业 发展中的主要问题所在,为全省医药产业健康发展建言献策。     

Same but different–Scale up and numbering up in electrobiotechnology and photobiotechnology

Facing energy problems, there is a strong demand for new technologies dealing with the replacement of fossil fuels. The emerging fields of biotechnology, photobiotechnology and electrobiotechnology, offer solutions for the production of fuels, energy, or chemicals using renewable energy sources (light or electrical current e.g. produced by wind or solar power) or organic (waste) substrates. From an engineering point of view both technologies have analogies and some similar challenges, since both light and electron transfer are primarily surface‐dependent. In contrast to that, bioproduction processes are typically volume dependent. To allow large scale and industrially relevant applications of photobiotechnology and electrobiotechnology, this opinion first gives an overview over the current scales reached in these areas. We then try to point out the challenges and possible methods for the scale up or numbering up of the reactors used. It is shown that the field of photobiotechnology is by now much more advanced than electrobiotechnology and has achieved industrial applications in some cases. We argue that transferring knowledge from photobiotechnology to electrobiotechnology can speed up the development of the emerging field of electrobiotechnology. We believe that a combination of scale up and numbering up, as it has been shown for several photobiotechnological reactors, may well lead to industrially relevant scales in electrobiotechnological processes allowing an industrial application of the technology in near future.     

不同量表用于机械通气新生儿急性疼痛评估的价值分析

目的:分析和比较不同量表用于机械通气新生儿急性疼痛评估的价值。方法:使用总结性、回顾性研究方法,研究时间为2017年3月份到2018年7月份,选择在医院NICU接受机械通气诊治的新生儿56例作为研究对象,所有新生儿都给予高频震荡通气治疗,急性疼痛采用新生儿疼痛/激惹与镇静量表、新生儿急性疼痛评估量表进行评估与分析,记录评估效果。结果:新生儿疼痛/激惹与镇静量表的总体Cronbachα系数为0.698分,最高评分为基础行为状态,最低评分为心率增快。新生儿急性疼痛评估量表的内部一致性总体Cronbachα系数为0.822,最高评分为胎龄,最低评分为SaO2。新生儿疼痛/激惹与镇静量表的护理人员一致性组内相关系数(ICC)为0.992,新生儿急性疼痛评估量表的护理人员一致性组内相关系数ICC为0.987。以新生儿疼痛/激惹与镇静量表作为效标,新生儿急性疼痛评估量表的效标关联效度Spearman相关系数为r=0.855,P=0.007。12名护理人员对新生儿急性疼痛评估量表的选择率为66.7%,对新生儿疼痛/激惹与镇静量表的选择率为33.3%。结论:新生儿疼痛/激惹与镇静量表和新生儿急性疼痛评估量表在机械通气新生儿急性疼痛评估中都有很好的信度与一致性,其中新生儿急性疼痛评估量表的可行性和临床实用性更好。     

A global assessment of primate responses to landscape structure

Land‐use change modifies the spatial structure of terrestrial landscapes, potentially shaping the distribution, abundance and diversity of remaining species assemblages. Non‐human primates can be particularly vulnerable to landscape disturbances, but our understanding of this topic is far from complete. Here we reviewed all available studies on primates' responses to landscape structure. We found 34 studies of 71 primate species (24 genera and 10 families) that used a landscape approach. Most studies (82%) were from Neotropical forests, with howler monkeys being the most frequently studied taxon (56% of studies). All studies but one used a site‐landscape or a patch‐landscape study design, and frequently (34% of studies) measured landscape variables within a given radius from the edge of focal patches. Altogether, the 34 studies reported 188 responses to 17 landscape‐scale metrics. However, the majority of the studies (62%) quantified landscape predictors within a single spatial scale, potentially missing significant primate–landscape responses. To assess such responses accurately, landscape metrics need to be measured at the optimal scale, i.e. the spatial extent at which the primate–landscape relationship is strongest (so‐called ‘scale of effect’). Only 21% of studies calculated the scale of effect through multiscale approaches. Interestingly, the vast majority of studies that do not assess the scale of effect mainly reported null effects of landscape structure on primates, while most of the studies based on optimal scales found significant responses. These significant responses were primarily to landscape composition variables rather than landscape configuration variables. In particular, primates generally show positive responses to increasing forest cover, landscape quality indices and matrix permeability. By contrast, primates show weak responses to landscape configuration. In addition, half of the studies showing significant responses to landscape configuration metrics did not control for the effect of forest cover. As configuration metrics are often correlated with forest cover, this means that documented configuration effects may simply be driven by landscape‐scale forest loss. Our findings suggest that forest loss (not fragmentation) is a major threat to primates, and thus, preventing deforestation (e.g. through creation of reserves) and increasing forest cover through restoration is critically needed to mitigate the impact of land‐use change on our closest relatives. Increasing matrix functionality can also be critical, for instance by promoting anthropogenic land covers that are similar to primates' habitat.