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Chronic ulcers are among the main causes of morbidity and mortality due to the high probability of infection and sepsis and therefore exert a significant impact on public health resources. Numerous types of dressings are used for the treatment of skin ulcers-each with different advantages and disadvantages. Bacterial cellulose (BC) has received enormous interest in the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and medical fields due to its biological, physical, and mechanical characteristics, which enable the creation of polymer composites and blends with broad applications. In the medical field, BC was at first used in wound dressings, tissue regeneration, and artificial blood vessels. This material is suitable for treating various skin diseases due its considerable fluid retention and medication loading properties. BC membranes are used as a temporary dressing for skin treatments due to their excellent fit to the body, reduction in pain, and acceleration of epithelial regeneration. BC-based composites and blends have been evaluated and synthesized both in vitro and in vivo to create an ideal microenvironment for wound healing. This review describes different methods of producing and handling BC for use in the medical field and highlights the qualities of BC in detail with emphasis on biomedical reports that demonstrate its utility. Moreover, it gives an account of biomedical applications, especially for tissue engineering and wound dressing materials reported until date. This review also includes patents of BC applied as a wound dressing material.

The growing interest in innovations regarding the treatment of oily wastewater stems from the fact that the oil industry is the largest polluter of the environment. The harm caused by this industry is seen in all countries. Companies that produce such wastewater are responsible for its treatment prior to disposal or recycling into their production processes. As oil emulsions are difficult to manage and require different types of treatment or even combined methods, a range of environmental technologies have been proposed for oil-contaminated effluents, such as gravity separation, flotation, flocculation, biological treatment, advanced oxidation processes, and membranes. Natural materials, such as biopolymers, constitute a novel, sustainable solution with considerable potential for oily effluent separation. The present review offers an overview of the treatment of oily wastewater, describing current trends and the latest applications. This review also points to further research needs and major concerns, especially with regards to sustainability, and discusses potential biotechnological applications.

Deepening democratization in Brazil has coincided with sustained flows of domestic migration, which raises an important question of whether migration deepens or depresses democratic development in migrant-sending regions. Whereas earlier perspectives have viewed migration as a political “brain drain,” we contend that out-migration can generate resources that promote democratic processes back home. We investigate the role of migration in two aspects of democratization: electoral participation and com petition. The analyses are based on spatial panel data models of mayoral election results across all municipalities between 1996 and 2012. The results show that migration increases electoral participation and competition in migrant-sending localities in Brazil. This study also identifies the sociopolitical context that conditions the impact of migration: the ef fect is most often present in the context of rural-urban migration and is more pronounced in sending localities with less democratic political structures. Moreover, using spatial network models, we find evidence for the transmission of political remittances from migration destination municipalities to origin municipalities. The pres ent study ex tends the research on the migration-development nexus to the political arena, thus dem on strat ing the value of integrating demographic processes into explanations of political change.

We analyze the trade-offs between health and the economy during the period of social distancing in São Paulo, the state hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. We use longitudinal data with municipal-level information and check the robustness of our estimates to several sources of bias, including spatial dependence, reverse causality, and time-variant omitted variables. We use exogenous climate shocks as instruments for social distancing since people are more likely to stay home in wetter and colder periods. Our findings suggest that the health benefits of social distancing differ by levels of municipal development and may have vanished if the COVID-19 spread was not controlled in neighboring municipalities. In turn, we did not find evidence that municipalities with tougher social distancing performed worse economically. Our results also highlight that estimates that do not account for endogeneity may largely underestimate the benefits of social distancing on reducing the spread of COVID-19.

We use a combination of economic and wellbeing metrics to evaluate the impacts of a climate resilience program designed for family farmers in the semiarid region of Brazil. Most family farmers in the region are on the verge of income and food insufficiency, both of which are exacerbated in prolonged periods of droughts. The program assisted farmers in their milk and sheepmeat production, implementing a set of climate-smart production practices and locally-adapted technologies. We find that the program under evaluation had substantive and significant impacts on production practices, land management, and quality of life in general, using several different quasi-experimental strategies to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated farmers. We highlight the strengths and limitations of each evaluation strategy and how the set of analyses and outcome indicators complement each other. The evaluation provides valuable insights into the economic and environmental sustainability of family farming in semiarid regions, which are under growing pressure from climate change and environmental degradation worldwide.

Key Points Pluripotent stem cells, such as embryonic stem cells, maintain the capacity to differentiate into all cell types of the body through a complex regulatory mechanism that involves a particular chromatin landscape. Pluripotent stem cells have been shown, by a variety of approaches, to have an open chromatin state with reduced levels of heterochromatin, both in vitro and in vivo . This open chromatin state is thought to be important for the maintenance of pluripotency. Open chromatin may be regulated by several chromatin regulators that are abundant in embryonic stem cells. These factors seem to actively prevent heterochromatin from expanding in the undifferentiated state. In the context of a globally open chromatin, other chromatin regulators contribute locally to the silencing of lineage-specific genes until differentiation is triggered, keeping pluripotent stem cells in a poised undifferentiated state. Reprogramming of somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells requires re-opening of chromatin in a process that probably involves some of the same factors that maintain open chromatin. Chromatin re-opening during reprogramming may not always be complete and thus leaves an epigenetic memory of the original cell type. The overcoming of epigenetic barriers during somatic cell reprogramming to pluripotency appears to have molecular parallels with cellular transformation in cancer. There is increasing evidence that an 'open' chromatin state contributes to maintenance of pluripotency in stem cells, and that this requires regulation of both the global chromatin state and local repression of transcription. This regulation may also be relevant for chromatin control during reprogramming or during tumorigenesis. Pluripotent stem cells can be derived from embryos or induced from adult cells by reprogramming. They are unique among stem cells in that they can give rise to all cell types of the body. Recent findings indicate that a particularly 'open' chromatin state contributes to maintenance of pluripotency. Two principles are emerging: specific factors maintain a globally open chromatin state that is accessible for transcriptional activation; and other chromatin regulators contribute locally to the silencing of lineage-specific genes until differentiation is triggered. These same principles may apply during reacquisition of an open chromatin state upon reprogramming to pluripotency, and during de-differentiation in cancer.

Food packaging, which is typically made of paper/cardboard, glass, metal, and plastic, is essential for protecting and preserving food. However, the impact of conventional food packaging and especially the predominant use of plastics, due to their versatility and low cost, bring serious environmental and health problems such as pollution by micro and nanoplastics. In response to these challenges, biotechnology emerges as a new way for improving packaging by providing biopolymers as sustainable alternatives. In this context, bacterial cellulose (BC), a biodegradable and biocompatible material produced by bacteria, stands out for its mechanical resistance, food preservation capacity, and rapid degradation and is a promising solution for replacing plastics. However, despite its advantages, large-scale application still encounters technical and economic challenges. These include high costs compared to when conventional materials are used, difficulties in standardizing membrane production through microbial methods, and challenges in optimizing cultivation and production processes, so further studies are necessary to ensure food safety and industrial viability. Thus, this review provides an overview of the impacts of conventional packaging. It discusses the development of biodegradable packaging, highlighting BC as a promising biopolymer. Additionally, it explores biotechnological techniques for the development of innovative packaging through structural modifications of BC, as well as ways to optimize its production process. The study also emphasizes the importance of these solutions in promoting a circular economy within the food industry and reducing its environmental impact.

Fashion is one of the most polluting world industries, surpassed only by the petroleum industry. Environmental damages originate from the production, manufacture and dyeing of fabrics, calling for alternative feedstock such as bacterial cellulose. Bacterial cellulose is attracting industrial interest from the textile sector due to advanced properties of bacterial cellulose compared to plant cellulose. For instance, bacterial cellulose is produced by microorganisms in a sustainable way, is biodegradable and does not pollute the environment. Moreover, bacterial cellulose can be dyed, resulting in an attractive textile surface that meets the actual socio-environmental awareness of the industry. Here, we review properties and production methods of bacterial cellulose and applications, focusing on the textile industry. We also discuss the main features of the dyeing process using natural dyes, as well as the registration of patents related to the textile industry, in order to demonstrate the growing application potential in the fashion market. This is the first review that explores the applications of bacterial cellulose related to the textile industry.

Patient‐derived cancer organoids (PDOs) hold considerable promise for personalizing therapy selection and improving patient outcomes. However, it is challenging to generate PDOs in sufficient numbers to test therapies in standard culture platforms. This challenge is particularly acute for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) where most patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage with non‐resectable tumors and where patient tissue is in the form of needle biopsies. Here the development and characterization of microfluidic devices for testing therapies using a limited amount of tissue or PDOs available from PDAC biopsies is described. It is demonstrated that microfluidic PDOs are phenotypically and genotypically similar to the gold‐standard Matrigel organoids with the advantages of 1) spheroid uniformity, 2) minimal cell number requirement, and 3) not relying on Matrigel. The utility of microfluidic PDOs is proven by testing PDO responses to several chemotherapies, including an inhibitor of glycogen synthase kinase (GSKI). In addition, microfluidic organoid cultures are used to test effectiveness of immunotherapy comprised of NK cells in combination with a novel biologic. In summary, our microfluidic device offers considerable benefits for personalizing oncology based on cancer biopsies and may, in the future, be developed into a companion diagnostic for chemotherapy or immunotherapy treatments. Treatment of pancreatic cancer may be made more effective by selecting therapies for an individual patient. The authors developed and characterized microfluidic devices that may be used to test chemotherapies and immunotherapies using needle core biopsies from patients with pancreatic cancer.

This paper examines multidimensional poverty in Brazil in 2000 and 2010, based on the microdata of the Demographic Censuses. Our analysis is disaggregated into five classes of municipalities according to their degree of urbanisation and remoteness, highlighting wide rural–urban inequalities in the levels and dynamics of poverty. We compare estimates of traditional monetary poverty with multidimensional poverty measures based on two methods: (i) the Alkire-Foster counting identification approach; and (ii) the Permanyer two-stage poverty identification approach. The two-stage approach introduces the concepts of complementarity/substitutability within and across poverty dimensions, which enables a more precise identification of the population targeted by anti-poverty policies. All methods highlight substantial progress in poverty alleviation. In absolute terms, the reduction in the incidence of multidimensional poverty was significantly larger in the initially poorest areas—rural and intermediate municipalities, as well as those in the North and North–East regions. Important advances were made in standard of living, especially in the access to electricity, durable consumer goods and private bathroom in the households in rural and intermediate municipalities. However, remote municipalities remain relatively poorer from any perspective, facing more difficulties in reducing monetary poverty.