Segmentation of OECD countries on the basis of selected global environmental indicators using k-means non-hierarchical clustering.

In order to allocate resources and describe progress, frequently nations are grouped together by many international authorities. A variety of pertinent indicators can provide a more useful basis for classification for each specific area of interest. Based on commonalities between various variables connected to the global environmental sector, we developed a novel typology of country clusters. Four indicators were chosen after a review of the literature. In order to optimize data availability across as many OECD nations as feasible, indicators were chosen based on their relevance for all the OECD countries. Countries were arranged into a natural cluster using the hierarchical clustering method. Four groups, covering 31 countries, were the result of two stages of grouping. These four clusters were found to be more compact and clearly divided which gives policymakers a clear-cut idea as to how these environmental indicators are deteriorating day by day and year by year and what needs to be done to be more environmentally sustainable and responsible.

Dosage du sC5b-9 plasmatique / Plasma sC5b-9 Assay / Dosage of plasma sC5b-9

INTRODUCTION: Une demande d'introduction d'une nouvelle analyse au Répertoire québécois et système de mesure des procédures de biologie médicale (ci-après nommé Répertoire) a été transmise à l'Institut national d'excellence en santé et en services sociaux (INESSS) à travers le mécanisme d'évaluation des nouvelles analyses de biologie médicale. Le mandat vise à évaluer la pertinence d'introduire le dosage du sC5b-9 plasmatique au Répertoire. Il s'agit de la troisième évaluation pour ce mandat. Étant donné que cette demande comporte des éléments nouveaux, l'INESSS a procédé à la réévaluation de la pertinence de réaliser ce dosage selon une perspective provinciale. MÉTHODOLOGIE: La démarche d'évaluation comprend une revue de la documentation scientifique, une recherche de la littérature grise et des consultations menées auprès de cliniciens et autres parties prenantes. La méthodologie a été déployée autour des cinq dimensions de l'énoncé de principes du cadre d'appréciation de la valeur des interventions de l'INESSS : socioculturelle, populationnelle, clinique, organisationnelle et économique. Une revue de la littérature économique a été réalisée concernant l'efficience du dosage du sC5b-9. Une analyse d'impact budgétaire considérant les coûts liés à l'introduction du dosage du sC5b-9 au Répertoire a été effectuée. Les coûts ont été projetés sur un horizon temporel de trois ans selon la perspective du système de soins de santé. L'ensemble des données scientifiques, contextuelles et expérientielles a été interprété et synthétisé sous la forme de constats afin de guider le processus de délibération du Comité délibératif permanent (CDP) ­ Approches diagnostiques et dépistage en vue de l'élaboration de recommandations. CONTEXTE DE L'ÉVALUATION: Les microangiopathies thrombotiques (MAT) sont un groupe de maladies hétérogènes qui se manifestent par une anémie hémolytique, une thrombopénie et des dommages aux organes, souvent les reins. Les MAT médiées par le complément sont caractérisées par un dérèglement de la voie alterne du complément. Cette pathologie est actuellement identifiée par exclusion en raison du manque d'outils fonctionnels pour la diagnostiquer. L'errance diagnostique a des répercussions sur la prise en charge des patients et, par conséquent, retarde l'instauration d'un traitement approprié. L'activation du complément mène à la formation du complexe d'attaque membranaire (MAC [de l'anglais membrane attack complex] ou C5b-9). Le dosage du sC5b-9 mesure ce complexe dans sa forme soluble. DIMENSION SOCIOCULTURELLE: Il s'agit de la troisième évaluation de la pertinence de l'ajout du dosage du sC5b-9 au Répertoire. Depuis les avis publiés en 2017 et 2018, de nouvelles informations permettent de répondre aux préoccupations soulevées par les membres du Comité délibératif permanent lors des évaluations antérieures, notamment concernant l'absence de consensus pour une concentration seuil et le manque de sensibilité et de spécificité diagnostiques. Le dosage du sC5b-9 est déjà utilisé dans la pratique clinique au Québec pour la recherche de l'étiologie d'une MAT. Cette mesure fait également partie d'un ensemble de critères pour justifier l'instauration d'un traitement inhibiteur du complément, notamment l'éculizumab, soit un médicament très dispendieux. Une MAT médiée par le complément est une maladie rare et l'accès à une analyse facilitant le diagnostic de cette pathologie concorde avec la Politique québécoise pour les maladies rares du ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux (MSSS) adoptée en 2022. En 2023, un regroupement d'experts (TA-TMA [transplant-associated TMA] Harmonization of Definitions panel) représentant plusieurs organisations a également recommandé le dosage du sC5b-9 dans la stratification des risques et le diagnostic d'une MAT associée à une transplantation (MAT-AT). DIMENSION POPULATIONNELLE: Une MAT médiée par le complément représente une situation d'urgence en raison du risque de détérioration rapide. En l'absence de traitement, les patients sont confrontés à un pronostic défavorable pouvant entraîner des conséquences fatales. En pratique clinique, l'éculizumab, un inhibiteur de la protéine C5, est entre autres utilisé pour traiter les MAT médiées par le complément. L'INESSS n'a toutefois jamais procédé à son évaluation pour cette pathologie puisqu'aucune demande n'a été soumise par le fabricant de ce médicament. Il existe également d'autres traitements inhibiteurs du complément et de nouveaux sont en cours de développement. Selon les cliniciens consultés, un besoin de santé existe pour les patients atteints d'une MAT, puisqu'il y a un manque d'outils diagnostiques fonctionnels pour identifier promptement celles médiées par le complément. Un diagnostic plus hâtif de cette pathologie permettrait d'instaurer rapidement un traitement inhibiteur du complément. Le dosage du sC5b-9 fait partie des outils pour répondre à ce besoin de santé. Une valeur normale n'exclut toutefois pas le diagnostic de MAT médiée par le complément et n'écarte pas non plus la possibilité d'instaurer un traitement inhibiteur du complément. DIMENSION CLINIQUE: La revue de la littérature a permis de repérer 14 articles, soit 2 revues systématiques, 6 études de cohorte, 4 études cas-témoins, 1 analyse exploratoire d'une étude clinique de phase III et 1 consensus d'experts. Selon la littérature et les cliniciens consultés, le dosage du sC5b-9 est une analyse utile pour investiguer l'étiologie d'une MAT, mais il ne pourrait confirmer un diagnostic à lui seul. Une MAT doit d'abord être établie selon des critères bien définis, notamment en présence d'une anémie hémolytique, d'une thrombopénie et de schizocytes aux frottis. De plus, l'obtention d'une valeur normale n'écarte pas forcément ce diagnostic. En contexte de greffe, le dosage du sC5b-9 est utilisé comme outil diagnostique avec les manifestations cliniques appropriées, lorsqu'il y a suspicion que le patient présente une MAT-AT. Le dosage du sC5b-9 permet également de cibler les patients qui pourraient être admissibles à un traitement inhibiteur du complément, sans nécessairement exclure cette option de traitement si la valeur observée est normale. DIMENSION ORGANISATIONNELLE: Actuellement, le dosage du sCb-9 est offert hors Répertoire au laboratoire d'hémostase du CHU Sainte-Justine. Aucune grappe OPTILAB autre que celle du Montréal-CHU Sainte-Justine n'effectue cette analyse localement, et aucune ne voit l'intérêt de l'ajouter à son offre de service pour le moment en raison de la faible volumétrie. De plus, les délais actuellement observés avant l'obtention des résultats concordent avec les utilisations anticipées. Advenant l'ajout au Répertoire du dosage du sC5b-9, si un seul centre était désigné, cela serait jugé adéquat. Il serait cependant souhaitable que les analyses en lien avec la recherche de l'étiologie d'une MAT soient accessibles dans le même centre afin de cadrer avec la trajectoire de soins d'un patient. DIMENSION ÉCONOMIQUE: Efficience: Aucune étude évaluant l'efficience du dosage du sC5b-9 pour préciser un diagnostic de microangiopathie thrombotique (MAT) médiée par le complément ou pour optimiser le traitement avec un inhibiteur du complément n'a été repérée dans la documentation scientifique. L'efficience du test du dosage du sC5b-9 ne peut pas être évaluée considérant l'absence de données permettant de quantifier les bénéfices de santé découlant de son utilisation. Analyse d'impact budgétaire: Selon les hypothèses retenues, l'introduction du test permettant le dosage du sC5b-9 au Répertoire pourrait entraîner des coûts d'environ 92 000 $ pour le total des trois premières années. Il est estimé que 1 100 tests seront effectués sur cet horizon. Les analyses de sensibilité réalisées montrent que l'impact net lié à l'introduction du test permettant le dosage du sC5b-9 au Répertoire pourrait varier d'environ 74 000 $ à 132 000 $ sur trois ans. Recommandations: À la lumière des constats dégagés à partir des cinq dimensions de valeur, l'INESSS recommande au ministre d'introduire le dosage du sC5b-9 plasmatique au Répertoire. L'INESSS précise quelques recommandations quant à l'implantation de l'analyse: Maintenir un temps de réponse qui concorde avec les utilisations anticipées; Advenant la désignation de plus d'un centre, s'assurer d'offrir les analyses en lien avec la recherche de l'étiologie d'une MAT au même endroit afin de faciliter la trajectoire de soins des patients.

Exploring the comparative adequacy of a unimanual and a bimanual stimulus-response setup for use with three-alternative choice response time tasks.

Research often conceptualises complex social factors as being distinct binary categories (e.g., female vs male, feminine vs masculine). While this can be appropriate, the addition of an 'overlapping' category (e.g., non-binary, gender neutral) can contextualise the 'binary', both for participants (allowing more complex conceptualisations of the categories than the 'either/or' conceptualisation in binary tasks), and for the results (by providing a neutral baseline for comparison). However, it is not clear what the best response setup for such a task would be. In this study, we explore this topic through comparing a unimanual (N = 34) and a bimanual response setup (N = 32) for use with a three-alternative choice response time task. Crucially, one of the stimulus categories ('mixed') was composed of stimulus elements from the other two stimulus categories used in that task (Complex Task). A reference button task was included to isolate the motoric component of response registration (Simple Task). The results of the simple task indicated lower motoric costs for the unimanual compared to the bimanual setup. However, when statistically controlling for these motoric costs in the complex task, the bimanual setup had a lower error rate and faster response times than the unimanual setup. Further, in the complex task error rates and response times were higher for the mixed than the matched stimuli, indicating that responding to mixed stimuli is more challenging for encoding and/or decision making processes. This difference was more pronounced in the unimanual than the bimanual setup. Taken together these results indicate that the unimanual setup is more adequate for the reference button task, whereas the intricacy of overlapping categories in the complex task is better contained in the bimanual setup, i.e. when some response alternatives are allocated to one hand and other alternatives to the other hand.

Potential visibility, growth, and technological innovation in offshore wind turbines installed in Europe.

One of the primary trends in the technological growth of offshore wind turbines is the movement toward larger-rotor machines with higher hub height. Recently, offshore wind turbine sizes, especially hub height, rotor diameter, and nameplate capacity, have increased dramatically and are expected to increase further. This growth in offshore wind turbine size enhances the turbine power coefficient for the same wind speeds significantly and also led to the reductions of levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and total installed cost (TIC) of the turbines. This work examines the growth in the nameplate size and capacity of offshore wind turbines installed in Europe through the years as new installations and total installations. Effects and results of this growth in nameplate size and capacity on the LCOE, TIC, wind farm capacity, turbine-specific power capacity, turbine capacity factor (CF), sea surface area needed per GW, and the number of turbines per GW are examined and discussed in detail. As a result, this study aims to contribute to the literature and provide technical and innovative information to turbine manufacturers by presenting various aspects of offshore wind turbine technology development in Europe. The rapid technological developments in this sector show that the average CF has increased from 42 to 44% in the last decade, and the LCOE value has reduced from 0.156 USD/kWh to 0.096 USD/kWh.

PredictiveNetwork: predictive gene network estimation with application to gastric cancer drug response-predictive network analysis.

BACKGROUND: Gene regulatory networks have garnered a large amount of attention to understand disease mechanisms caused by complex molecular network interactions. These networks have been applied to predict specific clinical characteristics, e.g., cancer, pathogenicity, and anti-cancer drug sensitivity. However, in most previous studies using network-based prediction, the gene networks were estimated first, and predicted clinical characteristics based on pre-estimated networks. Thus, the estimated networks cannot describe clinical characteristic-specific gene regulatory systems. Furthermore, existing computational methods were developed from algorithmic and mathematics viewpoints, without considering network biology. RESULTS: To effectively predict clinical characteristics and estimate gene networks that provide critical insights into understanding the biological mechanisms involved in a clinical characteristic, we propose a novel strategy for predictive gene network estimation. The proposed strategy simultaneously performs gene network estimation and prediction of the clinical characteristic. In this strategy, the gene network is estimated with minimal network estimation and prediction errors. We incorporate network biology by assuming that neighboring genes in a network have similar biological functions, while hub genes play key roles in biological processes. Thus, the proposed method provides interpretable prediction results and enables us to uncover biologically reliable marker identification. Monte Carlo simulations shows the effectiveness of our method for feature selection in gene estimation and prediction with excellent prediction accuracy. We applied the proposed strategy to construct gastric cancer drug-responsive networks. CONCLUSION: We identified gastric drug response predictive markers and drug sensitivity/resistance-specific markers, AKR1B10, AKR1C3, ANXA10, and ZNF165, based on GDSC data analysis. Our results for identifying drug sensitive and resistant specific molecular interplay are strongly supported by previous studies. We expect that the proposed strategy will be a useful tool for uncovering crucial molecular interactions involved a specific biological mechanism, such as cancer progression or acquired drug resistance.

Computational prediction of heteromeric protein complex disassembly order using hybrid Monte Carlo/molecular dynamics simulation.

The physicochemical entities comprising the biological phenomena in the cell form a network of biochemical reactions and the activity of such a network is regulated by multimeric protein complexes. Mass spectroscopy (MS) experiments and multimeric protein docking simulations based on structural bioinformatics techniques have revealed the molecular-level stoichiometry and static configuration of subcomplexes in their bound forms, thus revealing the subcomplex population and formation orders. Meanwhile, these methodologies are not designed to straightforwardly examine the temporal dynamics of multimeric protein assembly and disassembly, essential physicochemical properties to understand the functional expression mechanisms of proteins in the biological environment. To address this problem, we have developed an atomistic simulation in the framework of the hybrid Monte Carlo/molecular dynamics (hMC/MD) method and succeeded in observing the disassembly of a homomeric pentamer of the serum amyloid P component protein in an experimentally consistent order. In this study, we improved the hMC/MD method to examine the disassembly processes of the tryptophan synthase tetramer, a paradigmatic heteromeric protein complex in MS studies. We employed the likelihood-based selection scheme to determine a dissociation-prone subunit pair at every hMC/MD simulation cycle and achieved highly reliable predictions of the disassembly orders without a priori knowledge of the MS experiments and structural bioinformatics simulations. The success rate for the experimentally-observed disassembly order is over 0.9. We similarly succeeded in reliable predictions for three other tetrameric protein complexes. These achievements indicate the potential applicability of our hMC/MD approach as a general-purpose methodology to obtain microscopic and physicochemical insights into multimeric protein complex formation.

Alkyne modified purines for assessment of activation of Plasmodium vivax hypnozoites and growth of pre-erythrocytic and erythrocytic stages in Plasmodium spp.

Malaria is a major global health problem which predominantly afflicts developing countries. Although many antimalarial therapies are currently available, the protozoan parasite causing this disease, Plasmodium spp., continues to evade eradication efforts. One biological phenomenon hampering eradication efforts is the parasite's ability to arrest development, transform into a drug-insensitive form, and then resume growth post-therapy. Currently, the mechanisms by which the parasite enters arrested development, or dormancy, and later recrudesces or reactivates to continue development, are unknown and the malaria field lacks techniques to study these elusive mechanisms. Since Plasmodium spp. salvage purines for DNA synthesis, we hypothesised that alkyne-containing purine nucleosides could be used to develop a DNA synthesis marker which could be used to investigate mechanisms behind dormancy. Using copper-catalysed click chemistry methods, we observe incorporation of alkyne modified adenosine, inosine, and hypoxanthine in actively replicating asexual blood stages of Plasmodium falciparum and incorporation of modified adenosine in actively replicating liver stage schizonts of Plasmodium vivax. Notably, these modified purines were not incorporated in dormant liver stage hypnozoites, suggesting this marker could be used as a tool to differentiate replicating and non-replicating liver forms and, more broadly, as a tool for advancing our understanding of Plasmodium dormancy mechanisms.

Gestión de riesgos para cambio de Lotes de Siembra de Trabajo en el Instituto Finlay de Vacunas / Risk management for changing Working Seed Lots at Finlay Vaccine Institute

Este artículo proporciona un caso de estudio del uso del Análisis Modal de Fallos y Efectos para identificar y evaluar los riesgos de un posible cambio del lote de siembra de trabajo en el Instituto Finlay de Vacunas. Este análisis tuvo lugar en uno de los procesos críticos de las Plantas de Producción de Ingrediente Farmacéutico Activo del Instituto Finlay de Vacunas. No incluyó cambios en la tecnología de obtención del Lote de Siembra de Trabajo, ni cambios en el Lote de Siembra de Referencia. Como resultado, se identificaron ocho riesgos potenciales y de ellos se valoraron 17 causas, las cuales se asocian principalmente a la contaminación del Lote de Siembra de Trabajo o baja viabilidad del Lote de Siembra de Referencia, uso de materias primas y materiales de proveedores no calificados o posteriores al período de vigencia, errores de manipulación, parámetros de operación inadecuados, uso de medios de cultivo, soluciones y materiales contaminados, inadecuado funcionamiento del equipamiento e instalaciones y personal no capacitado. Los riesgos identificados son aceptables, con una probabilidad baja de ocurrencia y no están vinculados a la seguridad y eficacia del Ingrediente Farmacéutico Activo, ni de las vacunas. Por último, se propuso una estrategia que minimiza los posibles fallos ante un cambio de Lote de Siembra de trabajo para la fabricación de un producto biofarmacéutico(AU)

This article provides a case study of the use of Modal Failure and Effects Analysis to identify and assess the risks of a possible change in the Working Seed Lot at Finlay Vaccine Institute. This analysis took place in one of the critical processes of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Production Plants of the Finlay Vaccine Institute. This analysis did not include changes in the technology for obtaining the Working Seed Lot or changes in the Reference Seed Lot. As a result, eight potential risks were identified and 17 causes were assessed, mainly associated with contamination of the Working Seed Lot or low viability of the Reference Seed Lot, use of raw materials and other materials from unqualified suppliers or after the validity period, handling errors, inadequate operating parameters, use of culture media, contaminated solutions and materials, inadequate operation of equipment and facilities, and untrained personnel. The identified risks are acceptable, with a low probability of occurrence and are not linked to the safety and efficacy of the active pharmaceutical ingredient or vaccines. Finally, a strategy was proposed that minimizes possible failures in the event of a change in Working Seed Lot for the manufacture of a biopharmaceutical product(AU)

Quantifying the electron-donating and -accepting capacities of wastewater for evaluating and optimizing biological wastewater treatment processes.

Biological processes have been widely used for the treatment of both domestic and industrial wastewaters. In such biological processes, pollutants are converted into pollution-free substances by microorganisms through oxidation-reduction reactions. Thus, how to quantify the internal oxidation-reduction properties wastewaters and seek out targeted countermeasures is essential to understand, operate, and optimize biological wastewater treatment systems. So far, no such approach is available yet. In this work, a novel concept of electron neutralization-based evaluation is proposed to describe the internal oxidation-reduction properties of wastewater. Pollutants in wastewater are defined as electron donor substances (EDSs) or electron acceptor substances (EASs), which could give or accept electrons, respectively. With such an electron neutralization concept, several parameters, i.e., electron residual concentration (R), economy-related index (E and Er), and economical evaluation index (Y and Yr), are defined. Then, these parameters are used to evaluate the performance and economic aspects of currently applied wastewater treatment processes and even optimize systems. Three case studies demonstrate that the proposed concept could be effectively used to reduce wastewater treatment costs, assess energy recovery, and evaluate process performance. Therefore, a new, simple, and reliable methodology is established to describe the oxidation-reduction properties of wastewater and assess the biological wastewater treatment processes.

Collective intelligence defines biological functions in Wikipedia as communities in the hidden protein connection network.

English Wikipedia, containing more than five millions articles, has approximately eleven thousands web pages devoted to proteins or genes most of which were generated by the Gene Wiki project. These pages contain information about interactions between proteins and their functional relationships. At the same time, they are interconnected with other Wikipedia pages describing biological functions, diseases, drugs and other topics curated by independent, not coordinated collective efforts. Therefore, Wikipedia contains a directed network of protein functional relations or physical interactions embedded into the global network of the encyclopedia terms, which defines hidden (indirect) functional proximity between proteins. We applied the recently developed reduced Google Matrix (REGOMAX) algorithm in order to extract the network of hidden functional connections between proteins in Wikipedia. In this network we discovered tight communities which reflect areas of interest in molecular biology or medicine and can be considered as definitions of biological functions shaped by collective intelligence. Moreover, by comparing two snapshots of Wikipedia graph (from years 2013 and 2017), we studied the evolution of the network of direct and hidden protein connections. We concluded that the hidden connections are more dynamic compared to the direct ones and that the size of the hidden interaction communities grows with time. We recapitulate the results of Wikipedia protein community analysis and annotation in the form of an interactive online map, which can serve as a portal to the Gene Wiki project.

FlySilico: Flux balance modeling of Drosophila larval growth and resource allocation.

Organisms depend on a highly connected and regulated network of biochemical reactions fueling life sustaining and growth promoting functions. While details of this metabolic network are well established, knowledge of the superordinate regulatory design principles is limited. Here, we investigated by iterative wet lab and modeling experiments the resource allocation process during the larval development of Drosophila melanogaster. We chose this system, as survival of the animals depends on the successful allocation of their available resources to the conflicting processes of growth and storage metabolite deposition. First, we generated "FlySilico", a curated metabolic network of Drosophila, and performed time-resolved growth and metabolite measurements with larvae raised on a holidic diet. Subsequently, we performed flux balance analysis simulations and tested the predictive power of our model by simulating the impact of diet alterations on growth and metabolism. Our predictions correctly identified the essential amino acids as growth limiting factor, and metabolic flux differences in agreement with our experimental data. Thus, we present a framework to study important questions of resource allocation in a multicellular organism including process priorization and optimality principles.

Effect of Linearization in a WNT Signaling Model.

A nonlinear model consisting of a system of coupled ordinary differential equations (ODE), describing a biological process linked with cancer development, is linearized using Taylor series and tested against different magnitudes of input perturbations, in order to investigate the extent to which the linearization is accurate. The canonical wingless/integrated (WNT) signaling pathway is considered. The linearization procedure is described, and special considerations for linearization validity are analyzed. The analytical properties of nonlinear and linearized systems are studied, including aspects such as existence of steady state and initial value sensitivity. Linearization is a useful tool for speeding up drug response computations or for providing analytical answers to problems such as required drug concentrations. A Monte Carlo-based error testing workflow is employed to study the errors introduced by the linearization for different input conditions and parameter vectors. The deviations between the nonlinear and the linearized system were found to increase in a polynomial fashion w.r.t. the magnitude of tested perturbations. The linearized system closely followed the original one for perturbations of magnitude within 10% of the base input vector which yielded the state-space fixed point used for the linearization.

Global variation of soil microbial carbon-use efficiency in relation to growth temperature and substrate supply.

Soil microbial carbon-use efficiency (CUE), which is defined as the ratio of growth over C uptake, is commonly assumed as a constant or estimated by a temperature-dependent function in current microbial-explicit soil carbon (C) models. The temperature-dependent function (i.e., CUE = CUE0 + m × (T - 20)) simulates the dynamic CUE based on the specific CUE at a given reference temperature (i.e., CUE0) and a temperature response coefficient (i.e., m). Here, based on 780 observations from 98 sites, we showed a divergent spatial distribution of the soil microbial CUE (0.5 ± 0.25; mean ± SD) at the global scale. Then, the key parameters CUE0 and m in the above equation were estimated as 0.475 and -0.016, respectively, based on the observations with the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique. We also found a strong dependence of microbial CUE on the type of C substrate. The multiple regression analysis showed that glucose influences the variation of measured CUE associated with the environmental factors. Overall, this study confirms the global divergence of soil microbial CUE and calls for the incorporation of C substrate beside temperature in estimating the microbial CUE in different biomes.

The moderating role of oil price changes in the effects of service trade and tourism on growth: the case of Turkey.

The aim of this study is to examine the role of oil price changes in the effects of services trade and tourism on real income growth in Turkey. Time series analysis using the 1960-2017 annual period has been adapted with this respect. Results confirm the long-term impacts of tourism and services trade sectors on real income growth in Turkey. Tourism and trade (both services and manufacturing) exert positively significant effects on the long-term performance of macroeconomic activity as measured by gross domestic product. Oil prices negatively impact on real income growth of Turkey. It is also found that oil prices negatively moderate the effects of foreign trade, services trade, and tourism on real income growth in Turkey. This finding reveals that significant effects of foreign trade, services trade, and tourism on real income are negatively influenced from oil price changes.

Scaling Laws in City Growth: Setting Limitations with Self-Organizing Maps.

Do scaling relations always provide the means to anticipate the relationships between the size of cities, costs of maintenance, and the socio-economic benefits resulting from their growth? Scaling laws are considered a universal principle that describes the development of complex systems such as cities. It seems that regardless of their location or history, the growth of cities is associated with the super-linear or sublinear scaling of features such as the amount of space required, infrastructure, or human activities. However, the results of our research, based on grouping by Self-Organizing Maps, reveal some limitations in the application of scaling laws: the trends of urban growth behave in a different manner when we consider both a large and diverse collection of cities and a subset of cities alike. This finding complements the existing body of knowledge on the growth of cities and allows for a more accurate prediction of their future.

Biological processes for advancing lignocellulosic waste biorefinery by advocating circular economy.

The actualization of a circular economy through the use of lignocellulosic wastes as renewable resources can lead to reduce the dependence from fossil-based resources and contribute to a sustainable waste management. The integrated biorefineries, exploiting the overall lignocellulosic waste components to generate fuels, chemicals and energy, are the pillar of the circular economy. The biological treatment is receiving great attention for the biorefinery development since it is considered an eco-friendly alternative to the physico-chemical strategies to increase the biobased product recovery from wastes and improve saccharification and fermentation yields. This paper reviews the last advances in the biological treatments aimed at upgrading lignocellulosic wastes, implementing the biorefinery concept and advocating circular economy.