Search

IntroductionLeishmaniasis is a parasitic disease that affects more than 1 million people worldwide annually, predominantly in resource-limited settings. The challenge in compound development is to exhibit potent activity against the intracellular stage of the parasite (the stage present in the mammalian host) without harming the infected host cells. We have identified a compound series (pyrazolopyrrolidinones) active against the intracellular parasites of Leishmania donovani and L. major; the causative agents of visceral and cutaneous leishmaniasis in the Old World, respectively.MethodsIn this study, we performed medicinal chemistry on a newly-discovered antileishmanial chemotype, with over 100 analogs tested. Studies included assessments of antileishmanial potency, toxicity towards host cells, and in vitro ADME screening of key drug properties.Results and discussionMembers of the series showed high potency against the deadliest form, visceral leishmaniasis (approximate EC50 ≥ 0.01 µM without harming the host macrophage up to 10.0 µM). In comparison, the most efficient monotherapy treatment for visceral leishmaniasis is amphotericin B, which presents similar activity in the same assay (EC50 = 0.2 µM) while being cytotoxic to the host cell at 5.0 µM. Continued development of this compound series with the Discovery Partnership with Academia (DPAc) program at the GlaxoSmithKline Diseases of the Developing World (GSK DDW) laboratories found that the compounds passed all of GSK’s criteria to be defined as a potential lead drug series for leishmaniasis.ConclusionHere, we describe preliminary structure-activity relationships for antileishmanial pyrazolopyrrolidinones, and our progress towards the identification of candidates for future in vivo assays in models of visceral and cutaneous leishmaniasis.

Background/Aims The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented changes to healthcare services. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on referrals to cardiology services in a tertiary hospital. Methods Royal Stoke University Hospital has a cardiac assessment nurse team that provides rapid access to specialist cardiology opinion. All referrals are recorded on a database, which was used to determine how COVID-19 affected the number and types of referrals to cardiology during March–September 2019 and March–September 2020. Results A total of 12 447 referrals were made to the cardiac assessment nurse teams over the evaluation period. Compared to the average number of referrals across all months, there was a decline of 10.5%, 31.2% and 18.5% during March, April and May 2019 respectively. Comparing 2020 to 2019, there were more 999 calls (17.7% vs 15.7%) and accident and emergency referrals (46.5% vs 45.0%), and fewer interhospital referrals (16.0% vs 19.6%). In terms of advice provided for the 999 referrals, a greater number were advised to go to the accident and emergency department (10.5% vs 0%) and direct phone advice provided to those in other settings increased (11.7% vs 0.1%) in 2020. Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a reduction in the number of overall referrals to cardiology, while also demonstrating a shift towards more advice to attend the accident and emergency department for assessment or direct phone advice being provided about management in the community.

The growing share of renewable energies in our electricity production, together with the still lacking storage capacity, strongly reinforces the need for more flexible electricity production units. In this context, combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) have a role to play, both in the current and future electricity production system due to their high efficiency, high load flexibility, and low CO2 emissions compared to other conventional thermal power plants. Nevertheless, bearing in mind our current challenges concerning climate change, the CO2 emissions of these CCGTs need to be reduced drastically. The amine-based absorption carbon capture (CC) process is currently the most mature and applicable CC technology. This process is known to require a considerable amount of thermal energy, degrading plant performance. However, to back-up renewable production, CCGTs will operate most of the time under part-load conditions. The impact of these part-load operations on the CC is still relatively unknown. Within this framework, this study aims to assess the performance of the CC process applied to a typical CCGT under part-load operation using specific simulation models. The CC plant model has been successfully validated against experimental data from a pilot-scale capture facility. Then, the CC plant has been scaled-up to the CCGT scale and the process has been optimized for each operating condition. The simulation results show that the specific reboiler duty increases for part-load operation, while the specific cooling requirements decrease. Moreover, the analysis of the yearly CCGT operation highlights a relative increase in CC energy penalty of 21% for an annual CCGT load factor of 0.5, impacting significantly plant performance. The next step will involve reducing this energy penalty.

Carbone capture by absorption–regeneration technology is a well-known process. However, the development and utilization of new solvents remains crucial to lower its energy consumption. Therefore, an accurate thermodynamic modeling is essential for the process simulation and optimization. This work focuses on the thermodynamic modeling of CO2 absorption in aqueous solutions of N,N-diethylethanolamine (DEEA), N-methyl-1,3-propanediamine (MAPA) and their mixtures using electrolyte NRTL model. A novel thermodynamic modeling of DEEA-H2O−CO2, MAPA-H2O−CO2 and DEEA-MAPA-H2O−CO2 systems was developed. The modeling was carried out by considering the pure vapor pressures, excess enthalpies, dielectric constants, physical solubilities of CO2, partial and total pressures experimental data. The predicted and correlated data such as vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) and heat of CO2 absorption were compared favorably to experimental data from the literature. Liquid–liquid phase separation of a specific mixture of these two amines was also highlighted. Subsequently, the developed model could be used for further simulations at large scale considering that successful validation was performed at pilot scale.

A problem was identified where patient care was affected because of delays in receiving specialist cardiology input. This report describes the experience of developing a specialist cardiac assessment where senior cardiac nurses were trained to provide a 24-hour presence in the emergency department (ED). We describe the service and our evaluation of the service. These dedicated specialised nurses can optimise patient management including admission or safely discharge patients with relevant follow-up when necessary. The team also runs three clinics per week with consultant support. The team of 10 nurses provides a cardiology opinion to approximately 400 patients a month in the ED and 100 patients a month in the acute medical unit (AMU). Eighty-seven per cent of patients are seen in the ED within 30 minutes of referral. Approximately 40% of patients reviewed are accepted directly into cardiology beds thus avoiding admission to the AMU. It has been estimated that 6 bed-days are saved each day, which translated to an estimated £400,000 each year. The team also provides outpatient rapid access services which generates £121,792 income for the directorate. We demonstrate that a cardiac nurse assessment team can provide a cost-effective 24-hour presence in the ED.

Carbon dioxide valorization into value added products have become subject to much study to reduce industrial CO2 emissions and fossil energy resource consumption. In this context, the purpose of this study is to evaluate and highlight the interest of CO2 conversion into methanol through a complete techno-economic and environmental assessment of the entire process chain. The integrated process, successfully implemented in Aspen Plus®, is designed to treat the CO2 coming from a conventional cement plant. A MEA-based CO2 capture process is considered, and the captured CO2 is then directly sent to the conversion unit for its catalytic conversion. Consequently, combining the two units leads to relevant integrations, especially regarding the reuse of the heat provided by the exothermal methanol reactions for the regeneration of the CO2 capture solvent. An economic assessment is proposed to estimate the operational and investment costs, as well as the net present value, which demonstrates that the economic feasibility strongly depends on electricity and H2 production costs. A Life Cycle Analysis method is finally performed to identify the main environmental hotspots. The underlying process design offers a significant reduction in greenhouse gases (besides other categories) when compared to the conventional fossil production from natural gas.

[Image: see text] Utilizing a target repurposing and parasite-hopping approach, we tested a previously reported library of compounds that were active against Trypanosoma brucei, plus 31 new compounds, against a variety of protozoan parasites including Trypanosoma cruzi, Leishmania major, Leishmania donovani, and Plasmodium falciparum. This led to the discovery of several compounds with submicromolar activities and improved physicochemical properties that are early leads toward the development of chemotherapeutic agents against kinetoplastid diseases and malaria.

Direct Air Capture (DAC) technologies extract CO2 directly from the atmosphere and, therefore, compensate for the emissions from sectors that are difficult to decarbonize, e.g. aviation and heavy-duty mobility. However, due to the diluted CO2 in the atmosphere, DAC suffers from high costs and a significant energy footprint. When integrating DAC in power-to-gas systems, several underexplored synergies unfold that reduce the energy and water demand of the system, such as waste heat recycling from methanation and water recovery in the DAC unit. Interconnecting these energy and water streams results in a highly integrated system that is fragile towards changes in ambient and operating conditions. We developed a power-to-gas system with solid sorbent direct air capture and evaluated the energy efficiency and water self-sufficiency ratio under uncertain ambient and operating conditions. The results illustrate that operating at a desorption temperature of 61C, instead of 100oC, results in a water self-sufficient system under average ambient conditions for Belgium, at the expense of a reduction in the energy efficiency of 4% absolute (from 59% to 55%). Considering ambient and operating uncertainties results in a limited uncertainty on the energy efficiency (mean = 59.4%, standard deviation = 0.61%), but a significant uncertainty on the water self-sufficiency ratio (mean = 49.6%, standard deviation = 6.18%). Adopting time series for the ambient conditions is the main action to reduce uncertainty on the quantities of interest. Future work will focus on the dynamic operation of the system, including energy storage and renewable energy technologies.

International audience

Several industrial sectors, such as for example cement manufacturers and lime producers, produce so-called “unavoidable” CO2 emissions because these ones are intrinsically linked to the industrial process itself (decarbonation of calcium carbonate). In order to reduce these emissions, it is necessary to implement a Carbon Capture, Utilization and/or Storage (CCUS) process chain, whose step of capture, although already technologically mature (especially the absorption-regeneration process using amine(s)-based solvents), leads to very high energy consumption. Three pathways to reduce this consumption have been investigated (experimentally and/or through the development of Aspen PlusTM simulations), namely: (i) upstream of the process thanks to the increase of the flue gas CO2 content (by partial oxy-combustion and/or flue gas recirculation), (ii) within the process (using more efficient and innovative mixtures of solvents such as demixing solutions), and (iii) at the configurational level by using advanced configurations in the capture process. It emerged that the use of a demixing process such as the mixture composed of diethylethanolamine (DEEA) and methylamino-propylamine (MAPA), or the implementation of an advanced process configuration (InterCooling Absorber + Rich Vapor Compression + Rich Solvent Splitting and Preheating, with methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) + piperazine (PZ) as a solvent) are the most energy reducing pathways for the absorption-regeneration process, i.e. more than 40% in comparison with a conventional process using monoethanolamine (MEA). Moreover, from an economical point of view, and compared to a basic configuration with MEA, the demixing technology has the advantage of being able to achieve such energy performance with a more limited investment (CAPEX) (+1.6%) than with advanced process configurations (+8.8%).

Safe and effective treatments for Chagas disease, a potentially fatal parasitic infection associated with cardiac and gastrointestinal pathology and caused by the kinetoplastid parasite

Cysteine proteases comprise an important class of drug targets, especially for infectious diseases such as Chagas disease (cruzain) and COVID-19 (3CL protease, cathepsin L). Peptide aldehydes have proven to be potent inhibitors for all of these proteases. However, the intrinsic, high electrophilicity of the aldehyde group is associated with safety concerns and metabolic instability, limiting the use of aldehyde inhibitors as drugs. We have developed a novel class of self-masked aldehyde inhibitors (SMAIs) for cruzain, the major cysteine protease of the causative agent of Chagas disease-Trypanosoma cruzi. These SMAIs exerted potent, reversible inhibition of cruzain (Ki* = 18-350 nM) while apparently protecting the free aldehyde in cell-based assays. We synthesized prodrugs of the SMAIs that could potentially improve their pharmacokinetic properties. We also elucidated the kinetic and chemical mechanism of SMAIs and applied this strategy to the design of anti-SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is the most common disease form caused by a Leishmania parasite infection and considered a neglected tropical disease (NTD), affecting 700,000 to 1.2 million new cases per year in the world. Leishmania major is one of several different species of the Leishmania genus that can cause CL. Current CL treatments are limited by adverse effects and rising resistance. Studying disease metabolism at the site of infection can provide knowledge of new targets for host-targeted drug development. In this study, tissue samples were collected from mice infected in the ear or footpad with L. major and analyzed by untargeted liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Significant differences in overall metabolite profiles were noted in the ear at the site of the lesion. Interestingly, lesion-adjacent, macroscopically healthy sites also showed alterations in specific metabolites, including selected glycerophosphocholines (PCs). Host-derived PCs in the lower m/z range (m/z 200–799) showed an increase with infection in the ear at the lesion site, while those in the higher m/z range (m/z 800–899) were decreased with infection at the lesion site. Overall, our results expanded our understanding of the mechanisms of CL pathogenesis through host metabolism and may lead to new curative measures against infection with Leishmania.

In order to reduce CO2 emissions, the main driver of global warming, Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) and Carbon Capture Utilization (CCU) have become subject to much study. CCU covers a large number of processes and chemical reactions that use CO2 as an alternative carbon feedstock. CO2 can arise from a wide range of sources, including industrial ones, such as power, cement, steel and chemicals industries. The diversity of CO2 conversion routes is usually classified under three main categories: chemical CO2 conversion, mineralization, and biological processes, following routes such as thermochemical, electrochemical and photocatalytic conversion. As a multitude of pathways exist, both in terms of the chemical reactions involved and the processes used, and these pathways have different levels of maturity and performance, a key challenge is to identify those that are the most advanced, mainly in terms of technology availability for the short- to mid-term deployment in industries. An original multistep method is proposed to first reduce the panel of CO2 conversion alternatives, and then to select the best emerging options to be implemented short- to mid-term via a multi-criteria assessment, which includes technical, economic, energetic, environmental and market considerations. An original double-weighted matrix is developed, comprising nine indicators grouped into the 3E performance criteria (Engineering-Economic-Environmental). The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is used to determine two sets of weights by using pairwise comparison judgments. Finally, both qualitative uncertainty assessment and sensitivity analysis are performed to enhance the robustness of the results and limit the interpretation of biases. A ranking of the emerging CO2 utilization products for short- to mid-term deployment is then discussed. The routes that appear to be viable, with a high level of maturity, and suitable for near-term implementation, involve the production of compounds that have a low unit price, but significant market volume, including methanol, methane, calcium carbonates, microalgae, sodium carbonates, urea, syngas and ethanol, and compounds that have a high unit price but low market volume, such as dimethyl carbonates, polycarbonates, formic acid and salicylic acid.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the interest of a Power-to-Gas integrated system converting CO2 from cement plan flue gas. The integrated CO2 capture and CO2 catalytic conversion into Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG) process, using H2 produced by electrolysis, is investigated and simulated in Aspen Plus. More precisely, the process chain implemented is designed to capture almost 1 ton of CO2 per hour coming from a conventional cement plant equipped with the Best Available Techniques (flue gas CO2 content of 20 mol.%). An advanced amines-based CO2 capture process is implemented applying a Rich Vapor Compression configuration including intercooling, and a blend composed of methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) and piperazine (PZ) as solvent, allowing to minimize the specific energy consumption of the process. The captured CO2 is then sent to the exothermal catalytic methanation reactor together with renewable hydrogen to produce SNG. The heat provided by the exothermal methanation reactions is recovered. A fraction of the released heat is used for the regeneration of the CO2 capture solvent, while an excess recovered heat is used to produce steam for other applications, such as capturing more CO2 or producing electricity. An economic assessment is proposed to estimate the investment and operational costs of the process chain. Finally, a Life Cycle Analysis method is performed to identify the main environmental hotspots while comparing two scenarios (cement plant with and without the integrated CO2 capture-conversion process).

Each year 700,000 to 1.2 million new cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) are reported and yet CL remains one of thirteen diseases classified as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Leishmania major is one of several different species of that same genus that can cause CL. Current CL treatments are limited by adverse effects and rising resistance. Studying disease metabolism at the site of infection can lead to new drug targets. In this study, samples were collected from mice infected in the ear and footpad with L. major and analyzed by untargeted liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Significant differences in overall metabolite profiles were noted in the ear at the site of the lesion. Interestingly, lesion-adjacent, macroscopically healthy sites also showed alterations in specific metabolites, including select phosphocholines (PCs). Host-derived PCs in the lower m/z range (m/z 200-799) showed an increase with infection in the ear at the lesion site, while those in the higher m/z range (m/z 800-899) were decreased with infection at the lesion site. Overall, our results expanded our understanding of the mechanisms of CL pathogenesis through the host metabolism and may lead to new curative measures against infection with Leishmania.Author summaryCutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is one of thirteen neglected tropical diseases in the world today. It is an infectious disease with a wide distribution spanning five continents, with increasing distribution expected due to climate change. CL manifests as skin lesions and ulcers that are disabling and stigmatized. With the current treatment options being limited, studying host-pathogen metabolism can uncover mechanisms of disease pathogenesis that may lead to new curative measures against infection. In this paper we used untargeted metabolomics to address molecular-level changes occurring in vivo in experimental skin lesions of Leishmania major. Distinct global metabolic profiles were observed. Total phosphocholines (PCs) and those in the lower m/z ranges were significantly higher at the site of the skin lesion in the ear. In addition, specific PCs as well as PCs of varied m/z ranges were also affected at healthy-appearing lesion-adjacent sites, indicating that infection-induced metabolic perturbations are not restricted to the lesion site. Ultimately, these results provide essential clues to the metabolic pathways affected by CL.

Chagas disease, the clinical presentation of T. cruzi infection, is a major human health concern. While the acute phase of Chagas disease is typically asymptomatic and self-resolving, chronically infected individuals suffer numerous sequelae later in life. Cardiomyopathies in particular are the most severe consequence of chronic Chagas disease and cannot be reversed solely by parasite load reduction. To prioritize new therapeutic targets, we unbiasedly interrogated the host signaling events in heart tissues isolated from a Chagas disease mouse model using quantitative, multiplexed proteomics. We defined the host response to infection at both the proteome and phospho-proteome levels. The proteome showed an increase in the immune response and a strong repression of several mitochondrial proteins. Complementing the proteome studies, the phospho-proteomic survey found an abundance of phospho-site alterations in plasma membrane and cytoskeletal proteins. Bioinformatic analysis of kinase activity provided substantial evidence for the activation of NDRG2 and JNK/p38 kinases during Chagas disease. A significant activation of DYRK2 and AMPKA2 and the inhibition of casein family kinases were also predicted. We concluded our analyses by linking the diseased heart proteome profile to known therapeutic interventions, uncovering a potential to target mitochondrial proteins, secreted immune effectors and core kinases for the treatment of chronic Chagas disease. Together, this study provides molecular insight into host proteome and phospho-proteome responses to T. cruzi infection in the heart for the first time, highlighting pathways that can be further validated for functional contributions to disease and suitability as drug targets., Author summary Chagas disease is a significant human health concern as it can cause severe cardiomyopathies in chronically infected patients. Due to the high morbidity associated with Chagasic cardiomyopathies, it is vital to investigate new treatment options. In this study, we use state-of-the-art techniques to interrogate the host signaling events induced by chronic Chagas disease in the primary affected organ, the heart. We identify proteins and phospho-sites significantly altered upon infection, predict activated and inhibited kinases, and link our findings to known drug targets. For the first time, this study provides insight into the in vivo host signaling responses to T. cruzi in the heart, uncovering pathways that can be validated for contributions to disease and suitability as drug targets.

Background: Empirical evidence supports the contention that implementing caring nurse behaviors results in improved patient experience; however, previous studies find differences between patient and nurse perceptions of caring. Significance: Good patient experience is positively related to desired clinical and financial outcomes. Nurse caring is a critical component in the patient experience. Objective: The purposes of this project were to evaluate the congruency between nurse and patient perceptions of nurse caring in a long-term acute care hospital and to determine how much patient perception of nurse caring changes over time. Method: The study employed mixed methods using a triangulation strategy in which quantitative data from patients and qualitative data from nurses were collected simultaneously and compared for interpretation. Results: Time affected patient perception of caring significantly. Patients and nurses disagreed about the extent to which nurses ask patients what they know about their illnesses, help them deal with bad feelings, and make them feel comfortable. Conclusion: Patients and nurses do not always agree about the quality of caring behaviors, but exposure to nurses over time positively affects patient perception of nurse caring.

Carbon Capture Utilization or Storage (CCUS) has gained widespread attention as an option for reducing CO2 emissions from power plants but specific developments are still needed for the application to cement plants. More precisely, the post-combustion CO2 capture process by absorption-regeneration is the more mature technology but its cost reduction is still necessary. The present study is focusing on Aspen Hysys™ simulations of different CO2 capture process configurations (namely “Rich Solvent Recycle” (RSR), “Solvent Split Flow” (SSF), “Lean/Rich Vapor Compression” (L/RVC)) applied to the flue gas coming from the Norcem Brevik cement plant (taken as case study) and using three different solvents, namely: monoethanolamine (MEA), piperazine (PZ) and piperazine-methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) blend. For each configuration and solvent, different parametric studies were carried out in order to identify the operating conditions ((L/G)vol., split fraction, flash pressure variation, etc.) minimizing the solvent regeneration energy. Total equivalent thermodynamic works and utilities costs were also analyzed. It was shown that the configurations studied allow regeneration energy savings in the range 4–18%, LVC and RVC leading to the higher ones. As perspectives, other configurations and combination of configurations will be considered in order to further reduce the energy consumption of the process.

Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) technologies are receiving increasing interest and its implementation at world scale appears to be crucial to reduce CO2 emissions. In this context, Power-to-Gas technologies (PtG) are very promising, allowing to store renewable electricity and valorize captured CO2 to produce Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG), among other. The present work simulates an integrated CO2 capture and conversion process to SNG, and investigates its techno-economic and environmental performances. Different scenarios are defined considering the application to a cement plant flue gas and the production of renewable hydrogen. An advanced CO2 capture unit is implemented, considering a configuration (Rich Vapor Compression and Inter Cooling) and a solvent (MDEA + PZ) allowing to minimize its specific energy consumption (35 % regeneration energy savings in comparison with a conventional amine-based CO2 capture system). The excess heat released by the catalytic conversion is recovered for the solvent regeneration maximizing the amount of captured CO2. From the scenarios analyses, it is shown that integrating the CO2 capture and conversion steps is beneficial for reducing both the net CO2 emission to the atmosphere, by 45 %, and the contribution to fossil depletion, by 81 %, in comparison with the non-integrated one, as the production of fossil-based natural gas is replaced by renewable SNG. The proposed process leads to a cost of 2.39 € per kg Raw-SNG, with expected revenues of 0.87 € per kg Raw-SNG. Significant subsidies and incentives would thus be needed to compete with conventional energy prices for natural gas (0.55 € per kg).

The present work was focused on the application in the cement industry of the post-combustion CO 2 capture technology using amine-based chemical absorption. Besides conventional conditions, investigations were performed on a concept called “partial oxy-fuel combustion” applied to cement kilns leading to more CO 2 -concentrated flue gas (y CO2 up to 60%) and allowing to reduce the solvent regeneration energy consumption. The purpose of the study was to highlight and evaluate this reduction. Firstly, the performances of several solvents were evaluated thanks to screening tests at lab (results with a cables-bundle contactor) and micro-pilot (absorption-regeneration unit) scales considering different CO 2 contents (y CO2,in = 20-60 vol.%). Simple and blended solvents were tested in such conditions, such as primary and secondary alkanolamines (benchmark Monoethanolamine (MEA), Diethanolamine (DEA) and cyclical di-amine (Piperazine (PZ)). It was shown that the use of activated solutions (such as DEA 30 wt.% + PZ 5 wt.%) presented particularly high absorption performances both in conventional and high CO 2 contents conditions. Secondly, Aspen Hysys TM simulations were carried out considering cement plant flue gas. For MEA 30 wt.% an increase of y CO2 from 20% to 44% leads to a 26% decrease of the regeneration energy (from 3.36 to 2.48 GJ/t CO2 ), which is clearly encouraging. As perspectives, new absorption-regeneration tests at micro-pilot scale and simulations will be performed with other solvents in order to have a more global evaluation of the interest of partial oxy-fuel conditions for the cement industry.

In order to reduce the operating costs of post-combustion CO2 capture process by absorption-regeneration using amine based solvents for its application in the cement industry, the present study was focused on the Aspen HysysTM simulation of different CO2 capture process configurations (namely conventional configuration, “Rich Solvent Recycle” (RSR), “Solvent Split Flow” (SSF) and “Lean/Rich Vapor Compression” (L/RVC)) applied to the flue gas coming from the Norcem Brevik cement plant in Norway and using three different solvents, namely: monoethanolamine (MEA), piperazine (PZ) and piperazine-methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) blend. For each configuration and solvent, a parametric study was carried out in order to identify the specific operating conditions (flow rates ratio (L/G), split fraction, injection stage in the columns, flash pressure, etc.) minimizing the solvent regeneration energy and highlighting the energetical interest of such configurations. Energy savings of almost 30% were estimated with the RVC configuration and MDEA+PZ blend. A decrease of the condenser cooling energy was also noted. As perspectives, other configurations (such as InterCooled Absorber (ICA)) and combination of configurations will be considered in order to further reduce the energy consumption of the process. In addition to OPEX calculations, the consequence in terms of CAPEX of implementing each process configuration will have to be estimated for evaluating more precisely the global economic interest of using alternative process configurations for the application to cement plant flue gases.

In the context of Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) or Utilization (CCU), the application of a CO2 Purification Unit (CPU) previously developed for oxyfuel power plants is here tested on flue gases coming from oxyfuel cement plants thanks to simulations with Aspen PlusTM. The CPU block is divided into three CO2 purification steps. The compressed gas is firstly desulfurized and denitrified in a double-column (operating at 15 bar for the first column and 30 bar for the second one) unit called “Sour-Compression Unit” (SCU) where it is purified counter-currently with water to remove SOx and NOx components by a reactive absorption. Further treatments include a water adsorption step, and finally a separation step using either a distillation column or a double flash unit, to remove the residual inert gases. The present communication will be focused on the first step of the CPU, the “Sour-Compression Unit”. For this purpose, an accurate chemical mechanism was constructed based on literature reviews and critical comparison of various sources in order to represent properly the removal of SOx and NOx components and evaluate the performances of the SCU. Simulation results of this quite innovative application to cement plant flue gases are given and discussed. Future works will include an energetic and economic optimization of the SCU for the cement plant case.

INTRODUCTION AND HYPOTHESIS: The purpose of this study was to determine the proportion of women who demonstrate improvement in hydronephrosis after pessary placement for advanced pelvic organ prolapse (POP). METHODS: This was a planned subset analysis of a prospective study on the prevalence of hydronephrosis in women with advanced POP. Women with anterior or apical POP ≥1 cm past the hymenal remnant were enrolled and screened for hydronephrosis. All were offered expectant management, pessary placement or surgery. Participants self-selecting pessary placement were compared with those with expectant management during the study period. A follow-up ultrasound scan was performed after >3 weeks of treatment. The proportions of participants demonstrating cure/improvement were compared using Fisher’s exact test. RESULTS: Of 180 participants enrolled, 55 had hydronephrosis for a prevalence of 30.6% (95% CI 24.3–37.6%). Of those with hydronephrosis, 39 (70.8%) chose pessary placement while 16 (30.2%) declined. A follow-up ultrasound scan was performed in 89% of participants at a median of 77 days (interquartile range 49–99 days). Intention-to-treat analysis showed no difference in improvement or resolution of hydronephrosis between women who accepted and those who declined pessary placement (p = 0.43). However, of 22 women successfully using a pessary, 77.3% showed improvement or cure, compared with 29.6% of 27 women not using a pessary (p = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Successful pessary use improved hydronephrosis in over 75% of women with advanced POP. Approximately 39% of women with prolapse did not comply with pessary use and did not demonstrate hydronephrosis improvement.

Chemical cartography of experimental gastrointestinal Chagas disease identifies previously-unknown mechanisms of disease tolerance., Chagas disease (CD) is a parasitic disease caused by Trypanosoma cruzi protozoa, presenting with cardiomyopathy, megaesophagus, and/or megacolon. To determine the mechanisms of gastrointestinal (GI) CD tissue tropism, we systematically characterized the spatial localization of infection-induced metabolic and microbiome alterations, in a mouse model of CD. Notably, the impact of the transition between acute and persistent infection differed between tissue sites, with sustained large-scale effects of infection in the esophagus and large intestine, providing a potential mechanism for the tropism of CD within the GI tract. Infection affected acylcarnitine metabolism; carnitine supplementation prevented acute-stage CD mortality without affecting parasite burden by mitigating infection-induced metabolic disturbances and reducing cardiac strain. Overall, results identified a previously-unknown mechanism of disease tolerance in CD, with potential for new therapeutic regimen development. More broadly, results highlight the potential of spatially resolved metabolomics to provide insight into disease pathogenesis and infectious disease drug development.