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To cope with climate change, agricultural territories are forced to implement adaptation strategies, including the implementation of irrigation infrastructures. These strategies are deployed over a long term, and their environmental performance may vary in time and space due to climate change. Environmental assessment methods that include spatio-temporal dynamics must be developed to identify long term "no-regret" scenarios. This study proposes an innovative approach based on the coupling between a crop model, i.e. AquaCrop, and the Territorial-Life Cycle Assessment (T-LCA) framework. Results are exemplified and discussed, with comparison of scenarios with or without irrigation, between 1981 and 2099, at six contrasting locations in terms of climate and soil conditions for the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 5-8.5 scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The assessments report that climate change can affect the eco-efficiency of irrigated perimeters over time. Moreover, climate change may alter the conclusions of the comparison of scenarios with or without irrigation infrastructure at a given location. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis is performed on key parameters of the study highlighting the importance of the electricity mix. Finally, spatio-temporal dynamics need to be considered to assess the environmental performance of long-term land planning scenarios and account for environmental effects such as climate change., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Nicolas Rogy reports financial support was provided by Occitanie Region. Nicolas Rogy reports financial support was provided by ELSA-PACT industrial chair. Nicolas Géhéniau reports a relationship with BRL Ingénierie that includes: employment and funding grants. Agata Sferratore reports a relationship with the Société du Canal de Provence et d'Aménagement de la Région Provençale that includes: employment and funding grants., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Land is a key resource for human activities under growing pressure. Resource criticality assessment methods investigate the extent to which a resource may become a limiting factor according to various dimensions, including geological, economic and geopolitical availability. They have been applied to resources like minerals, fossil fuels, biotic material or water, but none consider land resources, i.e. natural land units providing space and support for human activities. Based on two recognised criticality methods developed by i) the Yale University and ii) the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, this study aims to develop spatialized land supply risk indexes at country level. The accessibility of raw resources can be quantified and compared using the supply risk index. The specific characteristics of land call for certain adaptations of the criticality approach, and are designed to ensure comparability between resources. The main adaptations include the definition of land stress and the internal land concentration index. Land stress represents the physical availability of land, while internal land concentration relates to the concentration of landowners within a country. Finally, land supply risk indexes are computed for 76 countries, including 24 European countries for which the results of the two criticality methods are compared. Comparison points to divergences in the countries ranking for land accessibility, thus underlining the importance of methodological choices in the construction of the indexes. Data quality is discussed for European countries with the JRC method, and the use of alternative data sources reveals that it may lead to differences in absolute values, although the ranking of countries with low or high land supply risk does not change. Finally, this work covers a gap in criticality methods by including land resources. These resources can be critical for certain countries, and are essential for human activities such as food or energy production., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Myriads of cilia beat on ciliated epithelia, which are ubiquitous in life. When ciliary beats are synchronized, metachronal waves emerge, whose direction of propagation depends on the living system in an unexplained way. We show on a reconstructed human bronchial epithelium in vitro that the direction of propagation is determined by the ability of mucus to be transported at the epithelial surface. Numerical simulations show that longitudinal waves maximize the transport of mucus while transverse waves, observed when the mucus is rigid and still, minimize the energy dissipated by the cilia.

Ciliated epithelia perform essential functions in animals across evolution, ranging from locomotion of marine organisms to mucociliary clearance of airways in mammals. These epithelia are composed of multiciliated cells (MCCs) harboring myriads of motile cilia, which rest on modified centrioles called basal bodies (BBs), and beat coordinately to generate directed fluid flows. Thus, BB biogenesis and organization is central to MCC function. In basal eukaryotes, the coiled-coil domain proteins Lrrcc1 and Ccdc61 have previously been shown to be required for proper BB construction and function. Here, we used the Xenopus embryonic ciliated epidermis to characterize Lrrcc1 and Ccdc61 in vertebrate MCCs. We found that they both encode BB components, localized proximally at the junction with striated rootlets. Knocking down either gene caused defects in BB docking, spacing and polarization. Moreover, their depletion impaired the apical cytoskeleton and altered ciliary beating. Consequently, cilia-powered fluid flow was greatly reduced in morphant tadpoles, which displayed enhanced mortality when exposed to pathogenic bacteria. This work illustrates how integration across organizational scales make elementary BB components essential for the emergence of the physiological function of ciliated epithelia., Competing Interests: Competing interests The authors declare no competing or financial interests., (© 2022. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.)

Pancreas transplant is one of the known most effective treatments for type 1 diabetes mellitus and is associated with improved survival and quality of life for patients. Most centers use a direct side-to-side anastomosis between the donor's duodenum and jejunum, and we describe a rare complication that affected 2 patients. The 2 patients each received a simultaneous kidney-pancreas transplant and presented with side-to-side duodenojejunal anastomosis volvulus. We describe the clinical and radiological presentations and then propose an effective management method. Side-to-side duodenojejunal anastomosis volvulus after pancreas transplant is an exceptional complication, and there are special radiological and surgical manage-ment techniques to allow efficient treatment.

Global value chains and climate change have a significant impact on water resources and increasingly threaten freshwater ecosystems. Recent methodological proposals for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), evaluate water use impacts on freshwater habitats based on river hydraulic parameters alterations. However, they are limited to French rivers due to lack of global data and models. On this basis, this article proposes an approach to compute regionalized characterization factors for modeling river habitat change potential (HCP) induced by water consumption, potentially applicable worldwide. A simplified model is developed for fish guilds and invertebrates. Based on French datasets, it establishes a relationship between HCP and river hydraulic parameters. A methodology to derive discharge and hydraulic geometry at the reach scale is proposed and applied to European and Middle Eastern rivers below 60°N latitude. Regionalized HCPs are calculated at the river reach scale and aggregated at watershed. Then, the impact of agricultural water use in contrasted European and Middle Eastern countries is evaluated comparing the outcomes from the HCP and the Available Water Remaining (AWARE) models at the national scale, considering water supply mix data. The same analysis is carried out on selected river basins. Finally, result consistency, uncertainty and global applicability of the overall approach are discussed. The study demonstrates the reproducibility of the impact model developed for French rivers on any hydrographic network where comparable ecological, hydrological and hydraulic conditions are met. Furthermore, it highlights the need to characterize impacts at a higher spatial resolution in areas where HCP is higher. Large scale quantification of HCP opens the way to the operationalization of mechanistic LCIA models in which the habitat preferences of freshwater species are taken into account to assess the impacts of water consumption on biodiversity., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In the lung, the airway surface is protected by mucus, whose transport and evacuation is ensured through active ciliary beating. The mechanisms governing the long-range directional organization of ciliary beats, required for effective mucus transport, are much debated. Here, we experimentally show on human bronchial epithelium reconstituted in-vitro that the dynamics of ciliary-beat orientation is closely connected to hydrodynamic effects. To examine the fundamental mechanisms of this self-organization process, we build a two-dimensional model in which the hydrodynamic coupling between cilia is provided by a streamwise-alignment rule governing the local orientation of the ciliary forcing. The model reproduces the emergence of the mucus swirls observed in the experiments. The predicted swirl sizes, which scale with the ciliary density and mucus viscosity, are in agreement with in-vitro measurements. A transition from the swirly regime to a long-range unidirectional mucus flow allowing effective clearance occurs at high ciliary density and high mucus viscosity. In the latter case, the mucus flow tends to spontaneously align with the bronchus axis due to hydrodynamic effects.

In this article a new characterization model and factors are proposed for the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of water consumption on instream freshwater ecosystems. Impact pathways of freshwater consumption leading to ecosystem damage are described and the alteration of instream physical habitat is identified as a critical midpoint for ecosystem quality. The LCIA characterization model aims to assess the change in habitat quantity due to consumptive water use. It is based on statistical, physical habitat simulation for benthic invertebrates, fish species and their size classes, and guilds of fish sharing common habitat preferences. A habitat change potential (HCP) midpoint, mechanistic indicator, is developed and computed on the French river network at the river reach scale (the river segment with variable length between the upstream and downstream nodes in the hydrographic network), for median annual discharges and dry seasons. Aggregated, multi-species HCPs at a river reach are proposed using various aggregation approaches. Subsequently, the characterization factors are spatially aggregated at watershed and sub-watershed scales. HCP is highly correlated with median and low flow discharges, which determine hydraulic characteristics of reaches. Aggregation of individual HCPs at reach scale is driven by the species most sensitive to water consumption. In spatially aggregated HCPs, consistently with their reduced smaller average discharge rate, small stream habitats determine the overall watershed characterization. The study is aimed primarily at life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners and LCIA modelers. However, since it is the result of a productive cross-fertilization between the ecohydrology and LCA domains, it could be potentially useful for watershed management and risk assessment as well. At the moment, the proposed model is applicable in France. For a broader implementation, the development of global, high resolution river databases or the generalization of the model are needed. Our new factor represents nevertheless an advancement in freshwater ecosystems LCIA laying the basis for new metrics for biodiversity assessment., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Freshwater comes from different sources unevenly distributed over time and space around the world and plays a key role in the planning of all social and economic sectors on a regional scale. In this context, a consistent framework for modeling regional water supply mix (WSmix) at a worldwide scale has already been developed for use in life cycle assessment (LCA). However, changes in water sources, driven by climate and socio-economic changes, will occur, affecting WSmix. This study aims to assess the need for a Prospective WSmix (P-WSmix) for implementation in LCA and water footprint studies as well as regional water management strategies. Environmental and socio-economic factors affecting future water supply are defined. Projections of the three main components of the P-WSmix (i.e., water sources mix (P-WOmix), technology evolutions, and associated electricity mix) are proposed for two water users (public water and irrigation), under three scenarios and time horizons until mid-21st century. For implementation of the P-WSmix in LCA, a P-WOmix database is provided for 74 countries on all continents as well as a prospective technological matrix and prospective electricity mixes. An illustrative case study shows the importance of including P-WSmix in LCI databases for the LCA of infrastructures or products with a long life span and tangible water use during use or end-of-life phase, through the example of a toilet flushing system. P-WSmix has an important added value in supporting regional adaptation strategies for the future water supply management.

Regulation of adhesion is a ubiquitous feature of living cells, observed during processes such as motility, antigen recognition, or rigidity sensing. At the molecular scale, a myriad of mechanisms are necessary to recruit and activate the essential proteins, whereas at the cellular scale, efficient regulation of adhesion relies on the cell's ability to adapt its global shape. To understand the role of shape remodeling during adhesion, we use a synthetic biology approach to design a minimal experimental model, starting with a limited number of building blocks. We assemble cytoskeletal vesicles whose size, reduced volume, and cytoskeletal contractility can be independently tuned. We show that these cytoskeletal vesicles can sustain strong adhesion to solid substrates only if the actin cortex is actively remodeled significantly. When the cytoskeletal vesicles are deformed under hypertonic osmotic pressure, they develop a crumpled geometry with deformations. In the presence of molecular motors, these deformations are dynamic in nature, and the excess membrane area generated thereby can be used to gain adhesion energy. The cytoskeletal vesicles are able to attach to the rigid glass surfaces even under strong adhesive forces just like the cortex-free vesicles. The balance of deformability and adhesion strength is identified to be key to enable cytoskeletal vesicles to adhere to solid substrates., (Copyright © 2018 Biophysical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

On a previous study, the carbon footprint (CF) of all production and consumption activities of Galicia, an Autonomous Community located in the north-west of Spain, was determined and the results were used to devise strategies aimed at the reduction and mitigation of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The territorial LCA methodology was used there to perform the calculations. However, that methodology was initially designed to compute the emissions of all types of polluting substances to the environment (several thousands of substances considered in the life cycle inventories), aimed at performing complete LCA studies. This requirement implies the use of specific modelling approaches and databases that in turn raised some difficulties, i.e., need of large amounts of data (which increased gathering times), low temporal, geographical and technological representativeness of the study, lack of data, and presence of double counting issues when trying to combine the sectorial CF results into those of the total economy. In view of these of difficulties, and considering the need to focus only on GHG emissions, it seems important to improve the robustness of the CF computation while proposing a simplified methodology. This study is the result of those efforts to improve the aforementioned methodology. In addition to the territorial LCA approach, several Input-Output (IO) based alternatives have been used here to compute direct and indirect GHG emissions of all Galician production and consumption activities. The results of the different alternatives were compared and evaluated under a multi-criteria approach considering reliability, completeness, temporal and geographical correlation, applicability and consistency. Based on that, an improved and simplified methodology was proposed to determine the CF of the Galician consumption and production activities from a total responsibility perspective. This methodology adequately reflects the current characteristics of the Galician economy, thus increasing the representativeness of the results, and can be applied to any region in which IO tables and environmental vectors are available. This methodology could thus provide useful information in decision making processes to reduce and prevent GHG emissions., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Normalisation is an optional step in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), often used in decision making since it helps interpreting the results of LCA studies with regard to some reference information. The applicable ISO standard recommends considering different reference systems to guarantee the robustness of the normalisation step, and so the availability of different normalisation datasets becomes of high relevance. Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods provide normalisation factors (NFs) for global and regional areas, but no NFs are proposed for smaller areas such as local or subnational scales. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the feasibility of using territorial LCA approach to determine subnational NFs. Normalisation datasets for both Galician (NW Spain) production and consumption activities have been calculated considering a life cycle perspective. In addition to this, the normalisation datasets calculated for Galicia have been used to evaluate two food products produced and/or consumed in the region as case studies. Then, the normalised results have been compared to those obtained using different reference systems (Europe and the World), calculated following the same methodology (ReCiPe). A qualitative uncertainty analysis of the NFs has been carried out, and the usefulness of territorial LCA to determine them has been discussed. It was concluded that territorial LCA is a promising way to determine NFs but that some improvements could be made, which have also been pointed out here., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Mucociliary clearance is a biomechanical mechanism of airway protection. It consists of the active transport along the bronchial tree of the mucus, a fluid propelled by the coordinated beating of a myriad of cilia on the epithelial surface of the respiratory tract. The physics of mucus transport is poorly understood because it involves complex phenomena such as long-range hydrodynamic interactions, active collective ciliary motion, and the complex rheology of mucus. We propose a quantitative physical analysis of the ciliary activity and mucus transport on a large panel of human bronchial cultures from control subjects, patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease obtained from endobronchial biopsies. Here we report on the existence of multiple ciliary domains with sizes ranging from the tens of a micron to the centimeter, where ciliary beats present a circular orientational order. These domains are associated with circular mucus flow patterns, whose size scales with the average cilia density. In these domains, we find that the radial increase of the ciliated cell density coupled with the increase in the orientational order of ciliary beats result in a net local force proportional to the mucus velocity. We propose a phenomenological physical model that supports our results.

Compartmentalized microcapsules are useful for the release of multiple cargos in medicine, agriculture, and advanced responsive materials. Although several encapsulation strategies that involve more than one cargo have been proposed, dual- or multicompartment capsules with high cargo loadings and sufficient mechanical stability are rarely reported. Here, we propose a single-step emulsification route for the preparation of strong dual-compartment capsules that can host the main cargo in their core in combination with another liquid cargo stored within their thick shell. Capsules are produced through the polymerization of the middle oil phase of water-oil-water double emulsions made by microfluidics. Compartmentalization results from the phase separation of monomers within the middle phase of the double emulsion. We investigate the effect of such phase separation process on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the capsules and eventually illustrate the potential of this approach by creating thermosensitive capsules with programmable bursting temperature. The large variety of possible mixtures of monomers and cargos that can be added in the oil and aqueous phases of the double emulsion templates makes this encapsulation approach a promising route for the fabrication of robust microcapsules for on-demand release of multiple cargos.

Galicia is an Autonomous Community located in the north-west of Spain. As a starting point to implement mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change, a regional greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory is needed. So far, the only regional GHG inventories available are limited to the territorial emissions of those production activities which are expected to cause major environmental degradation. An alternative approach has been followed here to quantify all the on-site (direct) and embodied (indirect) GHG emissions related to all Galician production and consumption activities. The carbon footprint (CF) was calculated following the territorial life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology for data collection, that combines bottom-up and top-down approaches. The most up-to-date statistical data and life cycle inventories available were used to compute all GHG emissions. This case study represents a leap of scale when compared to existing studies, thus addressing the issue of double counting, which arises when considering all the production activities of a large region. The CF of the consumption activities in Galicia is 17.8 ktCO 2 e/year, with 88% allocated to Galician inhabitants and 12% to tourist consumption. The proposed methodology also identifies the main important contributors to GHG emissions and shows where regional reduction efforts should be made. The major contributor to the CF of inhabitants is housing (32%), followed by food consumption (29%). Within the CF of tourist consumption, the share of transport is highest (59%), followed by housing (26%). The CF of Galician production reaches 34.9 MtCO 2 e/y, and its major contributor is electricity production (21%), followed by food manufacturing (19%). Our results have been compared to those reported for other regions, actions aimed at reducing GHG emissions have been proposed, and data gaps and limitations identified., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Microcapsules for controlled chemical release and uptake are important in many industrial applications but are often difficult to produce with the desired combination of high mechanical strength and high shell permeability. Using water-oil-water double emulsions made in microfluidic devices as templates, we developed a processing route to obtain mechanically robust microcapsules exhibiting a porous shell structure with controlled permeability. The porous shell consists of a network of interconnected polymer particles that are formed upon phase separation within the oil phase of the double emulsion. Porosity is generated by an inert diluent incorporated in the oil phase. The use of undecanol and butanol as inert diluents allows for the preparation of microcapsules covering a wide range of shell-porosity and force-at-break values. We found that the amount and chemical nature of the diluent influence the shell porous structure by changing the mechanism of phase separation that occurs during polymerization. In a proof-of-concept experiment, we demonstrate that the mechanically robust microcapsules prepared through this simple approach can be utilized for the on-demand release of small molecules using a pH change as exemplary chemical trigger.

Morphological transformations of living cells, such as shape adaptation to external stimuli, blebbing, invagination, or tethering, result from an intricate interplay between the plasma membrane and its underlying cytoskeleton, where molecular motors generate forces. Cellular complexity defies a clear identification of the competing processes that lead to such a rich phenomenology. In a synthetic biology approach, designing a cell-like model assembled from a minimal set of purified building blocks would allow the control of all relevant parameters. We reconstruct actomyosin vesicles in which the coupling of the cytoskeleton to the membrane, the topology of the cytoskeletal network, and the contractile activity can all be precisely controlled and tuned. We demonstrate that tension generation of an encapsulated active actomyosin network suffices for global shape transformation of cell-sized lipid vesicles, which are reminiscent of morphological adaptations in living cells. The observed polymorphism of our cell-like model, such as blebbing, tether extrusion, or faceted shapes, can be qualitatively explained by the protein concentration dependencies and a force balance, taking into account the membrane tension, the density of anchoring points between the membrane and the actin network, and the forces exerted by molecular motors in the actin network. The identification of the physical mechanisms for shape transformations of active cytoskeletal vesicles sets a conceptual and quantitative benchmark for the further exploration of the adaptation mechanisms of cells.

We report on robust synthetic microcompartments with hydrophobically gated shells that can reversibly swell and contract multiple times upon external stimuli. The gating mechanism relies on a hydrophilic-hydrophobic transition of a polymer layer that is grafted on inorganic colloidosomes using atom-transfer radical polymerization. As a result of such a transition, the initially tight hydrophobic shell becomes permeable to the diffusion of hydrophilic solutes across the microcompartment walls. Surprisingly, the microcompartments are strong enough to retain their spherical shape during several swelling and contraction cycles. This provides a powerful alternative platform for the creation of synthetic microreactors and protocells that interact with the surrounding media through a simple gating mechanism and are sufficiently robust for further engineering of increasingly complex compartmentalized structures.

Sickle cell anemia is a blood disorder, known to affect the microcirculation and is characterized by painful vaso-occlusive crises in deep tissues. During the last three decades, many scenarios based on the enhanced adhesive properties of the membrane of sickle red blood cells have been proposed, all related to a final decrease in vessels lumen by cells accumulation on the vascular walls. Up to now, none of these scenarios considered the possible role played by the geometry of the flow on deposition. The question of the exact locations of occlusive events at the microcirculatory scale remains open. Here, using microfluidic devices where both geometry and oxygen levels can be controlled, we show that the flow of a suspension of sickle red blood cells around an acute corner of a triangular pillar or of a bifurcation, leads to the enhanced deposition and aggregation of cells. Thanks to our devices, we follow the growth of these aggregates in time and show that their length does not depend on oxygenation levels; instead, we find that their morphology changes dramatically to filamentous structures when using autologous plasma as a suspending fluid. We finally discuss the possible role played by such aggregates in vaso-occlusive events., (Copyright © 2015 Biophysical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Water is a growing concern in cities, and its sustainable management is very complex. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used to assess the environmental impacts of water technologies during the last 20 years. This review aims at compiling all LCA papers related to water technologies, out of which 18 LCA studies deals with whole urban water systems (UWS). A focus is carried out on these 18 case studies which are analyzed according to criteria derived from the four phases of LCA international standards. The results show that whereas the case studies share a common goal, i.e., providing quantitative information to policy makers on the environmental impacts of urban water systems and their forecasting scenarios, they are based on different scopes, resulting in the selection of different functional units and system boundaries. A quantitative comparison of life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment data is provided, and the results are discussed. It shows the superiority of information offered by multi-criteria approaches for decision making compared to that derived from mono-criterion. From this review, recommendations on the way to conduct the environmental assessment of urban water systems are given, e.g., the need to provide consistent mass balances in terms of emissions and water flows. Remaining challenges for urban water system LCAs are identified, such as a better consideration of water users and resources and the inclusion of recent LCA developments (territorial approaches and water-related impacts)., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)