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Water shortage and a rising water demand are prevalent issues on the political agenda worldwide. Available water resources must not only be provided to ensure a domestic and drinking water supply for a steadily increasing population but also for the growing industrial and agricultural sectors. This work outlines how the use of the innovative vacuum multi‐effect membrane distillation contributes to improve the water management efficiency in the following key industry sectors: desalination, drinking water and beverage industry, pharmaceutical, agro and chemical as well as oil and gas industry.
Ecosystems provide a wide range of goods, services or ecosystem services (ES) to society. Estimating the impact of land use and land cover (LULC) changes on ES values (ESV) is an important tool to support decision making. This study used remote sensing and GIS tools to analyze LULC change and transitions from 2001 to 2016 and assess its impact on ESV in a tropical forested landscape in the southern plains of Nepal. The total ESV of the landscape for the year 2016 is estimated at USD 1264 million year−1. As forests are the dominant land cover class and have high ES value per hectare, they have the highest contribution in total ESV. However, as a result of LULC change (loss of forests, water bodies, and agricultural land), the total ESV of the landscape has declined by USD 11 million year−1. Major reductions come from the loss in values of climate regulation, water supply, provision of raw materials and food production. To halt the ongoing loss of ES and maintain the supply and balance of different ES in the landscape, it is important to properly monitor, manage and utilize ecosystems. We believe this study will inform policymakers, environmental managers, and the general public on the ongoing changes and contribute to developing effective land use policy in the region.
Metallic tubular micro-components play an important role in a broad range of products,
from industrial microsystem technology, such as medical engineering, electronics and optoelectronics, to sensor technology or microfluidics. The demand for such components is increasing, and forming processes can present a number of advantages for industrial manufacturing. These include, for example, a high productivity, enhanced shaping possibilities, applicability of a wide spectrum of materials and the possibility to produce parts with a high stiffness and strength. However, certain difficulties arise as a result of scaling down conventional tube forming processes to the microscale. These include not only the influence of the known size effects on material and friction behavior, but also constraints in the feasible miniaturization of forming tools. Extensive research work has been conducted over the past few years on micro-tube forming techniques, which deal with the development of novel and optimized processes, to counteract these restrictions. This paper reviews the relevant advances in micro-tube fabrication and shaping. A particular focus is enhancement in forming possibilities, accuracy and obtained component characteristics, presented in the reviewed research work. Furthermore, achievements in severe plastic deformation for micro-tube generation and in micro-tube testing methods are discussed.
Multidrug resistance (MDR) in tumors and pathogens remains a major problem in the efficacious treatment of patients by reduction of therapy options and subsequent treatment failure. Various mechanisms are described to be involved in the development of MDR with overexpression of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters reflecting the most extensively studied. These membrane transporters translocate a wide variety of substrates utilizing energy from ATP hydrolysis leading to decreased intracellular drug accumulation and impaired drug efficacy. One treatment strategy might be inhibition of transporter-mediated efflux by small molecules. Isocoumarins and 3,4-dihydroisocoumarins are a large group of natural products derived from various sources with great structural and functional variety, but have so far not been in the focus as potential MDR reversing agents. Thus, three natural products and nine novel 3,4-dihydroisocoumarins were designed and analyzed regarding cytotoxicity induction and inhibition of human ABC transporters P-glycoprotein (P-gp), multidrug resistance-associated protein 1 (MRP1) and breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP) in a variety of human cancer cell lines as well as the yeast ABC transporter Pdr5 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Dual inhibitors of P-gp and BCRP and inhibitors of Pdr5 were identified, and distinct structure-activity relationships for transporter inhibition were revealed. The strongest inhibitor of P-gp and BCRP, which inhibited the transporters up to 80 to 90% compared to the respective positive controls, demonstrated the ability to reverse chemotherapy resistance in resistant cancer cell lines up to 5.6-fold. In the case of Pdr5, inhibitors were identified that prevented substrate transport and/or ATPase activity with IC50 values in the low micromolar range. However, cell toxicity was not observed. Molecular docking of the test compounds to P-gp revealed that differences in inhibition capacity were based on different binding affinities to the transporter. Thus, these small molecules provide novel lead structures for further optimization.