The increase of both arterial occlusive diseases and coronary heart diseases leads to a higher demand for small-diameter vascular grafts (<6 mm). The gold standard for small-diameter vessel replacement is the use of autologous veins. Nevertheless, up to 30% of these patients need to use vascular grafts. Although synthetic polymers have been successfully used for the replacement of large-diameter vascular grafts (>6 mm), they are associated with thrombosis, intimal hyperplasia, calcification, and chronic inflammation when used as small-diameter vascular grafts. Therefore, natural materials have been studied for this application. In this study, a decellularized human chorion membrane (dHCM) vascular graft with a 3–4 mm diameter was created. Herein, the biocompatibility of dHCM with endothelial cells was demonstrated in vitro and ex ovo. Blood biocompatibility of dHCM was also shown by studying plasma protein adsorption, platelet adhesion and activation, and its hemolytic potential. Furthermore, dHCM antibacterial properties against Staphylococcus aureus were also studied. In summary, the dHCM reticular layer side presented all the needed characteristics to be used in the inner side of a vascular graft. Additionally, the mechanical properties of the dHCM tubular construct were studied, being similar to the ones of the saphenous vein, the gold standard for autologous small-diameter vessel replacement.

Produced water (PW) and spent oil-based wastewaters are some of the largest mineral oil wastewaters produced. Due to the high toxicity of hydrocarbons, several countries set stringent discharge limits and its treatment is compulsory before discharge. In this work, biological treatment of mineral oil wastewaters coupled with the production of bacterial lipids is demonstrated in sequential batch airlift reactors (SBAR). Two SBAR (2 L working volume) were used for treatment of PW and lubricant-based wastewater (LW), inoculated with Alcanivorax borkumensis SK2 (SBAR Ab+PW ) and Rhodococcus opacus B4 (SBAR R.o+LW ), respectively. A total petroleum hydrocarbon removal (TPH) efficiency up to 96% and 80% were achieved for SBAR Ab+PW and SBAR R.o+LW , respectively. Intracellular lipids production in SBAR Ab+PW increased when lower TPH/N ratios and higher feast stage duration were applied (up to 0.74 g g -1 cell dry weight (CDW)), whereas in SBAR R.o+LW higher lipids production was observed for higher TPH/N ratios (0.94 g g -1 in CDW). Triacylglycerols (TAG) were the main intracellular lipid accumulated in both SBAR Ab+PW and SBAR R.o+LW operations, while wax ester (WE) production was only observed extracellularly in the SBAR Ab+PW .

This paper examines how providing better information to customs inspectors and monitoring their actions affects tax revenue and fraud detection in Madagascar. First, an instrumental variables strategy is used to show that transaction-specific, third-party valuation advice on a subset of highrisk import declarations increases fraud findings by 21.7 percentage points and tax collection by 5.2 percentage points. Second, a randomized control trial is conducted in which a subset of highrisk declarations is selected to receive detailed risk comments and another subset is explicitly tagged for ex-post monitoring. For declarations not subject to third-party valuation advice, detailed comments increase reporting of fraud by 3.1 percentage points and improve tax yield by 1 percentage point. However, valuation advice and detailed comments have a significantly smaller impact on revenue when potential tax losses and opportunities for graft are large. Monitoring induces inspectors to scan more shipments but does not result in the detection of more fraud or the collection of additional revenue. Better information thus helps curb customs fraud, but its effectiveness appears compromised by corruption.