We investigated aquaculture production of Asian tiger shrimp, whiteleg shrimp, giant river prawn, tilapia, and pangasius catfish in Bangladesh, China, Thailand, and Vietnam by using life cycle assessments (LCAs), with the purpose of evaluating the comparative eco-efficiency of producing different aquatic food products. Our starting hypothesis was that different production systems are associated with significantly different environmental impacts, as the production of these aquatic species differs in intensity and management practices. In order to test this hypothesis, we estimated each system's global warming, eutrophication, and freshwater ecotoxicity impacts. The contribution to these impacts and the overall dispersions relative to results were propagated by Monte Carlo simulations and dependent sampling. Paired testing showed significant (p < 0.05) differences between the median impacts of most production systems in the intraspecies comparisons, even after a Bonferroni correction. For the full distributions instead of only the median, only for Asian tiger shrimp did more than 95% of the propagated Monte Carlo results favor certain farming systems. The major environmental hot-spots driving the differences in environmental performance among systems were fishmeal from mixed fisheries for global warming, pond runoff and sediment discards for eutrophication, and agricultural pesticides, metals, benzalkonium chloride, and other chlorine-releasing compounds for freshwater ecotoxicity. The Asian aquaculture industry should therefore strive toward farming systems relying upon pelleted species-specific feeds, where the fishmeal inclusion is limited and sourced sustainably. Also, excessive nutrients should be recycled in integrated organic agriculture together with efficient aeration solutions powered by renewable energy sources.

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Bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) is one of the most important factors for bone tissue formation. A number of BMP-2 related small molecule bioactive peptides have been designed and shown to be equally effective in osteogenic activity. In this report, we synthesized a novel BMP-2related peptide (designated P28) and designed a delivery system to regulate the controlled release of P28 from true bone ceramics (TBC) combined with an enlarged pore hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles (HMSNs) composite scaffold. An in vitro release showed that the release of P28 from the TBC/ HMSN scaffold was slower than that from the TBC scaffold. An in vitro cell experiment of the TBC/HMSN/P28 scaffold was tested with MC3T3-E1 cells in comparison to TBC, TBC/HMSN, and TBC/P28 scaffolds. Our results demonstrated that the TBC/HMSN/P28 scaffold had better effects on promoting proliferation and osteogenic differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells than TBC, TBC/HMSN, and TBC/P28 scaffolds. After four kinds of scaffolds were implanted into a rabbit radius critical bone defect for 6 and 12 weeks, the radiographic and histological examination indicated that this osteogenic delivery system TBC/HMSN/P28 scaffold effectively induced bone regeneration in vivo. Therefore, the TBC/ HMSN/P28 scaffold can promote proliferation and osteogenic differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells in vitro and new bone tissue generation in vivo. This study provides a promising scaffold for bone tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

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The aim of this work was to analyze the effect of different osmotic dehydration (OD) processes (sucrose, trehalose, glucose, and lactose) as a pretreatment for grape before exposure to freezing. The osmotic treatment had less effect on blueberry moisture content among different sugars. Impregnation with sugars decreases the freezing time of grapes, compared to untreated grapes. Trehalose and lactose had a remarkable effect on shortening the time for grapes to pass the zone of maximum crystallization of ice. It was concluded that drip loss and electrolyte permeability of cell membranes decreased and the soluble solids content increased after OD treatment. In addition, the firmness and L* values of trehalose‐treated grapes were significantly higher than those of other treatments (p < .05). In summary, osmosis with a carbohydrate solution not only increased the freezing rate but improved quality characteristics of grapes after freezing and thawing. Practical applications Grapes are subject to freezing damage during storage, including significant water loss, berry softening, off flavor occurrence, which reduce the commodity and consumption of grapes. OD can improve the freezing rate by reducing the moisture content in the raw material and reducing the impact of freezing on the quality of fruits and vegetables, which may be beneficial to the process of freezing grapes.