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Biotechnological processes for conversion of corn into ethanol.

Ethanol has been utilized as a fuel source in the United States since the turn of the century. However, it has repeatedly faced significant commercial viability obstacles relative to petroleum. Renewed interest exists in ethanol as a fuel source today owing to its positive impact on rural America, the environment and United States energy security. Today, most fuel ethanol is produced by either the dry grind or the wet mill process. Current technologies allow for 2.5 gallons (wet mill process) to 2.8 gallons (dry grind process) of ethanol (1 gallon = 3.785 l) per bushel of corn. Valuable co-products, distillers dried grains with solubles (dry grind) and corn gluten meal and feed (wet mill), are also generated in the production of ethanol. While current supplies are generated from both processes, the majority of the growth in the industry is from dry grind plant construction in rural communities across the corn belt. While fuel ethanol production is an energy-efficient process today, additional research is occurring to improve its long-term economic viability. Three of the most significant areas of research are in the production of hybrids with a higher starch content or a higher extractable starch content, in the conversion of the corn kernel fiber fraction to ethanol, and in the identification and development of new and higher-value co-products.

Biotechnology↗

Optimization of a Bifidobacterium longum production process.

Bifidobacteria are used as probiotics mainly in the dairy industry as cell suspensions or as freeze-dried additives. So far there have been no reports on a thorough investigation on factors influencing the production process or a statistical approach to the optimization thereof. A 2(8-4) fractional factorial design was used in determining the critical parameters influencing bioreactor cultivations of Bifidobacterium longum ATCC 15707. Glucose, yeast extract and l-cysteine concentrations were found critical for the cultivation of this strain. Glucose and yeast extract concentrations were further studied together with temperature in a three factor central composite design. The optimized cultivation conditions were temperature 40 degrees C, yeast extract concentration 35 gl(-1) and glucose concentration 20 gl(-1). Freeze-drying of frozen cell suspensions of B. longum was studied first in controlled temperatures and thereafter with temperature programming experiments. The results were statistically evaluated. A temperature program with a 2 h temperature gradient from -10 to 0 degrees C, a 10 h temperature gradient from 0 to +10 degrees C and a 12 h temperature hold at +10 degrees C was found best for the freeze-drying process. Temperature programming reduced drying times by over 50% and improved the product activity by over 160%.

Bifidobacterium↗

Monitoring volatile compounds during dry-cured ham ripening by solid-phase microextraction coupled to a new direct-extraction device.

Key flavour volatile compounds were monitored during ripening of dry-cured ham by solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coupled to a new direct-extraction device (DED). DED allows the insertion of the SPME fibre into the core of solid materials with no damage to the fibre. This enables extraction of volatiles from solid foodstuffs while avoiding sample handling. Major groups of volatile compounds extracted with SPME-DED agreed with available scientific literature about dry-cured ham volatiles. Moreover, volatile compounds previously highlighted as quality markers in dry-cured ham, such as 3-methylbutanal or hexanal, were satisfactorily extracted using SPME-DED. Changes in the profile of volatile compounds throughout the processing followed a typical pattern of volatile compounds formation. Therefore, SPME-DED appears as a new and promising method for monitoring ripening of dry-cured hams with no depreciation of the product, which might substitute traditional subjective methods currently used in the ham processing industry. However, the use of the internal standard method is not possible with this technique. Therefore, results using SPME-DED only point out a trend in the volatile profile. Further attempts relating data obtained using SPME-DED in dry-cured hams with sensory and chemical data from the same samples would be necessary for optimising this method as a quality control method in dry-cured ham industries.

Animals↗

[Technological directions for processing rape proteins into protein concentrates and isolates].

Rape-seeds or rape-seed meal are relatively cheap, but valuable raw materials for the manufacture of protein concentrates and isolates which may be used as constituents of foodstuffs. The high content of crude fibres and also of thioglucosides leads to considerable difficulties in the development of techniques for the manufacture of high-grade protein preparations. To describe the procedure, certain production-technological properties of rape proteins are discussed, such as extraction parameters, coagulating conditions, processing temperature, amount of solvent, etc. On the basis of these data, the following techniques for the manufacture of rape protein products are presented: - protein concentration by means of the water diffusion method; - protein isolation with the aid of one or multi-stage extraction. Finally, the author reports of a fermenting procedure for the manufacture of protein biomass from coarse colza meal. Furthermore, he presents some data about the nutritional value of rape protein.

Food-Processing Industry↗

[Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) and the preparation of a milk substitute].

Coconut (Cocos nucifera, L.) is an abundant product in Brazil. The authors studied the use of the protein fraction to prepare "milk-substitute" beverages. The analyses were made on albumen, copra and cake. Protein coconut extraction was tried with water; NaCl solutions in different concentrations; HCl and NaOH solutions in different concentrations; HCl and NaOH solutions at different pH values. The extracted proteins were analysed for aminoacid composition and chemical score. The best results of protein extraction were obtained with NaCl 1 M solution using the ratio 100:75 (coconut:solution). The extracted proteins were coagulated with trichloroacetic acid and separated with water and analysed for aminoacid composition and solubility.

Amino Acids↗

Effect of fortification of concentrated whey on growth of Kluyveromyces sp.

The effect of fortification of concentrated whey with 0.5% inorganic nitrogen viz. NH4Cl, (NH4)2SO4, NaNO3 and urea, organic nitrogen viz. tryptone, tryptose, peptone and yeast extract and 0.1% metal ions viz. K2HPO4, MgSO4 and FeSO4, on growth stimulation of Kluyveromyces marxianus subsp. marxianus NRRL Y-665, NRRL Y-1195, NRRL Y-2415 and Kluyveromyces marxianus subsp. lactis NRRL Y-1193 were studied. Supplementation with 0.5% (NH4)2SO4, peptone, yeast extract or 0.1% K2HPO4 individually increased the biomass production by 8-20%, 17-25%, 13-14% and 14-17%, respectively. Addition of 0.5% each of (NH4)2SO4, peptone, yeast extract and 0.1% K2HPO4 together is recommended to increase the biomass production by 81-98% for commercial production of single cell protein.

Animals↗

Leachability and metal-binding capacity in ageing landfill material.

In order to study the stability of landfilled heavy metals, landfill material from a combined household and industrial waste landfill was aerated for 14 months to simulate the natural ageing processes as air slowly begins to penetrate the landfill mass. During aeration, the pH of the landfill material decreased from around 8.6 to 8.1 and the carbon content also decreased. In order to investigate the possible fate of metals in ageing landfills, a four-stage sequential extraction technique was applied. The ability of the materials to bind metal ions by electrostatic attractions and to form stronger complexes was studied separately. The amount of exchangeable cations, the capacity to bind metal ions by electrostatic attraction and the capacity of the landfill material to complex copper ions were increased by the aeration process. However, results from the sequential analysis showed an increased solubility of sulphur and some metals (Cd, Co, Cu, Ni and Zn). Equilibrium speciation models (Medusa) indicated that the organic matter deposit had a significant capacity to bind metal ions provided that pH was sufficiently high. However, as carbonates are consumed over time, the risk for metal mobility increases. Therefore, the landfills can become an environmental risk, depending on variations in the solubility of metal ions due to changes in pH, redox status and the availability of organic material.

Conservation of Natural Resources↗

The physical characteristics of anaerobic granular sludges in relation to their internal architecture.

A range of granular sludges was taken from industrial anaerobic sludge blanket reactors treating a wide variety of wastewaters and a comparison was made between the polymers which were extractable from the granules and their internal structures. The study of the internal structure, using sequential staining of ultra-thin sections, showed the complexity of granular sludges. Much of the area was occupied by Gram-negative cells and the area which stained positive for protein was found to increase nearer the centre of the granules. This was accompanied by a decrease in the carbohydrate positive areas. Positive areas for lipid were widespread throughout the granules. Changes in the internal structure were observed when the type of wastewater treated by the granules was changed and a comparison between sludges treating the same type of wastewater showed that factors other than the nature of the substrate must be considered as parameters which will affect the structure of the granules. Although an appreciable variation in the granule strengths was noted, it was not possible to relate these differences, on an overall basis, to either the internal structure or the chemical composition of the extracted polymers. However, an examination of data for granules produced during the treatment of nominally similar wastes did suggest that there would be a relationship between polymer composition and granule strength in these cases.

Biodegradation, Environmental↗

Recent biotechnological developments of electropulsation. A prospective review.

During the last 25 years, basic research has improved our knowledge on the molecular mechanisms triggered at the membrane level by electric pulses. Applied aspects may now be used under safe conditions. Electropulsation is known as a very efficient tool for obtaining gene transfer in many species to produce genetically modified organisms (GMO). This is routinely used for industrial purposes to transfer exogenous activities in bacteria, yeasts and plants. The method is simple and of a low cost. But electropulsation is not limited to this application for biotechnological purposes. It is known that the field-associated membrane alterations can be irreversible. The pulsed species cannot recover after the treatment. Their viability is strongly affected. This appears as a very promising technology for the eradication of pathogenic microorganisms. Recent developments are proposed for sterilization purposes. New flow technologies of field generation allow the treatment of large volumes of solution. When high flow rates are used, microorganisms are submitted both to a hydromechanical and to an electrical stress. The synergy of the two effects may be present when suitable pulsing conditions are chosen. Several examples for the treatment of domestic water and in the food industry are described. Walled microorganisms are affected not only at the membrane level. We observed that alterations are present on the cell wall. A very promising technology is the associated controlled leakage of the cytoplasmic soluble proteins. Large dimeric proteins such as beta-galactosidases can be extracted at a high yield. High volumes can be treated by using a flow process. Extraction of proteins is obtained with many systems including mammalian cells.

Amoeba↗

Extraction by reversed micelles of the intracellular enzyme xylose reductase.

Xylose reductase enzyme (EC 1.1.1.21) produced by Candida guilliermondii in sugarcane bagasse was extracted by reversed micelles of N-benzyl-N-dodecyl-N-bis (2-hydroxyethyl) ammonium chloride cationic surfactant. An experimental design was employed to evaluate the influences of the following factors on the enzyme extraction: temperature, cosolvent, and surfactant concentration. A model was used to represent the enzyme recovery and fit of the experimental data. The extraction yielded a total recovery of 130%, and the purity increased 4.8-fold. This study demonstrates that liquid-liquid extraction by reversed micelles is a process able to recover and increase the enzymatic activity and purity of XR produced by C. guilliermondii.

Aldehyde Reductase↗

Genomics in the real world.

The term genomics has evolved into a catch-all term for a variety of information intensive biological methodologies. While the promise of genomics in the bio/pharmaceutical industry is great, its impact on the drug discovery pipeline has not yet been realized, excluding a few notable exceptions. As companies acquire several years of experience in working with genomic data, it is likely that the impact on the discovery process will slowly emerge as we learn to integrate these new technologies into individual discovery programs. It is clear that extracting novel biologically valid targets targets from exponentially growing amounts of sequence data requires time and considerable investment in biological research infrastructure. In order to accelerate the process of target validation, a variety of functional genomics technologies are also being developed to try to predict the effect of inhibitory compounds in advance of development. Resources spent on early stage exploratory efforts such as these can pay off by improving the success rate for screening and medicinal chemistry.

Animals↗

[Reduction of pesticide residues in vegetables by means of processing and canning operations (author's transl)].

Pesticide residues may be present in vegetables and may affect human health. Processing and canning operations substantially reduce these residues and help to maintain them at acceptable levels. The percentage of removal depends on the type of vegetable, the type of pesticide used and the processing procdure applied. The effects of washing, blanching, peeling and juice extraction on the removal of some insecticide residues from different vegetables are described and discussed, also with regerence to the present day situation in Italy.

Food Preservation↗

Microarray expression profiling: analysis and applications.

Recent advances in the technology of massive parallel gene expression profiling using microarrays are revolutionizing biomedical research and pharmacological discovery. These new and powerful tools allow researchers to examine the dynamics of a whole biological system by simultaneously interrogating the expression of tens of thousands of genes. This article will review the various bioinformatics and statistical methods commonly used to analyze the enormous amounts of data generated by this technology. The objective of these analyses is to reliably extract important biological information from carefully designed and controlled microarray experiments, and to organize the information in ways that reveal structured and coordinated physiological processes and key components controlling the biological responses studied. The major applications of the microarray technology, recently used to address a variety of biological questions of interest to scientists and clinicians in academia, healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry, will also be presented.

Databases, Genetic↗

Sterilization of workers from pesticide exposure: the causes and consequences of DBCP-induced damage in Costa Rica and beyond.

Public health hazards from the use of agricultural pesticides have received increasing attention in developing as well as industrial nations. This article examines a remarkable case of massive sterilization of approximately 1,500 workers in Costa Rica, due to exposure to a toxic nematicide called DBCP 1,2-dibromo-3-chloropropane), applied in large commercial banana plantations. Although the product was used during the 1970s, sterile victims have continued to be diagnosed through the 1980s. The effects include psychological trauma as well as permanent infertility. The case has international repercussions because several hundred workers have filed law suits against the U.S.-based transnational DBCP manufacturers, and because DBCP use was continued during the 1980s in other developing nations. The author analyzes the causes behind this serious impairment. It is argued that the contributing factors include not only biomedical processes and technical dimensions (i.e., how DBCP was used), but most importantly, political-economic factors that explain how and why DBCP was used despite the severe hazard. The crucial determinants pertain to the dominance of short-term profit motives, and the control over information and technology by the manufacturers (who concealed early toxicological research evidence of the reproductive hazards) and by the managers of the banana producer-companies. This case well illustrates problems and injustices from labor exploitation and resource extraction from transnational agro-industries. The article concludes with a brief summary of policy implications from the case.

Agricultural Workers' Diseases↗

Methadone at tapered doses for the management of opioid withdrawal.

BACKGROUND: Despite widespread use in many countries of tapered methadone for detoxification from opiate dependence, the evidence of efficacy to prevent relapse and promote lifestyle change has not been systematically evaluated. OBJECTIVES: To determine whether tapered methadone is effective to manage opioids withdrawal. SEARCH STRATEGY: We searched: the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (Issue 1, 2000), MEDLINE (OVID 1966-2000), EMBASE (1980-2000); scan of reference list of relevant articles; personal communication; conference abstracts; unpublished trials from pharmaceutical industry; Internet (NIDA, Clinical Trials.org, BMJ). SELECTION CRITERIA: All randomised controlled trials focused on tapered methadone (length of treatment max 30 days) versus all other pharmacological detoxification treatments, placebo and different modalities of methadone detoxification programs for the treatment of opiate withdrawal. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: One reviewer (LA) assessed studies for inclusion and undertook data extraction. Inclusion decisions and the overall process were confirmed by consultation between reviewers. Where possible analysis was carried out according to the "intention to treat" principles. MAIN RESULTS: 20 studies were included in the review, with 1357 participants. 10 studies compared methadone with adrenergic agonists, 7 studies compared different modalities of methadone detoxification, 2 studies compared methadone with other opioid agonists, 1 study with chlordiazepoxide, 1 with placebo. The conclusions of the 10 studies that compared methadone with adrenergic agonists showed no substantial clinical difference of the two treatments in terms of retention in treatment, degree of discomfort and detoxification success rates. The conclusions of the 6 studies that compare different methadone reduction schedules, showed that different types of methadone withdrawal schedule produce different responses in terms of withdrawal symptoms and severity of them. Regarding the studies that compare methadone with other opioid agonists, methadyl acetate performed similarly to methadone on most process and outcome measures, while methadone reduced severity of withdrawal and had fewer drop-outs than did propoxyphene. Using chlordiazepoxide vs methadone, the results suggest that the two drugs had similar results in terms of overall effectiveness. Comparing methadone with placebo more severe withdrawal and more drop outs were founded in the placebo group. The results indicate that tapered methadone and other medications used in the included studies are effective in the treatment of the heroin withdrawal syndrome, although symptoms experienced by subjects differed according to the medication used and the program adopted. It seems that regardless of which medication is selected for heroin detoxification, the rates of subsequent heroin abstinence are about equal. This suggests that the medications are similar in terms of overall effectiveness. Improvements were achieved when other services such as counseling and other supporting services were offered contemporaneously with detoxification. REVIEWERS' CONCLUSIONS: Data from literature are hardly comparable; programs vary widely with regard to duration, design and treatment objectives, impairing the application of meta-analysis. Results of many outcomes could not be summarised because they were presented either in graphical form or provided only statistical tests and p-values. For most studies standard deviation for continuous variables were not provided. The studies included in this review confirm that slow tapering with temporary substitution of long acting opioids, accompanied by medical supervision and ancillary medications can reduce withdrawal severity. Nevertheless the majority of patients relapsed to heroin use. However this cannot be considered a goal for a detoxification as heroin dependence is a chronic, relapsing disorder and the goal of detoxification should be to remove or reduce dependence on heroin in a controlled and human fashion and not a treatment for heroin dependence.

Humans↗

Verification of occupational doses at the first nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union.

Mean annual occupational exposures are reported for radiation workers at the first Russian industrial nuclear facility 'Mayak', South Ural region, for the period 1948-1988. The underlying individual doses originate from the register of the in-plant radiation safety department and are based on local film dosimetry results. Differentiation is made between personnel working at reactor and radiochemical processing plants. Verification of summed film doses is performed by means of ESR dose reconstruction using extracted teeth from selected individuals. Explanations are given for observed discrepancies between the reconstructed individual doses and original integrated film dosimetry results. The research potential of combined dose information from specific tooth enamel and dentine are shown.

Dental Enamel↗

Effective access to distributed heterogeneous medical text databases.

INQUERY is an advanced text information retrieval system developed by the Information Retrieval Laboratory of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. It is based on Bayesian inference networks, which are probabilistic models for reasoning with multiple sources of uncertain evidence. The evidence, in this case, is the presence or absence of words and/or phrases in a document. Evidence is combined into belief that a document is relevant. The INQUERY retrieval engine has been developed with the support of ARPA, NSF, and industrial funding. It has a number of unique features and has achieved excellent results in the TIPSTER and TREC evaluations. Informatics research and application development using INQUERY has recently begun in the medical domain, including a new ARPA initiative concerned with clinical text. The features that we will focus on in this demonstration are: Automatic processing of natural language queries, including the extraction of phrases and specific medical concepts such as drug doses; Document selection through automatic relevance feedback and routing techniques, including the construction of complex queries using the INQUERY query language; The integration of conventional database techniques with text analysis and retrieval; Automatic thesaurus generation and query expansion using the PhraseFinder system; Distributed database access, including automatic database selection and merging of local searches; this will be demonstrated using a collection of medical databases; Retrieval based on passages, rather than whole documents.

Bayes Theorem↗

Lutein in selected Canadian crops and agri-food processing by-products and purification by high-speed counter-current chromatography.

This study mainly focused on lutein content in several selected crops grown in southern Ontario, Canada. Marigold flower, a good rotation crop for the control of nematodes in tobacco fields was found to contain 0.77% lutein (after saponification, on dry basis). A high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC) method using a two-phase solvent system consisting of hexane-ethanol-water (6:4.5:1.5, v/v/v) was developed for the purification of lutein from the saponification mixture of marigold flower extract. The purity of lutein prepared using this HSCCC method was 97%. Free lutein was found to be the predominant form in three squash varieties, and it was mostly found in the peel rather than the commonly consumed flesh. Sweet Mamma, Buttercup and Pepper squash varieties contained 25.4, 18.4 and 30.1mg/100g fresh weigh (FW) of lutein in the peels, respectively. These concentrations were significantly higher than that in spinach and kale (3.7 and 12.3 mg/100 g FW). beta-Carotene was found most in the peel of Sweet Mamma squash at 13.6 mg/100g FW, whereas it was below 2mg/100g FW in all other samples. Cooking increased extractable free lutein by 22-65% in squash peels. Lutein in Yukon Gold potato was at ca. 0.4 mg/100 g FW. Certain Yukon Gold was also found to contain violaxanthin (0.35 mg/100 g FW). Structures of lutein, beta-carotene and violaxanthin were identified by LC-atmospheric pressure chemical ionization MS in positive ion mode, and by comparing the retention time and UV-vis spectral data with standards. Results from this study suggest the selected crops and agri-food industrial processing by-products of these can be a good source of free lutein.

Calendula↗