Novel approaches to purifying bacteriocin: A review

ABSTRACT

Bacteriocin is a proteinaceous biomolecule produced by bacteria (both Gram-positive and Gram-negative) that exhibits antimicrobial activity against closely related species, and food-borne pathogens. It has recently gained importance and attracted the attention of several researchers looking to produce it from various substrates and bacterial strains. This ushers in a new era of food preservation where the use of bacteriocin in food products will be an alternative to chemical preservatives, and heat treatment which are understood to cause unwanted side effects, and reduce sensory and nutritional quality. However, this new market depends on the success of novel downstream separation schemes from various types of crude feedstocks which are both effective and economic. This review focuses on the downstream separation of bacteriocin from various sources using both conventional and novel techniques. Finally, recommendations for future interesting areas of research that need to be pursued are highlighted.     

Reduction of chlorophenols and sludge management from paper industry wastewater using electrocoagulation process

ABSTRACT

In this study, electrocoagulation (EC) was used to determine the optimum conditions on the basis of maximum chemical oxygen demand (COD) and color removal. At the optimum conditions chlorophenols (CPs), biological oxygen demand and total organic carbon (TOC) were determined. The biodegradability of wastewater was increased significantly with 63% COD, 98% color, 61% TOC and overall 65.51% reductions in CPs. Further, the electro-coagulated sludge was characterized by using different analytical techniques to assist the physicochemical and elemental phases, to find-out better management option, reusability for plant growth and safe disposal. Additionally, aluminum content (70.62%) was successfully recovered from sludge.     

高性能碳基储能材料的设计、合成与应用

电化学储能器件的性能很大程度上决定于其电极材料。碳材料具有来源广泛、化学稳定性好、易于调控、环境友好等优点，被广泛应用于各类能量存储系统，但仍存在能量密度低、倍率性能差等问题。本文从碳材料孔结构调控、杂原子掺杂、与金属氧化物复合三个角度，综述了构建高性能碳基储能材料的设计合成策略，介绍了其在锂/钠离子二次电池、超级电容器等领域的研究进展，对几种方法策略的优缺点进行了总结，并对未来的研究方向进行了展望。本文对高性能碳基储能电极材料的设计开发具有积极意义。     

A red code triggers an unintended approach motivation toward sweet ultra-processed foods: Possible implications for front-of-pack labels

Front-of-package labels (FOPL) are recommended to reduce consumer intake of ultra-processed food products (UPP). The multiple traffic-light label is one example of FOPL that indicates the content of target nutrients in products by displaying red (high), amber (medium), and/or green (low) color-coding. The red code may implicitly enhance sweetness perception and approach dispositions toward sweet UPP via cross-modal visual-taste interactions. We conducted two experiments to examine the possibility of contradictory influence of explicitly learned and implicit cross-modal associations on the emotional responses evoked by UPP pictures. In both experiments, we first explicitly associated the color codes with health-related meanings. In Experiment I (n = 78), a psychometric tool estimated the emotional responses (pleasantness and arousal ratings) evoked by UPP pictures when preceded by red, amber, or green color-codes. In Experiment II (n = 24), we recorded participants’ electrocortical brain activity to assess the early posterior negativity (EPN) component as an index of the emotional responses to UPP. The reported pleasantness (Experiment I) and the EPN amplitude (Experiment II) were greater for sweet UPP relative to salty UPP when primed with red codes but not when primed with green or amber. A red code increased positive emotions toward sweet UPP despite its explicit association with increased health-risks. Thus, the use of multiple traffic-lights might lead to an unintended implicit approach behavior toward sweet UPP. Designers, researchers, and policy makers may consider color-taste cross-modal associations when designing, testing, and applying FOPL.     

Simultaneous improvement of thermal conductivity and mechanical properties for mechanically mixed ABS/h-BN composites by using small amounts of hyperbranched polymer additives

Recently, thermal interface materials (TIMs) are in great demands for modern electronics. For mechanically mixed polymer composite TIMs, the thermal conductivity and the mechanical properties are generally lower than expected values due to the sharply increased viscosity and poor filler dispersion. This work shows that addition of a small amount of polyester-based hyperbranched polymer (HBP) avoided the trade-off in mechanically mixed ABS/hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) composites. After adding 0.5 wt% HBP, the maximum h-BN content in the composites increased from 50 to 60 wt%. The out-of-plane, in-plane thermal conductivity, and tensile strength of ABS/h-BN with 50 wt% h-BN were 0.408, 0.517 W/mK, and 18 MPa, respectively, and were increased to 0.729, 0.847 W/mK, and 32 MPa by adding 0.5 wt% HBP, while 0.972, 1.12 W/mK, and 29.5 MPa were achieved for ABS/h-BN/HBP with 60 wt% h-BN. The morphological and rheological results proved that these enhancements are due to the improved h-BN dispersion by decreasing viscosity of composites during mixing. Theoretical modeling based on the modified effective medium theory confirmed such results and showed that the interfacial thermal resistance also decreased slightly. Thus, this work demonstrates a facile and scalable method for simultaneously improving the thermal conductivity and mechanical properties of thermoplastic-based TIMs.     

高性能有机氟材料制备科学及应用进展

有机氟材料具有优异的热氧稳定性、耐化学腐蚀性、耐老化性、不黏性、电绝缘性以及极小的摩擦系数等特性，因此作为一种不可替代的材料广泛应用于高新技术产业。近年来高新技术产业发展对高性能有机氟材料的需求引发了学术界和工业界对氟材料的研究兴趣。依据本文作者的研究经历及有机氟材料的发展方向，本文介绍了氟树脂（新型含氟聚合物、电活性含氟聚合物、新型全氟磺酸聚合物、聚四氟乙烯3D打印）及氟橡胶（过氧化物硫化氟橡胶、耐低温氟醚橡胶、耐高温全氟醚橡胶、全氟聚醚基类玻璃橡胶）的制备科学及应用进展，特别阐述为了满足航空航天、能源、信息等高新技术产业需求发展的新一代高性能有机氟材料。本文也介绍了近期出现的聚四氟乙烯新成型技术及类玻璃氟橡胶。文章指出发展绿色环保和高效的高性能有机氟材料制备及成型加工方法是今后的发展方向。     

Synthesis of Ionic Ultramicroporous Polymers for Selective Separation of Acetylene from Ethylene

The design of highly stable and efficient porous materials is essential for developing breakthrough hydrocarbon separation methods based on physisorption to replace currently used energy-intensive distillation/absorption technologies. Efforts to develop advanced porous materials such as zeolites, coordination frameworks, and organic polymers have met with limited success. Here, a new class of ionic ultramicroporous polymers (IUPs) with high-density inorganic anions and narrowly distributed ultramicroporosity is reported, which are synthesized by a facile free-radical polymerization using branched and amphiphilic ionic compounds as reactive monomers. A covalent and ionic dual-crosslinking strategy is proposed to manipulate the pore structure of amorphous polymers at the ultramicroporous scale. The IUPs exhibit exceptional selectivity (286.1–474.4) for separating acetylene from ethylene along with high thermal and water stability, collaboratively demonstrated by gas adsorption isotherms and experimental breakthrough curves. Modeling studies unveil the specific binding sites for acetylene capture as well as the interconnected ultramicroporosity for size sieving. The porosity-engineering protocol used in this work can also be extended to the design of other ultramicroporous materials for the challenging separation of other key gas constituents.     

Piezoresistive in-situ strain sensing of composite laminate structures

Various methods have been developed to monitor the health and strain state of carbon fiber reinforced polymers, each with a unique set of pros and cons. This research assesses the use of piezoresistive sensors for in situ strain measurement of carbon fiber and other composite structures in multidirectional laminates. The piezoresistive sensor material and the embedded circuitry are both evaluated. For the piezoresistive sensor, a conductive nickel nanocomposite sensor is compared with the piezoresistivity of the carbon fiber itself. For the circuit, the use of carbon fibers already present in the structure is compared with the use of nickel coated carbon fiber. Successful localized strain sensing is demonstrated for several sensor and circuitry configurations. Numerous engineering applications are possible in the ever-growing field of carbon-composites.     

Multi-objective particle swarm optimisation based integrated production inventory routing planning for efficient perishable food logistics operations

Sustainable and efficient food supply chain has become an essential component of one’s life. The model proposed in this paper is deeply linked to people's quality of life as a result of which there is a large incentive to fulfil customer demands through it. This proposed model can enhance food quality by making the best possible food quality accessible to customers, construct a sustainable logistics system considering its environmental impact and ensure the customer demand to be fulfilled as fast as possible. In this paper, an extended model is examined that builds a unified planning problem for efficient food logistics operations where four important objectives are viewed: minimising the total expense of the system, maximising the average food quality along with the minimisation of the amount of CO₂ emissions in transportation along with production and total weighted delivery lead time minimisation. A four objective mixed integer linear programming model for intelligent food logistics system is developed in the paper. The optimisation of the formulated mathematical model is proposed using a modified multi-objective particle swarm optimisation algorithm with multiple social structures: MO-GLNPSO (Multi-Objective Global Local Near-Neighbour Particle Swarm Optimisation). Computational results of a case study on a given dataset as well as on multiple small, medium and large-scale datasets followed by sensitivity analysis show the potency and effectiveness of the introduced method. Lastly, there has been a scope for future study displayed which would lead to the further progress of these types of models.