Biodegradation of Pine Processionary Caterpillar Silk Is Mediated by Elastase- and Subtilisin-like Proteases

Pine processionary caterpillar nests are made from raw silk. Fibroin protein is the main component of silk which, in the case of pine processionary caterpillar, has some unusual properties such as a higher resistance to chemical hydrolysis. Isolation of microorganisms naturally present in silk nests led to identification of Bacillus licheniformis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains that in a defined minimal medium were able to carry out extensive silk biodegradation. A LasB elastase-like protein from P. aeruginosa was shown to be involved in silk biodegradation. A recombinant form of this protein expressed in Escherichia coli and purified by affinity chromatography was able to efficiently degrade silk in an in vitro assay. However, silk biodegradation by B. licheniformis strain was mediated by a SubC subtilisin-like protease. Homologous expression of a subtilisin Carlsberg encoding gene (subC) allowed faster degradation compared to the biodegradation kinetics of a wildtype B. licheniformis strain. This work led to the identification of new enzymes involved in biodegradation of silk materials, a finding which could lead to possible applications for controlling this pest and perhaps have importance from sanitary and biotechnological points of view.     

Novel automatic video cut detection technique using Gabor filtering

Video shot transition identification constitutes an important computer vision research field, being applied, as an essential step, in many other digital video analysis domains: video scene detection, video compression, video indexing, video content retrieval and video object tracking. This paper approaches the video cut transition detection domain, providing a novel feature-based automatic identification method. We propose a feature extraction technique that uses 2D Gabor filtering, computing tridimensional image feature vectors for the video frames. Most shot cut detection techniques use a thresholding operation to discriminate between the inter-frame difference metric values and thus identify the video break points. Our identification approach is not threshold-based, using an automatic unsupervised distance classification procedure instead of a threshold. Thus, we provide a region-growing based classification approach, that proves to be very efficient in clustering the distances between feature vectors of consecutive frames. The two resulted distance classes determine a satisfactory video shot detection.     

Bacterial community dynamics,lactic acid bacteria species diversity and metabolite kinetics of traditional Romanian vegetable fermentations

BACKGROUND: Artisanal vegetable fermentations are very popular in Eastern European countries. Fresh vegetables undergo a spontaneous fermentation in the presence of salt, which is mainly carried out by lactic acid bacteria (LAB). RESULTS: Culture‐dependent and culture‐independent analyses of end‐samples of various spontaneous vegetable fermentations carried out in houses of the Chiodju region (central Romania) revealed Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactobacillus brevis as the most frequently isolated LAB species. Leuconostoc mesenteroides and Leuconostoc citreum were also found. Furthermore, the community dynamics of spontaneous cauliflower and mixed‐vegetable (green tomatoes, carrots and cauliflower) fermentations revealed three steps: an initial phase characterised by the presence of Enterobacteriaceae and a wide LAB species diversity, encompassing Weissella species; a second phase from day 3 onwards wherein L. citreum and Lb. brevis occurred; and a final phase characterised by the prevalence of Lb. brevis and Lb. plantarum. Metabolite target analysis revealed that glucose and fructose were mostly depleted at the end of fermentation. The main products of carbohydrate metabolism were lactic acid, acetic acid, ethanol and small amounts of mannitol, indicating heterolactate fermentation. CONCLUSION: Given their prevalence at the end of vegetable fermentations, Lb. brevis and Lb. plantarum appear to be good candidate starter cultures for controlled vegetable fermentation processes. © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry     

Changes in the composition and sensory properties of Croatian cheese in a lamb skin sack (Sir iz mišine) during ripening

Croatian traditional cheese, which ripens in a lamb skin sack, was studied to determine compositional, biochemical and sensory changes over 60 days of ripening. The ripening time had a significant effect on the chemical, biochemical and sensory parameters, particularly on the medium‐ and long‐chain free fatty acids (P < 0.05) and total FFAs (P < 0.001). At the end of ripening palmitic, oleic and stearic acids were the predominant FFAs. Cheese ripened for more than 45 days was less acceptable to consumers as a consequence of extensive proteolysis and lipolysis. Therefore, ripening for more than 45 days, which is commonly practised by cheesemakers, is not recommended.     

Trust‐based Leadership: Creative Lessons from Intelligent Horsemanship

Mostly unsubstantiated claims have been made that non‐traditional methods of horsemanship have much to offer as models for leadership. The claims include the achievement of rapid and efficient interactions in which trust is gained between the human and unridden foals, or even between human and horses with fear of human contact. A study has begun to explore the relationship between the so‐called ‘join‐up’ approach, and creative leadership. The basic principles of the two approaches have been compared and contrasted in pilot studies with managers on development courses. Preliminary results suggest that creative leadership, and the join‐up approach, have many features in common. A particularly significant similarity is that they are both trust‐based approaches, contrasting with more traditional approaches of human and horse management, in which the goals of the leader/trainer are achieved through reinforcement of power and through the exercise of coercive methods of maintaining dominance. The study raises deep ethical questions of how leaders deal with those over whom they have some power, and for whom they have responsibilities. We conclude that creative leadership, and trust‐based methods of horsemanship achieve involvement and cooperation by psychologically healthy means.