Preliminary identification of soil fungi for the degradation of polyurethane film.

Polyurethane (PU) is a versatile plastic that boasts high environmental resistance. The biodegradation of PU has become a hot topic of research aimed at finding ways to potentially solve PU pollutants. Identifying microorganisms capable of efficiently degrading PU plastics is pivotal for the development of a green recycling process for PU.

A software program for automated compressive vertebral fracture detection on elderly women's lateral chest radiograph: Ofeye 1.0.

Background: Because osteoporotic vertebral fracture (OVF) on chest radiographs is commonly missed in radiological reports, we aimed to develop a software program which offers automated detection of compressive vertebral fracture (CVF) on lateral chest radiographs, and which emphasizes CVF detection specificity with a low false positivity rate.

Methods: For model training, we retrieved 3,991 spine radiograph cases and 1,979 chest radiograph cases from 16 sources, with among them in total 1,404 cases had OVF. For model testing, we retrieved 542 chest radiograph cases and 162 spine radiograph cases from four independent clinics, with among them 215 cases had OVF.

The effects of pH and NaCl concentration on the structure of β-casein from buffalo milk.

In the present study, we aimed to investigate the effects of pH and sodium chloride (NaCl) concentration on the structure of β-casein (β-CN) purified from buffalo milk using circular dichroism (CD), intrinsic tryptophan, and anilino-8-naphthalene sulfonate (ANS) fluorescence spectroscopy. We found that NaCl concentration played a critical role in the stability of the secondary structure of β-CN. The CD negative peak had a redshift as the NaCl concentration was increased and accompanied by a decrease of β-sheet content and an increase of α-helix content.

A Novel Improved Gram Staining Method Based on the Capillary Tube.

In this work, an exploratory study was conducted to examine Gram staining based on the capillary tube. Each Gram staining step for all bacterial strains tested was completed in capillary tubes. The results showed that different Gram staining morphologies were clearly visible in the capillary tubes.

A high-throughput method for screening of Aspergillus niger mutants with high transglycosylation activity by detecting non-fermentable reducing sugar.

A novel high-throughput method was established for rapid screening of large numbers of Aspergillus niger mutants with high transglucosylation activity by exploiting that yeast can hardly hydrolyze isomaltooligosaccharides (IMO). Supernatants of A. niger fermentation were incubated with Saccharomyces cerevisiae to remove glucose and maltose, and the remaining non-reducing sugars, which is positively correlated with the amount of IMO, the products of transglucosylation reaction, were used as indicator of transglucosidase activity of A.

Purification and characterization of an intracellular α-glucosidase with high transglycosylation activity from A. niger M-1.

An intracellular α-glucosidase with high transglycosylation activity was purified from a mutant strain of Aspergillus niger M-1 by sequential chromatography using a DEAE-cellulose 52 column, a DEAE-Sepharose CL-6B column, and a Sephadex G-100 column. The molecular mass of the purified enzyme was determined to be 116 kD with no subunits and a pI of 5.23.