Sewage sludge and fly ash mixture as an alternative for decontaminating lead and zinc ore regions.

Many years of heavy industrial processes in the Upper Silesian Industrial Region in Poland (ore flotation, metal smelting and battery scrap processing) have resulted in lead, zinc and cadmium pollution of the air and soil. The most significant issues stem not only from elevated levels of these metals in environmental compartments, but also from the uneven pattern of their distribution. Point sources of local metal concentration are to be found dispersed over areas of contaminated soil.

Remediation aspect of microbial changes of plant rhizosphere in mercury contaminated soil.

Phytoremediation, an approach that uses plants to remediate contaminated soil through degradation, stabilization or accumulation, may provide an efficient solution to some mercury contamination problems. This paper presents growth chamber experiments that tested the ability of plant species to stabilize mercury in soil. Several indigenous herbaceous species and Salix viminalis were grown in soil collected from a mercury-contaminated site in southern Poland.

Structural investigation of the O-specific polysaccharides of Morganella morganii consisting of two higher sugars.

The lipopolysaccharide of the bacterium Morganella morganii (strain KF 1676, RK 4222) yielded two polysaccharides, PS1 and PS2, when subjected to mild acid degradation followed by GPC. The polysaccharides were studied by 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy, including two-dimensional COSY, TOCSY, NOESY, 1H,(13)C HMQC, and HMBC experiments. Each polysaccharide was found to contain a disaccharide repeating unit consisting of two higher sugars, 5-acetamidino-7-acetamido-3,5,7,9-tetradeoxy-L-glycero-D-galacto-non-2-ulosonic acid (a derivative of 8-epilegionaminic acid, 8eLeg5Am7Ac) and 2-acetamido-4-C-(3'-carboxamide-2',2'-dihydroxypropyl)-2,6-dideoxy-D-galactose (shewanellose, She).