One-step bioremediation of hypersaline and nutrient-rich food industry process water with a domestic microbial community containing diatom Halamphora coffeaeformis.

Proper treatment of hypersaline and nutrient-rich food industry process water (FIPW) is challenging in conventional wastewater plants. Insufficient treatment leads to serious environmental hazards. However, bioremediation of FIPW with an indigenous microbial community can not only recover nutrients but generate biomass of diverse applications.

Phycoremediation and valorization of hypersaline pickled mustard wastewater via Chaetoceros muelleri and indigenous bacteria.

Hypersaline pickled mustard wastewater (PMW), a typical food wastewater with high nutrient content, was successfully bioremediated via the co-treatment of Chaetoceros muelleri and indigenous bacteria in this study. Chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen, total nitrogen and total phosphorus in 10 % PMW could be effectively reduced by 82 %, 90 %, 94 % and 96 %, respectively, after 12 days treatment. Oxygen species activities, malondialdehyde content, microalgal biomass, photosynthesis and extracellular polymeric substances were characterized during the treatment to determine the responses of the consortium when exposed to different concentration of PMW.

[Hyperspectral inversion of paddy soil iron oxide in typical subtropical area with Pearl River Delta, China as illustration].

Iron oxide is the main form of iron element existing in the soil. In subtropical areas, the high-content iron oxide constitutes the soil's important coloring components, or its mineral substances, such as goethite and hematite, making the soil color apparently different from that in other climatic zones. The present paper, with the Pearl River Delta, a typical subtropical area, as illustration, and through analysis of the correlation between different spectral forms and the content of soil iron oxide, created inversion models of soil iron oxide by extracting characteristic spectral bands.

Solid lipid nanoparticles as insulin inhalation carriers for enhanced pulmonary delivery.

Growing attentions have been paid to the pulmonary route for systemic delivery of peptide and protein drugs, such as insulin. Advantages of this non-injective route include rapid drug deposition in the target organ, fewer systemic side effects and avoiding first pass metabolism. However, sustained release formulations for pulmonary delivery have not been fully exploited till now.

Targeted delivery of levofloxacin-liposomes for the treatment of pulmonary inflammation.

levofloxacin, an amphipathic antibiotic. The aim of the present study was to design passive targeting liposomes, which might improve the antibacterial activity by accumulating in lung and reduce side effects such as neurotoxicity and hematotoxicity associated with direct injection of the drug. Levofloxacin-loaded liposomes were prepared by the ammonium sulfate gradients method.

Spray-freeze-dried dry powder inhalation of insulin-loaded liposomes for enhanced pulmonary delivery.

Nowadays, growing attention has been paid to the pulmonary region as a target for the delivery of peptide and protein drugs, especially macromolecules with systemic effect like insulin, since the pulmonary route exhibits numerous benefits to be an alternative for repeated injection. Furthermore, encapsulation of insulin into liposomal carriers is an attractive way to increase drug retention time and control the drug release in the lung; however, its long-term stability during storage in the reservoir and the process of aerosolization might be suspected when practically applied. Thus, the aim of this study was to design and characterize dry powder inhalation of insulin-loaded liposomes prepared by novel spray-freeze-drying method for enhanced pulmonary delivery.

An attempt to increase the efficiency of protein crystal screening: a simplified screen and experiments.

Macromolecular crystallization remains a bottleneck in structure determination by X-ray diffraction. Based on the data reflecting success rates of crystallization conditions in different screens and the information derived from the BMCD and other related studies, a simplified screen has been designed to increase the success rate of traditional screening and to save samples, time and cost. The screen has been tested with six protein samples which had been crystallized before and its comparison with Crystal Screen (Hampton Research) was also performed with lysozyme crystallization.