The 491 U.S. coal-fired power plants are the largest unregulated industrial source of mercury emissions nationwide, annually emitting about 48 tons of mercury—a toxic element that poses health threats, including neurological disorders in children. In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that mercury emissions from these sources should be regulated, but the agency has not s...

the protease enzyme breaks down protein into amino acids as its constructors. protease immobilization onto appropriate support materials plays an essential role in various fields of technology including the food and detergent industries. accordingly, improvement of protease immobilization has been highly regarded due to its applications in bio catalysis. alginate and chitosan are natural polysa...

Microbial cells are producers of natural polymers present in plant cells. Production of pullulan (an extracellular microbial polysaccharide) by Aureobasidium pullularia pullulans (P. pullulans) was studied under fermentation conditions, and kinetic parameters were determined. Pullulan formation obeyed a growth and non-growth associated term. PHB (polyhydroxybutyrates) an intracellular biopo...

The contribution of aliphatic-rich plant biopolymer to sorption of hydrophobic organic compounds is significantly important because of their preservation and accumulation in the soil environment, but sorption mechanism is still not fully understood. In this study, sorption of 1-naphthol by plant cuticular fractions was examined to better understand the contributions of respective fraction. Towa...

Microbial modification of starch with Ophiostoma spp. was investigated, with the purpose of developing a novel packaging material for the food or pharmaceutical industries. Various starch sources, such as tapioca, potato, corn, rice and amylopectin were tested as raw materials. The initial screening demonstrated that tapioca and potato starch had better performance for biopolymer production. Th...

The incorporation of brown algae into biopolymer beads or foams for metal sorption has been previously reported. However, the direct use of these biomasses for preparing foams is a new approach. In this study, two kinds of porous foams were prepared by ionotropic gelation using algal biomass (AB, Laminaria digitata) or alginate (as the reference) and applied for Pb(II) sorption. These foams (ma...

SUMMARY An XML derived from a data model designed to be a hierarchical representation of an organism has been specified and a browser to use this language has been developed. AVAILABILITY The language definition is available in HTML form at http://www.proteometrics.com/BIOML/. The BioML browser is available on request from the author.

In the present study the kinetics of biosorption of cadmium(II) ions by deactivated protonated yeast converted to sodium form was investigated for different initial concentrations of the metal ion (10-100 ppm) and different sorbent dosages (0.1-2.0 g) at a pH of 6.5. The adsorption process occurred in four distinct steps and the rates for these steps decreased sequentially. The rate of cadmium ...