Headspace oxygen in sample vials affects volatiles production of meat during the automated purge-and-Trap/GC analyses.

Headspace oxygen in sample vial for the purge-and-trap dynamic headspace/gas chromatography method oxidizes meat if held hours before purging, influences volatile profiles, and misrepresents the true composition of volatiles. Helium flush and helium flush plus oxygen absorber were used to eliminate residual oxygen and minimize oxidative changes in meat during sample holding time. Both helium flush and helium flush plus oxygen absorber treatments were effective in preventing an increase in 2-thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARSs) and volatiles production in raw meat for up to 640 min of sample holding. With helium flush plus oxygen absorber, only 1-octen-3-ol increased during the 1280-min sample holding time. However, the hexanal peak in raw meat was interfered by 2,6-dimethyl heptane when oxygen absorber was added. Therefore, use of oxygen absorber was not appropriate for raw meat. Helium flush reduced oxidative changes in cooked meat during sample holding time but was not able to stop oxidative changes in meat after 160 min sample holding. A combination of helium flush and oxygen absorber was effective in preventing volatiles production in cooked meat for over 20 h of sample holding at 4 degrees C.     

Soil Contamination Caused by Emergency Bio-Reduction of Catastrophic Livestock Mortalities

Water, Air, & Soil Pollution - The variations of tropospheric ozone levels was assessed for the first time in the Boukornine National Park (N.E. Tunisia) by detection of leaf injury development...     

Monitoring of total type ii pyrethroid pesticides in citrus oils and water by converting to a common product 3-phenoxybenzoic acid

Pyrethroids are a class of insecticides that are becoming increasingly popular in agricultural and home use applications. Sensitive assays for pyrethroid insecticides in complex matrices are difficult with both instrumental and immunochemical methods. Environmental analysis of the pyrethroids by immunoassay requires either knowing which pyrethroids contaminate the source or the use of nonspecific antibodies with cross-reactivities to a class of compounds. We describe an alternative method that converts the type II pyrethroids to a common chemical product, 3-phenoxybenzoic acid (3-PBA), prior to analysis. This method is much more sensitive than detecting the parent compound, and it is much easier to detect a single compound rather than an entire class of compounds. This is useful in screening for pyrethroids as a class or in situations where a single type of pyrethroid is used. We demonstrated this technique in both citrus oils and environmental water samples with conversion rates of the pyrethroid to 3-PBA that range from 45 to 75% and methods that require no extraction steps for either the immunoassay or the liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) techniques. Limits of detection for this technique applied to orange oil are 5 nM, 2 μM, and 0.8 μM when detected by LC-MS/MS, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and immunoassay, respectively. The limit of detection for pyrethroids in water when detected by immunoassay was 2 nM.     

Solvent-free acid-catalyzed ring-opening of epoxidized oleochemicals using stearates/stearic acid, and its applications

Toxic solvent and strong acid catalysts causing environmental issues have been mainly used for ring-opening of epoxidized oleochemicals. Here, we demonstrated that magnesium stearate (Mg-stearate) was a high efficient catalyst for solvent-free ring-opening of epoxidized methyl oleate, a model compound of midchain epoxide. Mg-stearate resulted in the highest yield (95%) and conversion rate (99%) toward midchain alkoxyesters under the same conditions (160 °C, 12 h) superior to other fatty acid derivatives such as a Lewis acid (lithium and sodium stearate) and Br?nsted acid (stearic acid). Based on this chemical study, we synthesized biogrease and thermoplastic using epoxidized soybean oil (ESO) and Mg-stearate via one-pot, solvent-free, and purification-free process. Mg-stearate played a significant role as a reactant for epoxide ring-opening and as a thickener when excess loading rate was used; viscosity increased from 1800 to 4500 Pa·s at 25 °C when ESO:Mg-stearate increased from 1:1 equiv to 1:2, then behaved like thermoplastics (T(g) = -27 °C, T(m) = 90 °C) with 1:4.     

Development of an immunoassay for the residues of the herbicide bensulfuron-methyl

To develop a competitive indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay based on polyclonal antibodies for the detection of the sulfonylurea herbicide bensulfuron-methyl, seven structurally related haptens were synthesized. Four of them mimicking the target analyte were conjugated to keyhole limpet hemocyanin by the N-hydroxysuccinimide activated ester method to use as immunogens, and all of them were conjugated to bovine serum albumin to use as plate-coating antigens. Polyclonal antibodies raised in rabbits and the coating antigens were screened and selected for the assay in simple homologous and heterologous ELISA formats. Three sensitive heterologous ELISAs were selected and optimized, showing the average IC(50) values of bensulfuron-methyl as low as 0.17, 0.09, and 0.09 ng/mL, the detection ranges of 0.04-0.60, 0.01-0.60, and 0.04-0.25 ng/mL, and the lowest detection limits of 0.03, 0.002, and 0.03 ng/mL, respectively. The cross-reactivities of other sulfonylurea herbicides and metabolites of bensulfuron-methyl to the antibodies were less than 15% in the two assays. Recoveries from the analyte-fortified water samples in assay I were in the range of 81-125% by simple dilution. The correlation between the ELISA and HPLC was 0.999 (n = 15) with a slope of 1.37 in the analysis of groundwater samples fortified with bensulfuron-methyl. The results obtained strongly indicate that the ELISA can be a highly sensitive and convenient tool for detecting bensulfuron-methyl residues in agricultural and environmental samples.     

Wnt5a control of cell polarity and directional movement by polarized redistribution of adhesion receptors

Mechanisms by which Wnt pathways integrate the organization of receptors, organelles, and cytoskeletal proteins to confer cell polarity and directional cell movement are incompletely understood. We show that acute responses to Wnt5a involve recruitment of actin, myosin IIB, Frizzled 3, and melanoma cell adhesion molecule into an intracellular structure in a melanoma cell line. In the presence of a chemokine gradient, this Wnt-mediated receptor-actin-myosin polarity (W-RAMP) structure accumulates asymmetrically at the cell periphery, where it triggers membrane contractility and nuclear movement in the direction of membrane retraction. The process requires endosome trafficking, is associated with multivesicular bodies, and is regulated by Wnt5a through the small guanosine triphosphatases Rab4 and RhoB. Thus, cell-autonomous mechanisms allow Wnt5a to control cell orientation, polarity, and directional movement in response to positional cues from chemokine gradients.     

Architecture of a charge-transfer state regulating light harvesting in a plant antenna protein

Energy-dependent quenching of excess absorbed light energy (qE) is a vital mechanism for regulating photosynthetic light harvesting in higher plants. All of the physiological characteristics of qE have been positively correlated with charge transfer between coupled chlorophyll and zeaxanthin molecules in the light-harvesting antenna of photosystem II (PSII). We found evidence for charge-transfer quenching in all three of the individual minor antenna complexes of PSII (CP29, CP26, and CP24), and we conclude that charge-transfer quenching in CP29 involves a delocalized state of an excitonically coupled chlorophyll dimer. We propose that reversible conformational changes in CP29 can "tune" the electronic coupling between the chlorophylls in this dimer, thereby modulating the energy of the chlorophyll-zeaxanthin charge-transfer state and switching on and off the charge-transfer quenching during qE.     

Hematite nanospheres of possible colloidal origin from a precambrian banded iron formation

Exceptionally small spheres (nanospheres) of hematite (diameters between 120 and 200 nanometers) occur in the Marra Mamba Iron Formation of the Hamersley Basin, Australia. The nanospheres are clustered into small aggregates and may have formed by structural ordering and dehydration of colloidal iron hydroxide particles. Individual spheres consist of numerous thin, curved hematite platelets surrounding a central void that is approximately half the diamter of the sphere; this texture suggests that they formed by a volume reduction of the original colloidal particles by approximately 12.5%. The occurrence of hematite nanospheres supports the hypothesis that some ofthe iron was deposited colloidally during the development ofbanded iron formations, approximately 2.5 billion years ago.     

GC-MS analysis of curcumin dye after selective degradation treatment

Curcumin dye in methanol solution was treated in 100°C oven (OV) and H₂O₂/UV/O₂ (PER) conditions and the degradation products were examined using gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Curcumin itself was not detected from either the OV or PER degraded samples. From OV degradation samples curcumene1, o-coumaric acid2, vanillin3, 2,4-di-tert-butylphenol4, benzene, 1-(3-cyclopentylpropyl)-2,4-dimethyl-45, 1-(4-hydroxy-benzylidene) acetone6, feruloylmethane7, and 2-propenoic acid, 3-[4-(acetyloxy)-3-methoxy phenyl]-, methyl ester8 were detected. From PER degraded samples new products benzoic acid9 and vanillic acid10 were detected additionally. Under the same GC-MS instrumental condition, it is possible that the burial degraded curcumin dye or curcumin dyed textile will exhibit area peaks around 6.2∼6.5 min and 8.3∼8.4 min retention times, which have the mass spectrum matching closely with products3, 4, 7, 8 or9, 10.