Dispersion of watermelon rinds as secondary raw materials in technologies of pectin-containing extracts and film structures

The development of protective coatings based on pectin substances that serve as natural structure-forming agents developed from a secondary resource base is focused on removing a complex problem in the production of finished products by deep processing of basic raw materials and developing an original film material. At the same time, the technical result of obtaining pectin-containing film structures is their ability to protect food products from microbiological spoilage, natural losses during storage and the preservation of quality and safety indicators. An important preparatory procedure that determines the efficiency and intensity of extraction processes can be attributed to the operation of dispersing the feedstock, since it directly affects the size of the contact surface area of the phases involved in mass transfer. However, it is clear that the greater the degree of grinding, the higher the efficiency of the process, but an excessive increase can lead to additional unjustified energy costs and, as a result, to an increase in the cost of the finished products sold. In this regard, the purpose of the research is to analyze existing technologies for producing pectin-containing extracts, in which watermelon rinds can be used as secondary resources and to intensify the extraction process by conducting a rational preparatory procedure for grinding the raw materials. The object of the research are watermelon rinds as non-recyclable waste from processing watermelon raw materials. According to the obtained graphs, and taking into account the high rates of gelatinization of the obtained pectin extracts, it is possible to recommend a complex treatment of watermelon rinds, including, in addition to the operations of preliminary preparation of raw materials, ultrasonic exposure and acid hydrolysis, and it is desirable to use food acids, for example, acetic or citric, instead of aggressive sulfuric and hydrochloric acids. As a result of the study of the dispersed composition, it has been concluded that the average equivalent particle size of the dispersed raw materials does not exceed the recommended limits, that is, the result obtained can be considered acceptable

Reaction Data Curation I: Chemical Structures and Transformations Standardization

The quality of experimental data for chemical reactions is a critical consideration for any reaction-driven study. However, the curation of reaction data has not been extensively discussed in the literature so far. Here, we suggest a 4 steps protocol that includes the curation of individual structures (reactants and products), chemical transformations, reaction conditions and endpoints. Its implementation in Python3 using CGRTools toolkit has been used to clean three popular reaction databases Reaxys, USPTO and Pistachio. The curated USPTO database is available in the GitHub repository (Laboratoire-de-Chemoinformatique/Reaction_Data_Cleaning)

Atom-to-atom Mapping: A Benchmarking Study of Popular Mapping Algorithms and Consensus Strategies

In this paper, we compare the most popular Atom-to-Atom Mapping (AAM) tools: ChemAxon,[1] Indigo,[2] RDTool,[3] NameRXN (NextMove),[4] and RXNMapper[5] which implement different AAM algorithms. An open-source RDTool program was optimized, and its modified version (“new RDTool”) was considered together with several consensus mapping strategies. The Condensed Graph of Reaction approach was used to calculate chemical distances and develop the “AAM fixer” algorithm for an automatized correction of erroneous mapping. The benchmarking calculations were performed on a Golden dataset containing 1851 manually mapped and curated reactions. The best performing RXNMapper program together with the AMM Fixer was applied to map the USPTO database. The Golden dataset, mapped USPTO and optimized RDTool are available in the GitHub repository https://github.com/Laboratoire-de-Chemoinformatique

Proceedings of the Frontiers of Retrovirology Conference 2016

The emergence of pandemic retroviral infection in small ruminant

Evaluation of a quality improvement intervention to reduce anastomotic leak following right colectomy (EAGLE): pragmatic, batched stepped-wedge, cluster-randomized trial in 64 countries

Background Anastomotic leak affects 8 per cent of patients after right colectomy with a 10-fold increased risk of postoperative death. The EAGLE study aimed to develop and test whether an international, standardized quality improvement intervention could reduce anastomotic leaks. Methods The internationally intended protocol, iteratively co-developed by a multistage Delphi process, comprised an online educational module introducing risk stratification, an intraoperative checklist, and harmonized surgical techniques. Clusters (hospital teams) were randomized to one of three arms with varied sequences of intervention/data collection by a derived stepped-wedge batch design (at least 18 hospital teams per batch). Patients were blinded to the study allocation. Low- and middle-income country enrolment was encouraged. The primary outcome (assessed by intention to treat) was anastomotic leak rate, and subgroup analyses by module completion (at least 80 per cent of surgeons, high engagement; less than 50 per cent, low engagement) were preplanned. Results A total 355 hospital teams registered, with 332 from 64 countries (39.2 per cent low and middle income) included in the final analysis. The online modules were completed by half of the surgeons (2143 of 4411). The primary analysis included 3039 of the 3268 patients recruited (206 patients had no anastomosis and 23 were lost to follow-up), with anastomotic leaks arising before and after the intervention in 10.1 and 9.6 per cent respectively (adjusted OR 0.87, 95 per cent c.i. 0.59 to 1.30; P = 0.498). The proportion of surgeons completing the educational modules was an influence: the leak rate decreased from 12.2 per cent (61 of 500) before intervention to 5.1 per cent (24 of 473) after intervention in high-engagement centres (adjusted OR 0.36, 0.20 to 0.64; P < 0.001), but this was not observed in low-engagement hospitals (8.3 per cent (59 of 714) and 13.8 per cent (61 of 443) respectively; adjusted OR 2.09, 1.31 to 3.31). Conclusion Completion of globally available digital training by engaged teams can alter anastomotic leak rates. Registration number: NCT04270721 (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov)