Extraction and Quantification of Bisphenol-A Level in Infant Polycarbonate Feeding Bottles using High Performance Liquid Chromatography Technique

Polycarbonate plastics (PC) containing bisphenol A (BPA) are used for the production of infant feeding bottles, food storage containers, kitchen utensils and some components of medical devices. Trace amount of BPA have been reported in water and food products kept in PC containers. The leaching of bisphenol A from new and used polycarbonate feeding bottles into 10% ethanol (EU regulated simulant) and hot water was investigated using HPLC analysis. The bottles were filled to the corresponding nominal volumes with 10% ethanol, allowed to stand for 24hours and with boiled HPLC grade water for 2hours at 40°C, followed by extraction with ethyl acetate. The results indicated the release of high amount of BPA from new feeding bottles than the previously used ones. The BPA leachate in 10% ethanol was within the range of 20-61ng/mL and 14.13-27.30ng/mL in new and used bottle respectively, while the range in hot water was 12.53-92.65 ng/mL and 7.81-55.02ng/mL in new and used bottles respectively. The validation parameters were Limit Of Detection: 1.14 ng/mL, Limit Of Quantification: 3.80 ng/mL, while the percent recovery for spiked samples and efficiency of the extraction procedure were 98 –103 % and %RSD ranged between 2.00 – 5.61%.The estimated tolerable daily intake(TDI) using the average BPA leachate in boiled water has exceeded the new revised TDI of 4μg/kgbw/day established by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)

Biodegradation of gasoline polluted soil using goat dung

Petroleum product leakages from underground storage tanks, distribution facilities and various industrial operations represent an important source of soil and aquifer contamination. This study was carried out to determine the effects of Goat Dung (GD) on Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) degradation and microbiological composition. Top soil (0-15 cm depth) was collected from Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Satellite Depot, Ejigbo, Lagos State. One kilogram of the gasoline polluted soil was measured into nine containers. The GD was mixed with the soil at the rate of 0, 50 and 100 g kg-1 soil in triplicate and the containers were arranged in a Completely Randomized Design. Soil samples were taken from each container at 21 and 42 days for Hydrocarbon Utilizing Bacteria (HUB) and PAH determination using standard methods. Collected data were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. The HUB species identified were Bacillus, Staphylococcus, Klebsiella, Escherichia, Pseudomonas and Enterobacter. The PAH (mg kg-1) of the soil before GD application was 192.65. After the amendments at 0, 50 and 100 g kg-1, this value reduced to 167.32±2.45, 107.11 ±1.88 and 75.10±3.65, respectively at 21 days and 134.26±1.59, 74.16 ±2.27 and 46.14.14±1.93, respectively at 42 days. Biodegradation efficiency of 76 % was recorded after 42 days in soil amended with 100 g kg-1 of GD. Application of 100 g kg-1 of GD was more effective in the remediation of PAH contaminated soil. Results demonstrated that GD could be used to enhance activities of the microbial hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria during bioremediation of gasoline polluted soil.Keywords: Biodegradation, Gasoline, Goat dung, Hydrocarbon, Pollutio

Free radical scavenging potential of methanol extract of Ficus thonningii leave and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer (LCMS) profiling

This study evaluated the in vitro and in vivo free radical scavenging potentials of methanol extract of Ficus thonningii leaf and its liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer (LCMS) profiling. The qualitative phytochemical screening was carried out and the results show the presence of tannins, flavonoids, saponins glycoside and triterpenes. Antioxidant activities were carried out in vitro and in vivo and the reducing power shows a value of 0.53 ± 0.007 with a significant (p < 0.05) difference compared to the control and Diphenylpicrylhydrazyl (DPPH) value of 59.0 ± 0.007 with a significantly different (p < 0.05) compared to the control. However, the two assays are concentration-dependent. The in vivo analysis shows that lipid peroxidation, superoxide dismutase and catalase activities have values of 24.03± 8.04, 1.60± 0.03 and 0.003± 0.001 respectively. All the values are significantly different when compared to the control and are concentration-dependent. The LCMS results revealed the presence of some important metabolites; phenolic glycosides and quassin, which are potential molecules against free radicals. Therefore, Ficus thonningii leaf contains vital antioxidants and could be used in health management to boost the immune system or in drug development

Phytochemical screening and antifungal potentials of Citrus limon peels against Fusarium oxysporum and Rhizopus stolonifer causing rots in water melon (Citrullus lanatus L.)

This study investigated the phytochemical constituents and antifungal potential of Citrus limon peels using aqueous and methanol extracts against Fusarium oxysporum and Rhizopus stolonifer causing rots in water melon. The result of phytocemical screening revealed the presence of Saponin, Tannin, Phenols, Alkaloid and Flavanoid. Pathogenicity test conducted showed that F. oxysporum and R. stolonifer causes rots of Citrullus lanatus. The extracts inhibited the growth of F. oxysporum (76.67% and 60.00 %) methanol and aqueous respectively. R. stolonifer growth was inhibited (85.93% and 71.11%) methanol and aqueous extracts. The fungitoxicity of synthetic fungicide Benomyl was 95.56%. The methanol extracts has highest inhibitory activity than aqueous extract. The result of the findings indicates the Biofungicide potentials of Citrus limon peels as alternative to synthetic fungicide in management of phyto-pathogens of water lemon

Obstructive urolithiasis in a 11/2 – year old Ouda–Yankasa ram: case report

Obstructive urolithiasis is the retention of urine subsequent to the lodgement of calculi in the urinary tract from the kidney up to the urethral orifice. This report describes the post-mortem and chemical analysis findings of the calculi in an 18-month old Ouda-Yankasa cross ram presented at the Large Animal Clinic of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. The patient was presented on 20th of March, 2013 with reports of anorexia, disinclination to drink water and anuria that developed four days before presentation at the clinic. On clinical examination, urethral blockage and mild ascites were observed. Cystocentesis was performed to relieve the patient and plain radiograph taken but was not diagnostic. The patient died before definitive diagnosis was made for rational treatment. The post - mortem findings include frothy exudate in the trachea and bronchial airways, congestion of the lungs, hydroperitoneum with recovered fluid measuring 2,350 ml, splenomegaly, hydronephrosis, distended urinary bladder, severe haemorrhagic cystitis, urinary calculi in the bladder and throughout the urethral length and urethral stricture. The urinary calculi recovered were white, friable and amorphous, ranging from small particles to 5mm in diameter. Histopathologic section of the kidney showed atrophied glomeruli. It can thus be concluded that the atrophied glomeruli in turn impaired glomerular filtration which invariably pre-disposed the patient to uraemia leading to its death. The chemical analysis of the calculi showed that the calculi was either oxalate, phosphate or silicate, or any of these mixtures.Keywords: calculi, obstruction, phosphate, uraemi

Finite calculation of divergent selfenergy diagrams

Using dispersive techniques, it is possible to avoid ultraviolet divergences in the calculation of Feynman diagrams, making subsequent regularization of divergent diagrams unnecessary. We give a simple introduction to the most important features of such dispersive techniques in the framework of the so-called finite causal perturbation theory. The method is also applied to the 'divergent' general massive two-loop sunrise selfenergy diagram, where it leads directly to an analytic expression for the imaginary part of the diagram in accordance with the literature, whereas the real part can be obtained by a single integral dispersion relation. It is pointed out that dispersive methods have been known for decades and have been applied to several nontrivial Feynman diagram calculations.Comment: 15 pages, Latex, one figure, added reference

State sampling dependence of the Hopfield network inference

The fully connected Hopfield network is inferred based on observed magnetizations and pairwise correlations. We present the system in the glassy phase with low temperature and high memory load. We find that the inference error is very sensitive to the form of state sampling. When a single state is sampled to compute magnetizations and correlations, the inference error is almost indistinguishable irrespective of the sampled state. However, the error can be greatly reduced if the data is collected with state transitions. Our result holds for different disorder samples and accounts for the previously observed large fluctuations of inference error at low temperatures.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, further discussions added and relevant references adde

On the evaluation of a certain class of Feynman diagrams in x-space: Sunrise-type topologies at any loop order

We review recently developed new powerful techniques to compute a class of Feynman diagrams at any loop order, known as sunrise-type diagrams. These sunrise-type topologies have many important applications in many different fields of physics and we believe it to be timely to discuss their evaluation from a unified point of view. The method is based on the analysis of the diagrams directly in configuration space which, in the case of the sunrise-type diagrams and diagrams related to them, leads to enormous simplifications as compared to the traditional evaluation of loops in momentum space. We present explicit formulae for their analytical evaluation for arbitrary mass configurations and arbitrary dimensions at any loop order. We discuss several limiting cases of their kinematical regimes which are e.g. relevant for applications in HQET and NRQCD.Comment: 100 pages, 16 eps-figures include

Collective perspective on advances in Dyson-Schwinger Equation QCD

We survey contemporary studies of hadrons and strongly interacting quarks using QCD's Dyson-Schwinger equations, addressing: aspects of confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking; the hadron spectrum; hadron elastic and transition form factors, from small- to large-Q^2; parton distribution functions; the physics of hadrons containing one or more heavy quarks; and properties of the quark gluon plasma.Comment: 56 pages. Summary of lectures delivered by the authors at the "Workshop on AdS/CFT and Novel Approaches to Hadron and Heavy Ion Physics," 2010-10-11 to 2010-12-03, hosted by the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, China, at the Chinese Academy of Science

An integrated map of structural variation in 2,504 human genomes

Structural variants are implicated in numerous diseases and make up the majority of varying nucleotides among human genomes. Here we describe an integrated set of eight structural variant classes comprising both balanced and unbalanced variants, which we constructed using short-read DNA sequencing data and statistically phased onto haplotype blocks in 26 human populations. Analysing this set, we identify numerous gene-intersecting structural variants exhibiting population stratification and describe naturally occurring homozygous gene knockouts that suggest the dispensability of a variety of human genes. We demonstrate that structural variants are enriched on haplotypes identified by genome-wide association studies and exhibit enrichment for expression quantitative trait loci. Additionally, we uncover appreciable levels of structural variant complexity at different scales, including genic loci subject to clusters of repeated rearrangement and complex structural variants with multiple breakpoints likely to have formed through individual mutational events. Our catalogue will enhance future studies into structural variant demography, functional impact and disease association. © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved