Discovery of novel secreted fungal sulfhydryl oxidases with a plate test screen

Sulfhydryl oxidases (SOX) are FAD-dependent enzymes capable of oxidising free thiol groups and forming disulphide bonds. Although the quantity of scientific papers and suggested applications for SOX is constantly increasing, only a limited number of microbial SOX have been reported and are commercially available. Hence, the aim of this study was to develop a fast and reliable qualitative plate test for screening novel secreted fungal SOX. The screening was based on the Ellman's reagent, i.e. 5,5′-dithiobis[2-nitrobenzoic acid]. Altogether, 32 fungal strains from an in-house culture collection were screened. A total of 13 SOX-producing strains were found positive in the plate test screen. The novel SOX producers were Aspergillus tubingensis, Chaetomium globusum, Melanocarpus albomyces, Penicillium aurantiogriseum, Penicillium funiculosum, Coniophora puteana and Trametes hirsuta. Six of the discovered SOX were partially characterised by determination of isoelectric point, pH optimum and substrate specificity. A. tubingensis was identified as the most efficient novel SOX producer

Numerical Simulation and Experimental Study of Bimolecular Reactive Transport in Porous Media

The traditional advection–dispersion–reaction equation (ADRE) often meets difficulty in simulating diffusion-controlled reactive transport, because the grid-based ADRE with a laboratory-measured reaction rate overpredicts pore-scale mixing and the product concentration. In this study, we chose bimolecular reactive transport (A++B→→AB) in porous media as an example and developed a fully implicit Galerkin finite-element method with Picard’s linearization scheme for solving the ADRE considering incomplete mixing at pore scale (IM-ADRE) based on a continuum approximation by Sanchez-Vila et al. (Water Resour Res 46:W12510, 2010). Sensitivity analysis showed that the IM-ADRE model was most sensitive to the parameter “m,” which was the power index of time used to control the decline rate of the time-dependent kinetic reaction term considering effects of incomplete mixing at pore scale. We used the IM-ADRE model to interpret the column experiment reported by Raje and Kapoor (Environ Sci Technol 34(7):1234–1239, 2000), which studied bimolecular reactive transport of aniline (AN) +1,2-naphthoquinone-4-sulfonic acid (NQS)→→1,2-naphthoquinone-4-aminobenzene (NQAB) in porous media. Previous studies found that the discrepancy between the simulated and observed peak product concentrations was as large as 55 % by the traditional ADRE, while the discrepancy was reduced to 5 % by the IM-ADRE model. We further conducted new reactive transport column experiments with NQS and AN to systematically understand the nature of bimolecular reactive transport in porous media and further check the validity of the IM-ADRE model. Our experiments differed from previous ones in two aspects. First, we used two different realistic porous media with six different flow velocities while previous experiments mostly involved artificial media such as glass beads under two similar flow velocities. Second, our experiment used a column (with the length of 100 cm) relatively longer than that (18 cm) in Raje and Kapoor (2000), and thus, the boundary effect of the column was minimized, and the time dependence of the effective reaction term could be further checked rigorously. Our study reveals that the IM-ADRE is a feasible tool in quantifying reactive transport at a travel distance up to 100 cm, further validating the effective, time-dependent rate coefficient proposed empirically by Sanchez-Vila et al. (2010)

Projected increase in Hydropower production in India under climate change

Hydropower is a valuable renewable energy resource in India, which can help in climate change mitigation and meet the increasing energy demands. However, the crucial role of climate change on hydropower production in India remains unexplored. Here using the observations and model simulations, we show that seven large hydropower projects experienced a significant (p-value < 0.05) warming and a decline in precipitation and streamflow during the observed period of 1951–2007. However, all the hydropower projects are projected to experience a warmer and wetter climate in the future. Multimodel ensemble mean annual average temperature (precipitation) is projected to rise up to 6.3 ± 1.6 °C (18 ± 14.6%) in the catchments upstream of the other reservoirs by the end of the 21st century under representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5. Due to the projected increase in precipitation, mean annual streamflow (up to +45%) and hydropower (up to +25%) production are projected to rise under the future climate. However, significant warming (6.25 ± 1.62 °C) is projected to result in a decline in streamflow and hydropower production in May- June for snow-dominated Nathpa Jhakri and Bhakra Nangal hydropower projects. Our results provide insights into the development and planning of hydropower projects in India under the current projected future climate.by Syed Azhar Ali, Saran Aadhar, Harsh L. Shah and Vimal Mishr

Making sense of modern medical careers : the case of the UK's national health service

The ongoing debate on the re-articulation of the relationship between professions, the market and the state, pays increasing attention to the issue of professional identities and how these are reframed through processes such as socialization and training. The UK government’s Modernising Medical Careers programme (MMC), which introduces significant revisions to the structure, content and delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate doctor training, represents a recent example of an interruption of such processes within public sector professions. MMC strikes at the very heart of the medical profession by demystifying the process of forming, socializing and initiating new generations of professionals, and shifting the control over the processes and conditions of professional closure away from the profession itself. The article draws on the methodological and conceptual lens provided by Wright Mills’ ‘Vocabularies of motive’ (1940) to analyse medics’ reactions to recent reforms in medical education