Basic study on nitrification and the BOD removal of the sewage using immobilized activated sludge

Activated sludge obtained from the night soil treatment plant was immobilized using acrylamide and nitrification and the BOD removal of the sewage were studied by using the immobilized activated sludge which was packed in a single treatment tank. The findings indicated that the ratio of nitrification in the immobilized gel tank was larger than that in the free activated sludge tank in every operation period, and the rate of BOD removal in the immobilized gel tank was roughly equal to that in the free activated sludge tank in this condition. The findings indicated that the application of immobilized activated sludge to the sewage treatment enabled the sewage treatment process to be more efficiency and compact

Bladder Explosion during Transurethral Resection of the Prostate with Nitrous Oxide Inhalation

Bladder explosions are a rare complication of transurethral resection of the prostate. We report a patient who suffered a bladder rupture following transurethral resection of the prostate. Although explosive gases accumulate during the procedure, a high concentration of oxygen is needed to support an explosion. This rare phenomenon can be prevented by preventing the flow of room air into the bladder during the procedure to maintain a low concentration of oxygen inside the bladder

Salt-tolerance mechanism of Staphylococcus aureus -Dynamic aspects on proline contributing in osmoregulation.

S. aureus can grow in high salinity condition by a salt-tolerance mechanism. We have shown that S. aureus accumulated a large amount of proline in cytoplasm for the osmoregulation in high osmotic condition. In this study, we tried to elucidate the dynamics of proline by altering the salt concentration and supplementing proline in semisynthetic or synthetic media. S. aureus required only 20μM of proline as an essential amino acid under the normal condition, but 700μM to accumulate proline as an osmoregulator under the 10% NaCl condition. When the supplementary proline was not enough, S. aureus accumulated glutamine to compensate the osmoregulation by proline

Role of Arabidopsis INDOLE-3-ACETIC ACID CARBOXYL METHYLTRANSFERASE 1 in auxin metabolism

The phytohormone auxin regulates a wide range of developmental processes in plants. Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) is the main auxin that moves in a polar manner and forms concentration gradients, whereas phenylacetic acid (PAA), another natural auxin, does not exhibit polar movement. Although these auxins occur widely in plants, the differences between IAA and PAA metabolism remain largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the role of Arabidopsis IAA CARBOXYL METHYLTRANSFERASE 1 (IAMT1) in IAA and PAA metabolism. IAMT1 proteins expressed in Escherichia coli could convert both IAA and PAA to their respective methyl esters. Overexpression of IAMT1 caused severe auxin-deficient phenotypes and reduced the levels of IAA, but not PAA, in the root tips of Arabidopsis, suggesting that IAMT1 exclusively metabolizes IAA in vivo. We generated iamt1 null mutants via CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing and found that the single knockout mutants had normal auxin levels and did not exhibit visibly altered phenotypes. These results suggest that other proteins, namely the IAMT1 homologs in the SABATH family of carboxyl methyltransferases, may also regulate IAA levels in Arabidopsis