Grown organic matter as a fuel raw material resource

An extensive search was made on biomass production from the standpoint of climatic zones, water, nutrients, costs and energy requirements for many species. No exotic species were uncovered that gave hope for a bonanza of biomass production under culture, location, and management markedly different from those of existing agricultural concepts. A simulation analysis of biomass production was carried out for six species using conventional production methods, including their production costs and energy requirements. These estimates were compared with data on food, fiber, and feed production. The alternative possibility of using residues from food, feed, or lumber was evaluated. It was concluded that great doubt must be cast on the feasibility of producing grown organic matter for fuel, in competition with food, feed, or fiber. The feasibility of collecting residues may be nearer, but the competition for the residues for return to the soil or cellulosic production is formidable

Identification of target-specific bioisosteric fragments from ligand-protein crystallographic data

Bioisosteres are functional groups or atoms that are structurally different but that can form similar intermolecular interactions. Potential bioisosteres were identified here from analysing the X-ray crystallographic structures for sets of different ligands complexed with a fixed protein. The protein was used to align the ligands with each other, and then pairs of ligands compared to identify substructural features with high volume overlap that occurred in approximately the same region of geometric space. The resulting pairs of substructural features can suggest potential bioisosteric replacements for use in lead-optimisation studies. Experiments with 12 sets of ligand-protein complexes from the Protein Data Bank demonstrate the effectiveness of the procedure

Comparing methods of energy expenditure estimation using forestry as an example

In this paper the values of energy expenditure obtained with estimative methods (tables of energy expenditure, Lehmann's method) were compared to the data obtained with a method based on pulmonary ventilation measurements. Thereby, the usefulness of estimative methods for determining energy expenditure on work stations in forestry was tested. We compared energy expenditures for 30 forestry work stations within which 59 different activities were distinguished. For each activity the energy expenditure was determined utilizing the three following methods: pulmonary ventilation measurement, tables of energy expenditure and Lehmann's method. The percentage error in energy expenditure for particular activities determined with tables ranged from -44.47% to 42.31%. The highest representation of error value (52.8%) varied between -19.9% and 5.0%. The error in energy expenditure estimation determined with Lehmann's method is characterized by a smaller variability ranging from -31.35% to 34.13%. The highest density of error values was found in the range from -4.9% to 10.0%, which comprises 44.1% of the results. To conclude, the use of tables resulted in an underestimation of the energy expenditure value for 64.1% of activities, whereas the use of Lehmann's method resulted in an underestimation in 49.1% of the cases