Effect of Drying Methods on Lutein Content and Recovery by Supercritical Extraction from the Microalga Muriellopsis sp. (MCH35) Cultivated in the Arid North of Chile

In this study, we determined the effect of drying on extraction kinetics, yield, and lutein content and recovery of the microalga Muriellopsis sp. (MCH35) using the supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) process. The strain was cultivated in an open-raceways reactor in the presence of seawater culture media and arid outdoor conditions in the north of Chile. Spray-drying (SD) and freeze-drying (FD) techniques were used for dehydrating the microalgal biomass. Extraction experiments were performed by using Box-Behnken designs, and the parameters were studied: pressure (30–50 MPa), temperature (40–70 °C), and co-solvent (0–30% ethanol), with a CO2 flow rate of 3.62 g/min for 60 min. Spline linear model was applied in the central point of the experimental design to obtain an overall extraction curve and to reveal extraction kinetics involved in the SFE process. A significant increase in all variables was observed when the level of ethanol (15–30% v/v) was increased. However, temperature and pressure were non-significant parameters in the SFE process. The FD method showed an increase in lutein content and recovery by 0.3–2.5-fold more than the SD method. Overall, Muriellopsis sp. (MCH35) is a potential candidate for cost-effective lutein production, especially in desert areas and for different biotechnological applications.

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Optimisation of microalgal cultivation via nutrient-enhanced strategies: the biorefinery paradigm

Biotechnology for Biofuels ◽

10.1186/s13068-021-01912-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Gonzalo M. Figueroa-Torres ◽

Jon K. Pittman ◽

Constantinos Theodoropoulos

Keyword(s):

Kinetic Model ◽

Growth Dynamics ◽

Value Added ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Predictive Modelling ◽

Nitrogen And Phosphorus ◽

Predictive Capacity ◽

Microalgal Biomass ◽

Microalgal Cultivation ◽

Lipid Formation

Abstract Background The production of microalgal biofuels, despite their sustainable and renowned potential, is not yet cost-effective compared to current conventional fuel technologies. However, the biorefinery concept increases the prospects of microalgal biomass as an economically viable feedstock suitable for the co-production of multiple biofuels along with value-added chemicals. To integrate biofuels production within the framework of a microalgae biorefinery, it is not only necessary to exploit multi-product platforms, but also to identify optimal microalgal cultivation strategies maximising the microalgal metabolites from which biofuels are obtained: starch and lipids. Whilst nutrient limitation is widely known for increasing starch and lipid formation, this cultivation strategy can greatly reduce microalgal growth. This work presents an optimisation framework combining predictive modelling and experimental methodologies to effectively simulate and predict microalgal growth dynamics and identify optimal cultivation strategies. Results Microalgal cultivation strategies for maximised starch and lipid formation were successfully established by developing a multi-parametric kinetic model suitable for the prediction of mixotrophic microalgal growth dynamics co-limited by nitrogen and phosphorus. The model’s high predictive capacity was experimentally validated against various datasets obtained from laboratory-scale cultures of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii CCAP 11/32C subject to different initial nutrient regimes. The identified model-based optimal cultivation strategies were further validated experimentally and yielded significant increases in starch (+ 270%) and lipid (+ 74%) production against a non-optimised strategy. Conclusions The optimised microalgal cultivation scenarios for maximised starch and lipids, as identified by the kinetic model presented here, highlight the benefits of exploiting modelling frameworks as optimisation tools that facilitate the development and commercialisation of microalgae-to-fuel technologies.

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Awareness of the cost of psychotropic medication among doctors: a service evaluation

The Psychiatrist ◽

10.1192/pb.bp.109.026914 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 34 (9) ◽

pp. 364-366 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Dhananjay Kumar Singh ◽

Shakil Khawaja ◽

Ishaq Pala ◽

Jaleel Khaja ◽

Ray Krishnanu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cost Effective ◽

Service Evaluation ◽

Financial Resources ◽

Clinical Implications ◽

North East ◽

The North ◽

Old Age Psychiatry ◽

Level Of Knowledge ◽

The Cost ◽

Structured Questionnaire

Aims and methodCost-effective prescribing is an increasingly important aspect of our practice. A service evaluation was carried out to assess the level of awareness and knowledge of different aspects of cost-effective prescribing among doctors working in the North East London Foundation Trust. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to benchmark knowledge against six standards.ResultsThe survey was completed by 71% of doctors working in adult or old age psychiatry. A total of 2% of doctors stated that they should always take into consideration the price of the drug when prescribing and only 5% of doctors claimed to know the price of medications they prescribe most frequently.Clinical implicationsStrategies to improve the poor level of knowledge and awareness in this area of clinical practice would be of benefit in making the best use of limited financial resources without any detriment to patient care.

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Investigating post-breeding moult locations and diets of Common Guillemots (Uria aalge) in the North Sea using stable isotope analyses

10.1101/2020.09.01.276857 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Alec P. Christie

Keyword(s):

Stable Isotope ◽

Breeding Season ◽

North Sea ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Uria Aalge ◽

Age Classes ◽

Stable Isotope Analyses ◽

The North ◽

The North Sea ◽

Isotope Analyses

AbstractSeabird movements and diet during the non-breeding season are poorly studied, yet understanding these aspects of seabird ecology is extremely important to effectively conserve these protected species. Stable isotope analyses (SIA) provide a cost-effective solution to filling these knowledge gaps, yielding information on diet and foraging locations of animals. This study aimed to use SIA to investigate whether Common Guillemots (Uria aalge) from different age classes and locations in the UK had contrasting diets and foraging areas during the post-breeding moult (July-September). SIA of secondary feathers and a newly-developed North Sea isoscape were used to identify the likeliest foraging areas and diets of deceased guillemots recovered from beaches in eastern Scotland and mixed fisheries in Cornwall and the Celtic Sea. Overall, guillemots foraged widely in the western, eastern and southern North Sea, consuming a variety of clupeid, gadoid and invertebrate prey. There were negligible dietary differences between age classes and birds from different recovery locations. Juveniles showed a wider range in foraging areas, but both age classes foraged in similar parts of the North Sea. Guillemots recovered from Scotland may have foraged further north, only overlapping with guillemots recovered from the southwestern UK in the southern and eastern North Sea. Their winter recovery locations also implied that they exhibited different movement strategies during the non-breeding season, meriting further investigation. Conservation efforts should target foraging areas in the southern and eastern North Sea which are highly threatened by gillnet fishing, shipping traffic and oil infrastructure.

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5. Cost effective structures for the North Sea

Cost Reduction in Offshore Engineering ◽

10.1680/crioe.13490.0005 ◽

1988 ◽

pp. 41-52

Author(s):

N. J. Heaf

Keyword(s):

North Sea ◽

Cost Effective ◽

The North ◽

The North Sea

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Harvest of Briars

The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691196442.003.0005 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 121-158

Author(s):

A. Wess Mitchell

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Ottoman Empire ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Balkan Peninsula ◽

The Black Sea ◽

Second Phase ◽

Habsburg Monarchy ◽

The West ◽

The North ◽

Third Phase

This chapter examines the competition with the Ottoman Empire and Russia, from the reconquest of Hungary to Joseph II’s final Turkish war. On its southern and eastern frontiers, the Habsburg Monarchy contended with two large land empires: a decaying Ottoman Empire, and a rising Russia determined to extend its influence on the Black Sea littorals and Balkan Peninsula. In balancing these forces, Austria faced two interrelated dangers: the possibility of Russia filling Ottoman power vacuums that Austria itself could not fill, and the potential for crises here, if improperly managed, to fetter Austria’s options for handling graver threats in the west. In dealing with these challenges, Austria deployed a range of tools over the course of the eighteenth century. In the first phase (1690s–1730s), it deployed mobile field armies to alleviate Turkish pressure on the Habsburg heartland before the arrival of significant Russian influence. In the second phase (1740s–70s), Austria used appeasement and militarized borders to ensure quiet in the south while focusing on the life-or-death struggles with Frederick the Great. In the third phase (1770s–90s), it used alliances of restraint to check and keep pace with Russian expansion, and recruit its help in comanaging problems to the north. Together, these techniques provided for a slow but largely effective recessional, in which the House of Austria used cost-effective methods to manage Turkish decline and avoid collisions that would have complicated its more important western struggles.

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Innovative method for gathering river stage data using only the sound of the water

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-136 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

William Alexander Osborne ◽

Rebecca Hodge ◽

Gordon Love ◽

Peter Hawkin ◽

Ruth Hawkin

Keyword(s):

Winter Season ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Storm Events ◽

River Bank ◽

Power Efficient ◽

River Flooding ◽

River Stage ◽

North East ◽

The North ◽

Environment Agency

Splosh, gurgle, burble are all terms that can be used to describe how a river sounds as we stand on the bank. We have developed a new approach that uses the passive sound generated by a river, to gauge the current stage of the river, and generate (sono)hydrographs from the safety of the river bank. Our approach offers a cost-effective, power-efficient and flexible means to install flood monitors. We have developed a method of how to take the sound from around a river and translate it into a useful gauging tool without the need to listen to individual recordings. Using an internet of things approach we have developed a system of sound monitors that can be placed anywhere in the vicinity of a river. We aim to target the lesser studied parts of a river catchment, the headwaters, which are often data scarce environments. These environments are an opportunity to identify the real time responses of sub-catchments. The ultimate goal of our research is to enable community level flood monitoring, in areas that may be susceptible to river flooding, but are not yet actively gauged.&#160;We hypothesise that the sound generated by a river is a direct response to the obstacles found within the channel and the turbulence they cause. Sound is generated by the increase of energy available in the channel, being transformed into sound energy through turbulence generating structures, i.e. boulders. Data gathered over a winter season from several rivers in the North East of England, during Storm Ciara and Dennis, has shown sound to be a reliable method for determining rapid changes in river stage and is comparable to what the official Environment Agency gauges measured. Through an innovative approach, we have begun to understand the limits on sound data and the calibration of sound to the channel properties. Utilising a 7.5 m wide flume at a white water course we have recreated controlled environments and simulated different discharges and their effect on sound.&#160;Overall, we have found that sound is an opportunity to be taken to measure river stage in areas that are seldom studied. We have identified that sound works during extreme conditions, and being placed on the banks of the channel our monitors have a lower risk of being damaged during storm events and are easy and safe to install. We present the first means of using sound from a river to actively gauge a river and the full workflow from collection, analysis and dissemination of results.

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A Cost-Effective Method to Reproduce the Morphology of the Nearshore and Intertidal Zone in Microtidal Environments

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs12111880 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (11) ◽

pp. 1880

Author(s):

Stefano Furlani ◽

Valeria Vaccher ◽

Vanja Macovaz ◽

Stefano Devoto

Keyword(s):

Intertidal Zone ◽

Field Tests ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Time Lapse ◽

3D Models ◽

The North ◽

Cost Effective Method ◽

Photogrammetric Method ◽

The Difference ◽

Sea Wall

The photogrammetric method is widely used in coastal areas and in submerged environments. Time-lapse images collected with unmanned aerial vehicles are used to reproduce the emerged areas, while images taken by divers are used to reproduce submerged ones. Conversely, 3D models of natural or human-made objects lying at the water level are severely affected by the difference in refractive index between air and seawater. For this reason, the matching of 3D models of emergent and submerged coasts has been very rarely tested and never used in Earth Sciences. The availability of a large number of time-lapse images, collected at the intertidal zone during previous snorkel surveys, encouraged us to test the merging of 3D models of emerged and submerged environments. Considering the rapid and effective nature of the aforementioned program of swim surveys, photogrammetric targets were not used during image acquisition. This forced us to test the matching of the independent models by recognizing prominent landforms along the waterline. Here we present the approach used to test the method, the instrumentation used for the field tests, and the setting of cameras fixed to a specially built aluminum support console and discuss both its advantages and its limits compared to UAVs. 3D models of sea cliffs were generated by applying structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry. Horizontal time-lapse images, collected with action cameras while swimming parallel to the coastline at nearly constant velocity, were used for the tests. Subsequently, prominent coastal landforms were used to couple the independent models obtained from the emergent and submerged cliffs. The method was pilot tested in two coastal sites in the north-eastern Adriatic (part of the Mediterranean basin). The first site was a 25 m sea wall of sandstone set within a small harbor, while the second site was a 150 m route below plunging limestone cliffs. The data show that inexpensive action cameras provide a sufficient resolution to support and integrate geomorphological field surveys along rocky coastlines.

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Heritability of Simulated Wear and Traffic Tolerance in Three Fine Fescue Species

HortScience ◽

10.21273/hortsci12450-17 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 53 (4) ◽

pp. 416-420 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Austin L. Grimshaw ◽

Yuanshuo Qu ◽

William A. Meyer ◽

Eric Watkins ◽

Stacy A. Bonos

Keyword(s):

Broad Sense ◽

Potential Candidate ◽

Single Individual ◽

Broad Sense Heritability ◽

The North ◽

Heritability Estimates ◽

Traffic Tolerance ◽

Fine Fescue ◽

Selection Of ◽

Wear Tolerance

In recent years, turfgrass breeders have given increased attention to the development of lower maintenance turfgrass cultivars. Fine fescues (Festuca spp.) have been identified as potential candidate species for low-maintenance lawns because of their reduced need for water, mowing, and fertilizer. Unfortunately, these species have some weaknesses that must be improved to facilitate their use; perhaps, the most important of these is tolerance to wear and traffic. For this trait to be improved in new cultivars, there must be sufficient heritable variation available for plant breeders to exploit; however, little is known about the heritability of this complex trait in fine fescue species. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the heritability of wear and traffic tolerance in three fine fescue species. Replicated field studies were established in North Brunswick, NJ, and St. Paul, MN, and each included 157 Chewing’s fescue (Festuca rubra L. subsp. fallax), 155 hard fescue (Festuca brevipilia), and 149 strong creeping red fescue (F. rubra L. subsp. rubra) genotypes. Wear tolerance was evaluated in North Brunswick and traffic tolerance was evaluated in St. Paul during 2015 and 2016 using different simulators to determine both plant performance and broad-sense heritability estimates for wear and traffic tolerance. Broad-sense heritability estimates for the three species when calculated on a clonal basis was between 0.69 and 0.82 for wear tolerance in the North Brunswick location and between 0.49 and 0.60 for traffic tolerance in the St. Paul location. On a single-plant basis, broad-sense heritability estimates for the three species were between 0.31 and 0.45 for wear tolerance in the North Brunswick location and 0.09 and 0.12 for traffic tolerance in St. Paul. However, this research does indicate that improvement of wear and traffic tolerance in fine fescues is possible through recurrent breeding methods based on selection of replicated clonally propagated genotypes rather than selection of single individual plants of a population. This was the first study to determine the genetic effects of wear and traffic tolerance in any turfgrass species.

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DRIVERS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTEGRATED SUPPLY BASE AND OFFSHORE SUPPLY CHAIN, NORTH WEST SHELF, AUSTRALIA

The APPEA Journal ◽

10.1071/aj03027 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 44 (1) ◽

pp. 593

Author(s):

E.D. Graham

Keyword(s):

Supply Chain ◽

Critical Mass ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Integrated Services ◽

Economic Benefits ◽

Security Issue ◽

North West ◽

The North ◽

User Facility ◽

Integrated Service

Since the commencement of the major developments on the North West Shelf, the offshore resource industry, during both its construction and operational phases, has faced considerable logistical impediments to cost-effective solutions for the offshore supply chain. These impediments have included distance, scant resources, lack of infrastructure both on and offshore and lack of critical mass.Throughout the world, offshore projects have greatly benefitted from the availability of integrated services to cater for the transport of equipment from the point of manufacture or distribution to the offshore location.Within the Australian context the privately controlled Esso Barry Beach and Dampier Woodside facilities are examples of integrated services, but both differ considerably from a public multi-user facility. The model used in the Timor Sea of one vessel or vessels for the use of several operators is another example.The NorthWest Shelf has now reached the critical mass and it became apparent several years ago that the area needed an integrated supply base available to multiple operators. It would need to include a heavy loadout wharf, laydown areas, slipway and engineering facilities and office space to service forthcoming projects, as well as planning and cooperation amongst all players to maximise efficiency and use of scant resources as drivers for economic benefits to offshore operators in the region.Furthermore the fallout from the events of 11 September 2001 and continuing threats of terrorism has meant the security of marine assets has become an important part of each operator’s everyday life. The introduction of new legislation relating to this security issue is planned for mid 2004.In 2000 and 2001 Mermaid Marine Australia Limited undertook a major expansion of its Dampier supply base, and established a world-class facility to meet the growing demands of the region.This complex has for the first time provided the northwest of Australia, particularly the North West Shelf, Carnarvon Basin and the onshore developments on the Burrup Peninsula, with a facility for offloading and loadout of heavy shipments and fabrication and slipway facilities, coupled with the advantages of a large supply base. This facility can also be expanded to meet growth and the emerging requirements related to security.This paper describes the drivers for change commencing with the earliest supply chains and following through to the integrated service now availabe. These drivers meet the requirements of the offshore operators in the region as well as showing the benefits anticipated from this integrated service. The paper also outlines in detail the requirements of the International Maritime Organisation for worldwide changes to port and offshore security.

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Population Fluctuations and Reproduction of Rabbits in a Pastoral Area on the Coast North of Carnarvon, W. A.

Wildlife Research ◽

10.1071/wr9830097 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 97 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

DR King ◽

SH Wheeler ◽

GL Schmidt

Keyword(s):

Breeding Season ◽

Oryctolagus Cuniculus ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Effective Control ◽

Population Fluctuations ◽

North West ◽

The North ◽

Pastoral Area ◽

Average Rainfall ◽

Summer Rain

The population fluctuations and reproductive biology of rabbits, Oryctolagus cuniculus (L.), were studied in a coastal pastoral area in the north-west of Western Australia between 1974 and 1981. Numbers were highest in late 1975-early 1976 and declined during a period of below-average rainfall in 1976-79, but were still found in all landforms. The breeding season was more regular than that of rabbits in other pastoral areas, and appeared to be a response to winter rains which were relatively predictable in timing, if not amount. Successful summer breeding also followed heavy summer rain. There appears to be no opportunity for cost-effective control of rabbits in the area by techniques currently available, as even when numbers are low the rabbits are widespread.

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