A Study on the Manufacture and Physical Properties of Liquid Adhesive for Wood Preservation - Focusing on the Synthesis of Gelatin and Carrageenan -

In order to improve the usability of glue, a traditional adhesive material, and the gelation process of seaweed extract carrageenan, a liquid adhesive for wood preservation was prepared by mixing the two materials. The prepared wood adhesive was mixed with a 15 wt% aqueous solution of glue, λ-carrageenan, an antibacterial agent, an antifoaming agent, and the maximum adhesive strength of 1.80 Mpa was confirmed. As a result of comparison, the adhesive strength was superior to that of 5 different types of traditional natural adhesive ingredients (aqueous solution) and 1 type of polyvinyl acetate-based adhesive.

Mechanism of drug-induced liver injury and hepatoprotective effects of natural drugs

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a common adverse drug reaction (ADR) and a serious threat to health that affects disease treatments. At present, no targeted clinical drugs are available for DILI. Traditional natural medicines have been widely used as health products. Some natural medicines exert specific hepatoprotective effects, with few side effects and significant clinical efficacy. Thus, natural medicines may be a promising direction for DILI treatment. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge, common drugs and mechanisms of DILI, as well as the clinical trials of natural drugs and their bioactive components in anticipation of the future development of potential hepatoprotective drugs.

The co-management of the Te Arawa Lakes

<p>The restoration of indigenous rights to and interests in their traditional natural resources needs to be accompanied by practical ways in which indigenous values in relation to a resource can be met. Co-management or co-governance has emerged as an option for indigenous people in settling historical land and resource claims. Co-management offers a way in which governments and non-government entities such as and community or indigenous peoples can share decision-making over natural resources. However there are many different types and levels of co-management with, varying levels of participation and decision-making authority. Some are more effective than others at recognising indigenous values, authority and relationships. This dissertation discusses the New Zealand example of the co-management of the Te Arawa Lakes and provides an initial assessment of its cultural and environmental goals.</p>

The co-management of the Te Arawa Lakes

<p>The restoration of indigenous rights to and interests in their traditional natural resources needs to be accompanied by practical ways in which indigenous values in relation to a resource can be met. Co-management or co-governance has emerged as an option for indigenous people in settling historical land and resource claims. Co-management offers a way in which governments and non-government entities such as and community or indigenous peoples can share decision-making over natural resources. However there are many different types and levels of co-management with, varying levels of participation and decision-making authority. Some are more effective than others at recognising indigenous values, authority and relationships. This dissertation discusses the New Zealand example of the co-management of the Te Arawa Lakes and provides an initial assessment of its cultural and environmental goals.</p>

The effects of vacuum cooling to post-pasteurized honey on diastase enzyme activity and physical properties of Riau Forest Honey

Honey is defined as a traditional natural liquid which usually has a sweet taste derived from the nectar of flowers. The main component of honey is a natural saturated sugar solution consisting of a mixture of complex carbohydrates and contains various important micro-nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and organic compounds. These micro-nutrients are very susceptible to damage during the honey processing process. In this study, a cooling method in the form of vacuum cooling was applied with the aim of maintaining the micro-nutrients in honey. Vacuum cooling that is applied after the pasteurization process aims to release the latent heat trapped in the honey in a relatively short time and minimize damage to micronutrient, especially the diastase enzyme. The research design consisted of 2 factors, namely the volume chamber consisting of 12.5%, 25%, and 50%. The second factor is the cooling method which consists of conventional and vacuum cooling. The samples from the research were tested on diastase enzyme activity and the physical properties of honey such as moisture content, density, and acidity. The results showed that cooling with the vacuum cooling method had lower water content, low acidity, high density, and better diastase enzyme activity compared to conventional cooling.

Type S Non Ribosomal Peptide Synthetases for the rapid generation of tailor-made peptide libraries

Bacterial natural products in general, and non-ribosomally synthesized peptides in particular, are structurally diverse and provide us with a broad range of pharmaceutically relevant bioactivities. Yet, traditional natural product research suffers from rediscovering the same scaffolds and has been stigmatised as inefficient, time-, labour-, and cost-intensive. Combinatorial chemistry, on the other hand, can produce new molecules in greater numbers, cheaper and in less time than traditional natural product discovery, but also fails to meet current medical needs due to the limited biologically relevant chemical space that can be addressed. Consequently, methods for the high throughput generation of new-to-nature natural products would offer a new approach to identifying novel bioactive chemical entities for the hit to lead phase of drug discovery programms. As a follow-up to our previously published proof-of-principle study on generating bipartite type S non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs), we now envisaged the de novo generation of non-ribosomal peptides (NRPs) on an unreached scale. Using synthetic zippers, we split NRPS in up to three subunits and rapidly generated different bi- and tripartite NRPS libraries to produce 49 peptides, peptide derivatives, and de novo peptides at good titres up to 145 mgL-1. A further advantage of type S NRPSs not only is the possibility to easily expand the created libraries by re-using previously created type S NRPS, but that functions of individual domains as well as domain-domain interactions can be studied and assigned rapidly.

The Thermal Stability of Amur Cork Tree-Dyed Paper

Amur cork trees are one of the most important traditional natural dyes used, especially for functional production in ancient Chinese papers, due to religious reasons, their aesthetic aspects and antibacterial properties. The properties of Amur cork tree-dyed papers under dry-heat accelerating aging conditions were investigated via optical observation, pH, scanning electron microscopy, thermal difference, tensile strength and folding endurance examinations. The results showed that the concentration of Amur cork trees greatly affected the properties of paper. The changes in surface color, pH, morphology and mechanical properties after the artificial dry-heat aging tests revealed that the paper thermal stability was affected by the Amur cork tree content. A suitable concentration of Amur cork tree colorant is good for maintaining paper’s thermal stability due to chemical bonding. Agglomerated colorant dyes might decompose weak acidic materials, which accelerates paper degradation.

SENSE: A Flow-Down Semantics-Based Requirements Engineering Framework

The processes involved in requirements engineering are some of the most, if not the most, important steps in systems development. The need for well-defined requirements remains a critical issue for the development of any system. Describing the structure and behavior of a system could be proven vague, leading to uncertainties, restrictions, or improper functioning of the system that would be hard to fix later. In this context, this article proposes SENSE, a framework based on standardized expressions of natural language with well-defined semantics, called boilerplates, that support a flow-down procedure for requirement management. This framework integrates sets of boilerplates and proposes the most appropriate of them, depending, among other considerations, on the type of requirement and the developing system, while providing validity and completeness verification checks using the minimum consistent set of formalities and languages. SENSE is a consistent and easily understood framework that allows engineers to use formal languages and semantics rather than the traditional natural languages and machine learning techniques, optimizing the requirement development. The main aim of SENSE is to provide a complete process of the production and standardization of the requirements by using semantics, ontologies, and appropriate NLP techniques. Furthermore, SENSE performs the necessary verifications by using SPARQL (SPIN) queries to support requirement management.