Neodymium adsorption from aqueous solution by ß-cyclodextrin nanosponges and a polymer valorized from potato peels waste: experiments and conventional and statistical physics interpretations.

Using organic waste and residue streams to be turned into valuable and greener materials for various applications has proven an efficient and suitable strategy. In this work, two green materials (nanosponges and a polymer) were synthesized using potato peels and applied for the first time to adsorb and recover Neodymium (Nd3+) from aqueous solutions. The recovery of Nd3+ that belongs to the rare earth elements has attracted important interest due to its/their importance in several industrial and technological applications. The fine potato peel waste (FPPW) polymer presented an irregular shape and porous surface. At the same time, the ß-cyclodextrin (ß-CD) nanosponges had uniform distribution with regular and smooth shapes. ß-CD nanosponges exhibited a much higher total carboxyl content (4.02 mmol g-1) than FPPW (2.50 mmol g-1), which could impact the Nd3+ adsorption performance because carboxyl groups can interact with cations. The adsorption capacity increased with the increase of the pH, reaching its maximum at pHs 6-7 for ß-CD nanosponges and 4-7 for FPPW polymer. The kinetic and equilibrium data were well-fitted by General order and Liu models. ß-CD nanosponges attained adsorption capacity near 100 mg Nd per gram of adsorbent. Thermodynamic and statistical physical results corroborated that the adsorption mechanism was due to electrostatic interaction/complexation and that the carboxyl groups were important in the interactions. ß-CD nanosponges (three cycles of use) were more effective than FPPW (one cycle of use) in the regeneration. Finally, ß-CD nanosponges could be considered an eco-friendly adsorbent to recover Nd3+ from aqueous matrices.

Preparation and Characterization of Eugenol Incorporated Pullulan-Gelatin Based Edible Film of Pickering Emulsion and Its Application in Chilled Beef Preservation.

The purpose of this study was to develop a composite film composed of eugenol Pickering emulsion and pullulan-gelatin, and to evaluate its preservation effect on chilled beef. The prepared composite film was comprehensively evaluated in terms of the stability of emulsion, the physical properties of the film, and an analysis of freshness preservation for chilled beef. The emulsion size (296.0 ± 10.2 nm), polydispersity index (0.457 ± 0.039), and potential (20.1 ± 0.9 mV) proved the success of emulsion. At the same time, the films displayed good mechanical and barrier properties. The index of beef preservation also indicated that eugenol was a better active ingredient than clove essence oil, which led to the rise of potential of hydrogen, chroma and water content, and effectively inhibited microbial propagation, protein degradation and lipid oxidation. These results suggest that the prepared composites can be used as promising materials for chilled beef preservation.

Structure-Based Screening of DNA GyraseB Inhibitors for Therapeutic Applications in Tuberculosis: a Pharmacoinformatics Study.

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) and considered as serious public health concern worldwide which kills approximately five thousand people every day. Therefore, TB drug development efforts are in gigantic need for identification of new potential chemical agents to eradicate TB from the society. The bacterial DNA gyrase B (GyrB) protein as an experimentally widely accepted effective drug target for the development of TB chemotherapeutics. In the present study, advanced pharmacoinformatics approaches were used to screen the Mcule database against the GyrB protein. Based on a number of chemometric parameters, five molecules were found to be crucial to inhibit the GyrB. A number of molecular binding interactions between the proposed inhibitors and important active site residues of GyrB were observed. The predicted drug-likeness properties of all molecules were indicated that compounds possess characteristics to be the drug-like candidates. The dynamic nature of each molecule was explored through the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation study. Various analyzing parameters from MD simulation trajectory have suggested rationality of the molecules to be potential GyrB inhibitor. Moreover, the binding free energy was calculated from the entire MD simulation trajectories highlighted greater binding free energy values for all newly identified compounds also substantiated the strong binding affection towards the GyrB in comparison to the novobiocin. Therefore, the proposed molecules might be considered as potential anti-TB chemical agents for future drug discovery purposes subjected to experimental validation. Graphical Abstract.

Occurrence of acrylamide carcinogen in Arabic coffee Qahwa, coffee and tea from Saudi Arabian market.

The present work describes the outcomes of the assessment on acrylamide contents in a number of thermally treated foods (Arabic coffee Qahwa, coffee and tea) obtained from the Saudi Arabian markets. A total of 56 food samples of different brands and origin were studied, the amounts of acrylamide in Arabic coffee Qahwa, coffee and tea were obtained in the range of 10 to 682 µg kg-1. In comparison to coffee (152-682 µg kg-1), the Arabic coffee Qahwa (73-108 µg kg-1) and tea (10-97 µg kg-1) contain lower amounts of acrylamide. Among the analyzed samples, the green tea contained low amounts of acrylamide ranged from 10 to 18 µg kg-1, and thus the green tea could be considered as a healthier hot drink. A great variation of acrylamide formation has been observed in these food products. This divergence may be due to the initial concentration of amino acids especially asparagines and reducing sugars in food products, in addition to roasting temperature and time, pH and water activity. The obtained data can also be used in epidemiological investigation to estimate the acrylamide exposure from nutritional survey.

Novel guar gum/Al2O3 nanocomposite as an effective photocatalyst for the degradation of malachite green dye.

Guar gum/Al2O3 (GG/AO) nanocomposite was prepared using simple and cost effective sol-gel method. This nanocomposite was characterized by several analytical techniques viz. scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal analysis (TGA/DTA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis). The FTIR analysis confirmed that GG/AO composite material was formed. TEM images inferred the particle size in the range between 20 and 45nm. GG/AO nanocomposite exhibited good photocatalytic performance for malachite green (MG) dye (dye initial concentration 1.5×10(-5)M) degradation from aqueous phase. The adsorption followed by photocatalysis and coupled adsorption/photocatalysis reaction achieved about 80% and 90% degradation of MG dye under solar irradiation. Antibacterial test showed the excellent activity of GG/AO nanocomposite against Staphylococcus aureus.

Determination of capsaicinoids in Capsicum species using ultra performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.

In the present work, a rapid and sensitive ultra performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method has been proposed for the analysis of capsaicinoids (nordihydrocapsaicin, capsaicin, dihydrocapsaicin, homocapsaicin, and homodihydrocapsaicin) present in different Capsicum samples. Extraction of capsaicinoids was carried out by liquid-liquid extraction using ethanol as an extracting solvent, while the chromatographic separation was achieved by reversed phase C(18) column with gradient mobile phase (solvent A: acetonitrile and solvent B: water with 0.1% formic acid). Under the optimum experimental conditions, the linear ranges were 0.5-50 µg/g with correlation coefficient (r(2) ) >0.999 for each capsaicinoids and detection limits were 0.15, 0.05, 0.06, 0.2, and 0.1 µg/g for nordihydrocapsaicin, capsaicin, dihydrocapsaicin, homocapsaicin, and homodihydrocapsaicin, respectively. Run-to-run and day-to-day precisions of the method with relative standard deviations <1.5% were achieved for all analyzed capsaicinoids. The robustness of the method was determined by utilizing different injection volumes of the extracts. Furthermore, to validate the system robustness, a run of high number of capsaicinoids present in different varieties of Capsicum samples was performed in this study. All the capsaicinoids were separated in a time of less than 9 min by employing the proposed method.