Ethanol production by Saccharomyces cerevisiae grown in sugarcane blackstrap molasses through a fed-batch process

We studied the effect of reactor filling time (T) (3-5 h), initial mass of inoculum (M) (1000-2100 g), and exponential time decay constant for the substrate feed rate (K) (0.6-1.6 h-1) on ethanol production by Saccharomyces cerevisiae grown in sugarcane blackstrap molasses through a fed-batch culture. The highest ethanol productivity (16.9 g/[L x h]) occurred at T = 3 h, K = 1.6 h-1, and M = 1300 g. In addition, productivity was affected by both M (for T = 3 and 4 h) and K (for T = 3 h) and varied inversely with T under any value fixed for M and K. By the quadratic regression multivariable analysis method, equations were determined to estimate ethanol yield and productivity as function of the variables studied (T, K, and M).     

Development and validation of capillary electrophoresis method for tobramycin with precapillary derivatization and UV detection

One of the major drawbacks in the analysis of aminoglycoside antibiotics is their lack of UV chromophore and/or fluorophore. Tobramycin, a representative member of this group, was examined in this study. To overcome the detection hurdle, a precapillary derivatization followed by capillary electrophoresis analysis with direct UV detection was investigated. A central composite design was applied to optimize the method and three parameters were selected in this study: buffer pH, temperature and % acetonitrile (ACN). Selectivity between tobramycin main component and its adjacent peaks as well as the peak efficiency and symmetry factors were established as responses. For each response, a model was obtained by a second-order mathematical expression. Successful results were obtained with a simple background electrolyte (BGE) containing 30 mM sodium tetraborate, pH 10.2, and ACN (75:25 v/v). Under these conditions, baseline separation of tobramycin from its adjacent kanamycin B and an unknown peak was achieved. A temperature of 20 degrees C and applied voltage of 28.0 kV were used. The method showed good validation data in terms of precision, limits of quantitation and detection, specificity and linearity and was found to be suitable for analysis of tobramycin bulk pharmaceutical samples.     

Ueber das Saccharin

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

A comprehensive survey on the quickest path problem

This work is a survey on a special minsum-maxmin bicriteria problem, known as the quickest path problem, that can model the transmission of data between two nodes of a network. Moreover, the authors review the problems of ranking the K quickest paths, and the K quickest loopless paths, and compare them in terms of the worst-case complexity order. The classification presented led to the proposal of a new variant of a known K quickest loopless paths algorithm. Finally, applications of quickest path algorithms are mentioned, as well as some comparative empirical results. This work was partially supported by FEDER and OE, under the projects POCTI/MAT/139/2001, POCTI/ISFL-1/152, POSI/SRI/37346/2001, and POCTI/MAT/37707/2001.