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“BACKGROUND: Kinetic parameters used for modelling air biofilters are commonly determined by growing microorganisms in suspended cultures. However, they are not representative of phenomena occurring in a biofilm. There is need for new methods for calculating the true kinetics of pollutant degradation in an air biofilter.
RESULTS: An experimental method for calculating the kinetic parameters of a microbial
consortium which PS-341 solubility dmso degrades methanol in an air treatment biofilter was developed. The kinetic parameters were calculated by taking biomass from biofilters packed with clay spheres or compost pellets. The kinetic runs were carried out in batch bioreactors at a constant temperature of 25 degrees C. The results obtained show that the maximum specific growth rate of microorganisms developed in the biofilter packed with clay spheres was twice as high as that packed with compost pellets; 0.233 h(-1) for clay spheres and 0.129 h(-1) for compost pellets. For both biofilters, the specific methanol biodegradation increased with methanol concentration in the biofilm, whereas carbon dioxide production
was not a function of this parameter.
CONCLUSION: Results show that for both biofilters, the Monad model fitted to the specific growth rate and the microbial consortium did not include any inhibition over the entire range of methanol concentrations tested. (C) 2009 Society of Chemical Industry”
“Vicarious trial-and-error (VTEs) are back-and-forth movements of the head exhibited by rodents and other animals when faced with a decision. These behaviors have recently been associated with prospective sweeps of hippocampal BYL719 in vivo place cell firing, and thus may reflect a rodent model of deliberative decision-making. The aim of the current study was to test whether the hippocampus is essential for VTEs in a spatial memory task and in a simple HKI-272 nmr visual discrimination (VD) task. We found that lesions of the hippocampus with ibotenic acid produced a significant impairment in the accuracy of
choices in a serial spatial reversal (SR) task. IN terms of VTEs, whereas sham-lesioned animals engaged in more VTE behavior prior to identifying the location of the reward as opposed to repeated trials after it had been located, the lesioned animals failed to show this difference. In contrast, damage to the hippocampus had no effect on acquisition of a VD or on the VTEs seen in this task. For both lesion and sham-lesion animals, adding an additional choice to the VD increased the number of VTEs and decreased the accuracy of choices. Together, these results suggest that the hippocampus may be specifically involved in VTE behavior during spatial decision making.”
“BACKGROUND: One of the major problems facing biofilter operation is the long start-up periods, which is related to microbial adhesion in packing materials among other factors.