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Dark fermentative bioethanol production process yields carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and organic acids as by-products. The so-yielded CO 2 is a nearly saturated gas of high CO 2 purity, which is commonly utilized in food industries as supplements. The potential utilization pathways for the CO 2 generated and released from the ethanol fermentation process (denoted as “fermentation CO 2 ”) include production of biofuels by CO 2 fixation of microalgae and succinic acid fermentation by non-photosynthetic microorganisms. This study compared the performances of these two CO 2 fixing pathways using Chlorella vulgaris or Actinobacillus succinogenes cultures. The highest carbon fixation rate achieved by Actinobacillus succinogenes was 388.8 g/L-d in 2-L reactor, which is about 188 times to that by Chlorella vulgaris (2.06 g/L-d) in the reactor at the same volume. This study ultimately demonstrated the advantages of adopting succinic acid production process compared to those frequently addressed in literature using microalgae-based biofuels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zymomonas mobilis cells were immobilized with a novel Fe 2 O 3 -modified polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) matrix to perform continuous ethanol fermentation with very high efficiency. The key operating parameters, such as glucose feeding concentration, dilution rate, and cells loading were optimized to achieve high bioethanol production performance at a high dilution rate and high glucose utilization efficiency. The optimal conditions for ethanol fermentation with the modified PVA immobilized cells were determined as: cell loading, 40% ( w/v ); glucose feeding concentration, 125 g/L; hydraulic retention time (HRT), 2 h (or 0.5 h −1 dilution rate). The bioethanol productivity was nearly doubled (31.09 g/L/h) when the PVA-immobilized cells were modified with 1% ( w/v ) Fe 2 O 3 . The modified PVA-immobilized cells could be utilized for more than 20 days without losing their activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Dengue has emerged as one of the most important infectious diseases in the last five decades. Evidence indicates the expansion of dengue virus endemic areas and consequently the exponential increase of dengue virus infections across the subtropics. The clinical manifestations of dengue virus infection include sudden fever, rash, headache, myalgia and in more serious cases, spontaneous bleeding. These manifestations occur in children as well as in adults. Defining the epidemiology of dengue in a given area is critical to understanding the disease and devising effective public health strategies. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, we report the results from a prospective cohort study of 4380 adults in West Java, Indonesia, from 2000–2004 and 2006–2009. A total of 2167 febrile episodes were documented and dengue virus infections were confirmed by RT-PCR or serology in 268 cases (12.4%). The proportion ranged from 7.6 to 41.8% each year. The overall incidence rate of symptomatic dengue virus infections was 17.3 cases/1,000 person years and between September 2006 and April 2008 asymptomatic infections were 2.6 times more frequent than symptomatic infections. According to the 1997 WHO classification guidelines, there were 210 dengue fever cases, 53 dengue hemorrhagic fever cases (including one dengue shock syndrome case) and five unclassified cases. Evidence for sequential dengue virus infections was seen in six subjects. All four dengue virus serotypes circulated most years. Inapparent dengue virus infections were predominantly associated with DENV-4 infections. Conclusions/Significance: Dengue virus was responsible for a significant percentage of febrile illnesses in an adult population in West Java, Indonesia, and this percentage varied from year to year. The observed incidence rate during the study period was 43 times higher than the reported national or provincial rates during the same time period. A wide range of clinical severity was observed with most infections resulting in asymptomatic disease. The circulation of all four serotypes of dengue virus was observed in most years of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concentration of ethanol from the fermentation broth is an energy-intensive process. Very high gravity (VHG) process with modified polyvinyl alcohol-immobilized Zymomonas mobilis cells integrated with in situ bioethanol removal via vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) was proposed to mitigate product inhibition effects in VHG fermentation. The proposed VHG + VMD system, at 300 g/L glucose loading, produced 127.4 g/L (16.1% v/v) ethanol, at 63.7 g/L−h productivity and 84.9% glucose conversion rate, which is the highest in reported literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]