XYLANOLYTIC ENZYME SYSTEM OF RUMEN BACTERIUM Prevotella bryantii B14

Prevotella spp. are recognised as one of the most numerous strictly anaerobic bacteria inhabiting the rumen. Potentially significant activities include the degradation of plant cell wall polysaccharides, starch, proteins and peptides. P. bryantii B14 is not cellulolytic but actively degrades hemicellulose xylan and carries multiple xylanase genes. Four regions encoding xylanase activity have been isolated, one of which encodes a previously isolated CMC-ase. Of the remaining regions, one encodes activities against p-nitrophenyl-b -xyloside and p-nitrophenyl-a -L-arabinofuranoside (genes xyn A and xynB). The gene xynC encodes another endoxylanase. SDS PAGE xylanograms revealed four endoxylanolytic bands at 29 kDa, 45 kDa, 66 kDa and 88 kDa. The majority of endoxylanase and CMC-ase activity was found in periplasmic cell fraction while most of the a -L-arabinofuranosidase and b -xylosidase activities were found in the crude membrane fraction. HPLC separation of periplasmic proteins by CIM DEAE 8 tubes resulted in partial isolation of CMC-ase and 66-kDa endoxylanase

Review article: assessing the costs of natural hazards - state of the art and knowledge gaps

Efficiently reducing natural hazard risks requires a thorough understanding of the costs of natural hazards. Current methods to assess these costs employ a variety of terminologies and approaches for different types of natural hazards and different impacted sectors. This may impede efforts to ascertain comprehensive and comparable cost figures. In order to strengthen the role of cost assessments in the development of integrated natural hazard management, a review of existing cost assessment approaches was undertaken. This review considers droughts, floods, coastal and Alpine hazards, and examines different cost types, namely direct tangible damages, losses due to business interruption, indirect damages, intangible effects, and the costs of risk mitigation. This paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art cost assessment approaches and discusses key knowledge gaps. It shows that the application of cost assessments in practice is often incomplete and biased, as direct costs receive a relatively large amount of attention, while intangible and indirect effects are rarely considered. Furthermore, all parts of cost assessment entail considerable uncertainties due to insufficient or highly aggregated data sources, along with a lack of knowledge about the processes leading to damage and thus the appropriate models required. Recommendations are provided on how to reduce or handle these uncertainties by improving data sources and cost assessment methods. Further recommendations address how risk dynamics due to climate and socio-economic change can be better considered, how costs are distributed and risks transferred, and in what ways cost assessment can function as part of decision support

Incidence of maternal Toxoplasma infections in pregnancy in Upper Austria, 2000-2007

Sagel U, Krämer A, Mikolajczyk RT. Incidence of maternal Toxoplasma infections in pregnancy in Upper Austria, 2000-2007. BMC Infectious Diseases. 2011;11(1): 348.UNLABELLED: ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Despite three decades of prenatal screening program for toxoplasmosis in Austria, population-based estimates for the incidence of maternal infections with Toxoplasma gondii during pregnancy are lacking. We studied the incidence of primary maternal infections during pregnancy in the Federal State of Upper Austria. METHODS: Screening tests for 63,416 women and over 90,000 pregnancies (more than 84.5% of pregnancies in the studied region) in the time period between 01.01.2000 and 31.12.2007 were analysed. The incidence of toxoplasmosis was estimated indirectly by binomial and directly by interval censored regression. RESULTS: During the studied period, 66 acute infections (risk of 0.07% per pregnancy) were detected, but only 29.8% of seronegative women were tested at least three times during their pregnancies. The seroprevalence of Toxoplasma antibodies among all tested women was 31%. Indirectly estimated incidence (from differences in prevalence by age) was 0.5% per pregnancy, while directly estimated incidence (interval censored regression) was 0.17% per pregnancy (95% confidence interval: 0.13-0.21%). CONCLUSIONS: Calculating incidence from observed infections results in severe underreporting due to many missed tests and potential diagnostic problems. Using statistical modelling, we estimated primary toxoplasmosis to occur in 0.17% (0.13-0.21%) of all pregnancies in Upper Austria