In this paper, a novel enzymatic method was evaluated for isolation and purification of wood lignin. The chemical structure of enzymatic lignin (Cellulytic lignin) was compared with conventional Bjorkman method (Milled wood lignin). The chemical structure elucidation was performed with FTIR, quantative 13CNMR, basic elemental analysis and Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC). The results showed that enzymatic lignin preparation has a better chemical structure than MWL. Comparing to conventional isolation methods, application of an enzyme sequence with reduced milling time could lead to a mild extraction with less structural degradation of lignin. Resulting lignin could be more representative for wood lignin than milled wood lignin.

The effect of applying the sequence of enzymatic treatment and refining on the properties of deinked pulp from mixed office waste (MOW) is investigaed. Refining was applied for 700 and 1500 revolutions with PFI mill beater. Enzymatic treatment was applied for 60 minutes at the temperature of 60° C and 13% consistency. Applying enzymatic treatment led to decrease the strength properties of pulp and also decreased the freeness. The refining process resulted in increase the pulp properties. By applying enzymatic treatment before refining, the freeness of pulp changed significantly so that, the freeness of the pulp reached 496 and 390 for 700 and 1500 refining revolution respectively just for refining but these numbers changed to 397 and 544 for same revolutions for “ enzymatic treatment + refining” sequence. Enzymatic pre-treatment led to increase in freeness of pulp with higher refining revolution. This means that the enzymatic treatment was effective. Generally, refining itself improved the quality of pulp, but refining with enzymatic pre-treatment, led to decrease in quality parameters of pulp in the same refining revolutions. Refining with enzymatic pre-treatment increased ERIC as one of the effective parameters of waste paper pulp.

Introduction: Pierre Robin sequence (PRS), previously termed Pierre Robin syndrome, consists of three congenital abnormalities: micrognathia (small mandible), glossoptosis, and cleft palate. In Pierre Robin sequence, the events occur in sequence, with one defect leading to the next. PRS occurs with an incidence of 1 in 8500 to 25000. Affected newborns have varying degrees of airway obstruction, often in association with gastroesophageal reflux and feeding difficulties. Intervention is mostly aimed at restoring a patent airway.Case Reports: Airway management in the infant with Pierre Robin sequence can be very challenging because of difficulty with mask ventilation and intubation. Our patient was a 4-year old boy with Robin sequence scheduled for dental repair under general anesthesia. He had a history of palate repair 3 years ago. After inhalation induction with sevofluran, nitrous-oxide in oxygen‚ under spontaneous ventilation, initial laryngeal view with the conventional Macintosh laryngoscope revealed Cormack-Lehane grade IIӀ due to restricted mouth opening and micrognathia. Nasal intubation for two times under the spontaneous respiration were unsuccessful. We fiberoptically intubated the patient with uncuffed tracheal tube (ID 5 mm) while allowing him to breathe spontaneously. Extubation was done with the patient fully awake and with emergency airway equipment immediately available. Postoperatively, he was transferred to intensive care unit where he could be observed closely for delayed complications of airway obstruction.Conclusion: Managing the airway of patients with craniofacial abnormalities can potentially be difficult. Therefore we recommend even simple treatment procedures to be carried out by experienced anesthesiologists, with a variety of different airway devices available such as flexible fiberoptic‚ Storz video laryngoscope and Airtraq optical laryngoscope.

AbstractBackground and Objectives: The recycling of different paper and paperboard products can supply the major shortage of cellulosic raw materials needed for the production of pulp and paper, and it can be important from the economic and environmental point of view. Using recycled pulp in papermaking reduces the quality of the final paper. Therefore, the use of enzyme pre-treatment separately or combined sequences as well as pulp bleaching can be effective in improving the quality properties of the final paper obtained from recycled pulp. This research was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of enzyme pre-treatment with cellulase and laccase sequence on the bleachability of the resulting pulp with hydrogen peroxide, and the quality of the final pulp after bleaching system were investigated.Materials and Methods: At first, the mixture of waste newspaper and magazine papers were deinked using enzyme pre-treatment (combined sequence of cellulase and laccase) as well as conventional chemical method. Enzymatic pre-treatment was done as experimental treatments C1L1 (cellulase usage: 0.1% and duration time: 10 minutes; laccase usage: 20u and duration time: 120 minutes), C1L2 (cellulase usage: 0.1% and duration time: 10 minutes; laccase usage: 40u and duration time: 120 minutes), C2L1 (cellulase usage: 0.1% and duration time: 20 minutes; laccase usage: 20u and duration time: 120 minutes) and C2L2 (cellulase usage: 0.1% and duration time: 20 minutes; laccase usage: 40u and duration time: 120 minutes) under specific process conditions. Also, control pulp (without adding chemicals or enzymes) and chemically deinked pulp samples were also prepared and then bleaching of deinked pulp was accomplished using hydrogen peroxide bleaching system including 2% hydrogen peroxide, 2% sodium hydroxide, 2% sodium silicate, 0.2% DTPA chelating agent and 0.1% magnesium sulfate in separate plastic bags under process conditions of 10% consistency, 70°C temperature and 2 hours in a water bath. At the end, the optical and strength characteristics of the bleached pulp were evaluated.Results: The results of the evaluation of bleached pulp with hydrogen peroxide after deinking with conventional method and also cellulase and laccase enzyme pre-treatment sequences showed that the use of enzyme pre-treatment in deinking improves the overall performance of the hydrogen peroxide bleaching process and resulted in the papers with better optical and strength characteristics after bleaching compared to pulp pre-deinked by conventional chemical method. C2L2 and C2L1 pre-treatments in combined enzymatic treatments after bleaching with hydrogen peroxide led to an improvement in brightness by 11.12% (increase of about 5 units) and 9.5% (increase of about 4 units), respectively. In these pretreatments, the whiteness of the paper increased by 31.92% and 24.54% (an increase of about 9 and 6 units), respectively. Also, the yellowness of the paper decreased by 40.19% and 44.25%, respectively, and the opacity of the paper reduced by 37.74% and 23.97%, respectively. Also, in experimental runs of C2L1 and C2L2, the paper tensile index increased 29.17% and 35.64%, respectively (40.64 Nm/g and 38.7 Nm/g, respectively), breaking length enhanced by 64.42% and 99%, respectively (5.92 km and 4.89 km), and the paper burst index also increased by 70.85% and 92.37% (3.81 mN.m2/g and 4.29 kPa.m2/g), respectively. The tear indices of paper in these runs were determined on average about 6.82 mN.m2/g and 6.62 mN.m2/g, which are a little lower compared to the chemically deinked pulp after bleaching, but in the pretreatment with the combined sequence C2L1, the tear index of paper was almost equivalent to that of chemically deinked pulp.

The etiopathogenesis of dementia in Alzheimer's disease (AD) is still unclear. However, long-term oxidative stress is believed to be one of the major contributing factors in progression of neuronal degeneration and decline of cognitive function in AD. In order to assess the presence of oxidative stress in AD, we examined the enzymatic activities of the erythrocyte Cu-Zn superoxide dismutase (Cu-Zn SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), catalase (CAT), and plasma level of total antioxidant status (TAS) in AD and control groups (age and sex-matched). The results showed that the Cu-Zn SOD activity was significantly higher and the level of GSH-Px and TAS activities were significantly lower in AD subjects than that in the control group (2111 ±324 U/grHb, 43.7 ±11.6 U/grHb, and 1.17± 0.23 mmol/L compared with 1371 ±211 U/gHb; t = -2.17, P = 0.036, 56.3±9.5 U/gHb; t = 3.8, P = 0.014, and 1.54 ±0.2 mmol/L; t = 11.18, P < 0.001, respectively). While, the erythrocyte CAT activity was lower in AD subjects compared to the control group, the difference was not statistically significant (t = 1.3, P = 0.15). These findings support the idea that the oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis underlying AD neurodegeneration. In addition, the enzymatic activity of the erythrocyte Cu-Zn SOD and GSH-Px and the plasma level of TAS can be used as a measure of the oxidative stress and a marker for pathological changes in the brain of patients with AD.

Background: Due to some problems of serological assays in diagnosis of patients infected with HIV-1 and HCV, the use of molecular assay has become widely accepted. However, molecular assays have a major drawback of high cost and dependency to expensive thermocycler instruments.Methods: This research described the development of a multiplex nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) assay for the simultaneous or single detection of HIV-1 and HCV genomes in plasma samples. The sensitivity and specificity of this assay has been evaluated using several clinical samples.Findings: The results showed that the primers used in this assay did not have any interactions with each other or with other possible interfering agents. The analytical sensitivity of this assay for both HIV-1 and HCV was calculated as 1000 copies/ml. The clinical sensitivity and specificity of the assay were considered as 90% and 100%, respectively.Conclusion: The developed multiplex NASBA assay can be used for simultaneous or single detection of HIV-1 and HCV viruses with a suitable sensitivity and specificity. Due to easy application, multiplexity, and no need to thermocycler instruments, this assay can be used as a low cost method in laboratories with limited instruments.

The etiopathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is still unclear. However, long-term oxidative stress is believed to be one of the major contributing factors in progression of neuronal degeneration and decline of cognitive function in AD. In order to assess the presence of oxidative stress in AD, we examined the enzymatic activities of the erythrocyte Cu-Zn superoxide dismutase (Cu-Zn SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), catalase (CAT), and plasma level of total antioxidant status (TAS) in AD and control groups (age and sex-matched). The results showed that the Cu-Zn SOD activity was significantly higher and the level of GSH-Px and TAS activities were significantly lower in AD subjects than that in the control group (2111 ± 324 U/grHb, 43.7 ± 11.6 U/grHb, and 1.17 ± 0.23 mmol/l compared with 1371 ± 211 U/grHb; t= -2.17, P = 0.036, 56.3 ± 9.5 U/grHb; t=3.8, P = 0.014, and 1.54±0.2 mmol/l; t=11.18, P < 0.001, respectively). While, the erythrocyte CAT activity was lower in AD subjects compared to the control group, the difference was not statistically significant (t = 1.3, P = 0.15). These findings support the idea that the oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis underlying AD neurodegeneration. In addition, the enzymatic activity of the erythrocyte Cu-Zn SOD and GSH-Px and the plasma level of TAS can be used as a measure of the oxidative stress and a marker for pathological changes in the brain of patients with AD.