A novel alcohol oxidase (AOX) has been purified from mycelial pellets of the wood-degrading basidiomycete Gloeophyllum trabeum and characterized as a homooctameric nonglycosylated protein with native and subunit molecular masses of 628 and 72.4 kDa, containing noncovalently bonded flavin adenine dinucleotide. The isolated AOX cDNA contained an open reading frame of 1,953 bp translating into a p...

Wood anatomy of ten species in five genera of the Cape Province (South Africa) family Stilbaceae is reported in quantitative and qualitative terms. Wood anatomy for stem, root, and lignotuber is reported for the monotypic Cape genus Retzia. Stilbaceae and Retziaceae are alike in wood anatomy but differ from Verbenaceae by having scalariform perforation plates with few and wide-bordered bars (si...

One of the most relevant properties of composite materials to be considered is stiffness. Fiberglass has been used traditionally as a fibrous reinforcing element when stiff materials are required. However, natural fibers are been exploited as replacements for synthetic fibers to satisfy environmental concerns. Among the different natural fibers, wood fibers show the combination of relatively hi...

Hybridization between the introduced arborescent Opuntia ficus-indica and the native shrubby O. littoralis has led to populations, referred to as O. "occidentalis," which form thickets that can dominate hillsides of chaparral and that can survive fires. Because the thickets apparently develop via vegetative reproduction, O. "occidentalis" was hypothesized to have a greater ability than its pare...

Wind turbine blades are easily struck by lightning, a phenomenon that has attracted more and more attention in recent years. On this subject a large current experiment was conducted on three typical blade sandwich structures to simulate the natural lightning-induced arc effects. The resulting damage to different composite materials has been compared: polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene te...