Anthropogenic land-cover change is driving biodiversity loss worldwide. At the epicenter of this crisis lies Southeast Asia, where biodiversity-rich forests are being converted to oil-palm monocultures. As demand for palm oil increases, there is an urgent need to find strategies that maintain biodiversity in plantations. Previous studies found that retaining forest patches within plantations be...

Functional genomics approaches, which use combined computational and expression-based analyses of large amounts of sequence information, are emerging as powerful tools to accelerate the comprehensive understanding of cellular metabolism in specialized tissues and whole organisms. As part of an ongoing effort to identify genes of essential oil (monoterpene) biosynthesis, we have obtained sequenc...

Oil reservoirs exhibit extreme environmental conditions such as high salinity and high temperature. Insights into microbial community assemblages in oil reservoirs and their functional potentials are important for understanding biogeochemical cycles in the subterranean biosphere. In this study, we performed shotgun metagenomic sequencing of crude oil samples from two geographically distant oil ...

Homogenizers are commonly used to produce oil-in-water emulsions that consist of emulsifier-coated oil droplets suspended within an aqueous phase. The functional attributes of emulsions are usually controlled by selecting appropriate ingredients (e.g., surfactants, co-surfactants, oils, solvents, and co-solvents) and processing conditions (e.g., homogenizer type and operating conditions). Howev...

Sequestration of CO2 in oil reservoirs is considered to be one of the feasible options for mitigating atmospheric CO2 building up and also for the in situ potential bioconversion of stored CO2 to methane. However, the information on these functional microbial communities and the impact of CO2 storage on them is hardly available. In this paper a comprehensive molecular survey was performed on mi...

BACKGROUND Functional constipation is one of the most prevalent childhood gastrointestinal disorders. We evaluated effects of adding a probiotic to mineral oil in the treatment of functional constipation in children. MATERIALS AND METHODS This controlled trial was conducted on 60 children (2 to 14 years old) with functional constipation (Rome III criteria). Children were allocated to receive ...

AIM To assess the efficacy and safety of enteric coated capsules containing a fixed combination of 90 mg peppermint oil and 50 mg caraway oil (PCC; Enteroplant) in patients with functional dyspepsia. METHODS A total of 96 out-patients received one capsule twice daily of PCC or placebo for 28 days. Primary efficacy variables were the intra-individual change in (i) pain intensity and (ii) sensa...

In view of disadvantages of commercially available oil level sensing products, this paper introduces a new mechanical type of oil sensor for refrigeration compressor’s oil level protection, which is used to avoid failure due to lack of oil in the compressor, especially when multi-compressors were connected in parallel. The paper analyzed this new mechanical oil senor in terms of superiority com...

cone oil placement and onset of discomfort may be explained by long-term, slow leakage of silicone oil through the sclera. Free silicone oil within the extracellular matrix commonly causes a chronic granulomatous reaction that may lead to inflammation or functional impairment. Our patient described late development of ocular and orbital pain in a blind eye treated with silicone oil. Enucleation...

Purpose: The study aimed to characterize the fatty acid profile of Camellia oleifera (tea) seed oil and evaluate for cytotoxicity and activities on melanogenesis and antioxidant activity assays in order to utilize as the functional oil. Methods: The fatty acid profile of oil was analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The cytotoxicity was performed by sulforhodamine B (SRB) as...