Process engineering aspects of plasmid-based biopharmaceuticals production : tackling the threatening vaccine shortages to prevent global pandemics

Infectious diseases such as SARS, influenza and bird flu have the potential to cause global pandemics; a key intervention will be vaccination. Hence, it is imperative to have in place the capacity to create vaccines against new diseases in the shortest time possible. In 2004, The Institute of Medicine asserted that the world is tottering on the verge of a colossal influenza outbreak. The institute stated that, inadequate production system for influenza vaccines is a major obstruction in the preparation towards influenza outbreaks. Because of production issues, the vaccine industry is facing financial and technological bottlenecks: In October 2004, the FDA was caught off guard by the shortage of flu vaccine, caused by a contamination in a US-based plant (Chiron Corporation), one of the only two suppliers of US flu vaccine. Due to difficulties in production and long processing times, the bulk of the world's vaccine production comes from very small number of companies compared to the number of companies producing drugs. Conventional vaccines are made of attenuated or modified forms of viruses. Relatively high and continuous doses are administered when a non-viable vaccine is used and the overall protective immunity obtained is ephemeral. The safety concerns of viral vaccines have propelled interest in creating a viable replacement that would be more effective and safer to use.

Endotoxin removal : a critical step in vaccine production

A major drawback to the immunological potency of conventional vaccines, resulting in reduced level of immune responses, tissue injury, shock and high cytotoxicity, thus making their applications contraindicated in immunodeficiency diseases, is the presence of high contaminant concentrations in vaccine titers. Vaccine contamination arises from the simultaneous occurrence of competitive pathways resulting in the formation of other bio-products during cellular metabolism aside the pathways necessary for the production of vaccine molecules. One of such vaccine contaminating molecules is endotoxins which are mainly lipopolysaccharides (LPS) complexes found in the membrane of bacterial cell wall. The structural dynamics of these molecules make their removal from vaccine titers problematic, thus making vaccine endotoxin removal a major research endeavour. This presentation will discuss a novel technique for reducing the endotoxin level of vaccines. The technique commences with the disentanglement of endotoxin-vaccine molecular bonding and then capturing the vaccine molecules on an affinity monolith to separate the vaccine molecules from the endotoxins.

Dancing as Knowledge Production/Dancer as Researcher in Practice-led Research

This chapter discusses research undertaken for a PhD in dance, highlighting the oscillating and ambivalent nature of practice-led research methods. Holding an unusual position within the field of practice-led research in dance, the researcher adopted the role of dancer within four creative processes led by four choreographers. Although instigating and leading this research, the author produced new knowledge of dancing practices whilst being directed creatively by the choreographers in the research environment. In line with many definitions of practice-led research, the methods used were emergent from the research arena and responsive to the requirements of the project. Deeply imbricated in the research environment, the researcher used her embodied self as a research tool, as the one who participated, discovered and recorded. This outsider/insider role of researcher/participant produced a series of meta-positions, leading to a mixed-modal outcome that encompassed live performance, a movement treatise and a written thesis.

Bio-hydrogen production from food waste through anaerobic fermentation

In order to protect our planet and ourselves from the adverse effects of excessive CO2 emissions and to prevent an imminent non-renewable fossil fuel shortage and energy crisis, there is a need to transform our current ‘fossil fuel dependent’ energy systems to new, clean, renewable energy sources. The world has recognized hydrogen as an energy carrier that complies with all the environmental quality and energy security, demands. This research aimed at producing hydrogen through anaerobic fermentation, using food waste as the substrate. Four food waste substrates were used: Rice, fish, vegetable and their mixture. Bio-hydrogen production was performed in lab scale reactors, using 250 mL serum bottles. The food waste was first mixed with the anaerobic sewage sludge and incubated at 37°C for 31 days (acclimatization). The anaerobic sewage sludge was then heat treated at 80°C for 15 min. The experiment was conducted at an initial pH of 5.5 and temperatures of 27, 35 and 55°C. The maximum cumulative hydrogen produced by rice, fish, vegetable and mixed food waste substrates were highest at 37°C (Rice =26.97±0.76 mL, fish = 89.70±1.25 mL, vegetable = 42.00±1.76 mL, mixed = 108.90±1.42 mL). A comparative study of acclimatized (the different food waste substrates were mixed with anaerobic sewage sludge and incubated at 37°C for 31days) and non-acclimatized food waste substrate (food waste that was not incubated with anaerobic sewage sludge) showed that acclimatized food waste substrate enhanced bio-hydrogen production by 90 - 100%.

Reducing nitrous oxide emissions while supporting subtropical cereal production in Oxisols

This is the first study to investigate alternative fertilisation strategies to increase cereal production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the most common soil type in subtropical regions. The results of this research will contribute to define future farming practices to achieve global food security and mitigate climate change. The study established that introducing legumes in cropping systems is the most agronomically viable and environmentally sustainable fertilisation strategy. Importantly, this strategy can be widely adopted in subtropical regions since it is economically accessible, requires little know-how transfer and technology investment, and can be profitable in both low- and high-input cropping systems.

Production of biodegradable nano and micro particles via ultrasonic atomization for biopharmaceutical delivery

Biopharmaceuticals have been shown to have low delivery and transformation efficiencies. To over come this, larger doses are administered in order to obtain the desired response which may lead to toxicity and drug resistance. This paper reports upon a continuous particle production method utilizing surface acoustic wave atomization to reliably produce micro and nanoparticles with physical characteristics to facilitate the cellular uptake of biopharmaceuticals. By producing particles of an optimal size for cellular uptake, the efficacy and specificity of drug loaded nanoparticles will be increased. Better delivery methods will result in dosage reduction (hence lower costs per dose), reduced toxicity, and reduced problems associated with multidrug resistance due to over dosing.

Book Review: "Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy by Vicki Mayer", Duke University Press, 2012

Vicki Mayer’s book is unusual in that, despite its title, it is not about television producers at all, or at least not in the sense that scholars and the television industry itself have traditionally understood the role. Rather than referring to those in creative, managerial or financial control, or those with substantial intellectual input into a program, Mayer uses the term in a deliberately broad sense to mean, essentially, anyone ‘whose labor, however small, contributes to [television] production’ (179).

Experimental and statistical investigation of Australian native plants for second-generation biodiesel production

This work explores the potential of Australian native plants as a source of second-generation biodiesel for internal combustion engines application. Biodiesels were evaluated from a number of non-edible oil seeds which are grow naturally in Queensland, Australia. The quality of the produced biodiesels has been investigated by several experimental and numerical methods. The research methodology and numerical model developed in this study can be used for a broad range of biodiesel feedstocks and for the future development of renewable native biodiesel in Australia.

Applying digital product memories in industrial production

Industrial production and supply chains face increased demands for mass customization and tightening regulations on the traceability of goods, leading to higher requirements concerning flexibility, adaptability, and transparency of processes. Technologies for the ’Internet of Things' such as smart products and semantic representations pave the way for future factories and supply chains to fulfill these challenging market demands. In this chapter a backend-independent approach for information exchange in open-loop production processes based on Digital Product Memories DPMs is presented. By storing order-related data directly on the item, relevant lifecycle information is attached to the product itself. In this way, information handover between several stages of the value chain with focus on the manufacturing phase of a product has been realized. In order to report best practices regarding the application of DPM in the domain of industrial production, system prototype implementations focusing on the use case of producing and handling a smart drug case are illustrated.

International regulatory framework for food production and diversity

Stakeholders commonly agree that food systems need to be urgently reformed. Yet, how food systems should be reformed is extremely contested. Public international law and regulations are uniquely placed to influence and guide law, policy, programmes and action at regional, national and local levels. Although plenty of international legal instruments intersect with food-related issues, the international regulation of food systems is fragmented, understudied and contested. In order to address these issues, this paper maps and analyses the public international regulatory aspects of food production with a view to providing recommendations for reform. Accordingly, this paper brings together a variety of binding and non-binding international regulatory instruments that to varying degrees and from a range of angles deals with the first activity in the food system: food production. The following paper traces the regulatory tools from natural resources, to the farmers and farm workers that apply skill and experience, and finally to the different dimension of world trade in food. The various regulatory instruments identified, and their collective whole, will be analysed against a rights-based approach to food security.

Socially critical pedagogy and the 'production of skilled performers': Further considerations of teaching and learning in physical education

The growing call for physical educators to move beyond the bounds of performance has been a powerful discourse. However, it is a discourse that has tended to be heavy on theory but light on practical application. This paper discusses recent work in the area of skill acquisition and what this might mean for pedagogical practices in physical education. The acquisition of motor skill has traditionally been a core objective for physical educators, and there has been a perception that child-centred pedagogies have failed in the achievement of this traditional yardstick. However, drawing from the work of Rovegno and Kirk (1995) and Langley (1995; 1997), and making links with current work in the motor learning area, it is possible to show that skill acquisition is not necessarily compromised by child-centred pedagogy. Indeed, working beyond Mosston's discovery threshold and using models such as Games for Understanding, can provide deeper skill-learning experiences as well as being socially just.

A network DEA quantity and quality-orientated production model: An application to Australian university research services

The motivation for this analysis is the recently developed Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) program developed to assess the quality of research in Australia. The objective is to develop an appropriate empirical model that better represents the underlying production of higher education research. In general, past studies on university research performance have used standard DEA models with some quantifiable research outputs. However, these suffer from the twin maladies of an inappropriate production specification and a lack of consideration of the quality of output. By including the qualitative attributes of peer-reviewed journals, we develop a procedure that captures both quality and quantity, and apply it using a network DEA model. Our main finding is that standard DEA models tend to overstate the research efficiency of most Australian universities.

A perfusion fMRI investigation of thematic and categorical context effects in the spoken production of object names

The context in which objects are presented influences the speed at which they are named. We employed the blocked cyclic naming paradigm and perfusion functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the mechanisms responsible for interference effects reported for thematicallyand categorically related compared to unrelated contexts. Naming objects in categorically homogeneous contexts induced a significant interference effect that accumulated from the second cycle onwards. This interference effect was associated with significant perfusion signal decreases in left middle and posterior lateral temporal cortex and the hippocampus. By contrast, thematically homogeneous contexts facilitated naming latencies significantly in the first cycle and did not differ from heterogeneous contexts thereafter, nor were they associated with any perfusion signal changes compared to heterogeneous contexts. These results are interpreted as being consistent with an account in which the interference effect both originates and has its locus at the lexical level, with an incremental learning mechanism adapting the activation levels of target lexical representations following access. We discuss the implications of these findings for accounts that assume thematic relations can be active lexical competitors or assume mandatory involvement of top-down control mechanisms in interference effects during naming.