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This article examines the legal status of the Rohingya in Myanmar by analysing relevant constitutional provisions (of 1947, 1974 and 2008) and other major citizenship legislations including the Citizenship Law, 1982. A doctrinal analysis demonstrates that: (i) the earlier Constitutions and laws provided citizenship for the Rohingya (where they were identified as an ethnic minority); and (ii) their status has been changed gradually under the later constitutions and legislations until recently, when they are regarded as neither minority nor citizen and rendered stateless by the law. The role of legislation in disempowering the Rohingya is thus made explicit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whey permeate was used as a co-substrate to replace part of the wheat for ethanol production by Saccharomyces cerevisiae . The simultaneous saccharification and fermentation was achieved with β-galactosidase added at the onset of the fermentation to promote whey lactose hydrolysis. Aspergillus oryzae and Kluyveromyces lactis β-galactosidases were two enzymes selected and used in the co-fermentation of wheat and whey permeate for the comparison of their effectiveness on lactose hydrolysis. The possibility of co-fermentations in both STARGEN and jet cooking systems was investigated in 5 L bioreactors. Ethanol yields from the co-fermentations of wheat and whey permeate were evaluated. It was found that A. oryzae β-galactosidase was more efficient for lactose hydrolysis during the co-fermentation and that whey permeate supplementation can contribute to ethanol yield in co-fermentations with wheat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a novel alternative for utilization of whey permeate, a by-product stream from the dairy industry, in wheat fermentation for ethanol production using Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Whey permeates were hydrolyzed using enzymes to release fermentable sugars. Hydrolyzed whey permeates were integrated into wheat fermentation as a co-substrate or to partially replace process water. Cold starch hydrolysis-based simultaneous saccharification and fermentation was done as per the current industrial protocol for commercial wheat-to-ethanol production. Ethanol production was not affected; ethanol yield efficiency did not change when up to 10% of process water was replaced. Lactic acid bacteria in whey permeate did not negatively affect the co-fermentation or reduce ethanol yield. Whey permeate could be effectively stored for up to 4 wk at 4°C with little change in lactose and lactic acid content. Considering the global abundance and nutrient value of whey permeate, the proposed strategy could improve economics of the dairy and biofuel sectors, and reduce environmental pollution. Furthermore, our research may be applied tofermentation strategies designed to produce value-added products other than ethanol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses some of the current challenges in producing biofuels from yeast oils. Specifically, it valorizes byproduct waste streams of biomass processing technologies by integrating them as alternative carbon or nutrient sources in oleaginous yeast cultivation. Crude glycerol recovered from the thermal hydrolysis of various fats and oils was successfully used in culturing of the oleaginous yeast Cryptococcus curvatus , with growth and lipid accumulation occurring at levels identical to those achieved when commercially purchased glycerol was used. The aqueous byproduct stream from the hydrothermal processing of C. curvatus can also be recycled as a growth substrate for subsequent C. curvatus cultures. The addition of this stream promoted higher biomass production without affecting lipid accumulation and only moderately changing the fatty acid profile. Use of these recycling strategies reduces costs and environmental impact of current microbial biofuels production by providing accessible, non-expensive carbon sources and nutrients for oleaginous yeast cultivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbial oils hold great potential as a suitable feedstock for the renewable production of biofuels. Specifically, the use of oleaginous yeasts offers several advantages related to cultivation and quality of lipid products. However, one of the major bottlenecks for large-scale production of yeast oils is found in the lipid extraction process. This work investigated the hydrothermal treatment of oleaginous yeast for hydrolysis and lipid extraction resulting in fatty acids used for biofuel production. The oleaginous yeast, Cryptococcus curvatus , was grown in 5 L bioreactors and the biomass slurry with 53 ± 4% lipid content (dry weight basis) was treated at 280 °C for 1 h with an initial pressure of 500 psi in batch stainless steel reactors. The hydrolysis product was separated and each of the resulting streams was further characterized. The hexane soluble fraction contained fatty acids from the hydrolysis of yeast triacylglycerides, and was low in nitrogen and minerals and could be directly integrated as feedstock into pyrolysis processing to produce biofuels. The proposed hydrothermal treatment addresses some current technological bottlenecks associated with traditional methodologies such as dewatering, oil extraction and co-product utilization. It also enhances the feasibility of using microbial biomass for production of renewable fuels and chemicals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient biological degradation of lignocellulosic biomass is a key step towards developing sustainable biorefineries. One potential approach to improve process efficiency is the use of enzyme immobilization to facilitate reuse of the enzymes. Two different commercial cellulase containing enzyme preparations, termed Cellulases 1 (C1) and Cellulases 2 (C2) for the purposes of this manuscript, were separately immobilized on non-porous silica (S1) and porous silica (S2). The effect of pH, ionic strength and enzyme loading on enzyme stability and activity were all investigated. Immobilized cellulases on S1 showed equivalent enzyme activity as free cellulases, and those on S2 retained 60% enzyme activity. Dissociation of the cellulases from the support after immobilization and during hydrolysis was found to be minimal, suggesting strong enzyme-support interactions. Further, Scanning Electron Microscopy images revealed that S1 and S2 containing immobilized cellulases differentially interact with cellulose, which likely contributes to the observed differences in hydrolysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Whey permeate, a waste stream, was used to produce microalgae for biofuels. [•] High lipid-algal biomass was obtained with whey permeate and yeast extract at low C/N. [•] Batch, fed-batch and SSF bioprocesses modes were investigated for algal culture. [•] Algal fatty acid profile when grown in whey permeate was similar to that of glucose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discovery of new drugs is often propelled by the increasing resistance of parasites to existing drugs and the availability of better technology platforms. The area of microfluidics has provided devices for faster screening of compounds, controlled sampling/sorting of whole animals, and automated behavioral pattern recognition. In most microfluidic devices, drug effects on small animals (e.g., Caenorhabditis elegans) are quantified by an end-point, dose response curve representing a single parameter (such as worm velocity or stroke frequency). Here, we present a multi-parameter extraction method to characterize modes of paralysis in C. elegans over an extended time period. A microfluidic device with real-time imaging is used to expose C. elegans to four anthelmintic drugs (i.e., pyrantel, levamisole, tribendimidine, and methyridine). We quantified worm behavior with parameters such as curls per second, types of paralyzation, mode frequency, and number/duration of active/immobilization periods. Each drug was chosen at EC75 where 75% of the worm population is responsive to the drug. At equipotent concentrations, we observed differences in the manner with which worms paralyzed in drug environments. Our study highlights the need for assaying drug effects on small animal models with multiple parameters quantified at regular time points over an extended period to adequately capture the resistance and adaptability in chemical environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental toxicants influence development, behavior, and ultimately survival. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has proven to be an exceptionally powerful model for toxicological studies. Here, we develop novel technologies to describe the effects of cyanide toxicity with high spatiotemporal resolution. Importantly, we use these methods to examine the genetic underpinnings of cyanide resistance. Caenorhabditis elegans that lack the EGL-9 oxygen sensing enzyme have been shown to be resistant to hydrogen cyanide (HCN) gas produced by the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1. We demonstrate that the cyanide resistance exhibited by egl-9 mutants is completely dependent on the HIF-1 hypoxia-inducible factor and is mediated by the cysl-2 cysteine synthase, which likely functions in metabolic pathways that inactivate cyanide. Further, the expression of cysl-2 correlates with the degree of cyanide resistance exhibited in each genetic background. We find that each mutant exhibits similar relative resistance to HCN gas on plates or to aqueous potassium cyanide in microfluidic chambers. The design of the microfluidic devices, in combination with real-time imaging, addresses a series of challenges presented by mutant phenotypes and by the chemical nature of the toxicant. The microfluidic assay produces a set of behavioral parameters with increased resolution that describe cyanide toxicity and resistance in C. elegans, and this is particularly useful in analyzing subtle phenotypes. These multiparameter analyses of C. elegans behavior hold great potential as a means to monitor the effects of toxicants or chemical interventions in real time and to study the biological networks that underpin toxicant resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chlorpyrifos (CPF) is a widely used agricultural organophosphorus insecticide (OP). Epidemiological studies have reported that children living in an OP contaminated environment, showed altered immune function. However, there is a paucity of experimental evidence for CPF-induced toxicity in the developmental phases of immune system. The current studies sought to ascertain the effect of CPF on the developing immune system of mice. Swiss albino dams were exposed orally with 0, 0.3, and 3.0 mg CPF/kg/day from GD12 to PND7, and then pups were directly dosed with CPF (by gavage) through PND42. One week after the final dose of CPF (i.e. on PND49), immunotoxicities in these offspring were assessed. These analyses revealed that there were increases in Foxp3+CD25+CD4+ T-regulatory ( Treg) cell frequency in the spleens of 3.0 mg CPF/kg/day-exposed female mice, but not in males. In contrast, the anti-sheep red blood cells IgM response was reduced in both genders. Moreover, splenic lymphoproliferative response to phytohemagglutinin (PHA), concanavalin A (ConA), and lipopolysaccharide (LPS), as well as interferon (IFN)- γ, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)- α, and interleukin (IL)-6 production following LPS stimulation decreased in mice of both sexes at higher CPF doses. Together, these findings suggest that developmental CPF exposure might cause immunosuppression in mice. Some of these outcomes might arise, in part, through a suppression of pro-inflammatory cytokine production and/or changes in the responsivity (specifically to mitogens) of lymphocytes in these hosts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the continued denial of equality to women in India's religious personal laws by focusing on the rights of brothers and sisters to illustrate the repeated failures of law. Although this failure has been normalised by deploying various conceptual tools, these theoretical trends need to be challenged. This article examines the 2005 amendment to the Hindu Succession Act which, although giving women extensive property rights, still gave sisters lesser rights than their brothers. It demonstrates that the concept of religious personal laws is a construct which is often used uncritically, and that it legitimises the denial of equal rights to women. The paper combines critical geography scholarship and legal feminist insights to argue that the law must be aware of spatial practices and that it is essential for legal thinkers to engage with the law in more than an instrumental sense. It analyses the processes of knowledge production and explores how the constitutive aspects of legal knowledge can be better integrated into legal scholarship. It thus aims to make visible the many spaces of the law: where laws are made; where ideas about men and women as owners of property are normalised; and where the law is expected to be implemented. It argues for legal scholars to be present and engaged in the contestation of meanings of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the concept of religious personal laws as used in Indian legal discourse. This concept is used to denote religious laws of various communities that are claimed to be upheld but not modified by the secular state and also to refer to the religion related rules followed by communities outside of state regulation. This existence of various 'religious' laws is increasingly being described as legal pluralism. The ambiguous status of religious personal laws serves to legitimize the continued denial by the state of gender equality to women in family law matters as it creates a space for rules or laws to operate that do not conform to the Constitutional requirements and yet are enforced by the state. When legal scholars deploy this concept un-reflexively they participate in the discourse formation about religious personal laws as exceptional laws or as (progressive) examples of legal pluralism. In this way they assist the state in using the concept as a mode of governance. In this article it is argued that the legal scholars need to accept responsibility for the significant power they wield as discourse formers and acknowledge the power of naming legal practices. They are the scholars who can and should deconstruct the concept of religious personal laws. This is necessary for a serious engagement with the issue of what kind of family law would be truly non-oppressive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The family law in Australia claims to be universal, egalitarian, progressive and just. This characterisation of family law, among other things, allows for constructing the mythical Australian identity and the political claim that those who choose to come to Australia should agree to live by its values including its family law. It leaves no scope for an argument for recognising ‘religious’ laws. However, the very Act that proclaims a universal and exclusive law for everyone also facilitates huge diversity in the actual arrangements people make under it. The fact that it denies or at least downplays the actual plurality raises the central issue for this paper: the role of legal ideology of universal legal rights in maintaining the hegemony of the dominant social order. The discourse of the recognition of religious personal laws, and in particular the Sharia law, has to be understood in this context of the wider function of family law as an ideology for maintaining the hegemony of the self-understanding of Australia as a modern, liberal society. While legal pluralism is feasible it remains the responsibility of everyone to ensure that the resulting legal arrangements are fair and non-discriminatory for all members of society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we present a movement-based assay to observe adaptability in Caenorhabditis elegans locomotion behavior. The assay comprises a series of sinusoidal microchannels with a fixed wavelength and modulating (increasing or decreasing) amplitude. The channel width is comparable to the body diameter of the organism. Worms are allowed to enter the channel from the input port and migrate toward the output port. Within channel sections that closely match the worm's natural undulations, the worm movement is relatively quick and steady. As the channel amplitude increases or decreases along the device, the worm faces difficulty in generating the propulsive thrust, begins to slow down and eventually fails to move forward. A set of locomotion parameters (i.e., average forward velocity, number and duration of stops, range of contact angle, and cut-off region) is defined for worm locomotion in modulated sinusoidal channels and extracted from the recorded videos. The device is tested on wild-type C. elegans (N2) and two mutants (lev-8 and unc-38). We anticipate this passive, movement-based assay can be used to screen nematodes showing difference in locomotion phenotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The similarity of BldG and the downstream coexpressed protein SCO3548 to anti-anti-sigma and anti-sigma factors, respectively, together with the phenotype of a bldG mutant, suggests that BldG and SCO3548 interact as part of a regulatory system to control both antibiotic production and morphological differentiation in Streptomyces coelicolor. A combination of bacterial two-hybrid, affinity purification, and far-Western analyses demonstrated that there was self-interaction of both BldG and SCO3548, as well as a direct interaction between the two proteins. Furthermore, a genetic complementation experiment demonstrated that SCO3548 antagonizes the function of BldG, similar to other anti-anti-sigma/anti-sigma factor pairs. It is therefore proposed that BldG and SCO3548 form a partner-switching pair that regulates the function of one or more sigma factors in S. coelicolor. The conservation of bldG and sco3548 in other streptomycetes demonstrates that this system is likely a key regulatory switch controlling developmental processes throughout the genus Streptomyces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses gender inequality and religious personal laws (RPLs) in India. The first part of the article explores the origin of the concept of RPLs and their selective reform by the state. The second part traces the development of various feminist legal responses to the issue of gender equality and the post-structural proliferation of differences. The third part illustrates how the shape of RPLs has repercussions for the design and scope of other laws. The last part develops an argument for a reconceptualizing of categories that allow for pursuing differences and justice together.

The article discusses the re-conceptualization of law, responsibility and regulation in Australia. It examines the potential of regulation to pursue fairness as well as its conception to prove that law offers collective guides to behavior of agencies and institutions or individuals. It highlights the need to recognize the source of an idea to create responsible theory. It mentions the ability of critical pedagogy to improve students' knowledge to understand institutional conditions that affect their lives. It adds that critical thinking allows students' participation on discussions related to political and social issues.

In this article, I argue that legal feminists must focus on the "purpose" for engaging in feminist jurisprudence. As feminists, our main goal must be to transform society and achieve social justice for all women. However, legal feminism is predominantly concerned with the issues that are relevant to the lives of western, white, middle-class women. This article relies on the current debate on race and essentialism and argues that it is incumbent upon legal feminists to reconceptualize gender to acknowledge the plurality of the experiences of women, including women of the third world. However, even if legal feminism could accommodate all the demands of pluralism, it still lacks a theory of social transformation. Instead of endlessly debating whether they are essentialists or not, legal feminists must articulate how these visions can be translated into institutional commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a microfluidic platform for the hydroponic growth of Arabidopsis plants with high-resolution visualization of root development and root-pathogen interactions. The platform comprises a set of parallel microchannels with individual input/output ports where 1-day old germinated seedlings are initially placed. Under optimum conditions, a root system grows in each microchannel and its images are recorded over a 198-h period. Different concentrations of plant growth media show different root growth characteristics. Later, the developed roots are inoculated with two plant pathogens (nematodes and zoospores) and their physicochemical interactions with the live root systems are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including liberal separation of law and religion, multicultural society and the banning of public display of religious symbols.

We report a nematode electrotactic-response valve (NERV) to control the locomotion of Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) in microfluidic devices. This nonmechanical, unidirectional valve is based on creating a confined region of lateral electric field that is switchable and reversible. We observed that C. elegans do not prefer to pass through this region if the field lines are incident to its forward movement. Upon reaching the boundary of the NERV, the incident worms partially penetrate the field region, pull back, and turn around. The NERV is tested on three C. elegans mutants: wild-type (N2), lev-8, and acr-16. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]