Damian’s Blog

Enzymes for Brewing Traditionally production of beer is by mixing crushed barley malt and hot water in large vessel known as mash copper. This process is known as ‘mashing’. Apart from malt, other starch-based cereals such as maize (corn), sorghum, rice and barley, or pure starch itself, are added to the mash. These are known as adjuncts. After mashing, the mash is filtered in a lauter tun and the liquid, known as ’sweet wort’, is then run off to the copper, where it is boiled with hops. The ‘hopped wort’ is cooled and transferred to the fermentation vessels where yeast is added. After the fermentation, the so-called ‘green beer’ is matured before the final filtration and bottling.

Liquefying Adjuncts

Adjuncts are used as an extra source of starch in brewing and usually consist of cereals. Protein also plays a vital role in fermentation by providing soluble nitrogen compounds that the yeast needs. Since the protein proportion in some types of adjunct is very small, it may be necessary to provide extra protein in the wort. This can be done by utilising the protein in the malt more efficiently. By adding a protein splitting (protease) enzyme, more protein can be solubilised and made available to the yeast.

In their natural form, starch­based cereals such as maize grits and rice are boiled before being added to the malt mash. The boiled (gelatinised) cereals are very viscous and need to be thinned (liquefied) before they can be pumped into the mash copper. This is done using an alpha amylase. Heat-stable alpha amylases are also available that are effective even at 100?C to ensure full liquefaction of the starch

Filtration

Slow rate of filtration is generally a problem when the mash is run off in the lauter tun and also during the final filtration of the beer. This is due to the presence of certain polysaccharides, mainly beta­glucans and pentosans, which are found in barley and poorly modified barley malt. The solution is to break down the beta­glucans using a beta­glucanase added during mashing or at the start of the fermentation process.

Maps offers a range of amylases, glucoamylase, proteases for distilling depending on the processes and applications.

When we catch a disease naturally, we usually produce antibodies to the organism that causes it. Antibodies are proteins in the blood which remember the organism which caused the disease, can recognise it and inactivate it when we come into contact with it again. Without us actually experiencing the disease, vaccines teach our body’s immune system to produce antibodies and identify certain potentially infective organisms even though we have never come into contact with them.

Vaccines take various forms:

• Killed or inactivated vaccines are produced by chemically killing or inactivating bacteria or viruses. The now harmless bacteria or viruses, when injected, stimulate the body to produce antibodies, without the individual having to suffer the disease.
• Live vaccines are produced by weakening the ability of the organism to produce disease while retaining its ability to produce immunity.
• Vaccines may be made by identifying and purifying those fragments of the disease-producing organisms that are most import in stimulating antibodies. These fragments may be substances found on the surface of the organism which the immune system recognises or others such as the toxins produced by some bacteria.
• These fragments can also be produced by modifying the genetic material of a totally different cell so that this cell produces copies of these fragments, which can then be purified and used to make a vaccine.

Once adminstered the user is usually protected for life or until a new strain comesabout.

needs writing in your own words damian. you cannot steal other peoples work and pass it off as your own. this is plagiarism. if you do use other people’s work then attibute it with a link or a reference.

Just Finished updating my Blog Roll which includes Woodchurch High Schools Yr 10 Seps group Blogs.

For now, nanotechnology exists almost exclusively in the laboratory. But it has the potential to revolutionise our lives. Put simply it’s science measured on a scale of billionths of a metre. At that level everything, even life, is reduced to fundamental interactions between atoms and molecules. Nanotechnology aims to manipulate and control these particles to create novel structures with unique properties, and promises advances in manufacturing, medicine and computing. But the Canadian based ETC Group claims the potential for harm is equally dramatic. Their report “The Big Down: Technologies Converging at the Nano-scale” argues that because nanotechnology can be applied to virtually any industrial sector, no one regulatory body is taking a lead, and research into new products is continuing beneath the radar screen of public debate.

Click the link below to see the animation. This animation shows you the size of a nanometre compared with other forms of measurements.

http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology/videos/What_is_a_nanometer.php

I need to find out more information on Nanotechonology in medicine so……………

Feed me with information on Nanomedicine. Simply just write a comment with the information you wish to submit.

All creatures great and small…. Now it’s our turn,

Nano Technology – Nanomedicine

Nanomedicine is the medical use of molecular-sized particles to deliver drugs, heat, light or other substances to specific cells in the human body. Engineering particles to be used in this way allows detection and/or treatment of diseases or injuries within the targeted cells, thereby minimizing the damage to healthy cells in the body.