Extraction Step Research Articles

A Three-Step Process to Isolate Large Quantities of Bioactive Sesquiterpene Lactones from Cichorium intybus L. Roots and Semisynthesis of Chicory STLs Standards.

Sesquiterpene lactones (STLs) are a large group of terpenoids most commonly found in plants of the Asteraceae family, e.g., in chicory plants, displaying a wide range of interesting biological activities. However, further studies on the biological potential of chicory-derived STLs and analogues are challenging as only four of these molecules are commercially available (as analytical standards), and to date, there are no published or patented simple extraction-purification processes capable of large-scale STLs isolation. In this work, we describe a novel three-step large-scale extraction and purification method for the simultaneous purification of 11,13-dihydrolactucin (DHLc) and lactucin (Lc) starting from a chicory genotype rich in these STLs and the corresponding glucosyl and oxalyl conjugated forms. After a small-scale screening on 100 mg of freeze-dried chicory root powder, the best results were achieved with a 17 h water maceration at 30 °C. With these conditions, we managed to increase the content of DHLc and Lc, at the same time favoring the hydrolysis of their conjugated forms. On a larger scale, the extraction of 750 g of freeze-dried chicory root powder, followed by a liquid-liquid extraction step and a reversed-phase chromatography, allowed the recovery of 642.3 ± 76.3 mg of DHLc and 175.3 ± 32.9 mg of Lc. The two pure STLs were subsequently used in the context of semisynthesis to generate analogues for biological evaluation as antibacterial agents. In addition, other described chicory STLs that are not commercially available were also synthesized or extracted to serve as analytical standards for the study. In particular, lactucin-oxalate and 11,13-dihydrolactucin-oxalate were synthesized in two steps starting from Lc and DHLc, respectively. On the other hand, 11β,13-dihydrolactucin-glucoside was obtained after a MeOH/H2O (70/30) extraction, followed by a liquid-liquid extraction step and a reversed-phase chromatography. Together, this work will help facilitate the evaluation of the biological potential of chicory-derived STLs and their semisynthetic analogues.

Methane, ethane, and propane production in Greenland ice core samples and a first isotopic characterization of excess methane

Abstract. Air trapped in polar ice provides unique records of the past atmospheric composition ranging from key greenhouse gases such as methane (CH4) to short-lived trace gases like ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8). Recently, the comparison of CH4 records obtained using different extraction methods revealed disagreements in the CH4 concentration for the last glacial in Greenland ice. Elevated methane levels were detected in dust-rich ice core sections measured discretely, pointing to a process sensitive to the melt extraction technique. To shed light on the underlying mechanism, we performed targeted experiments and analyzed samples for methane and the short-chain alkanes ethane and propane covering the time interval from 12 to 42 kyr. Here, we report our findings of these elevated alkane concentrations, which scale linearly with the amount of mineral dust within the ice samples. The alkane production happens during the melt extraction step of the classic wet-extraction technique and reaches 14 to 91 ppb of CH4 excess in dusty ice samples. We document for the first time a co-production of excess methane, ethane, and propane, with the observed concentrations for ethane and propane exceeding their past atmospheric background at least by a factor of 10. Independent of the produced amounts, excess alkanes were produced in a fixed molar ratio of approximately 14:2:1, indicating a shared origin. The measured carbon isotopic signature of excess methane is (-47.0±2.9) ‰ and its deuterium isotopic signature is (-326±57) ‰. With the co-production ratios of excess alkanes and the isotopic composition of excess methane we established a fingerprint that allows us to constrain potential formation processes. This fingerprint is not in line with a microbial origin. Moreover, an adsorption–desorption process of thermogenic gas on dust particles transported to Greenland does not appear very likely. Instead, the alkane pattern appears to be indicative of abiotic decomposition of organic matter as found in soils and plant leaves.

Visualization of azoxystrobin penetration in wheat leaves using mass microscopy imaging.

Fungicides must penetrate the internal tissues of plants to kill pathogenic fungi. Mass spectrometers have been used to confirm this penetration, but conventional mass spectrometric methods cannot distinguish the fungicides in different internal tissues owing to the extraction steps. However, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI-MSI) can detect the penetration of fungicides into leaf sections through direct analysis of the sample surfaces. Therefore, the objective of this study was to establish a method for visualizing fungicide penetration in wheat leaf cross sections using MALDI-MSI. The penetration of azoxystrobin from the epidermal to the internal tissue of the leaves was observed. Moreover, azoxystrobin accumulates in the cells around the vascular bundle. This study suggests that MSI can be useful for the evaluation of fungicide penetration in plant leaves.

Facile and selective separation of anthraquinones by alizarin-modified iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles

Anthraquinones are widely distributed in higher plants and possess broad biological activities. The conventional separation procedures for isolating anthraquinones from the plant crude extracts require multiple extraction, concentration, and column chromatography steps. In this study, we synthesized three alizarin (AZ)-modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles (Fe3O4@AZ, Fe3O4@SiO2-AZ, and Fe3O4@SiO2-PEI-AZ) by thermal solubilization method. Fe3O4@SiO2-PEI-AZ showed strong magnetic responsiveness, high methanol/water dispersion, good recyclability, and high loading capacity for anthraquinones. To evaluate the feasibility of using Fe3O4@SiO2-PEI-AZ for separating various aromatic compounds, we employed molecular dynamics simulations to predict the adsorption/desorption effects of PEI-AZ for various aromatic compounds in different methanol concentrations. The results showed that the anthraquinones could be efficiently separated from the monocyclic and bicyclic aromatic compounds by adjusting the methanol/water ratio. The Fe3O4@SiO2-PEI-AZ nanoparticles were then used to separate the anthraquinones from the rhubarb extract. At 5% methanol, all the anthraquinones were adsorbed by the nanoparticles, thus allowing their separation from other components in the crude extract. Compared with the conventional separation methods, this adsorption method has the advantages of high adsorption specificity, simple operation, and solvent saving. This method sheds light on the future application of functionalized Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles to selectively separate desired components from complex plant and microbial crude extracts.

An Optimised MS-Based Versatile Untargeted Metabolomics Protocol

Untargeted metabolomics approaches require complex samples containing the endogenous metabolites of a biological system. Here, we describe a set of protocols that can be applied to various types of samples, including prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, as well as animal and human samples. Following a single extraction step, samples are analysed using different chromatographic conditions coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry. Quantification of metabolite changes between samples is performed without internal standards, using peak areas from extracted ion chromatograms for statistical analysis. Bioinformatics annotation of the results allows a pathway- and process-oriented analysis across biological sample conditions, allowing a complete pathway interrogation.

Generative Adversarial Networks as a Data Augmentation Tool for Handwritten Digits

In the field of data processing, handwritten digit recognition (HDR) has proven to be of great use. However, due to the vast differences in how different people write, accurate recognition of such characters from images is a challenging job. The labelled samples necessary for supervised learning methods are not always easy to come by. For instance, a lot of labelled examples are needed to train a model in deep learning approaches, where all the feature extraction steps are learned within the artificial neural network. To get around this problem, data augmentation methods can be used to fill in the gaps using variations in an example's label that are already known. The Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is able to generate random samples from the latent space that are statistically indistinguishable from the training set's actual examples. In this study, we leverage the powerful features of GAN to learn from the MNIST data set and produce digital images of handwriting.

Pressurized Liquid Extraction: A Powerful Tool to Implement Extraction and Purification of Food Contaminants.

Pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) is considered an advanced extraction technique developed in the mid-1990s with the aim of saving time and reducing solvent with respect to traditional extraction processes. It is commonly used with solid and semi-solid samples and employs solvent extraction at elevated temperatures and pressures, always below the respective critical points, to maintain the solvent in a liquid state throughout the extraction procedure. The use of these particular pressure and temperature conditions changes the physicochemical properties of the extraction solvent, allowing easier and deeper penetration into the matrix to be extracted. Furthermore, the possibility to combine the extraction and clean-up steps by including a layer of an adsorbent retaining interfering compounds directly in the PLE extraction cells makes this technique extremely versatile and selective. After providing a background on the PLE technique and parameters to be optimized, the present review focuses on recent applications (published in the past 10 years) in the field of food contaminants. In particular, applications related to the extraction of environmental and processing contaminants, pesticides, residues of veterinary drugs, mycotoxins, parabens, ethyl carbamate, and fatty acid esters of 3-monochloro-1,2-propanediol and 2-monochloro-1,3-propanediol from different food matrices were considered.

RP-HPLC Method Developed for the Determination of Metformin in Human Saliva

Several extraction steps involved while analyzing metformin in plasma necessitates the need to develop a simple less tedious RP-HPLC method for metformin analysis in human saliva.Blank saliva (2 mL) was spiked with 2 mL solution (12.5 µg mL-1) of metformin and 1 mL solution (0.5 µg mL-1) of caffeine as internal standard (IS). The mixture was vortex mixed and centrifuged at 3000 rpm for 10 minutes. A portion (0.5 mL) of the resultant solution was injected into the HPLC machine (Agilent 1260 infinity). The optimized conditions included a mobile phase of methanol:water (80:20 v/v) containing 0.1 % orthophosphoric acid, isocratic elusion mode, an injection volume of 10 µL, flow rate of 1 mLmin-1, at 35°C and detection wavelength of 232nm. Calibration curve(1.25to25.0 µg mL-1) was prepared by plotting the peak height ratios of metformin Vs IS against their corresponding concentrations. The method was validated according to ICH guidelines. Metformin and caffeine eluted at 1.6 and 2.6 minutes respectively. The method was precise (<1 % RSD), accurate (% Er of 1.00 and % recovery of 99.98 %) with linear calibration curve (r= 0.9987). The developed method can be used for determination of metformin in human saliva. Keywords: Metformin, Saliva, Isocratic elution, RP-HPLC

Optimization of modified QuEChERS method for extraction of selected pharmaceuticals from vegetable samples using HPLC


 ABSTRACT. Optimized QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe) method of sample preparation was employed for five selected pharmaceutical compounds on its advantage of simplicity, less extraction solvent and extraction time. Different parameters affecting the extraction efficiency of the target analyte was optimized. Since QuEChERS was developed for pesticides, uses of the method for pharmaceuticals need modification and evaluation of different parameters. Clean-up sorbents were evaluated for their matrix effect removal after extraction and a combination of d-SPE sorbent, MgSO4, PSA, C18 and diatomaceous earth found to be selective clean-up sorbent for the targeted compounds. The addition and amount of diatomaceous earth and EDTA during the clean-up and extraction steps, respectively, were also examined and the amount was optimized. Solvent type and composition, salt type and extraction time were also optimized and methanol, MgSO4 with NaCl salt and 5 min extraction time was obtained. The method was successfully applied to different vegetable samples collected from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Johannesburg, South Africa (carrot, cabbage and lettuce) and none of the target analytes were found in the sample investigated. The matrix effect study on vegetable samples collected was found very high that suppresses the signal during analysis.
 
 KEY WORDS: QuEChERS, EDTA, Pharmaceuticals, Vegetable, HPLC
 Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2023, 37(4), 831-844. 
 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/bcse.v37i4.3

Recovery of Lithium from Simulated Nanofiltration-Treated Seawater Desalination Brine Using Solvent Extraction and Selective Precipitation

ABSTRACT The world's seas and oceans contain vast amounts of lithium, but the low concentration hereof renders solvent extraction impractical for its recovery. By contrast, seawater desalination brine, after treatment by nanofiltration, contains a roughly tenfold greater concentration of lithium than raw seawater. Hence, lithium can be effectively recovered from such streams using solvent extaction. Compared with other techniques to sequester lithium from dilute solutions, solvent extraction offers the advantages of simple operations, robust and well-established technology and high recovery yields. Thus, we propose a solvent-extraction based process to recover lithium from seawater desalination brine, treated by nanofiltration. The first step comprises the removal of magnesium and calcium using methyltrioctylammonium neodecanoate in p-cymene. This is followed by a lithium extraction step using the extractants Mextral 54–100 and Cyanex 923 in Shellsol D70 diluent. The lithium extract is then scrubbed with water and stripped with hydrochloric acid. Subsequently, residual alkaline earth metals are removed with sodium hydroxide in ethanol and finally lithium is precipitated using sodium carbonate. The solvent extraction, scrubbing and stripping steps were demonstrated on mini-pilot scale in continuous countercurrent mode (in mixer-settlers), while the precipitation steps were demonstrated in batch. The process was found to have an overall yield of 74%, affording a lithium carbonate product with a purity of 97 wt%.

Extraction of natural colorants using supramolecular solvents composed of Triton X-114 and ionic liquids

The interest for natural colorants from microbial sources has increased in the last few years. However, the extraction of these compounds from complex biomasses/matrices is still a challenge for industrial applications, mainly due to the requirements of biocompatibility, sustainability, and efficiency. With this aim, supramolecular solvents (SUPRAS) composed of nonionic polyethylene glycol tert-octylphenyl ether (TX-114) and various cationic surfactants (n-alkyl-3-methyl imidazolium bromide ([Cnmim]Br, n = 10, 12, 14, 16), and tributyl-tetradecylphosphonium chloride ([P4,4,4,14]Cl) ionic liquids (ILs) and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB)) were here studied for the extraction of red polyketides colorants from the fermented broth of Talaromyces amestolkiae. Firstly, the influence of ILs on the SUPRAS phase behavior was determined by measuring the cloud point temperature (TCP) and coarse-grained molecular dynamic (CG-MD) simulations. The results of extraction showed that for all SUPRAS the red colorant preferentially partitioned into the surfactant-rich (bottom) phase (partition coefficients, K > 10) with the highest partition using [C14mim]Br as a co-surfactant (K = 14.69 ± 0.15). The systems studied also allowed high recovery efficiency of all mixed surfactant-based SUPRAS (>70 % of red colorant recovered in a single extraction step) with selective for the separation of the red colorant from the yellow (1.52 ± 0.04) and orange (1.62 ± 0.08) counterparts present in the fermented broth. The novel SUPRAS have demonstrated remarkable potential in extracting red colorants from fermented broth, without requiring harsh operating conditions. As such, these platforms offer an effective means of concentrating and pre-purifying the red colorants, and hold promise for application to other molecules with similar chemical properties.

Low-Cost, Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction System with Integrated RNA Extraction.

Rapid, easy-to-use, and low-cost systems for biological sample testing are important for point-of-care diagnostics and various other health applications. The recent pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) showed an urgent need to rapidly and accurately identify the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2, an enveloped ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus, in upper respiratory specimens from people. In general, sensitive testing methods require genetic material extraction from the specimen. Unfortunately, current commercially available extraction kits are expensive and involve time-consuming and laborious extraction procedures. To overcome the difficulties associated with common extraction methods, we propose a simple enzymatic assay for the nucleic acid extraction step using heat mediation to improve the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) reaction sensitivity. Our protocol was tested on Human Coronavirus 229E (HCoV-229E) as an example, which comes from the large coronaviridae family of viruses that affect birds, amphibians, and mammals, of which SARS-CoV-2 is a member. The proposed assay was performed using a low-cost, custom-made, real-time PCR system that incorporates thermal cycling and fluorescence detection. It had fully customizable reaction settings to allow versatile biological sample testing for various applications, including point-of-care medical diagnosis, food and water quality testing, and emergency health situations. Our results show that heat-mediated RNA extraction is a viable extraction method when compared to commercial extraction kits. Further, our study showed that extraction has a direct impact on purified laboratory samples of HCoV-229E, but no direct impact on infected human cells. This is clinically relevant, as it allows us to circumvent the extraction step on clinical samples when using PCR.

Short Flax Fibres and Shives as Reinforcements in Bio Composites: A Numerical and Experimental Study on the Mechanical Properties.

The complete flax stem, which contains shives and technical fibres, has the potential to reduce the cost, energy consumption and environmental impacts of the composite production process if used directly as reinforcement in a polymer matrix. Earlier studies have utilised flax stem as reinforcement in non-bio-based and non-biodegradable matrices not completely exploiting the bio-sourced and biodegradable nature of flax. We investigated the potential of using flax stem as reinforcement in a polylactic acid (PLA) matrix to produce a lightweight, fully bio-based composite with improved mechanical properties. Furthermore, we developed a mathematical approach to predict the material stiffness of the full composite part produced by the injection moulding process, considering a three-phase micromechanical model, where the effects of local orientations are accounted. Injection moulded plates with a flax content of up to 20 V% were fabricated to study the effect of flax shives and full straw flax on the mechanical properties of the material. A 62% increase in longitudinal stiffness was obtained, resulting in a 10% higher specific stiffness, compared to a short glass fibre-reinforced reference composite. Moreover, the anisotropy ratio of the flax-reinforced composite was 21% lower, compared to the short glass fibre material. This lower anisotropy ratio is attributed to the presence of the flax shives. Considering the fibre orientation in the injection moulded plates predicted with Moldflow simulations, a high agreement between experimental and predicted stiffness data was obtained. The use of flax stems as polymer reinforcement provides an alternative to the use of short technical fibres that require intensive extraction and purification steps and are known to be cumbersome to feed to the compounder.

Comparison between Cashew-Based and Petrochemical Hydroxyoximes: Insights from Molecular Simulations.

Solvent extraction has been ubiquitously used to recover valuable metals from wastes such as spent batteries and electrical boards. With increasing demands for energy transition, there is a critical need to improve the recycling rate of critical metals, including copper. Therefore, the sustainability of reagents is critical for the overall sustainability of the process. Yet, the recycling process relies on functional organic compounds based on the hydroxyoxime group. To date, hydroxyoxime extractants have been produced from petrol-based chemical feedstocks. Recently, natural-based cardanol has been used to produce an alternative hydroxyoxime. The natural-based oxime has been employed to recover valuable metals (Ga, Ni, Co) via a liquid/liquid extraction process. The natural compound has a distinctive structure with 15 carbons in the alkyl tail. In contrast, petrol-based hydroxyoximes have only 12 or fewer carbons. However, the molecular advantages of this natural-based compound over the current petrol-based ones remain unclear. In this study, molecular dynamics simulation was employed to investigate the effect of extractant hydrocarbon chains on the extraction of copper ions. Two hydroxyoxime extractants with 12 and 15 carbons in the alkyl chain were found to have similar interactions with Cu2+ ions. Yet, a slight molecular binding increase was observed when the carbon chain was increased. In addition, lengthening the carbon chain made the extracting stage easier and the stripping stage harder. The binding would result in a lower pH in the extraction step and a lower pH in the stripping step. The insights from this molecular study would help design the extraction circuit using natural-based hydroxyoxime extractants. A successful application of cashew-based cardanol will improve the environmental benefits of the recycling process. With cashew-producing regions in developing countries, the application also improves these regions' social and economic sustainability.

Development of an online Nigella sativa inspection system equipped with machine vision technology and artificial neural networks

Aim of study: Nigella sativa L. seeds usually are mixed with impurities, which affect its quality and influences consumer acceptance in both raw seeds and the oil market. In this study, an intelligent system based on the combination of machine vision (MV) and artificial neural networks (ANN) was developed to classify and clean N. sativa seeds and its impurities. Area of study: Iran, Kurdistan province. Material and methods: For accurate detections we developed a robust image processing algorithm including image acquisition, image enhancement, segmentation, and feature extraction steps. Correlation-based Feature Selection method was used to select the superior features. Three methods of linear discriminant analysis, support vector machines, and ANN were used to classify the data. Main results: The statistical indices of sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for N. sativa in the online phase were 90%, 98.93%, and 97.04%, respectively. The average of these measurements for the impurities class was 95.57%, 96.89%, and 96.58%, respectively. Research highlights: The results demonstrated the feasibility of suggested machine learning and image processing approaches in the real-time cleaning of N. sativa. The image acquisition and processing process, including selection of the best lighting methods to reduce the shadows, noise elimination and segmentation, provided precise results. The final results indicated the effectiveness of proposed machine learning algorithm in feature extraction, feature dimensionality reduction, and classification approaches. This methodology can be recommended for detection, classification and automatic cleaning of other similar seeds.

Review of entity relation extraction

In today’s big data era, there are a large number of unstructured information resources on the web. Natural language processing researchers have been working hard to figure out how to extract useful information from them. Entity Relation Extraction is a crucial step in Information Extraction and provides technical support for Knowledge Graphs, Intelligent Q&A systems and Intelligent Retrieval. In this paper, we present a comprehensive history of entity relation extraction and introduce the relation extraction methods based on Machine Mearning, the relation extraction methods based on Deep Learning and the relation extraction methods for open domains. Then we summarize the characteristics and representative results of each type of method and introduce the common datasets and evaluation systems for entity relation extraction. Finally, we summarize current entity relation extraction methods and look forward to future technologies.

One-Pot, Three-Phase Recycling of Metals from Li-Ion Batteries in Rotating, Concentric-Liquid Reactors.

Efficient recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries, LIBs, is essential for making their numerous applications sustainable. Hydrometallurgy-based separation methods are an indispensable part of the recycling process but remain limited by the extraction efficiency and selectivity, and typically require numerous binary liquid-liquid extraction steps in which the capacity of the extracting organic phase or partition coefficient of extracted metals become an overall bottleneck. In this paper, we describe rotating reactors in which aqueous feed, organic extractant, and aqueous acceptor phases are all present in the same, rotating vessel and can be vigorously stirred and emulsified without the coalescence of aqueous layers. In this arrangement, the extractant molecules are not equilibrated with the feed and, instead, "shuttle" between the feed/extractant and the extractant/acceptor interfaces multiple times, with each such molecule ultimately transferring ∼10 metal ions. This shuttling allows for using extractant concentrations much lower than in previous designs even for extremely concentrated feeds and, simultaneously, ensures unprecedented speed and selectivity of the one-pot processes. These experimental results are accompanied by theoretical considerations of the selectivity versus speed trends as well as discussion of parameters essential for system's upscaling. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Acoustic Scene Classification using Deep Fisher network

Acoustic Scene Classification (ASC) is the task of assigning a semantic label to an audio recording, based on the surrounding environment. In this work, a Fisher network is introduced for ASC. The proposed method mimics the working mechanism of a feed-forward Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) where, output of a layer is fed as an input to the succeeding layer. The Fisher network consists of a feature extraction step followed by a Fisher layer. The Fisher layer has three sub-layers, namely, Fisher Vector (FV) encoder, temporal pyramid and normalization layers along with feature reduction layer. Gammatone Time Cepstral Coefficients (GTCCs) and Mel-spectrograms are the features encoded as Fisher vector representation in FV encoder sub-layer. Temporal information of the Fisher vectors is retained using temporal pyramid sub-layer. After temporal pyramids are extracted from Fisher vectors, they are available as a feature vector. Irrelevant dimensions of the temporal pyramids are reduced further using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in normalization and PCA sub-layers. The proposed model is evaluated on five DCASE datasets, TUT Urban Acoustic Scenes 2018 and Mobile, DCASE 2019 Acoustic Scene Classification Task 1(a) and Task 1(b), TAU Urban Acoustic Scenes 2020 datasets. The overall classification accuracy is 93%, 91%, 92%, 91% and 89% for TUT 2018, TUT Mobile 2018, DCASE Task 1(a) 2019, DCASE Task 1(b) 2019, and TAU Urban Acoustic Scenes 2020 datasets, respectively. The proposed model performed much better than the state-of-the-art ASC systems.

GC-MS/MS Method for Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Herbal Medicines.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are hydrophobic organic contaminants that have a highly carcinogenic and mutagenic nature. This study aimed to develop and validate a sensitive analytical method to determine 8 PAHs in 51 herbal medicines (HMs) using gas chromatography (GC)-tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Liquid--liquid extraction and florisil SPE cartridge purification were basically adopted for pretreatment. For the samples containing essential oil, starch grain, etc., N,N-dimethyl formamide/water mixture (9:1, v/v) was added in the extraction step. The multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) conditions were newly obtained by the infusion of reference solutions of the targeted compounds at a concentration of 100 ng/mL into the GC-MS/MS system used in this study. The 51 items were classified according to whether or not they contained essential oil. Eight PAHs were not detected in 39 (8.3%) of the 459 samples monitored. The total content of 8 PAHs ranged from 0.45 μg/kg in Anemarrhenae Rhizoma to 270.94 μg/kg in Zingiberis Rhizoma. The average content of those ranged from 0.9 μg/kg in Araliae Continentalis Radix to 110.8 μg/kg in Coptidis Rhizoma Preparata cum Vinum. The results of this study prove that the proposed method is useful for determining 8 PAHs in HMs.

Utilizing Condoms in Laparoscopic Gynecologic Cancer Surgeries: A Profitable Safeguard?

Minimally invasive approach is a well-established strategy in the initial exploration or definitive management of the eligible gynecological cancers. It provides the benefits of improved surgical recovery to the patients. However, the last step of the specimen extraction through the smallest incision possible is always challenging for most of the surgeons. The in-bag retrieval of specimen needs utmost attention in most of the malignancies for the preservation of tumor integrity to avoid tumor seedling and upstaging of the disease. The various kinds of commercially available bags are already being utilized for the retrieval of specimens. However, the venture into innovative methods of development of novel and economical specimen retrieval system is desirable owing to the high cost of the commercial endobags. Here, we have described a very simple, safe, and cost-effective technique of specimen retrieval using the ETO sterilized condoms for smaller specimens' extraction in gynecological cancer surgeries.