Sung-Il Kang

The skin functions as the primary interface between the human body and the external environment. To understand how the microbiome varies within urban mass transit and influences the skin microbiota, we profiled the human palm microbiome after contact with handrails within the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system. Intraday sampling time was identified as the primary determinant of the variation and recurrence of the community composition, whereas human-associated species and clinically imp

Abstract This study evaluates the feasibility of two thermal pretreatments including hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) and low temperature pyrolysis (LTP) on the production of Eucommia ulmoides biochar. The waste wood of Eucommia ulmoides Oliver was pretreated and characterized for fuel applications. The results confirm that both LTP and HTC are promising processes for improving fuel properties. However, for the same char yield, the required temperature for HTC is lower than LTP, as the char yiel

Abstract Leveraging metal–organic framework (MOF) to eliminate radioactive contaminants has invariably received much attention, but low preparation efficiency and poor selectivity have still limited its actual application. Herein, it is found that a fourfold interpenetrated cationic MOF (Ag‐TPPE) can be rapidly synthesized by only mixing, stirring, or sonication at room temperature. More impressively, the preparation process can be completed in <1 min. Up to now, this is the first report that

BACKGROUND: Plant expansins and fungal swollenin that can disrupt crystalline cellulose have great potential for applications in conversion of biomass. Recent studies have been mainly focused on Trichoderma reesei swollenin that show relatively low activity in the promotion of cellulosic hydrolysis. Our aim was to isolate a novel swollenin with greater disruptive activity, to establish an efficient way of producing recombinant swollenin, and to optimize the procedure using swollenin in facilitat

Oral antibiotics are commonly prescribed to non-hospitalized adults. However, antibiotic-induced changes in the human gut microbiome are often investigated in cohorts with preexisting health conditions and/or concomitant medication, leaving the effects of antibiotics not completely understood. We used a combination of omic approaches to comprehensively assess the effects of antibiotics on the gut microbiota and particularly the gut resistome of a small cohort of healthy adults. We observed that

In this work, Central Composite Design (CCD) methodology was first introduced to noncatalytic SCWG of lignin for experimental design, model building, and data analysis. Noncatalytic SCWG of lignin was performed in a batch reactor with the specific focus on hydrogen yield optimization. By both experimental and statistical modeling, the main effects as well as interaction effects of three parameters including temperature, pressure, and water to biomass ratio were investigated in a wide range of 39