**Author details**

72 Advanced Aspects of Spectroscopy

(Lin *et al*., 2008).

types.

1996; Russwurm, 1999).

**6. Conclusion**

livestock building behaves such as an accumulation chamber, and methane emission factor

As was described by Lin and coworkers an open-path Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy system can be used for monitoring of VOCs in industrial medium. They used this system to monitor VOCs emissions from a paint manufacturing plant, and they determined seven VOCs in ambient environment. The same system was also used to determine the VOCs in a petrochemical complex. The results obtained were correlated with meteorological data and were effective in the depiction of spatial variations in indentifying sources of VOC emissions. They also mentioned another important advantage of OP-FTIR spectroscopy such as the ability to obtain more comprehensive data than by using the traditional multiple, single-point monitoring methods. It can be concluded that OP-FTIR can be useful in both industrial hygiene and environmental air pollutat regulatory enforcement

Ammonia, CO, methane, ethane, ethylene, acetylene, propylene, cyclohexane, and O-xylene were identified as major emissions in a coke processing area from Taiwan using OP-FTIR system by Lin and coworkers (Lin *et al.,* 2007). Main gaseous byproducts (CO, CO2, CH4 and NH3) of thermal degradation (pyrolysis) of biomass in forest fires were determined accurately using OP-FTIR. The results obtained in this study can help to improve the modelling of the pyrolysis processes in physical-based models for predicting forest fire behaviour (de Castro *et al*., 2007). An other reasearch in this field was performed by Burling and coworkers who measured trace gas emissions from biomass burning of fuel types from the southeastern and southwestern United States (Burling *et al*., 2010) with the help of OP-FTIR. The authors detected and quantified 19 gas-phase species in these fires: CO2, CO, CH4, C2H2, C2H4, C3H6, HCHO, HCOOH, CH3OH, CH3COOH, furan, H2O, NO, NO2, HONO, NH3, HCN, HCl, and SO2. The emission factors depend on the fuel composition and fuel

All the advantages of OP-FTIR spectroscopy and all the studies mentioned above demonstrate the utility of OP-FTIR in measuring and monitoring of atmospheric gases. This technique has increasingly been accepted by different environmental agencies as a tool in the measurement and the monitoring of the atmospheric gases (Russwurm and Childers,

All these presented above show the importance of FTIR spectroscopy in environmental studies. The major advantages of this technique are: real time data collection and reporting, excellent sample-to-sample reproductibility, enhanced frequency accuracy, high signal-tonoise ratios, superior sensitivity, analytical performance. In addition, the measurement is very rapid so that a large number of samples can be analyzed. Consequently FTIR spectroscopy coupled with other techniques is widely used to determine the nature of pollutants (gaseous, liquid or solid), to monitor environment, to asses the impact of pollution on health and environment, to determine the level of decontamination processes.

was lower than the proposed by Emission Inventory (Briz *et al*., 2009).

#### Claudia Maria Simonescu

*Department of Analytical Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Applied Chemistry and Materials Science, "Politehnica" University of Bucharest, Romania*


**Acknowledgements**

The authors acknowledge start-up funds from Westlake University to the Center of Excellence in Biomedical Research on Advanced Integrated-On-Chips Neurotechnologies (CenBRAIN Neurotech) for supporting this research project. This work was funded in part by the Zhejiang Key R&D Program Project No. 2021C03002 and in part by the Zhejiang Leading Innovative and Entrepreneur Team Introduction Program No. 2020R01005.


**Author details**

Nebil Belaid\* École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Sfax, Laboratoire de Radio-Analyses et Environnement, ENIS, BP W, 3038 Sfax, Tunisie

\*Address all correspondence to<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Tertiary Treatment for Safely Treated Wastewater Reuse DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94872*


Preface

Bioinformatics is a catalyzer of modern life sciences research. Its development and impact in life sciences is fundamental to understand the scientific progress in the last decades. Bioinformatics fosters the development of computational solutions that facilitate a qualitative and quantitative understanding of life, that is, it supports the interpretation of data coming from life sciences experiments. It is a multidisciplinary area which requires a collaborative effort.

This book describes several of the most important areas in Bioinformatics, grouped into five main sections. In the first section, the importance and relevance of biological networks and their relevance is explained and its potential is exploited in different research areas. The second one describes the latest developments and applications in the active field of next generation sequencing. Since Bioinformatics studies requires the use of high performance computing resources, the third section describes its exploitation in different scenarios. Detailed reviews of molecular modeling and advanced aspects of its application in drug discovery scenarios are described in the fourth section. Exposition of the relevance of structural bioinformatics is described in the fifth section, and the last part of the book shows different studies where the application of intelligent data analysis techniques has been elegantly employed.

The objective of the book is to give a general view of the different areas of Bioinformatics, and each of them both introduces basic concepts and then explains its application to problems of great relevance, so both novice and expert readers can benefit from the information and research works presented here.

> **Dr. Horacio Pérez-Sánchez** Computer Engineering Department, School of Computer Science, University of Murcia, Spain

**Section 1**

**Analysis of Biological Networks**

**Section 1**

**Analysis of Biological Networks**

**Chapter 1**

© 2012 Kher et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2012 Kher et al., licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Hierarchical Biological Pathway**

Shubhalaxmi Kher, Jianling Peng, Eve Syrkin Wurtele and Julie Dickerson

Biological pathway data is the key resource for biologists worldwide. Interestingly, most of these sources that generate, update, and analyze data are open source. One of the observations that motivated this research work is that, the repositories of data created by a variety of laboratories and research units worldwide represent same pathways with significant details. Generally, if the pathway data has resulted from experimentation, then it is expected that across different resources, under similar conditions, pathways would be exactly identical and biologists may pickup from any source. Interestingly, almost all of the biological data sources refer to data integration of some kind. It may involve rigorous integration mechanisms within the data source and the purpose of integration may change

These efforts in integration may be either local to the source or lack details associated with integration within a pathway, across pathways, or from various data sources etc. Further, the key attributes or design criteria may not be well documented and or may not be readily available to the biologist. In other words, the integration may be achieved as vertical integration (within the data source), or horizontal integration (across data sources). Since most of the extensively integrated data sources (plants or humans) like BioCyc-level-I, Reactome are human curated, it is hard to identify the integration done by the sources like; BioCyc. Also, on a similar note, it may not be apparent to find exactly when the data was

Data in general refers to a collection of results, including the results of experience, observation, or experiment, or a set of premises and can be utilized at the maximum when made available to all in a common format. Different organizations and research laboratories around the world store the data in their own formats; this diversity of data sources is caused due to many factors including lack of coordination among the organizations and research

**Data Integration and Mining**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

the perspective of looking at the integration.

integrated looking at a pathway.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/49974

**1. Introduction**


**4.2 Reduction of salt**

Reducing the consumption of salt in general population has been identified as a priority intervention to reduce NCDs. Indeed, the World Health Organization has

agreed to diminish 30% of salt intake by 2025. The use of vegetable extracts able to enhance flavor while improving health benefits arises as a promising alternative. Under this framework, extracts rich in PC have been already used in food industry. Indeed, green tea extracts were used to enhance the flavor of fish flesh [75], soybean isoflavones enhance the flavor quality in the muscle of grass carp while contribute to health benefits [76]. Furthermore, PC-rich extracts containing aromatic compounds such as onion, garlic, celery spices and herbs could also be a nutraceutical alternative to reduce salt.

#### **4.3 Preservative agents**

Spoilage are one of the main causes of economic loses in food industry [77]. Traditionally, the use of artificial preservative technologies such as drying, freezing, thermal treatments and more recently modified atmosphere packaging and nonthermal physical treatments (pulsed electric fields and high hydrostatic pressure) have been employed to extend shelf life of food [78]. Synthetic chemical preservatives such as, tartaric or citric acids; sulphites, sorbate, propionate and benzoate; or nitrites and nitrates, have been extensively used but in recent times the use of natural products as preservative agents acquire relevance [79]. The increase in the consumption of minimally processed foods joined with the clean label requirements boost the trend to explore the use of natural antimicrobials for food preservation. PC have been widely reported as antimicrobial agents [80]. Indeed antimicrobial extracts containing PCs have been already designed for this purposes, such as an extract of moso bamboo (Takeguard™) launched by Takex Labo (Osaka, Japan) or a mixture of different natural antimicrobial extracts (Biovia™ YM10) including green tea extract launched by Danisco DuPont [81]. **Table 1** summarizes the already tested PC from food byproducts with antimicrobial properties.

#### **4.4 Colorant agents**

Some PC are natural pigments with high potential to be incorporated into food systems as colorant agents. However, the great reactivity and lack of chemical stability make necessary to deliver these compounds in encapsulated forms. Among PC sources, flowers such as *Clitoria ternatea* petals are commonly used in health drinks and natural food colorants [95]. Moreover, Brazilian fruit peel - jabuticaba (*Plinia cauliflora* (Mart.) Kausel) and propolis from Tubuna (*Scaptotrigona bipunctata*) encapsulated in alginate beds have been tested as a new ingredient with colorant properties and health outcomes [96]. Betacyanins (red-violet) and betaxanthins (yellow-orange), from beets are also powerful antioxidants, which can be used as natural colorants in the food industry [97]. Furthermore, pecan nut shell has been already studied as a food colorant for active packaging for color stabilization [98].

#### **4.5 Emulsifier agents**

New alternatives to reduce the content of saturated fats while maintaining the emulsifying properties of sauces must be evaluated. To date, some amphiphilic plant proteins such as wheat gliadins and maize zeins have rheological properties suitable to fabricate colloidal particles for stabilizing foams and emulsions. However, in recent years the use of novel emulsifiers to obtain nutraceutical emulsions are being studied. In this context, the ability of PC to bind to proteins have been described as able to improve the chemical and physical stability of emulsions, arising as a good source of nutraceuticals while emulsifier agents. The emulsifying

#### **Table 1.**

*Polyphenols as food preservatives. Adapted from [81].*

properties of proteins have also been modified by introducing polysaccharides; however, little to nothing is known about how ternary interactions could affect the physical stability of emulsions. Ternary conjugates were fabricated by covalently bonding polyphenol, protein, and polysaccharide together. The protein was used to provide surface activity, the polysaccharide to provide strong steric repulsion, and the PC to provide functional properties [99]. But, some PC have poor interfacial activity, like green tea PCs [100]. However, the interaction between green tea PC and the protein β-lactoglobulin (β-lg) (spontaneous nanocomplexes formation) was sucesfully used as an emulsifier agent in fish oil [101]. Colloidal complexes were also prepared from pea protein and grape seed proanthocyanidin and the ability of these complexes to form and stabilize oil-in-water emulsions were verified [102]. Overall, covalent and noncovalent interactions between proteins and PC have provide novel insights into the interfacial behaviors of novel emulsifiers [103].

#### **4.6 Matrix effect**

There are several factors which could influence the PC delivery to bloodstream, to their target tissues and biological activities. Disruption of the natural matrix or the microstructure created during processing may influence the release, transformation, and further absorption of some nutrients as well as functional ingredients such as PC in the digestive tract. Some *in vitro* studies verified the effect of milk proteins in PC bioaccesibility and bioactivities after consuming oat based breakfast cereals with blueberry fruit [104]. The absorption of flavanols, such as green tea catechins, is influenced by epimerization reactions, which usually occur during technological processing as well as the presence of lipids and carbohydrates. Moreover is enhanced by the presence of piperine and tartaric acid [105]. Phenolic acids and Flavanones such as hesperidin are affected by the attached sugar, which can covalently link these compounds to the cereal bran matrix [106, 107]. There are only a few examples reported on PC release from the food matrix, but existing information established a direct relationship between the absorption and dose but is sometimes linear and sometimes saturated [108]. The lack of systematic information on the effects of other components on the bioavailability of PCs needs to be performed. This information must be completed by human studies to further establish general principles affecting absorption in vivo. Information derived from such experiments could be useful for the optimal design of future bioefficacy studies for functional foods production.