Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Applied and Environmental Microbiology is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Society for Microbiology. It was established in 1953 as Applied Microbiology and obtained its current name in 1975. Articles older than six months are available free of cost from the website, however, the newly published articles within six months are available to subscribers only. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2013 impact factor of 3.952. The journal has been ranked as one of the top 100 journals over the past 100 years in the fields of biology and medicine. The current editor-in-chief is Harold L. Drake (University of Bayreuth).

The journal's scope includes "(a) applied microbiology, including biotechnology, protein engineering, bioremediation, and food microbiology, (b) microbial ecology, including environmental, organismic, and genomic microbiology, and (c) interdisciplinary microbiology, including invertebrate microbiology, plant microbiology, aquatic microbiology, and geomicrobiology".

Microbial ecology

Microbial ecology (or environmental microbiology) is the ecology of microorganisms: their relationship with one another and with their environment. It concerns the three major domains of life—Eukaryota, Archaea, and Bacteria—as well as viruses.

Microorganisms, by their omnipresence, impact the entire biosphere. Microbial life plays a primary role in regulating biogeochemical systems in virtually all of our planet's environments, including some of the most extreme, from frozen environments and acidic lakes, to hydrothermal vents at the bottom of deepest oceans, and some of the most familiar, such as the human small intestine. As a consequence of the quantitative magnitude of microbial life (Whitman and coworkers calculated 7030500000000000000♠5.0×10³⁰ cells, eight orders of magnitude greater than the number of stars in the observable universe) microbes, by virtue of their biomass alone, constitute a significant carbon sink. Aside from carbon fixation, microorganisms’ key collective metabolic processes (including nitrogen fixation, methane metabolism, and sulfur metabolism) control global biogeochemical cycling. The immensity of microorganisms’ production is such that, even in the total absence of eukaryotic life, these processes would likely continue unchanged.

Drug delivery

Drug delivery refers to approaches, formulations, technologies, and systems for transporting a pharmaceutical compound in the body as needed to safely achieve its desired therapeutic effect. It may involve scientific site-targeting within the body, or it might involve facilitating systemic pharmacokinetics; in any case, it is typically concerned with both quantity and duration of drug presence. Drug delivery is often approached via a drug's chemical formulation, but it may also involve medical devices or drug-device combination products. Drug delivery is a concept heavily integrated with dosage form and route of administration, the latter sometimes even being considered part of the definition.

Drug delivery technologies modify drug release profile, absorption, distribution and elimination for the benefit of improving product efficacy and safety, as well as patient convenience and compliance. Drug release is from: diffusion, degradation, swelling, and affinity-based mechanisms. Most common routes of administration include the preferred non-invasive peroral (through the mouth), topical (skin), transmucosal (nasal, buccal/sublingual, vaginal, ocular and rectal) and inhalation routes. Many medications such as peptide and protein, antibody, vaccine and gene based drugs, in general may not be delivered using these routes because they might be susceptible to enzymatic degradation or can not be absorbed into the systemic circulation efficiently due to molecular size and charge issues to be therapeutically effective. For this reason many protein and peptide drugs have to be delivered by injection or a nanoneedle array. For example, many immunizations are based on the delivery of protein drugs and are often done by injection.

European Journal

European Journal was a weekly, 30-minute Deutsche Welle (DW) news programme produced in English from 1992 - 2014. It was broadcast from Brussels, Belgium and primarily covered political and economic developments across the European Union and the rest of Europe, as well as issues of particular concern to Germany.

In North America, European Journal had previously been available on the now-defunct Newsworld International network. It also aired in New York City on CUNY TV and on some PBS stations.

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Pharmacy

Pharmacy is the science and technique of preparing and dispensing drugs. It is a health profession that links health sciences with chemical sciences and aims to ensure the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs.

The scope of pharmacy practice includes more traditional roles such as compounding and dispensing medications, and it also includes more modern services related to health care, including clinical services, reviewing medications for safety and efficacy, and providing drug information. Pharmacists, therefore, are the experts on drug therapy and are the primary health professionals who optimize use of medication for the benefit of the patients.

An establishment in which pharmacy (in the first sense) is practiced is called a pharmacy (this term is more common in the United States) or a chemist's (which is more common in Great Britain). In the United States and Canada, drugstores commonly sell drugs, as well as miscellaneous items such as confectionery, cosmetics, office supplies, and magazines and occasionally refreshments and groceries.