ToxicologyToxicology is a scientific discipline, overlapping with biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and medicine, that involves the study of the adverse effects of chemical substances on living organisms and the practice of diagnosing and treating exposures to toxins and toxicants. The relationship between dose and its effects on the exposed organism is of high significance in toxicology. Factors that influence chemical toxicity include the dosage, duration of exposure (whether it is acute or chronic), route of exposure, species, age, sex, and environment.
Nonfood cropA nonfood crop, also known as industrial crop, is a crop grown to produce goods for manufacturing, for example fibre for clothing, rather than food for consumption. Industrial crops is a designation given to an enterprise that attempts to raise farm sector income, and provide economic development activities for rural areas. Industrial crops also attempt to provide products that can be used as substitutes for imports from other nations.
Diethyl etherDiethyl ether, or simply ether, is an organic compound in the ether class with the formula or , sometimes abbreviated as . It is a colourless, highly volatile, sweet-smelling ("ethereal odour"), extremely flammable liquid. It is commonly used as a solvent in laboratories and as a starting fluid for some engines. It was formerly used as a general anesthetic, until non-flammable drugs were developed, such as halothane. It has been used as a recreational drug to cause intoxication.
MaizeMaize (meɪz ; Zea mays subsp. mays, from maíz after mahis), also known as corn in North American- and Australian- English, is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant gives rise to inflorescences (or "tassels") which produce pollen and separate ovuliferous inflorescences called ears that when fertilized yield kernels or seeds, which are botanical fruits.
Destructive distillationDestructive distillation is a chemical process in which decomposition of unprocessed material is achieved by heating it to a high temperature; the term generally applies to processing of organic material in the absence of air or in the presence of limited amounts of oxygen or other reagents, catalysts, or solvents, such as steam or phenols. It is an application of pyrolysis. The process breaks up or 'cracks' large molecules.
Meat alternativeA meat alternative or meat substitute (also called plant-based meat, mock meat, or fake meat sometimes pejoratively), is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy (e.g. tofu, tempeh, and textured vegetable protein), but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn.
BioproductBioproducts or bio-based products are materials, chemicals and energy derived from renewable biological material. Biological resources include agriculture, forestry, and biologically derived waste, and there are many other renewable bioresource examples. One of the examples of renewable bioresources is lignocellulose. Lignocellulosic tissues are biologically derived natural resources containing some of the main constituents of the natural world.
Essentially uniqueIn mathematics, the term essentially unique is used to describe a weaker form of uniqueness, where an object satisfying a property is "unique" only in the sense that all objects satisfying the property are equivalent to each other. The notion of essential uniqueness presupposes some form of "sameness", which is often formalized using an equivalence relation. A related notion is a universal property, where an object is not only essentially unique, but unique up to a unique isomorphism (meaning that it has trivial automorphism group).
Metabolic wasteMetabolic wastes or excrements are substances left over from metabolic processes (such as cellular respiration) which cannot be used by the organism (they are surplus or toxic), and must therefore be excreted. This includes nitrogen compounds, water, CO2, phosphates, sulphates, etc. Animals treat these compounds as excretes. Plants have metabolic pathways which transforms some of them (primarily the oxygen compounds) into useful substances.
Hypothetical types of biochemistryHypothetical types of biochemistry are forms of biochemistry agreed to be scientifically viable but not proven to exist at this time. The kinds of living organisms currently known on Earth all use carbon compounds for basic structural and metabolic functions, water as a solvent, and DNA or RNA to define and control their form. If life exists on other planets or moons it may be chemically similar, though it is also possible that there are organisms with quite different chemistries - for instance, involving other classes of carbon compounds, compounds of another element, or another solvent in place of water.
