We found that shochu slop, the residue generated during the production of distilled shochu liquor, which must be treated as industrial waste, can be used as an excellent medium for Escherichia coli culture. LB medium is generally used in laboratories for culturing E. coli. However, it is not the optimal medium for E. coli culture because the bacterial cells cannot grow to very high densities in LB medium. On the other hand, E. coli can grow to higher densities in Terrific broth and this medium is used when researchers want to grow E. coli to high density or to obtain a protein with high yield. In this study, we removed solid matter from shochu slop, adjusted the pH of the mixture to 7 and subsequently used the slop for E. coli culture. The ability of shochu slop to support E. coli growth was compared with those of LB Miller medium and Terrific broth. The results indicate that sweet potato shochu slop as culture medium for E. coli is comparable to Terrific broth and much better than LB Miller medium in terms of supporting cell proliferation, and plasmid and enzyme production. Significance and Impact of the Study Shochu manufacturers incur a cost to dispose shochu slop, which is recognized as food manufactural residues. Escherichia coli has been used in laboratories and in industry. However, culture media used in the laboratories are expensive and those used in industry are expensive because of their large scale. We found that sweet potato shochu slop is an excellent culture medium for E. coli. This finding is not only useful for laboratories and industry, but also beneficial to the effective utilization of this renewable resource to create a sustainable society.

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Influence of the strength and the asymmetry of input‐output ports on the measurement of complex permittivity by the resonant cavity perturbation method was investigated experimentally.We adopted the |S21| as the criterion of the strength, and the difference between S11 and S22 as the criterion of the asymmetry. When the coupling is symmetric, the real part of permittivity can be evaluated in strong coupling state up to −3 dB of coupling. The imaginary part of permittivity can be evaluated up to −14 dB of coupling. Imaginary part of the relative permittivity ε″r was calculated using the conventional equation, which is based on the complete symmetry of the coupling of input‐output ports. For the measurement of high‐Q materials, calculated ε″r is strongly affected by the asymmetry in the strongly coupled region. For the measurement of lossy materials, the inevitable asymmetry and the strong coupling allow enough exact evaluation of ε″r. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 52: 706–709, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24988

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