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A wide variety of biomass is available all around the world. Most of the biomass exists as a by-product from manufacturing industries. Pulp and paper mills contribute to a higher amount of these biomasses mostly discarded in the landfills creating an environmental burden. Biomasses from other sources have been used to produce different kinds and grades of biomaterials such as those used in industrial and medical applications. The present review aims to investigate the availability of biomass from pulp and paper mills and show sustainable routes for the production of high value-added biomaterials. The study reveals that using conventional and integrated biorefinery technology the ample variety and quantity of waste generated from pulp and paper mills can be converted into wealth. As per the findings of the current review, it is shown that high-performance carbon fiber and bioplastic can be manufactured from black liquor of pulping waste; the cellulosic waste from sawdust and sludge can be utilized for the synthesis of CNC and regenerated fibers such as viscose rayon and acetate; the mineral-based pulping wastes and fly ash can be used for manufacturing of different kinds of biocomposites. The different biomaterials obtained from the pulp and paper mill biomass can be used for versatile applications including conventional, high performance, and smart materials. Through customization and optimization of the conversion techniques and product manufacturing schemes, a variety of engineering materials can be obtained from pulp and paper mill wastes realizing the current global waste to wealth developmental approach.

In this paper, we present a system for automatic evaluation of the quality of a question paper. Question paper plays a major role in educational assessment. The quality of a question paper is crucial to fulfilling the purpose of the assessment. In many education sectors, question papers are prepared manually. A prior analysis of a question paper might help in finding the errors in the question paper, and better achieving the goals of the assessment. In this experiment, we focus on higher education in the technical domain. First, we conducted a student survey to identify the key factors that affect the quality of a question paper. The top factors we identified are question relevance, question difficulty, and time requirement. We explored the strategies to handle these factors and implemented them. We employ various concepts and techniques for the implementation. The system finally assigns a numerical quality score against these factors. The system is evaluated using a set of question papers collected from various sources. The experimental results show that the proposed system is quite promising.

Water-activated paper-based batteries are expected to be low-cost disposable power sources for paper-based sensor applications. In this study, a disposable paper-based battery was developed. The battery used activated carbon powder loaded on a carbon sheet as the anode. The cathode was coated directly on a paper filter to fabricate an integrated proton exchange membrane cathode. Copper (II) chloride mixed with multiwalled carbon nanotube (CuCl2/CNT) was used as the cathode. Water was injected into the anode electrode to activate the battery. The maximum power density of 134. 6 μ W /cm2 was obtained with the anode loaded 17 mg cm−2 activated carbon powder. The power output of the battery is proportional to the amount of activated carbon loaded on the anode.

As a new type of energy harvesting device, the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) can convert mechanical energy into electrical energy effectively. Paper-based materials have gained considerable attention for use in flexible energy harvesting device applications because of their flexibility, environmental friendliness (i.e., they are biodegradable and renewable), and foldability. This work proposes a strategy to use cellulose fibers layer as a spacer of paper-based triboelectric nanogenerator (P-TENG). The P-TENG consists of a three-layer fiber material and a copper electrode. The three-layer fiber material comprises nylon, cellulose, and polypropylene, where the cellulose fiber layer contains millimeter-sized holes and is used as a spacer. Because of its attractive cuttability and flexibility properties, the P-TENG can be applied on a large scale in complex environments (e.g., sports fields, driving training fields) to detect signal changes caused by external pressure This type of device has great potential for application to the large-scale TENG field and may provide a new solution for TENG industrialization.

In recent history, the Panama Papers have comprised one of the largest and most influential leaks detailing information on offshore entities, company officers and financial (and legal) intermediaries, and has led to a global exposé of corruption and tax evasion. A systematic analysis of this information can provide valuable insights into the structure and properties of these entities and the relations between them. Network science can be applied as a scientific framework for understanding the structure of such relational, heterogeneous datasets at scale. In this article, we use an existing, relational version of the Panama Papers to selectively construct various networks, and then study the properties of the underlying system using well-defined analytical methods from network science, including degree properties, country assortativity analyses, connectivity and single-point network metrics like transitivity and density. We also illustrate significant structural features in these networks by conducting a triad census and exploring the networks’ core-periphery structure. Together, these results are used to show that the Panama Papers constitute a distinct class of networks that differ significantly from ordinary social and information networks. We also propose, construct and analyze ‘higher-order’ networks from the raw data, such as a ‘social’ network of officers. We confirm that some of these higher-order networks also show significant non-random deviations from expected or typical behavior, including in their degree distributions.

Water is a prerequisite for the existence of life on earth. Rapid growth in the global population and industrialization have created a dearth of freshwater resources. Escalating water scarcity suggests that the use of passive solar stills is the most suitable and viable option in the arid and semi-arid areas around the world. In this study, the yield of wick type floating solar still is experimentally investigated for different wick materials. Capillary rise and absorbency of two different absorbers are considered as performance parameters for analysis of the research. Based on results, crepe paper with absorbency (1.8s) and capillary rise (112mm/h) proved a better absorber for higher productivity of the still. The efficiency of still with crepe paper was observed to be 16.68% higher than that of glass fiber sheet when applied in still during the investigation. The maximum internal temperature and the productivity of still were 9.1°C and 0.8 L/day respectively higher when crepe paper was used instead of a glass fiber sheet as a wicking material.

Trap plays an important role in the charge transportation of three-layer oil-paper and the investigation of trap parameters at different degradation degree is of great significance for further research of the partial discharge (PD) mechanism. This article considers the turn-to-turn structure of on-board traction transformer. A defect model of three-layer oil-paper insulation was designed for PD test. The PD degradation samples are selected from the inception of PD to the breakdown of PD to study the characteristics of surface potential decay on degradation samples by using isothermal surface potential decay method. Given that, the trap distribution at different degradation stages was calculated and its influence on PD characteristics was investigated. The result shows that AC fluctuation voltages caused by inter-harmonic has a great influence on PD distribution, surface charge distribution and trap distribution. With the increase of degradation, the decay rate of surface potential increases and the decay rate of AC fluctuation voltages is larger than that pure AC. And also, the number of shallow trap with AC fluctuation voltages is larger than that with pure AC. The rate of free charge increases with the number of shallow trap increasing. More free electrons involves in the process of PD, accelerating the aging rate of three-layer oil paper samples. Therefore, it can be concluded that surface charge and trap distribution are helpful to clarify PD mechanism.

The low frequency section of frequency domain spectroscopy (FDS) of oil-paper insu- lation system can effectively reflect the ageing state and moisture of the oil-immersed paper. Meanwhile, steady-state insulation resistance is the one of indexes for the condition of transformer. In actual measurement, these two both are time-consuming and poor accessibility, thereby restraining their field applications. Aim at this problem, this paper analyses the polarization process of the oil-paper insulation in transformer, and adopts a low frequency equivalent circuit model for the oil-paper insulation to characterize the polarization process at low frequency. The simulated annealing particle swarm optimization (SAPSO) algorithm is proposed to identify the parameters in equivalent circuit, which are affected by change of insulation state. Compared with the experimental results, the errors of the steady-state insulation resistance and the tan δ below 10-3 Hz, which are calculated by the identified parameters, are less than 2.5%. This method can avoid the influence from external environment and reduce the measurement time. The time and frequency domain parameters calculated can provide reference for the ageing assessment of oil-immersed paper.

Woody and agricultural wastes are important fuels in many countries, and have the potential of being even more important in the future. The main problems of plant biomass combustion are low ash melting temperatures and increased emissions. The most widely used treatment to solve the problem of low ash melting point is blending a fuel with an additive. In this work, pellets were produced from wheat straw containing wood sawdust and paper sludge in the following proportions 40:40:20 and 45:45:10 (straw/sawdust/paper sludge). The purpose of this work was to study the influence of sludge and dendromass on the straw pellet parameters and combustion process. The highest calorific value of 15.71 MJ kg&minus, 1 was registered for a sample with a 10% paper sludge concentration. The effectiveness of paper sludge was proved, and the ash melting temperature was increased from 1025 to 1328 &deg, C for the same sample.

Background The implementation of an electronic health record (EHR) with structured and standardized recording of patient data can improve data quality and reusability. Whether and how users perceive these advantages may depend on the preimplementation situation. Objective To determine whether the influence of implementing a structured and standardized EHR on perceived EHR use, data quality, and data reuse differed for users working with paper-based records versus a legacy EHR before implementation. Methods We used an electronic questionnaire to measure users' perception before implementation (2014), expected change, and perceived change after implementation (2016) on three themes. We included all health care professionals in two university hospitals in the Netherlands. Before jointly implementing the same structured and standardized EHR, one hospital used paper-based records and the other a legacy EHR. We compared perceptions before and after implementation for both centers. Additionally, we compared expected benefit with perceived benefit. Results We received 7,611 responses (4,537 before and 3,074 after implementation) of which 5,707 (75%) were from professionals reading and recording patient data. A total of 975 (13%) professionals responded to both before and after implementation questionnaires. In the formerly paper-based center staff perceived improvement in all themes after implementation. The legacy EHR center experienced deterioration of perceived EHR use and data reuse, and only one improvement in EHR use. In both centers, for half of the aspects at least 45% of responders experienced results worse than expected preimplementation. Conclusion Our results indicate that the preimplementation recording practice impacts the perceived effect of the implementation of a structured and standardized EHR. For almost half of the respondents the new EHR did not meet their expectations. Especially legacy EHR centers need to investigate the expectations as these might be different and less clear cut than those in paper-based centers. These expectations need to be addressed appropriately to achieve a successful implementation.

The metal casting industry, Nitikan is a micro business whose production process is carried out manually. The equipment used is simple and without considering the user's health. This can be seen in the product finishing process that uses a sanding machine. The equipment is not designed according to the user's posture so the operator bends in doing work movements, of course this is very risky to experience lower back pain injuries. This study aims to analyze the work activities of the finishing process using the Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) approach and design work tools that can be applied to improve work posture. The results of data processing and analysis obtained a Rapid Entire Body Assessment score on a sandpaper machine single head of 5 and a Rapid Upper Limb Assessment score of 4, the score indicates that the work position has the potential to experience a risk of low back pain, so there must be an improvement in work posture. Work posture improvement is done by designing a tool in the form of a sandpaper machine that takes into account ergonomic dimensions to reduce the risk of lower back injury. The final result after the improvement is obtained Rapid Entire Body Assessment score of 3 and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment score of 4. This shows that the risk of lower back injuries can be minimized.

Paper waste is a raw material for a lot of products with different added value. The engineering, economic and environmental aspects of paper waste recycling are analysed for production of composite material, cellulose nanofibers and nanocrystals, bricks with paper components, porous carbon, film of biopolymer, enzymatic sugar and bioenergy: bioethanol, hydrogen and biofuel. Through multicriteria analysis, it was possible to determine the most feasible paper waste recycling product in case of four product groups: egg packaging boxes, cardboard, reused paper, cellulose nanomaterials (nanofibers and nanocrystals). The production of cellulose nanofibres and cellulose nanocrystals has an advantage over egg packaging and cardboard production as well as reusable paper.

We have studied the surface structure of tamper-proof paper with positive and negative watermarks at different scales ‒ from a micrometer to a nanometer level, by using the methods of contact profilometry and atomic force microscopy. Experimental research has confirmed that the structural parameters of the tamper-proof paper's surface differ at regions with and without watermarks. The results of measurements by a contact profilometer have made it possible to trace a correlation between values of the profile's mean arithmetic deviation and the presence of watermarks. It was determined that the value for the profile's largest height does not depend on a measurement region, which could be related to the chaotic arrangement of fibers and particles of the filler in the paper bulk that protrude above the profile's line. By analyzing the value of the profile's mean arithmetic deviation obtained by using a method of atomic-force microscopy, it was found that for regions with negative watermarks it is larger than that for regions with positive watermarks. The dependence of the profile's largest height on measurement region is not clearly observed. This may be due to that the size of the examined region (3,000×3,000 nm) covers only part of the pulp fibers. Thus, the results of our analysis allow us to argue that both methods are suitable for estimating the characteristics of paper's surface, and determine the character of interaction between a given type of paper and printing inks during printing process. In particular, it has been established that the method of profilometry makes it possible to determine parameters of the paper's surface profile, formed in a certain way, while the atomic force microscopy method allows analysis of the morphology of its components, located at the surface (fibers, filler's particles, etc.). The availability of information on the structural properties of paper makes it possible to predict the quality of printing reproduction, specifically clearness of reproduction of thin guilloche lines on watermarks, which is relevant because it prevents flaws in printing products for special purposes.

The effect of paper thermal destruction on its luminescence spectra and luminescence excitation spectra in the spectral ranges of 400-550 nm and 250-450 nm, respectively, was studied. It is proposed to use the characteristic changes in the intensity and shape of the luminescence spectra as a criterion for the state of paper insulation of power transformers. On the basis of the analysis performed, it was concluded that when luminescence is excited at a wavelength of 360 nm, none of the main components of the paper can contribute to the recorded luminescence spectra. It is assumed that the resulting luminescence spectra are due to the emission of various impurities that enter the paper during its production.

The Gaussian wiretap channel with noncausal state interference available at the transmitter, which is also called the dirty paper wiretap channel (DP-WTC), has been extensively studied in the literature. Recently, it has been shown that taking actions on the corrupted state interference of the DP-WTC (also called the action-dependent DP-WTC) helps to increase the secrecy capacity of the DP-WTC. Subsequently, it has been shown that channel feedback further increases the secrecy capacity of the action-dependent DP-WTC (AD-DP-WTC), and a sub-optimal feedback scheme is proposed for this feedback model. In this paper, a two-step hybrid scheme and a corresponding new lower bound on the secrecy capacity of the AD-DP-WTC with noiseless feedback are proposed. The proposed new lower bound is shown to be optimal (achieving the secrecy capacity) and tighter than the existing one in the literature for some cases, and the results of this paper are further explained via numerical examples.

The textile industry is resource-intensive, which has a significant impact on global emissions and waste pollution. To meet the demand of textiles over a third of fibres used in manufacturing are sourced from fossil fuels. As the global demand for textiles continues to grow, manufacturers are having to seek innovative approaches to providing sustainable and regenerative cellulose fibres. However, the latest climate change pressures on the textile industry have uncovered grave environmental issues associated with traditional regenerative cellulose production, such as the viscose manufacturing process. The viscose process requires intensive use of hazardous chemicals which leads to water pollution and ecotoxicity. In addition, if forestry products are unsustainably sourced for this process, this can lead to resource scarcity and deforestation. To provide a holistic solution for mitigating these challenges this study uses the by-products of paper manufacturing dissolved in an ionic liquid to produce regenerated cellulose filaments. Paper mill sludge (PMS) is a cellulosic by-product typically used on animal bedding and land spreading. The material has been dissolved in an ionic liquid - 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium diethyl phosphate - with the aid of a co-solvent dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) - and spun into continuous filaments for textile production. The mechanical properties of paper sludge filaments are found to be competitive with commercial viscose, which is promising for their drop-in replacement. It is also demonstrated that by increasing the concentration of the PMS from 9% to 12.4%, an improvement of the filament properties can be achieved; an increase in modulus from ∼19 GPa to ∼26 GPa and strength from ∼223 MPa to ∼282 MPa. These values are shown to be competitive with other commercial, less sustainable, regenerated cellulose fibres.

The recycled paper industry produces tons of waste whose disposal is a cost for industry and the environment. This research examines the suitability of de-inked paper sludge (DPS), after pelletization, as a sustainable alternative component to a peat-based growing media, creating ideal root conditions for tree development (e.g. high water storage, low compaction). DPS, tested on Lepidium sativum L. germination, did not show toxicity effects. Three species, Quercus ilex L., Lagerstroemia indica L. and Prunus serrulata “Kanzan”, were planted in 40 cm O pots filled with a control (peat, pumice and zeolite) and the experimental substrate (compost, DPS pellets, pumice and zeolite). After two years in the nursery, the trees were planted in situ. The physical and chemical properties of substrates were analyzed. Plant morphological and physiological parameters were monitored: trunk diameter, leaf dry matter, leaf nitrogen, chlorophyll, and photosynthetic efficiency. The new substrate showed higher Corg (+135%), total N (+73%) and easily available water (+19%), compared to the control substrate used in the nursery. In this new substrate, the trees showed similar radial growth values to the control in the nursery and after transplanting in situ improved their photosynthetic performance in terms of quantum yield of photosystem II (+36%, and +29% in P. serrulata and L. indica, respectively) and electron transport rate (+39%, +25%, and +32% in P. serrulata, Q. ilex and L. indica, respectively). Pelletization represents an attractive amendment for growing media, which enhances the plant’s physiological health status. This study proposes alternative recovery methods for paper industry waste with low environmental impact. As the process is developed locally, it should also contribute to reducing energy-related CO2 emissions from transport. Pelletization represents an attractive novelty in the use of DPS as amendment for growing media, which enhances the plant’s physiological health status. This study proposes alternative recovery methods for paper industry waste with low environmental impact. As the process is developed locally, it should also contribute to reducing energy-related CO2 emissions from transport.

Valorization of industrial low-value side-streams are of great interest, contributing to boosts in the circular economy. In this context, lignin side-streams of the pulp and paper industry were oxypropylated to produce biobased polyols and tested in the synthesis of rigid polyurethane (RPU) foams. E. globulus lignins, namely a lignin isolated from an industrial Kraft black liquor and depolymerized lignins obtained as by-products of an oxidation process, were used. RPU foams, synthesized with 100% lignin-based polyols and using a 1.1 NCO/OH ratio, were characterized concerning apparent density, morphology, thermal conductivity, thermal stability, and heat release rate (HRR). Foams containing the lignin-based polyols presented densities varying from 44.7 to 112.2 kg/m3 and thermal conductivity in the range of 37.2–49.0 mW/mK. For the reference foam (sample produced with 100% wt. Daltofoam TP 32015 polyol), values of 70.9 kg/m3 and 41.1 mW/mK were obtained, respectively. The achieved results point out the viability of using the generated lignin-based polyols at 100% content in RPU foams, mainly when depolymerized lignins are used. Moreover, fire retardancy was favored when the lignin-based polyols were introduced. The proposed strategies can contribute to establishing the integrated pulp and paper biorefinery concept where material synthesis (polyols and RPU foams) can be combined with chemical production (vanillin and syringaldehyde). Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) and FEDER under Program PT2020 for financial support to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020), and to UIDB/50020/2020 of the Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM—funded by national funds through FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC); national funding by FCT, PI, through the institutional scientific employment program contract for Isabel P. Fernandes. This work was carried out under the Project No. 33969 Bioblocks—Design of biobased products from renewable lignocellulosic sources as precursors for the bioindustry of chemical synthesis and biomaterials—financed by FEDER through the Operational Program for Competitiveness Factors (POFC) and QREN. To COST Action LignoCOST (CA17128) supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

When conducting a search for research papers, the search should return comprehensive results related to the user’s query. In general, a user inputs a Boolean query that reflects the information need, and the search engine ranks the research papers based on the query. However, it is difficult to anticipate all possible terms that authors of relevant papers might have used. Moreover, general query-based ranking methods emphasize how to rank the relevant documents at the top of the results, but require some means of guaranteeing the comprehensiveness of the results. Therefore, two ranking methods that consider the comprehensiveness of relevant papers are proposed. The first uses a topic-based Boolean query search. This search converts every word in the abstract set and query into a topic via topic analysis by Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and conducts a search at the topic level. The topic assigned to synonyms of a search term is expected to be the same as that assigned to the search term. Each paper is ranked based on the number of times it is matched with each topic-based Boolean query search executed for various LDA parameter settings. The second is a hybrid method that emphasizes better results from our topic-based ranking result and a general query-based ranking result. This method is based on the observation that the paper sets retrieved by our method and by a general ranking method will be different. Through experiments using the NTCIR-1 and -2 datasets, the effectiveness of our topic-based and hybrid methods are demonstrated.

With the increasing advance of computer and information technologies, numerous research papers have been published online as well as offline, and as new research fields have been continuingly created, users have a lot of trouble in finding and categorizing their interesting research papers. In order to overcome the limitations, this paper proposes a research paper classification system that can cluster research papers into the meaningful class in which papers are very likely to have similar subjects. The proposed system extracts representative keywords from the abstracts of each paper and topics by Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) scheme. Then, the K-means clustering algorithm is applied to classify the whole papers into research papers with similar subjects, based on the Term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) values of each paper.

There is a lot of investment in research on displaying texture through a stylus pen. However, little is known about the effect of a stylus pen that can provide the texture of pen and paper on user experience. This study investigated whether there is a change in user experience when using a stylus pen that can provide pen-and-paper texture compared with a typical stylus pen. Experiments involving writing and drawing tasks using three tools (a stylus pen that can provide pen-and-paper texture, a typical stylus pen, and analogue pen and paper) were conducted, and user experiences were compared. After a literature review that examined the factors affecting the experience of using a pen, the experiments were conducted to measure usability and emotions. We found little difference between the typical stylus pen and the stylus pen in providing texture in respect of completion time and amount of error. However, the stylus pen that can provide texture showed results closer to those of the analogue pen and paper, and better results than those of the typical stylus pen in respect of familiarity and overall satisfaction of the usability and emotional variables. Therefore, this study confirmed that user experience is improved when using a stylus pen that can provide the texture of pen and paper. Daar is al baie belê en nagevors in die nabootsing van die pen-op-papier gevoel van 'n elektroniese stilus. Daar is egter weinige inligting beskikbaar oor die effek wat tekstuur op gebruikers-ervaring het. Hierdie studie ondersoek of daar n verandering in gebruikerservaring is wanneer n stilus met pen-op-papier terugvoer gebruik word teenoor n tipiese stilus wat nie terugvoer aan die gebruiker lewer nie. Eksperimente wat skryf en teken-take insluit is met drie gereedskapstukke (n stilus met pen-op-papier terugvoer, n tipiese stilus, en n konvensionele pen op papier) uitgevoer. Na n literatuurstudie van stapel gestuur is, is die eksperimente uitgevoer om die bruikbaarheid en subjektiewe terugvoer van die gebruiker te bepaal. Die resultate toon min verskil tussen n tipiese stilus en een met die pen-op-papier gevoel, beide in terme van die tyd om die take te voltooi en die aantal foute begaan. Die stilus met pen-op-papier terugvoer se vertoning was nader aan die van n tradisionele pen, asook beter subjektiewe terugvoer van die gebruiker in terme van vertroudheid en algehele bevrediging. Die gevolgtrekking is dus dat n stilus met pen-op-papier terugvoer gebruikerservaring verbeter.

Indigenous plants are widely abundant in Mauritius and if made proper use of, these renewable plants can contribute largely to the local economic sector. This paper assesses the suitability of producing eco-friendly and biodegradable papers using low-cost raw materials by means of fibre from Pandanus utilis’ leaves commonly known as ‘Vacoas’. The leaves were used along with Arundo donax or wastepaper to manufacture composite paper samples in the ratios of 20:80, 40:60, 60:40, 80:20 and 100:0. Chemical pulping was done through Kraft process for a period of 1.5 h at a concentration of 14 wt% NaOH and 4 wt% Na2S at 90 ± 2.5 °C. The mean thickness of the papers was determined to be 0.261 ± 0.027 mm. It was found that the 100% Vacoas fibres had the highest absorbency rate of 1.8 ± 0.5 s followed by the composite A. donax and Vacoas fibre (1.8 ± 0.3 s). The most abrasion resistant paper which also demonstrated the highest burst index of 0.63 kPa m2 g− 1 and tensile index 11.8 N m g− 1 was observed to be that of 100:0 Vacoas fibre paper requiring 35 turns to get abraded followed by the P. utilis and A. donax mix where the 80:20 fibre ratio revealed a high bursting index of 0.45 kPa m2 g− 1 requiring 25 turns to get abraded while 40% P. utilis and 60% A. donax had a high tensile strength of 11.9 N m g− 1. Vacoas to wastepaper mix ratios of 20:80 and 40:60 were found to have the highest mean recovery angles of 61.3 and 59.6°, respectively.

Researchers from academia and the corporate-sector rely on scholarly digital libraries to access articles. Attackers take advantage of innocent users who consider the articles' files safe and thus open PDF-files with little concern. In addition, researchers consider scholarly libraries a reliable, trusted, and untainted corpus of papers. For these reasons, scholarly digital libraries are an attractive-target and inadvertently support the proliferation of cyber-attacks launched via malicious PDF-files. In this study, we present related vulnerabilities and malware distribution approaches that exploit the vulnerabilities of scholarly digital libraries. We evaluated over two-million scholarly papers in the CiteSeerX library and found the library to be contaminated with a surprisingly large number (0.3-2%) of malicious PDF documents (over 55% were crawled from the IPs of US-universities). We developed a two layered detection framework aimed at enhancing the detection of malicious PDF documents, Sec-Lib, which offers a security solution for large digital libraries. Sec-Lib includes a deterministic layer for detecting known malware, and a machine learning based layer for detecting unknown malware. Our evaluation showed that scholarly digital libraries can detect 96.9% of malware with Sec-Lib, while minimizing the number of PDF-files requiring labeling, and thus reducing the manual inspection efforts of security-experts by 98%.

The aging of the transformer oil-paper insulation distributes spatially, which results in changes in paper resistivity in different regions. This paper establishes an iterative inversion algorithm using the finite element method to calculate the oil-immersed paper resistivity in different regions of a transformer. This algorithm sets the transformer dielectric loss factor tan δ at low frequency, the dielectric parameters of the transformer oil as inputs and the oil-immersed paper resistivity as output. The resistivity obtained from inversion can be used as a reference to access the insulation state of the oil-paper insulation. This paper aims at achieving the nondestructive detection of the partial state of the oil-paper insulation.

This paper shows how chemical sludge (CS) generated during wastewater treatment at a paperboard mill can be quickly dried at low-temperature and employed in bark-fired boilers to reduce slagging and corrosion problems. By using a cyclone-dryer operated at an inlet-air velocity of 110 m/s and a temperature of 90 °C, the dry-matter content of CS was increased from approximately 19 to 82%. The residence time of CS inside the cyclone was approximately 2 s when using the inlet-air velocity mentioned above. Disaggregation of the feedstock caused by collisions with the cyclone wall and between particles played a crucial role in enhancing the efficiency of heat and mass transfer. Three co-pelletized mixtures of Scots pine bark (SPB) and dried-CS were combusted in a 40 kW fixed-bed burner. Flue gas analysis was performed with a gas analyser. Coarse and fine ash were analysed by SEM-EDS and XRD. NOx and SO2 emissions increased with increasing amount of CS in the mixtures. Mono-combustion of SPB resulted in a large quantity of slag (i.e., molten ash) with a high degree of sintering (i.e., hardness of the slag), and ash deposits formed on heat transfer surfaces were rich in K2SO4 and KCl. Mixtures of SPB and CS were less prone to slagging, and the amount of alkali chloride in the deposits was reduced in favour of alkali sulphate formation.

Having been generated with a tremendous amount annually, paper waste (PW) represents a large proportion in municipal solid waste (MSW) and also a potential source of renewable energy production through the application of anaerobic digestion (AD). However, the recalcitrant lignocellulosic structure poses obstacles to efficient utilization in this way. Recently, anaerobic and microaerobic pretreatment have attracted attention as approaches to overcome the obstacles of biogas production. This study was set out to present a systematic comparison and assessment of anaerobic and microaerobic pretreatment of PW with different oxygen loadings by five microbial agents: composting inoculum (CI), straw-decomposing inoculum (SI), cow manure (CM), sheep manure (SM), and digestate effluent (DE). The hints of microbial community evolution during the pretreatment and AD were tracked by 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing. The results demonstrated that PW pretreated by DE with an oxygen loading of 15 ml/gVS showed the highest cumulative methane yield (CMY) of 343.2 ml/gVS, with a BD of 79.3%. In addition to DE, SI and SM were also regarded as outstanding microbial agents for pretreatment because of the acceleration of methane production at the early stage of AD. The microbial community analysis showed that Clostridium sensu stricto 1 and Clostridium sensu stricto 10 possessed high relative abundance after anaerobic pretreatment by SI, while Bacteroides and Macellibacteroides were enriched after microaerobic pretreatment by SM, which were all contributable to the cellulose degradation. Besides, aerobic Bacillus in SI and Acinetobacter in SM and DE probably promoted lignin degradation only under microaerobic conditions. During AD, VadinBC27, Ruminococcaceae Incertae Sedis, Clostridium sensu stricto 1, Fastidiosipila, and Caldicoprobacter were the crucial bacteria that facilitated the biodegradation of PW. By comparing the groups with same microbial agent, it could be found that changing the oxygen loading might result in the alternation between hydrogenotrophic and acetoclastic methanogens, which possibly affected the methanogenesis stage. This study not only devised a promising tactic for making full use of PW but also provided a greater understanding of the evolution of microbial community in the pretreatment and AD processes, targeting the efficient utilization of lignocellulosic biomass in full-scale applications.

In recent years, the use of microalgae as feedstock for many marketable products, such as animal/aqua feeds, bioplastics and fertilizers, has gained renewed interest due to their fast growth potential coupled with relatively high lipid, carbohydrate and nutrient content. An algal biorefinery at an industrial site has the potential to sustainably and profitably convert carbon dioxide emissions into microalgal biomass and concomitantly reduce nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewaters. Industrial wastewaters are a potential alternative to traditional media used for large-scale microalgal cultivation. Pulp and paper mills are major consumers of water resources and discharge a huge amount of water to nearby lakes or rivers. This study investigated whether pulp and paper mill waste water is suitable for microalgal cultivation with the aim of achieving significant biomass production. Six different process waters from one Canadian pulp and paper mill were tested with two freshwater green microalgae. All of these waters were unable to support growth of microalgae due to inadequate nutrient concentrations, colour, turbidity and possible toxicity issues. HIGHLIGHTS Two freshwater microalgae strains were screened for potential growth on pulp and paper effluents.; Pulp and paper wastewater effluents were unable to support growth of the microalgae.; Chemical residues from the pulping process, such as peroxide and tannin, may inhibit algal growth.

BACKGROUND Breast cancer remains the most common neoplasm diagnosed among women in China and globally. Health-related questionnaire assessments in research and clinical oncology settings have gained prominence. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network–Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy–Breast Cancer Symptom Index (NFBSI-16) is a rapid and powerful tool to help evaluate disease- or treatment-related symptoms, both physical and emotional, in patients with breast cancer for clinical and research purposes. Prevalence of individual smartphones provides a potential web-based approach to administrating the questionnaire; however, the reliability of the NFBSI-16 in electronic format has not been assessed. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to assess the reliability of a web-based NFBSI-16 questionnaire in breast cancer patients undergoing systematic treatment with a prospective open-label randomized crossover study design. METHODS We recruited random patients with breast cancer under systematic treatment from the central hospital registry to complete both paper- and web-based versions of the questionnaires. Both versions of the questionnaires were self-assessed. Patients were randomly assigned to group A (paper-based first and web-based second) or group B (web-based first and paper-based second). A total of 354 patients were included in the analysis (group A: n=177, group B: n=177). Descriptive sociodemographic characteristics, reliability and agreement rates for single items, subscales, and total score were analyzed using the Wilcoxon test. The Lin concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) and Spearman and Kendall τ rank correlations were used to assess test-retest reliability. RESULTS Test-retest reliability measured with CCCs was 0.94 for the total NFBSI-16 score. Significant correlations (Spearman ρ) were documented for all 4 subscales—Disease-Related Symptoms Subscale–Physical (ρ=0.93), Disease-Related Symptoms Subscale–Emotional (ρ=0.85), Treatment Side Effects Subscale (ρ=0.95), and Function and Well-Being Subscale (ρ=0.91)—and total NFBSI-16 score (ρ=0.94). Mean differences of the test and retest were all close to zero (≤0.06). The parallel test-retest reliability of subscales with the Wilcoxon test comparing individual items found GP3 (item 5) to be significantly different (P=.02). A majority of the participants in this study (255/354, 72.0%) preferred the web-based over the paper-based version. CONCLUSIONS The web-based version of the NFBSI-16 questionnaire is an excellent tool for monitoring individual breast cancer patients under treatment, with the majority of participants preferring it over the paper-based version.

The continuity of transformer operation is very necessary for utilities to maintain a continuity of power flow in networks and achieve a desired revenue. Most failures in a transformer are due to the degradation of the insulating system, which consists of insulating oil and paper. The degree of polymerization (DP) is a key detector of insulating paper state. Most research in the literature has computed the DP as a function of furan compounds, especially 2-furfuraldehyde (2-FAL). In this research, a prediction model was constructed based on some of most periodical tests that were conducted on transformer insulating oil, which were used as predictors of the insulating paper state. The tests evaluated carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), breakdown voltage (VBD), interfacial tension (IF), acidity (ACY), moisture (M), oil color (OC), and 2-furfuraldehyde (2-FAL). The DP, which was used as the key indicator for the paper state, was categorized into five classes labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 to express the insulating paper normal aging rate, accelerating aging rate, excessive aging danger zone, high risk of failure, and the end of expected life, respectively. The classification techniques were applied to the collected data samples to construct a prediction model for the insulating paper state, and the results revealed that the fine tree was the best classifier of the data samples, with a 96.2% prediction accuracy.

© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE part of Springer Nature.The present paper reports the pyrolysis behavior, kinetic, and thermodynamic parameters of paper mill sludge (PMS), which is a paper manufacturing residue and cannot be re-evaluated, at three heating rates (5, 10, and 20 °C min−1) under non-isothermal conditions. Ultimate and proximate analyses of the paper mill sludge were carried out. Kinetic and thermodynamic parameters were calculated using four model-free methods; Flynn-Wall Ozawa (FWO), Friedman, Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS), and distributed activation energy model (DAEM). High R2 values revealed that all models are compatible with TGA data. The activation energy calculated (101.01 kJ mol−1) from FWO was higher than the other three methods. Pre-exponential factor values ranged from 0.56 × 103 and 14.55 × 103 s−1 for all methods. Kinetic and thermodynamic findings will be beneficial in terms of the process design of PMS pyrolysis. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

The aging of power transformers causes several defects and damages in the insulating system, especially in the insulating paper. The degradation of the insulating paper generates dissolved gases in the insulating oil, which are measured by gas chromatography and used as an indicator of the insulation status. The state of the insulating paper can be identified based on the degree of polymerization (DP) measurement. In some cases, when the measurement of DP is difficult, estimating DP can be accomplished through gathering information about some of the testing parameters, such as the dissolved gases (DGA), breakdown voltage (BDV), oil interfacial tension (IF), oil acidity (ACI), moisture content (MC), oil color (OC), dielectric loss (Tan δ), and furans concentration specifically (2-furfuraldhyde (FA)). The statistical tools (correlation and multiple linear regression), based on 131 transformer samples, can be used to build a relation linking DP and one or more of the previous parameters to identify the insulating paper status and the percentage of remaining life of the transformer. The results indicated that it is difficult to build a mathematical model to relate between the DP and the testing variables, except with FA, where the trend of DP with FA is more obvious than with other variables. The empirical formula to compute DP based on the FA concentration was developed and gave promising results to compute DP and the remaining life of the power transformers.

Rapid increase in scholarly publications on the web has posed a new challenge to the researchers in finding highly relevant and important research articles associated with a particular area of interest. Even a highly relevant paper is sometimes missed especially for novice researchers due to lack of knowledge and experience in finding and accessing the most suitable articles. Scholarly recommender system is a very appropriate tool for this purpose that can enable researchers to locate relevant publications easily and quickly. However, the main downside of the existing approaches is that their effectiveness is dependent on priori user profiles and thus, they cannot recommend papers to the new users. Furthermore, the system uses both public and non-public metadata and therefore, the system is unable to find similarities between papers efficiently due to copyright restrictions. Considering the above challenges, in this research work, a novel hybrid approach is proposed that separately combines a Content Based Filtering (CBF) recommender module and a Collaborative Filtering (CF) recommender module. Unlike previous CBF and CF approaches, public contextual metadata and paper-citation relationship information are effectively incorporated into these two approaches separately to enhance the recommendation accuracy. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach, publicly available datasets were employed. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the baseline approaches in terms of standard metrics (precision, recall, F1-measure, mean average precision, and mean reciprocal rank), indicating that the proposed approach is more efficient in recommending scholarly publications.

International audience; This paper focuses on the problem of the hierarchical multi‐label classification of research papers, which is the task of assigning the set of relevant labels for a paper from a hierarchy, using reduced amounts of labelled training data. Specifically, we study leveraging unlabelled data, which are usually plentiful and easy to collect, in addition to the few available labelled ones in a semi‐supervised learning framework for achieving better performance results. Thus, in this paper, we propose a semi‐supervised approach for the hierarchical multi‐label classification task of research papers based on the well‐known Co‐training algorithm, which exploit content and bibliographic coupling information as two distinct papers' views. In our approach, two hierarchical multi‐label classifiers, are learnt on different views of the labelled data, and iteratively select their most confident unlabelled samples, which are further added to the labelled set. The success of our suggested Co‐training‐based approach lies in two main components. The first is the use of two suggested selection criteria (i.e., Maximum Agreement and Labels Cardinality Consistency) that enforce selecting confident unlabelled samples. The second is the appliance of an oversampling method that rebalances the labels distribution of the initial labelled set, which reduces the reinforcement of the label imbalance issue during the Co‐training learning. The proposed approach is evaluated using a collection of scientific papers extracted from the ACM digital library. Performed experiments show the effectiveness of our approach with regards to several baseline methods.

Paper waste in the mockups design with regular, irregular, and amorphous patterns is a critical problem in digital printing presses. Paper waste reduction directly impacts production costs, generating business and environmental benefits. This problem can be mapped to the two-dimensional irregular bin-packing problem. In this paper, an iterated local search algorithm using a novel neighborhood structure to detect overlaps between amorphous shapes is introduced. This algorithm is used to solve the paper waste problem, modeled as one 2D irregular bin-packing problem. The experimental results show that this approach works efficiently and effectively to detect and correct the overlaps between regular, irregular, and amorphous figures.

Ample interest for more efficient utilization of bio-based residues has emerged in the Nordic pulp and paper (P&P) industry, which uses virgin wood as feedstock. Although different bioenergy retrofit technologies for production of liquid, solid, and gaseous bioenergy products have been applied in the existing P&P mills, the number of installations remains small. The lack of profound knowledge of existing bioenergy retrofits hinders the replication and market uptake of potential technologies. This review synthesises the existing knowledge of European installations and identifies the key drivers and barriers for implementation to foster the market uptake of potential technologies. The bioenergy retrofits were reviewed in terms of technical maturity, drivers, barriers and market potential. Based on this evaluation, common drivers and barriers towards wider market uptake were outlined from political, economic, social, technical, environmental, and legal perspective. Technologies already commercially applied include anaerobic fermentation of sludge, bark gasification, tall oil diesel and bioethanol production, whereas lignin extraction, biomethanol production, hydrothermal liquefaction and hydrothermal carbonization are being demonstrated or first applications are under construction. The findings of this review show that a stable flow of residues at P&P mills creates a solid base for retrofitting. New innovative bio-based products would allow widening the companies' product portfolios and creating new businesses. Also, European Union's (EU) legislation drives towards advanced biofuels production. Wider uptake of the retrofitting technologies requires overcoming the barriers related to uncertainty of economic feasibility and unestablished markets for new products rather than technical immaturity.

The article presents the results of comparative investigations of partial discharges in two insulation systems, aramid-enhanced cellulose paper-mineral oil, and pure cellulose paper-mineral oil. Partial discharges were investigated in a diagonal electric field with vertical and horizontal components. This field is treated as the most dangerous for insulation. The research was carried out on Nomex&reg, 910 paper and cellulose paper samples, each paper being 0.25 mm thick. Samples of the two materials were tested at four levels of moisture. The inception voltage of partial discharges of all samples tested decreased as their moisture content increases. It was also proved that Nomex&reg, 910 has a significantly higher partial discharge inception voltage than the cellulose paper, although this difference decreased with increasing moisture content.

The security of critical infrastructures is of paramount importance nowadays due to the growing complexity of components and applications. This paper collects the contributions to the industry dissemination session within the 14th International Conference on Critical Information Infrastructures Security (CRITIS 2019). As such, it provides an overview of recent practical experience reports in the field of critical infrastructure protection (CIP), involving major industry players. The set of cases reported in this paper includes the usage of serious gaming for training infrastructure operators, integrated safety and security management in the chemical/process industry, risks related to the cyber-economy for energy suppliers, smart troubleshooting in the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as intrusion detection in power distribution Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA). The session has been organized to stimulate an open scientific discussion about industry challenges, open issues and future opportunities in CIP research.

The pulp and paper (P&P) sector is a dynamic manufacturing industry and plays an essential role in the Austrian economy. However, the sector, which consumes about 20 TWh of final energy, is responsible for 7% of Austria’s industrial CO2 emissions. This study, intending to assess the potential for improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions in the Austrian context in the P&P sector, uses a bottom-up approach model. The model is applied to analyze the energy consumption (heat and electricity) and CO2 emissions in the main processes, related to the P&P production from virgin or recycled fibers. Afterward, technological options to reduce energy consumption and fossil CO2 emissions for P&P production are investigated, and various low-carbon technologies are applied to the model. For each of the selected technologies, the potential of emission reduction and energy savings up to 2050 is estimated. Finally, a series of low-carbon technology-based scenarios are developed and evaluated. These scenarios’ content is based on the improvement potential associated with the various processes of different paper grades. The results reveal that the investigated technologies applied in the production process (chemical pulping and paper drying) have a minor impact on CO2 emission reduction (maximum 10% due to applying an impulse dryer). In contrast, steam supply electrification, by replacing fossil fuel boilers with direct heat supply (such as commercial electric boilers or heat pumps), enables reducing emissions by up to 75%. This means that the goal of 100% CO2 emission reduction by 2050 cannot be reached with one method alone. Consequently, a combination of technologies, particularly with the electrification of the steam supply, along with the use of carbon-free electricity generated by renewable energy, appears to be essential.

Subject categories of scholarly papers generally refer to the knowledge domain(s) to which the papers belong, examples being computer science or physics. Subject category information can be used for building faceted search for digital library search engines. This can significantly assist users in narrowing down their search space of relevant documents. Unfortunately, many academic papers do not have such information as part of their metadata. Existing methods for solving this task usually focus on unsupervised learning that often relies on citation networks. However, a complete list of papers citing the current paper may not be readily available. In particular, new papers that have few or no citations cannot be classified using such methods. Here, we propose a deep attentive neural network (DANN) that classifies scholarly papers using only their abstracts. The network is trained using 9 million abstracts from Web of Science (WoS). We also use the WoS schema that covers 104 subject categories. The proposed network consists of two bi-directional recurrent neural networks followed by an attention layer. We compare our model against baselines by varying the architecture and text representation. Our best model achieves micro-F1 measure of 0.76 with F1 of individual subject categories ranging from 0.50-0.95. The results showed the importance of retraining word embedding models to maximize the vocabulary overlap and the effectiveness of the attention mechanism. The combination of word vectors with TFIDF outperforms character and sentence level embedding models. We discuss imbalanced samples and overlapping categories and suggest possible strategies for mitigation. We also determine the subject category distribution in CiteSeerX by classifying a random sample of one million academic papers., Comment: submitted to "Frontiers Mining Scientific Papers Volume II: Knowledge Discovery and Data Exploitation"

The main aim of this study was to define a procedure useful to evaluate the potential environmental, social and economic benefits contained in paper and cardboard (or other recyclables), which are wasted in the unsorted fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW). To give a practical example, the procedure was applied to the 550 municipalities of the Campania region, in Southern Italy, but the developed procedure is applicable in any context in an ‘urban mining’ perspective. The procedure consists of five phases and uses two methodologies: one for the estimation of the composition analysis of the unsorted residual waste and another for the calculation of sustainability indicators able to measure the benefits wasted in the unsorted residual MSW. Six indicators were defined: two for the environment (carbon footprint and ecological footprint), two for the society (health footprint and occupational benefits) and two for the economy (economic profit and economic saving). The first methodology was developed by the regional environmental protection agency to update the MSW regional management plan. The second methodology is based on the use of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) through which it was possible to calculate the reference parameters useful for the calculation of the impacts (i.e., loss of benefits) for recycling, mechanical and biological treatment (MBT), incineration and landfilling of paper and cardboard contained in the unsorted residual waste. The obtained results confirmed the presence of such an enormous deposit of recyclable materials contained in the unsorted residual waste, which is a potential source, but not exploited, of environmental, social and economic benefits. For instance, the paper and cardboard ‘urban mine’ of Naples was greater than 16 million of euro (economic profit + economic saving), with a potential saving of around 11.4 million of kgCO2eq. (carbon footprint), 207 million of m2 (ecological footprint), 44 Disability Adjusted Life Years (health footprint), with a creation of 30 job positions in the waste management sector (occupational benefits).

A new process for the production of bioethanol from paper mill sludge (PMS) is described in this work. PMS biomass feedstock was processed via the simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) with and without accelerants. The enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation were first evaluated, and the energy demand was 2.2 MJ/L of produced ethanol. When the enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation were combined, the energy demand was reduced to 1.0 MJ/L ethanol, the sugars production increased, and the overall capital cost of the process decreased. The sugar yield was improved by adding accelerant and selecting the optimal fiber recovery method. The accelerant improved the enzymatic hydrolysis via a pathing/bridging mechanism. The SSF with the chemical fiber recovery method coupled with accelerant addition would be the best process configuration. Upon this combination, the glucose profile was enhanced from 9.8 g/L to 17.0 g/L. The sludge fiber conversion by SSF was improved by selecting an efficient fiber recovery method combined with the accelerant addition. SSF in chemical fiber recovery with accelerant addition was the best process by a 10% improvement of ethanol yield. The proposed process configuration offers a lower cost and sustainable process and contributes to the circular economy of zero waste discharges.

The main aim of the study was to assess the environmental performance, through the application of the life cycle assessment, of a recycled paper production process focusing on the energy aspect. The production process occurred in a paper mill that produces packaging paper using paper and cardboard from source separation of municipal solid waste as raw materials. Two scenarios (S1 and S2) were defined by their energy supply sources. A cogeneration (CHP) system using natural gas for the combined production of thermal and electric energy was the source in S1. The Italian electricity grid (using the Italian country mix) and a natural gas boiler were the separate sources for electric and thermal energy, respectively, in S2. Finally, in order to evaluate the environmental effects on the results of the study about the variation in the natural gas supply source, four alternative Italian import mixes (M1, M2, M3, and M4) were defined by varying the contribution of the supplier countries. The environmental impacts were evaluated with ReCiPe 2016 (H) using both midpoint and endpoint approaches. The results showed that for both the scenarios, the energy consumption was the main cause of impacts mainly because of the natural gas contribution. The presence of the cogeneration (CHP) system generated significant environmental benefits compared with the use of energy provided by more conventional sources. The production and use of chemicals as well as the disposal of waste produced during the paper production were other environmental hotspots. The variation in the composition of the Italian import mix of natural gas, in terms of the supplier country’s contribution, had a significant influence on the results. The import of natural gas from Russia was the most impactful option. Since Russia is the country that contributes to the Italian import mix the most, in the next years, the use of natural gas in Italy could become increasingly impactful. Therefore, the replacement of natural gas with renewable sources is an urgent priority.

The introduction of paper-based platforms for developing novel energy storage devices such as supercapacitors (SCs) highlights new promising opportunities in the field of flexible electronics. Herein, the use of paper-based substrate has shown reduced manufacturing cost and simplified coating process by screen-printing technology, as well as an improvement of the multilayer structure adhesion. The SC manufactured with Graphite ink mixed with Carbon Black (CB)/Prussian blue (PB) at different weight ratios (0, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 10 wt %) shows good performances. An optimum weight ratio of carbon black/prussian blue. 4 wt % is consistent with the following features: i) specific capacitance of 253 mF/cm² at 0.01 V/s, ii) specific energy density of 0.5 mWh/cm², iii) specific power density of 0.1 mW/cm², and iv) good cycling stability (94%) after 5000 cycles. The proposed fabrication approach exhibits a simple scale-up, a low environmental impact and a decrease of manufacturing costs: it provides self-supporting electrodes based on a mixture of graphite ink and CB/PB nanocomposite.

PurposeThis position paper urges a drive towards clarity in the key definitions, terminologies and habits of speech associated with digital engineering and building information modelling (BIM). The ultimate goal of the paper is to facilitate the move towards arriving at an ideal definition for both concepts.Design/methodology/approachThis paper takes the “explanation building” review approach in providing prescriptive guidelines to researchers and industry practitioners. The aim of the review is to draw upon existing studies to identify, describe and find application of principles in a real-world context.FindingsThe paper highlights the definitional challenges surrounding digital engineering and BIM in Australia, to evoke a debate on BIM and digital engineering boundaries, how and why these two concepts may be linked, and how they relate to emerging concepts.Originality/valueThis is the first scholarly attempt to clarify the definition of digital engineering and address the confusion between the concepts of BIM and digital engineering.

The aim of this paper is to study the effect of reinking and pretreatment of waste banknote paper on its usability in the bioethanol production process. To this end, the tensile strength of worn banknote paper was first studied at different pH values. The sample with the lowest tensile strength was considered for the next sections. In the deinking process, NaOH at different concentrations (1%, 2%, 3%, and 4%) and in combination with ultrasonic treatment was applied. After deinking the pulp, two acidic and alkaline chemical pretreatments with concentrations of 1%, 2%, 3%, and 4% were used independently and in combination with ultrasonic. Enzymatic hydrolysis, following fermentation with Scheffersomyces stipitis, and crystallinity measurements were used to confirm the efficiency of the pretreatments. RSM Design Expert software was used to determine the optimal values by considering the three variables&mdash, enzyme loading, ultrasonic loading, and contact time for waste paper deinked (WPD) and waste paper blank (WPB) pulps. The results indicated that repulping was the most efficient at pH = 2. In deinking, the highest brightness was obtained using 3% NaOH in combination with ultrasonic. Between the acid and alkaline pretreatment, the acid treatment was more appropriate according to the resulting sugar concentration and weight loss. XRD tests confirmed that the lowest crystallinity index was obtained in the sample pretreated with 4% sulfuric acid in combination with ultrasonic. The highest sugar concentration in the enzymatic hydrolysis step was 92 g/L for WPD and 81 g/L for WPB. For the fermentation at 96 h, the highest ethanol concentration and process efficiency achieved were 38 g/L and 80.9% for WPD and 31 g/L and 75.04% for WPB, respectively. Our research shows that the deinking process can widen the utilization potential of waste banknote paper in biorefinery processes.

Pulp and paper mills generate a huge amount of wastewater and some of them, especially non-wood paper mills, do not possess recovery systems. In this research work, the effectiveness of coagulation–flocculation using poly (ethylene oxide), poly aluminium chloride and poly (dimethyl diallyl ammonium chloride) for the treatment of a black liquor obtained from a pulp mill (with wheat straw as the raw material) is reported. Furthermore, the calorific potential of the solid fraction generated after these treatments was investigated with the aim of enhancing this residue. Chemical oxygen demand (COD), turbidity and total solids (TS) were determined in the supernatants obtained from the different coagulation–flocculation processes. The treatment with poly (ethylene oxide) at pH 2.0 achieved the maximum reduction of TS (66%), COD (75%) and Turbidity (95%) in the black liquor and the precipitated solid fraction with the highest calorific value (19.9 MJ/kg).

Background Roadside observational studies play a fundamental role in designing evidence-informed strategies to address the pressing global health problem of road traffic injuries. Paper-based data collection has been the standard method for such studies, although digital methods are gaining popularity in all types of primary data collection. Objective This study aims to understand the reliability, productivity, and efficiency of paper vs digital data collection based on three different road user behaviors: helmet use, seatbelt use, and speeding. It also aims to understand the cost and time efficiency of each method and to evaluate potential trade-offs among reliability, productivity, and efficiency. Methods A total of 150 observational sessions were conducted simultaneously for each risk factor in Mumbai, India, across two rounds of data collection. We matched the simultaneous digital and paper observation periods by date, time, and location, and compared the reliability by subgroups and the productivity using Pearson correlations (r). We also conducted logistic regressions separately by method to understand how similar results of inferential analyses would be. The time to complete an observation and the time to obtain a complete dataset were also compared, as were the total costs in US dollars for fieldwork, data entry, management, and cleaning. Results Productivity was higher in paper than digital methods in each round for each risk factor. However, the sample sizes across both methods provided a precision of 0.7 percentage points or smaller. The gap between digital and paper data collection productivity narrowed across rounds, with correlations improving from r=0.27-0.49 to 0.89-0.96. Reliability in risk factor proportions was between 0.61 and 0.99, improving between the two rounds for each risk factor. The results of the logistic regressions were also largely comparable between the two methods. Differences in regression results were largely attributable to small sample sizes in some variable levels or random error in variables where the prevalence of the outcome was similar among variable levels. Although data collectors were able to complete an observation using paper more quickly, the digital dataset was available approximately 9 days sooner. Although fixed costs were higher for digital data collection, variable costs were much lower, resulting in a 7.73% (US $3011/38,947) lower overall cost. Conclusions Our study did not face trade-offs among time efficiency, cost efficiency, statistical reliability, and descriptive comparability when deciding between digital and paper, as digital data collection proved equivalent or superior on these domains in the context of our project. As trade-offs among cost, timeliness, and comparability—and the relative importance of each—could be unique to every data collection project, researchers should carefully consider the questionnaire complexity, target sample size, implementation plan, cost and logistical constraints, and geographical contexts when making the decision between digital and paper.

Paper and pulp industries produce effluents with high phosphorus concentrations, which need to be treated before their discharge in watercourses. The use of microalgae for this purpose has attracted the attention of researchers because: (i) microalgae can assimilate phosphorus (one of the main nutrients for their growth), and (ii) growing on effluents can significantly reduce the costs and environmental impact of microalgal biomass production. This study evaluated the growth and ability of Chlorella vulgaris to remove the phosphorus from a secondary-treated effluent of a Portuguese paper company. Batch experiments were performed for 11 days using different dilutions of the effluent to evaluate its inhibitory effect on microalgae. Results showed that the non-diluted effluent inhibited microalgal growth, indicating that this bioremediation process is possible after a previous dilution of the effluent. Regarding phosphorus removal, promising results were achieved, especially in the experiments conducted with the most diluted effluent: removal efficiencies obtained in these conditions were (54 &plusmn, 1)%. Another interesting finding of this study was microalgal growth in flakes&rsquo, form (mainly due to the compounds present in the effluent and to the pH values achieved), which can be an important economic advantage for biomass recovery after the remediation step.

Pulp and paper wastewater ozonation was tested at pilot-scale in a medium-potentiality wastewater treatment plant (143,000 population equivalent). Single wastewater lines (bleaching and process water), as well as wastewater mixture (before and after secondary biological treatment) were investigated to evaluate the best ozonation conditions. The aim of the work was to evaluate the feasibility of substituting current tertiary physicochemical treatment with an ozonation unit, reducing operating costs and improving management operations. The tests were useful to identify the ozone dosage required to achieve the desired COD abatement. Ozone effectiveness was more pronounced in process water (60% COD removal), rather than bleaching water (28% COD removal); ozone showed a significantly higher efficiency on pulp and paper wastewater mixture after biological treatment (up to 81% COD removal) rather than before biological process (46% mean COD abatement). COD removal efficiency at a dosage of 100 mg O3/L was comparable to existing physicochemical treatment (mean 50%); a good TSS abatement (up to 20–30 mg/L) was observed as well. Toxicity analysis revealed that ozonation treatment did not modify treated effluent toxicity characteristics (mean Daphnia Magna mortality of 23.3%). Economic analysis proved that ozonation installation cost would be 1.5–2.0 M€, for total flowrate to be treated of 1200 m3/h. Ozonation would lead to an economic saving of about 300,000 €/y compared to actual physicochemical treatment and the investment cost could be recovered in about 7 years. The proposed innovative approach, including plant analysis, pilot-ozonation tests, data regression, respirometric fractionation, toxicity and economic analysis, could be exported to other industrial wastewater treatment plants to allow an increased advanced oxidation processes diffusion.

Background There has been growing interest in the development of waste-specific decay factors for estimation of greenhouse gas emissions from landfills in national greenhouse gas inventories. Although engineered wood products (EWPs) and paper represent a substantial component of the solid waste stream, there is limited information available on their carbon dynamics in landfills. The objective of this study was to determine the extent of carbon loss for EWPs and paper products commonly used in Australia. Experiments were conducted under laboratory conditions designed to simulate optimal anaerobic biodegradation in a landfill. Results Methane generation rates over incubations of 307–677 days ranged from zero for medium-density fibreboard (MDF) to 326 mL CH4 g−1 for copy paper. Carbon losses for particleboard and MDF ranged from 0.7 to 1.6%, consistent with previous estimates. Carbon loss for the exterior wall panel product (2.8%) was consistent with the expected value for blackbutt, the main wood type used in its manufacture. Carbon loss for bamboo (11.4%) was significantly higher than for EWPs. Carbon losses for the three types of copy paper tested ranged from 72.4 to 82.5%, and were significantly higher than for cardboard (27.3–43.8%). Cardboard that had been buried in landfill for 20 years had a carbon loss of 27.3%—indicating that environmental conditions in the landfill did not support complete decomposition of the available carbon. Thus carbon losses for paper products as measured in bioreactors clearly overestimate those in actual landfills. Carbon losses, as estimated by gas generation, were on average lower than those derived by mass balance. The low carbon loss for particleboard and MDF is consistent with carbon loss for Australian wood types described in previous studies. A factor for carbon loss for combined EWPs and wood in landfills in Australia of 1.3% and for paper of 48% is proposed. Conclusions The new suggested combined decay factor for wood and EWPs represents a significant reduction from the current factor used in the Australian greenhouse gas inventory; whereas the suggested decay factor for paper is similar to the current decay factor. Our results improve current understanding of the carbon dynamics of harvested wood products, and allow more refined estimates of methane emissions from landfills. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13021-018-0115-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.