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The need for pulp and paper has risen significantly due to exponential population growth, industrialization, and urbanization. Most paper manufacturing industries use wood fibers to meet pulp and paper requirements. The shortage of fibrous wood resources and increased deforestation are linked to the excessive dependence on wood for pulp and paper production. Therefore, non-wood substitutes, including corn stalks, sugarcane bagasse, wheat, and rice straw, cotton stalks, and others, may greatly alleviate the shortage of raw materials used to make pulp and paper. Non-woody raw materials can be pulped easily using soda/soda-AQ (anthraquinone), organosolv, and bio-pulping. The use of agricultural residues can also play a pivotal role in the development of polymeric membranes separating different molecular weight cut-off molecules from a variety of feedstocks in industries. These membranes range in applications from water purification to medicinal uses. Considering that some farmers still burn agricultural residues on the fields, resulting in significant air pollution and health issues, the use of agricultural residues in paper manufacturing can eventually help these producers to get better financial outcomes from the grown crop. This paper reviews the current trends in the technological pitch of pulp and paper production from agricultural residues using different pulping methods, with an insight into the application of membranes developed from lignocellulosic materials.

Phytate is the main form of phosphorus in corn ethanol coproducts and poses digestion issues in monogastric-animal feed. Extracting phytate as a commodity chemical will bring extra revenue to the corn ethanol industry and reduces potential phosphorus pollution from livestock waste management. We assessed a simplified scale-up approach of an ion-exchange separation system applied to extract phytate from thin stillage using volumetric parameters and simplifications of the van Deemter model. Thin stillage is one of the main byproducts generated on dry-grind corn-to-ethanol plants and accounts for the liquid portion of the bottom product generated in the ethanol distillation process. Thin stillage is rich in dissolved phytate, which served as the basis for an ion-exchange extraction system developed with a scalability factor of 50. Under the evaluated conditions, similar breakthrough profiles were obtained when similar Péclet and Stanton numbers were maintained for the scales studied, demonstrating that a simple and straightforward scale-up can be attained if special attention is given to maintaining both parameters as the basis of calculations of the plate numbers of ion-exchange columns.

Carbonaceous and calcareous materials are commonly used as amendments to decrease the Cd mobility in contaminated soils. This study evaluated the effect of amendments applied to cocoa seedlings in the greenhouse, considering the mobilization of soil cadmium toward the seedlings as the main response. The experimental conditions considered soil artificially contaminated with Cd at a concentration of 50 mg Cd kg−1 and applications of amendments in different treatments with the presence of charcoal dust and calcium carbonate. The charcoal was characterized by microscopy and by adsorption tests, and it proved to be a material with macropores, with a maximum capacity of 8.06 mg Cd g−1 and favorable kinetic behavior according to the adjustment of the data obtained to the pseudo-second-order model. The results also showed that the application of liming decreased the mobility of Cd toward the seedlings, with the liming combined with charcoal leading to the absence of Cd in the cocoa seedlings, considering a residual concentration of Cd in the soil of 35 mg Cd kg−1. The results, although limited to a small scale, demonstrated the possibility of applying low-cost and easy-to-handle amendments for the control of Cd in cocoa plantations.

This study aims to evaluate the potential of consortium biomass formation between Mucor circinelloides, an oleaginous filamentous fungal species, and Chlorella vulgaris, in order to promote a straightforward approach to harvest microalgal cells and to evaluate the lipid production in the consortium system. A synthetic medium with glucose (2 g·L−1) and mineral nutrients essential for both fungi and algae was selected. Four different inoculation strategies were assessed, considering the effect of simultaneous vs. separate development of fungal spores and algae cells, and the presence of a supporting matrix aiming at the higher recovery of algae cell rates. The results were evaluated in terms of consortium biomass composition, demonstrating that the strategy using a mature fungal mycelium with a higher algae count may provide biomass samples with up to 79% of their dry weight as algae, still promoting recovery rates greater than 97%. The findings demonstrate a synergistic effect on the lipid accumulation by the fungal strain, at around a fourfold increase when compared to the axenic control, with values in the range of 23% of dry biomass weight. Furthermore, the fatty acid profile from the samples presents a balance between saturated and unsaturated fatty acids that is likely to present an adequate balance for applications such as biodiesel production.

Distiller’s grains, an important commodity in the feed and food chains, are currently underdosed in rations due to several factors, mainly nutrient imbalance. This study aimed to increase the linoleic acid content in distiller’s grains and decrease the excess nutrients in stillage water by the use of an artificial lichen, composed of fungi, algae, and a supporting matrix. A maximum concentration of 46.25% of linoleic acid in distiller’s grains was achieved with a combination of Mucor indicus and Chlorella vulgaris using corn-to-ethanol whole stillage as substrate. Microbial hydrolytic enzymes during fermentation were able to decrease the solids in whole stillage. Nitrogen depletion by microalgal uptake causes lipid-formation stress to Mucor indicus cells, increasing linoleic acid production to about 49% of the total lipids, potentially decreasing costs in the animal feed. The culture supernatant can potentially be recycled as process water to the ethanol fermentation tank, and enhanced distiller’s grains can replace animal-specific diets. This would reduce exogenous enzyme use and supplementation of unsaturated fatty acids from other sources.

Background: in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), radial access should be favoured over femoral access as it reduces the risk of vascular complications and bleeding. Furthermore, a preventive role of radial access in the occurrence of acute kidney injury (AKI), mainly mediated by the reduction of bleeding and cholesterol crystal embolization into renal circulation, has been investigated in several studies, yielding conflicting results. Methods: we designed a retrospective study to appraise the effect of the use of a vascular access site on the occurrence of AKI in a cohort of 633 patients with acute myocardial infarction treated by PCI at our centre from 2018 to 2020. Results: after propensity score adjustment, radial access was associated with a reduced, albeit statistically not significant, incidence of AKI (14.7% vs. 21.0%; p = 0.06) and major bleeding (12.5% vs. 18.7%; p = 0.04) as compared to femoral access. At multivariate analysis, femoral access was an independent predictor of AKI, together with in-hospital occurrence of BARC 3-5 bleeding, Killip class >1 at presentation, female gender, baseline eGFR <60 mL/min, and baseline haemoglobin <12 g/dL. Conclusions: although limited by the observational design, our study supports the hypothesis that radial access may exert a protective role on the occurrence of AKI in patients with acute myocardial infarction undergoing PCI.

Background: Pulmonary vein isolation is currently considered to be the gold standard for ablating paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. However, its efficacy is limited in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation. The convergent procedure has emerged as a hybrid ablation. This study aims, for the first time in the literature, to introduce a hybrid approach that includes epicardial ablation with cutting-edge robotic technology and subsequent electrophysiological study to verify and an endocardial ablation to complete the ablation lines. Methods: We present 18 cases of robotic-assisted epicardial hybrid ablation performed between April and December 2023 on patients with long-standing persistent atrial fibrillation (mean age: 64 ± 5 years; mean duration: 4 ± 2 years). All of the procedures were performed at "Humanitas Gavazzeni Hospital", Bergamo, Italy. Robot-assisted epicardial ablation performed using the "Epi-Sense AtriCure" device was guided by monitoring electrogram morphology and point-by-point impedance drop. This approach also included left atrial appendage occlusion and the disconnection of the ligament of Marshall. An electrophysiological study and endocardial ablation were planned three months after the procedure. Results: The procedure was successfully executed in all patients with no major complications and a mean operative time of 142 ± 22 min. None of the cases required conversion to full sternotomy or minithoracotomy. The procedure was performed in all cases without extracorporeal circulation and on a beating heart. Fifteen patients (83%) were extubated in the operating room. The length of stay in the intensive care unit was less than 24 h. Acute restoration of sinus rhythm was achieved in 12 out of the 18 patients (67%); the median duration of their hospital stay was two days. In the electrophysiological study, seven pts had sinus rhythm, two had atrial fibrillation, and one patient developed atrial flutter at 3-month follow-up. Patients underwent transcatheter ablation to complete the lesion set and, at the time of discharge, were all in sinus rhythm. Conclusions: In our initial experience, surgical atrial fibrillation ablation consisting of a unilateral thoracoscopic technique facilitated by a robotic platform and continuous EGM monitoring has proven to be safe and feasible. For the electrophysiological study at 3 months, completing the gaps in the surgical ablation lines could improve the clinical results of the technique in terms of sinus rhythm stability. However, mid- and long-term follow-up is required to demonstrate this.

The very high-power short-duration (vHP-SD) ablation strategy is an alternative for pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) in patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (PAF). However, the acute procedural biophysical behavior of successful lesion creation by means of this technique is still unexplored. We performed a retrospective case-control study aimed at evaluating the behavior of vHP-SD ablation parameters with the QDOT MICRO™ ablation catheter (Biosense Webster) compared with standard radiofrequency (RF) ablation with the THERMOCOOL SMARTTOUCH ® ablation catheter. Twenty consecutive cases of symptomatic PAF treated with the QDOT MICRO™ ablation catheter from December 2022 to March 2023 were compared with cases treated with the standard technique. The acute procedural success of PVI was obtained in all cases with 2192 RF applications, and no adverse events occurred. Compared with the controls, vHP-SD cases featured a significant reduction in procedural time (47 ± 10 vs. 56 ± 12 min, p = 0.023), total RF time (3.8 [CI 3.4-4.6] vs. 21.2 [CI 18.4-24.9] min, p < 0.001), ablation phase time (25 ± 5 vs. 39 ± 9 min, p < 0.001), and irrigation volume (165 [CI 139-185] vs. 404 [CI 336-472] ml, p < 0.001). In vHP-SD RF ablation, a contact force of 5 g minimum throughout the 4 s of RF application appeared to be statistically significant in terms of an impedance drop of at least 10 Ohm (OR 2.63 [CI 1.37; 5.07], p = 0.003). In contrast, in the control group, the impedance drop depended linearly on the contact force. This suggests a different biophysical behavior of vHP-SD ablation. A maximum temperature and minimum contact force of >5 g independently predicted an effective impedance drop in vHP-SD. Increasing the contact force over 5 g during 4 s of vHP RF application might not be necessary to achieve a successful lesion.