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ShiftWork is a web application built in order to assist with the creation of a staffing schedule for a given service point in which employees already working a set number of hours throughout a given work-day, must rotate to staff the service point in question. This web application was developed in order to solve the issue of staffing the research and scholarly services desk in the Weinberg Memorial Library at the University of Scranton, but has been built to be generalizable to any situation in which rotational shift staffing is necessary. ShiftWork has been built to replace an antiquated paper-based staffing system, and can be deployed and implemented in any instance where there is a need to digitize the shift scheduling process.

Biorefining food loss and waste (FLW) to produce bioenergy or bioproducts is an attractive waste management option with potential economic and environmental benefits. This paper aims to identify how biorefining pro-cesses have been incorporated into waste management frameworks, and how well their placement or ranking within these frameworks is supported by evidence from the literature. Seven FLW management frameworks (hierarchies) sourced from government and research literature were critically assessed. The ranking of man-agement options within the FLW hierarchy is generally based on environmental outcomes and consequently, it was expected that the FLW hierarchies provide consistent advice. It was found that while biorefining processes were frequently incorporated within the recycling and recovery levels of the FLW hierarchies, their comparative positions were subject to significant variability. A systematic literature review of biorefining processes for FLW management revealed that the environmental impacts of energy-driven processes were frequently assessed and compared. However, comparative environmental assessments of biorefining non-energy products (product- driven biorefining) is underrepresented in this literature. Nevertheless, for horticultural FLW feedstocks, product- driven biorefining potentially offers attractive economic and environmental outcomes. Product-driven bio-refining is likely to be particularly relevant for horticultural FLW, due to the abundance of useful and valuable compounds in these materials.

In this review, we offer our opinion of current and expected trends regarding the use of mushrooms and mycelia in food and feed. Mushrooms have provided food for millennia and production methods and species diversity have recently expanded. Beyond mushrooms, cultured fungal mycelia are now harvested as a primary product for food. Mushrooms and mycelia provide dietary protein, lipids and fatty acids, vitamins, fibre, and flavour, and can improve the organoleptic properties of processed foods (including meat analogues). Further, they are often key ingredients in nutritional or therapeutic supplements because of diverse specialised metabolites. Mycelia can also improve feed conversion efficiency, gut health, and wellbeing in livestock. New molecular tools, coupled with quality genetic data, are improving production technologies, enabling the synthesis of specialised metabolites, and creating new processing and valorisation opportunities. Production systems for submerged culture are capital intensive, but investment is required considering the scale of the protein market.

In this study, lignocellulose-assisted hydrothermal treatment (HTT) of digestated sludge was studied to further understand the role of biomass in HTT and its effect on subsequent sludge dewatering. HTT of sludge-biomass mixtures at 180 °C for 60 min at a sludge/biomass total solids (TS) ratio of 1:1 led to solid residue moistures of 36%–40% after dewatering using a hydraulic press at 24 MPa, compared to 69.5% without biomass. Further investigation showed that organic acids, especially acetic acid generated from lignocellulosic biomass hydrolysed extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), especially EPS-protein, and improved sludge dewaterability. The role of organic acids was further verified with the addition of 10.0 g/L acetic acid for HTT of sludge at 180 °C in the absence of biomass. It was also observed that in HTT of sludge with 10.0 g/L acetic acid, protein nitrogen was converted to more stable forms of nitrogen such as pyrrole‑nitrogen and quaternary‑nitrogen. However, HTT with acetic acid alone resulted in dewatered solids with high ash contents, which may limit their applications as soil amendments. Combination of biomass and acetic acid with a sludge/biomass TS ratio of 3:1 and acetic acid loading of 10.0 g/L at a HTT temperature of 180 °C for 60 min led to solid moistures of 50.5% with hardwood sawdust and 57.7% with sugarcane bagasse after dewatering at 3 MPa, corresponding to total weight reductions of 66.3% and 55.7%, respectively. In contrast, HTT of sludge at 180 °C for 60 min without acetic acid and biomass resulted in a solid moisture of 76.6% after dewatering at 3 MPa and a corresponding weight reduction of 49.5%. With the use of biomass and acetic acid in HTT, the treated and dewatered solids also had increased carbon content and reduced ash content. These dewatered solids may be used as potential soil amendments though the properties related to soil applications need to be considered in future studies.