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Corn silage, its water unextractable solids (WUS) and enzyme recalcitrant solids (ErCS) and an industrial corn silage-based anaerobic fermentation residue (AFR) represent corn substrates with different levels of recalcitrance. Compositional analysis reveals different levels of arabinoxylan substitution for WUS, ErCS and AFR, being most pronounced regarding acetic acid, glucuronic acid- and arabinose content. By screening for enzymatic degradation of WUS, ErCS and AFR, enzyme preparations exhibiting high conversion rates were identified. Furthermore significant synergistic effects were detected by blending Aspergillus niger/Talaromyces emersonii culture filtrates with various enzymes. These findings clearly highlight a necessity for a combinatorial use of enzyme preparations towards substrates with high recalcitrance characteristics to reach high degrees of degradation. Enzyme blends were identified, outperforming the individual commercial preparations. These enzyme preparations provide a basis for new, designed enzyme mixtures for corn polysaccharide degradation as a source of necessary, accessory enzyme activities.

Research and development of cost-effective, high-performance thermal insulation materials for the construction sector has to be focused on their final application. In particular, solutions for refurbishing historic buildings, which represent 40% of the European building stock, have to offer a good compromise between environmental quality, energy efficiency and conservation aspects. In this paper, the experimental assessment of an insulation material based on aerogel technology, recently developed in the European project EFFESUS, is presented with regard to the material's thermal performance, compatibility with historic fabric and reversibility. The overall results obtained in laboratory testing on a real-size mock-up and in a real-world case application indicate that the new material is a promising solution for retrofitting historic buildings, thanks to its thermal properties, easy application, reversibility and material compatibility.

This paper presents a preliminary study of the characterization of real waste from slaughterhouses as well as their rendering products (protein and fat) through different pyrolytic techniques: thermogravimetric analysis (TG), analytical pyrolysis in a pyroprobe equipment and hydrothermal liquefaction process (HTL). The experiments have allowed a deeper knowledge about the thermal behavior of these wastes under different conditions: slow pyrolysis up to 800°C (TG), flash pyrolysis at 500°C and room pressure (pyroprobe) and slow pyrolysis at 290°C and 110-130bar (HTL batch reactor). Experiments with each one of the materials (real waste, PAP and fat) as well as some mixtures have been performed. Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques were used to identify the pyrolytic products obtained. The results indicate that fatty acids and fatty esters are the major group obtained in the pyrolysis of fat samples, followed by aliphatic hydrocarbons. In the case of PAP pyrolysis, heterocyclic aromatic compounds, which includes typical products coming from protein degradation, is the major group obtained. Oxygenated aliphatics are also obtained in high amounts. In the case of the HTL experiments, significant glycerine amounts were detected in the aqueous phase. The yield of biocrude obtained under HTL conditions is about 30%, with a high proportion of nitrogenated compounds (amides, pyrrole and pyridine derivatives). Generation of amides is much higher under HTL conditions than in the analytical pyrolysis runs while the proportion of acids is reduced.

Most existing industrial control systems (ICSs), such as building energy management systems (EMSs), were installed when potential security threats were only physical. With advances in connectivity, ICSs are now, typically, connected to communications networks and, as a result, can be accessed remotely. This extends the attack surface to include the potential for sophisticated cyber attacks, which can adversely impact ICS operation, resulting in service interruption, equipment damage, safety concerns, and associated financial implications. In this work, a novel cyber–physical security framework for ICSs is proposed, which incorporates an analytics tool for attack detection and executes a reliable estimation-based attack-resilient control policy, whenever an attack is detected. The proposed framework is adaptable to already implemented ICS and the stability and optimal performance of the controlled system under attack has been proved. The performance of the proposed framework is evaluated using a reduced order model of a real EMS site and simulated attacks.

Feedbacks between land carbon pools and climate provide one of the largest sources of uncertainty in our predictions of global climate. Estimates of the sensitivity of the terrestrial carbon budget to climate anomalies in the tropics and the identification of the mechanisms responsible for feedback effects remain uncertain. The Amazon basin stores a vast amount of carbon, and has experienced increasingly higher temperatures and more frequent floods and droughts over the past two decades. Here we report seasonal and annual carbon balances across the Amazon basin, based on carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide measurements for the anomalously dry and wet years 2010 and 2011, respectively. We find that the Amazon basin lost 0.48 ± 0.18 petagrams of carbon per year (Pg C yr(-1)) during the dry year but was carbon neutral (0.06 ± 0.1 Pg C yr(-1)) during the wet year. Taking into account carbon losses from fire by using carbon monoxide measurements, we derived the basin net biome exchange (that is, the carbon flux between the non-burned forest and the atmosphere) revealing that during the dry year, vegetation was carbon neutral. During the wet year, vegetation was a net carbon sink of 0.25 ± 0.14 Pg C yr(-1), which is roughly consistent with the mean long-term intact-forest biomass sink of 0.39 ± 0.10 Pg C yr(-1) previously estimated from forest censuses. Observations from Amazonian forest plots suggest the suppression of photosynthesis during drought as the primary cause for the 2010 sink neutralization. Overall, our results suggest that moisture has an important role in determining the Amazonian carbon balance. If the recent trend of increasing precipitation extremes persists, the Amazon may become an increasing carbon source as a result of both emissions from fires and the suppression of net biome exchange by drought.

p-Type Co(3)O(4) nanostructured films are synthesized by a plasma-assisted process and tested in the photocatalytic production of H(2) from water/ethanol solutions under both near-UV and solar irradiation. It is demonstrated that the introduction of fluorine into p-type Co(3)O(4) results in a remarkable performance improvement with respect to the corresponding undoped oxide, highlighting F-doped Co(3)O(4) films as highly promising systems for hydrogen generation. Notably, the obtained yields were among the best ever reported for similar semiconductor-based photocatalytic processes.

Hybrid hole-transporting material and selective contact for perovskite solar cells was manufactured by industrially viable materials and methods.

AbstractWhile an understanding of evolutionary processes in shifting environments is vital in the context of rapid ecological change, one of the most potent selective forces, sexual selection, remains curiously unexplored. Variation in sexual selection across a species range, especially across a gradient of temperature regimes, has the potential to provide a window into the possible impacts of climate change on the evolution of mating patterns. Here, we investigated some of the links between temperature and indicators of sexual selection, using a cold‐water pipefish as model. We found that populations differed with respect to body size, length of the breeding season, fecundity, and sexual dimorphism across a wide latitudinal gradient. We encountered two types of latitudinal patterns, either linear, when related to body size, or parabolic in shape when considering variables related to sexual selection intensity, such as sexual dimorphism and reproductive investment. Our results suggest that sexual selection intensity increases toward both edges of the distribution and that the large differences in temperature likely play a significant role. Shorter breeding seasons in the north and reduced periods for gamete production in the south certainly have the potential to alter mating systems, breeding synchrony, and mate monopolization rates. As latitude and water temperature are tightly coupled across the European coasts, the observed patterns in traits related to sexual selection can lead to predictions regarding how sexual selection should change in response to climate change. Based on data from extant populations, we can predict that as the worm pipefish moves northward, a wave of decreasing selection intensity will likely replace the strong sexual selection at the northern range margin. In contrast, the southern populations will be followed by heightened sexual selection, which may exacerbate the problem of local extinction at this retreating boundary.