Background: Nurses and nursing students experienced an emotional burden while working during the COVID-19 outbreak. During the COVID-19 outbreak three questions for nurses working under these extreme circumstances were formulated: 1. What today’s events do you remember? 2. How do you feel (physically and mentally)? 3. Do you have enough support? The purpose of this study was to obtain insight into whether nurses and nursing students perceive that the use of the three-questions-method contributes to effective coping with the emotional burden during the COVID-19 outbreak. Methods: Focus group interviews were held with hospital nurses (n = 11) and nursing students with internships in mental health care (n = 2), hospital (n = 9), and homecare/nursing home care (n = 3) in September 2020 followed by twenty semi-structured interviews one year later. Results: Almost all nurses and nursing students named factors that contributed to the emotional burden: fear, powerlessness, frustration, lack of knowledge about COVID-19, and pressure to pass the internship. Participants indicated that using the three-questions-method can help to effectively cope with the emotional burden during and after the COVID-19 outbreak. Conclusions: Using the three-questions-method offers added value in coping with emotional burden and can be used in education as well as in practice.
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The transition to a biobased economy necessitates utilizing renewable resources as a sustainable alternative to traditional fossil fuels. Bioconversion is a way to produce many green chemicals from renewables, e.g., biopolymers like PHAs. However, fermentation and bioconversion processes mostly rely on expensive, and highly refined pure substrates. The utilization of crude fractions from biorefineries, especially herbaceous lignocellulosic feedstocks, could significantly reduce costs. This presentation shows the microbial production of PHA from such a crude stream by a wild-type thermophilic bacterium Schlegelella thermodepolymerans [1]. Specifically, it uses crude xylose-rich fractions derived from a newly developed biorefinery process for grassy biomasses (the ALACEN process). This new stepwise mild flow-through biorefinery approach for grassy lignocellulosic biomass allows the production of various fractions: a fraction containing esterified aromatics, a monomeric xylose-rich stream, a glucose fraction, and a native-like lignin residue [2]. The crude xylose-rich fraction was free of fermentation-inhibiting compounds meaning that the bacterium S.thermodepolymerans could effectively use it for the production of one type of PHA, polyhydroxybutyrate. Almost 90% of the xylose in the refined wheat straw fraction was metabolized with simultaneous production of PHA, matching 90% of the PHA production per gram of sugars, comparable to PHA yields from commercially available xylose. In addition to xylose, S. thermodepolymerans converted oligosaccharides with a xylose backbone (xylans) into fermentable xylose, and subsequently utilized the xylose as a source for PHA production. Since the xylose-rich hydrolysates from the ALACEN process also contain some oligomeric xylose and minor hemicellulose-derived sugars, optimal valorization of the C5-fractions derived from the refinery process can be obtained using S. thermodepolymerans. This opens the way for further exploration of PHA production from C5-fractions out of a variety of herbaceous lignocellulosic biomasses using the ALACEN process combined with S. thermodepolymerans. Overall, the innovative utilization of renewable resources in fermentation technology, as shown herein, makes a solid contribution to the transition to a biobased economy.[1] W. Zhou, D.I. Colpa, H. Permentier, R.A. Offringa, L. Rohrbach, G.J.W. Euverink, J. Krooneman. Insight into polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) production from xylose and extracellular PHA degradation by a thermophilic Schlegelella thermodepolymerans. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 194 (2023) 107006, ISSN 0921-3449, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2023.107006. [2] S. Bertran-Llorens, W.Zhou. M.A.Palazzo, D.I.Colpa, G.J.W.Euverink, J.Krooneman, P.J.Deuss. ALACEN: a holistic herbaceous biomass fractionation process attaining a xylose-rich stream for direct microbial conversion to bioplastics. Submitted 2023.
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The invention relates to the use of modified starch obtainable by treating amylose containing starch in aqueous medium with an enzyme from the group of the α-1,4-α-1,4-glucosyl transferases (EC 2.4.1.25) or an enzyme the activity of which corresponds to that of enzymes from the group just mentioned, as an agent for forming a thermoreversible gel. The invention also relates to products in the form of a thermoreversible gel having as gel-forming substance a modified starch as defined. The invention further relates to the use of a modified starch as defined in the form of an aqueous solution.
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Paper sludge contains papermaking mineral additives and fibers, which could be reused or recycled, thus enhancing the circularity. One of the promising technologies is the fast pyrolysis of paper sludge, which is capable of recovering > 99 wt.% of the fine minerals in the paper sludge and also affording a bio-liquid. The fine minerals (e.g., ‘circular’ CaCO3) can be reused as filler in consumer products thereby reducing the required primary resources. However, the bio-liquid has a lower quality compared to fossil fuels, and only a limited application, e.g., for heat generation, has been applied. This could be significantly improved by catalytic upgrading of the fast pyrolysis vapor, known as an ex-situ catalytic pyrolysis approach. We have recently found that a high-quality bio-oil (mainly ‘bio-based’ paraffins and low-molecular-weight aromatics, carbon yield of 21%, and HHV of 41.1 MJ kg-1) was produced (Chem. Eng. J., 420 (2021), 129714). Nevertheless, catalyst deactivation occurred after a few hours’ of reaction. As such, catalyst stability and regenerability are of research interest and also of high relevance for industrial implementation. This project aims to study the potential of the add-on catalytic upgrading step to the industrial fast pyrolysis of paper sludge process. One important performance metric for sustainable catalysis in the industry is the level of catalyst consumption (kgcat tprod-1) for catalytic pyrolysis of paper sludge. Another important research topic is to establish the correlation between yield and selectivity of the bio-chemicals and the catalyst characteristics. For this, different types of catalysts (e.g., FCC-type E-Cat) will be tested and several reaction-regeneration cycles will be performed. These studies will determine under which conditions catalytic fast pyrolysis of paper sludge is technically and economically viable.
Resistance to damage, fracture and failure is critical for high performance polymers, especially so in safety applications where they protect equipment or human life. In this project we investigate the use of molecular mechanochemistry tools for the measurement and analysis of mechanical impact in high performance polymers and their composites. While typically performed in a laboratory setting, these measurements hold promise for studying damage in large scale realistic samples. For this we will to develop fluorescent imaging techniques and chemistry, necessary to produce mechanoresponsive samples. This proposal will also draw correlations between imaging and mechanical testing, which can ultimately allow us to study realistic samples and recover the history of the impact they have sustained during operation.
Environmental nano- and micro-plastics (NMPs) are highly diverse [2]. Accounting for this diversity is one of the main challenges to develop a comprehensive understanding of NMPs detection, quantification, fate, and risks [3]. Two major issues currently limit progresses within this field: (a) validation and broadening the current analytical tools (b) uncertainty with respect to NMPs occurrence and behaviour at small scales (< 20 micron). Tracking NMPs in environmental systems is currently limited to micron size plastics due to the size detection limit of the available analytical techniques. There are currently many uncertainties regarding detecting nanoplastics in real environmental systems, e.g. the inexistence of commercially available NMPs and incompatibility between them and those generated from plastic fragments degradation in the environment. Trying to tackle these problems some research groups synthesized NMPs dopped with metals inside [16]. However, even though elemental analysis techniques (ICP-MS) are rather sensitive, the low volume of these metals encapsulated in the nanoparticles make their detection rather challenging. At the same time, due to Sars-Cov-19 pandemic, nucleic acid identification technologies (LAMP, PCR) experienced a fast evolution and are able to provide detection at very low levels with very compact and reliable equipment. Nuclepar proposes the use of Electrohydrodynamic Atomization (EHDA) to generate NMPs coated with nucleic acids of different polymer types, sizes, and shapes, which can be used as support for detection of such particles using PCR-LAMP technology. If proven possible, Nuclepar might become a first step towards an easy NMPs detection tool. This knowledge will certainly impact current risk assessment tools, efficient interventions to limit emissions and adequate regulations related to NMPs.
