Articles

Elsevier, Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry, Volume 26, December 2020
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has been increasing in the last two decades and, as a major greenhouse gas, it has been linked to global warming and climate changes. Capture and conversion of CO2 into fuels and chemicals offer opportunities to mitigate the increasing CO2 buildup, while simultaneously adding value to CO2. The main limitation in CO2 conversion is its high thermodynamic stability, thus requiring catalysts and energy input to drive the transformation.
Elsevier, Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry, Volume 26, December 2020
Among the major pollutants in the atmosphere, carbon oxides are the result of multiple factors, mainly due to human activities. Nowadays, the decrease in carbon oxides emissions represents a pressing challenge necessary to limit their harmful effects on the climate change. As a result, numerous strategies dedicated to the environmental preservation are currently under study and, among these, all that kind of technologies that produce power from renewable sources offer promising solutions.
Elsevier, Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy, Volume 18, December 2020
In this essay some important forerunners of green chemistry will be discussed and compared with the present state. The relationship to ethics will be considered. Starting from the new movement of green chemistry by Anastas, some important highlights will be presented. The new activities of IUPAC and other institutions on the concepts of metrics for green syntheses will be discussed. The prime importance of the inclusion of developing African countries into the concepts will also be covered.
Elsevier, Current Opinion in Food Science, Volume 36, December 2020
The massive rise of Big Data generated from smartphones, social media, Internet of Things (IoT), and multimedia, has produced an overwhelming flow of data in either structured or unstructured format. Big Data technologies are being developed and implemented in the food supply chain that gather and analyse these data. Such technologies demand new approaches in data collection, storage, processing and knowledge extraction. In this article, an overview of the recent developments in Big Data applications in food safety are presented.
Elsevier, Energy Policy, Volume 147, December 2020
In this paper, we use standard scenarios focussing on renewable energy, energy efficiency and grid investments. We take stock of the literature and quantitative data on available sources of financing for clean energy to qualitatively match supply and demand of specific sources of finance in the European context. Our analysis shows that under the current investment mandates and lending criteria the required funds for a successful energy transition are available. In fact, the current landscape of financing sources can provide between two and six times what is necessary.
Elsevier, Materials Today Sustainability, Volume 10, December 2020
Herein, we present a multigram scale-up route for the preparation of novel polymer composite nanoparticles as potential multifunctional rechargeable material for future, sustainable batteries. The nanoparticles (20 nm) comprise three innocuous yet functional interpenetrated macromolecular networks: polypyrrole, methylcellulose, and lignin. They are uniquely assembled in strands or chains (~200 nm) such as necklace beads and show long-term stability as water dispersion.
Elsevier, Food Quality and Preference, Volume 86, December 2020
Targeted interventions have important under-explored potential for reducing meat consumption. We hypothesized that group-specific interventions targeting reduction for reducer, moderate-hindrance, and strong-hindrance meat eaters would be effective. All participants were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions designed for these three meat-eating groups, or to a control condition. Following the intervention, up to 28 days of food diaries were gathered to measure their consumption of animal products, which were weighted according to their greenhouse gas emissions.
Elsevier,

Food Packaging and Shelf Life, Volume 26, December 2020

The recent sharp increase of sensitivity towards environmental issues arising from plastic packaging has boosted interest towards alternative sustainable packaging materials. This new trend promotes the industrial exploitation of knowledge on chitosan-based films. Chitosan has been extensively investigated and used due to its unique biological and functional properties. However, inherent drawbacks including low mechanical properties and high sensitivity to humidity represent major limitations to its industrial applications, including food packaging.

Elsevier,

Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, Volume 304, 1 December 2020

Agroecosystems make up a significant portion of terrestrial ecosystems and receive a disproportionally high amount of terrestrial nitrogen inputs from fertilizer, leading to nitrogen loss and associated environmental problems. Integrated crop livestock systems, such as pasture-integrated crop rotations, may be more environmentally sustainable however the long-term effects of this management practice on soil microorganisms and nitrogen transformations are not well understood.

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