Global

Elsevier, Sustainable Materials and Technologies, Volume 22, December 2019
The development of mass-market electric vehicles (EVs) using lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is helping to propel growth in LIB usage, but end-of-life strategies for LIBs are not well developed. An important aspect of waste LIB processing is the stabilisation of such high energy-density devices, and energy discharge is an obvious way to achieve this. Salt-water electrochemical discharge is often mentioned as the initial step in many LIB recycling studies, but the details of the process itself have not often been mentioned.
The utilization of existing metallurgical infrastructure and integration of secondary process streams into primary metals production can provide advantages over separate recycling plants. This paper focuses on the integration of a pregnant leach solution (PLS) into a nickel production plant that contains Ni, Co, Zn, Mn, Fe, Al and Cd ions, derived from a NiMH recycling stream.
Elsevier, Fire Safety Journal, Volume 110, December 2019
The International Association of Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) is comprised of members from some 40 countries. This paper presents the Association's thinking, developed by the Management Committee, concerning pressing research needs for the coming 10 years presented as the IAFSS Agenda 2030 for a Fire Safe World. The research needs are couched in terms of two broad Societal Grand Challenges: (1) climate change, resiliency and sustainability and (2) population growth, urbanization and globalization.
It is a well-documented phenomenon that a group's gender composition can impact group performance. Understanding why and how this phenomenon happens is a prominent puzzle in the literature. To shed light on this puzzle, we propose and experimentally test one novel theory: through the salience of gender stereotype, a group's gender composition affects a person's willingness to lead a group, thereby impacting the group's overall performance.
Many factors have been proposed as potential causes for the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions. The present research leverages computational modeling and simulation to examine the impacts of external hiring and developmental opportunities, which may have consequences at different junctures in women's leadership labyrinth. Two agent-based simulations examined 1) the emergence of gender stratification in gender-balanced organizations and 2) the impact of reducing bias in external hiring and developmental opportunities in gender-stratified organizations.
Identification of methodologies for recycling laminated glass, especially the interlayer film, and their contextualization within the glass recycling field implicated an extensive patent search. During the last decade the technology centre L'Urederra exploited a methodology for recycling the poly-vinyl-butyral to be reused as interlayer in windscreens. Subsequent rounds of patents selection were aimed at identifying equivalent or innovative methodologies.
Elsevier,

Assistive Technologies (Fifth Edition): Principles & Practice, 2020, Pages 16-30

This chapter addresses SDGs 4 and 10 by offering a systematic process for ensuring the effective application of assistive technologies with a focus on the relationship between the human user and the assisted activity within specific contexts.

Psychological abuse within intimate relationships is linked to negative health outcomes among women and is frequently identified as more wounding than physical or sexual violence. There is little agreement, however, on how to conceptualize or measure the phenomenon, despite measurement being necessary to estimate the prevalence of psychological abuse, establish its interaction with physical and sexual violence, assess its health impacts, and monitor progress towards global Sustainable Development Goals.

Elsevier,

Current Opinion in Food Science, Volume 30, December 2019

Enteric viruses are an important food safety concern and have been associated with many foodborne disease outbreaks. Norovirus and Hepatitis A virus have been implicated in majority of outbreaks; however, other foodborne viruses such as Hepatitis E virus, Sapovirus and Rotavirus can also present a risk to humans. Viral foodborne disease outbreaks have typically been associated with foods served raw including shellfish, fruits and vegetables. The contamination of food by viruses can occur anywhere in the supply chain.

The pyrolysis-catalytic steam reforming of six agricultural biomass waste samples as well as the three main components of biomass was investigated in a two stage fixed bed reactor. Pyrolysis of the biomass took place in the first stage followed by catalytic steam reforming of the evolved pyrolysis gases in the second stage catalytic reactor. The waste biomass samples were, rice husk, coconut shell, sugarcane bagasse, palm kernel shell, cotton stalk and wheat straw and the biomass components were, cellulose, hemicellulose (xylan) and lignin.

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