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The process industries have been facing ever increasing pressure in the monitoring and control of gaseous pollutants such as volatile organic compounds and hazardous air pollutants. With increasingly stringent regulations and laws, emission management may need to go beyond the traditional leak detection and repair and continuous emissions monitoring system approaches to manage potential emission events. Alternative monitoring technologies, such as optical and remote sensing instruments and wireless sensors, can monitor emissions from a specific equipment/area/unit/plant in a timely manner.
Elsevier, Current Research in Green and Sustainable Chemistry, Volume 3, June 2020
Bio-based aerogels with customizable porosities and functionalities constitute a significant potential for CO2 capture. Developing bio-based aerogels from different polysaccharides and proteins is a safe, economical, and environmentally sustainable approach. Polysaccharides are biodegradable, sustainable, renewable, and plentiful in nature. Because of these advantages, the use of bio-based aerogels with porosity and amine functionality has attracted considerable interest.
Elsevier, Current Research in Green and Sustainable Chemistry, Volume 3, June 2020
The successful conversion of lignocellulose into value-added products depends on overcoming the recalcitrance of its structure towards enzymatic digestion. The highly crosslinked structure of lignin, crystallinity of cellulose, and low digestibility of hemicellulose create the recalcitrance. Many studies have proved that an appropriate pretreatment method could enhance the digestibility of lignocellulosic biomass by weakening the strong network of its chemical bonds among the cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin.
Nurse practitioners (NPs) have key roles in addressing health consequences of climate change across the lifespan for patients, families, communities, and populations. The role of the NP in the health and well-being of vulnerable populations is critical in understanding the deleterious consequences of climate change. Older adults are considered a vulnerable population for health challenges in our climate-changing world. The link between climate and health via a systems approach includes engaging in health assessment, physical examination, differential diagnoses, and plans for interventions.
This chapter focuses in the importance of freshwater for domestic use, which is critical for maintaining human health and well-being. As the human population has grown, the pressure of domestic use on freshwater systems has increased. Despite mounting concerns over diminishing water quantity and quality, new opportunities for safe and accessible domestic water use are being implemented.
This chapters describes the hugely diverse but threatened desert environments, from their broad ecosystem structure through to the unique adaptations found among the species inhabiting these challenging habitats. Current changes and threats desert ecosystems face due to anthropogenic activities, including climate change, are discussed, together with potential solutions and conservation approaches.
Indigenous peoples globally have high exposure to environmental change and are often considered an “at-risk” population, although there is growing evidence of their resilience. In this Perspective, we examine the common factors affecting this resilience by illustrating how the interconnected roles of place, agency, institutions, collective action, Indigenous knowledge, and learning help Indigenous peoples to cope and adapt to environmental change.

In the light of the opportunities presented by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) debate is being reignited to understand the connections between human population dynamics (including rapid population growth) and sustainable development. Sustainable development is seriously affected by human population dynamics yet programme planners too often fail to consider them in development programming, casting doubt on the sustainability of such programming.

Protecting the ocean has become a major goal of international policy as human activities increasingly endanger the integrity of the ocean ecosystem, often summarized as “ocean health.” By and large, efforts to protect the ocean have failed because, among other things, (1) the underlying socio-ecological pathways have not been properly considered, and (2) the concept of ocean health has been ill defined. Collectively, this prevents an adequate societal response as to how ocean ecosystems and their vital functions for human societies can be protected and restored.

Elsevier,

Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies, Volume 62, June 2020

Chitin is the structural material of crustaceans, insects, and fungi, and is the second most abundant biopolymer after cellulose on earth. Chitosan, a deacetylated derivative of chitin, can be obtained by deacetylation of chitin. It is a functionally versatile biopolymer due to the presence of amino groups responsible for the various properties of the polymer. Although it has been used for various industrial applications, the recent one is its use as a biodegradable antimicrobial food packaging material.

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