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Lignin nanomaterials have emerged as a promising alternative to fossil-based chemicals and products for some potential added-value applications, which benefits from their structural diversity and biodegradability. This review elucidates a perspective in recent research on nanolignins and their nanocomposites. It summarizes the different nanolignin preparation methods, emphasizing anti-solvent precipitation, self-assembly and interfacial crosslinking. Also described are the preparation of various nanocomposites by the chemical modification of nanolignin and compounds with inorganic materials or polymers. Additionally, advances in numerous potential high-value applications, such as use in food packaging, biomedical, chemical engineering and biorefineries, are described.

The strategy of watch and wait (W&W) in patients with rectal cancer who achieve a complete clinical response (cCR) after neoadjuvant therapy is new and offers an opportunity for patients to avoid major resection surgery. However, evidence is based on small-to-moderate sized series from specialist centres. The International Watch & Wait Database (IWWD) aims to describe the outcome of the W&W strategy in a large-scale registry of pooled individual patient data. We report the results of a descriptive analysis after inclusion of more than 1000 patients in the registry. Participating centres entered data in the registry through an online, highly secured, and encrypted research data server. Data included baseline characteristics, neoadjuvant therapy, imaging protocols, incidence of local regrowth and distant metastasis, and survival status. All patients with rectal cancer in whom the standard of care (total mesorectal excision surgery) was omitted after neoadjuvant therapy were eligible to be included in the IWWD. For the present analysis, we only selected patients with no signs of residual tumour at reassessment (a cCR). We analysed the proportion of patients with local regrowth, proportion of patients with distant metastases, 5-year overall survival, and 5-year disease-specific survival. Between April 14, 2015, and June 30, 2017, we identified 1009 patients who received neoadjuvant treatment and were managed by W&W in the database from 47 participating institutes (15 countries). We included 880 (87%) patients with a cCR. Median follow-up time was 3·3 years (95% CI 3·1–3·6). The 2-year cumulative incidence of local regrowth was 25·2% (95% CI 22·2–28·5%), 88% of all local regrowth was diagnosed in the first 2 years, and 97% of local regrowth was located in the bowel wall. Distant metastasis were diagnosed in 71 (8%) of 880 patients. 5-year overall survival was 85% (95% CI 80·9–87·7%), and 5-year disease-specific survival was 94% (91–96%). This dataset has the largest series of patients with rectal cancer treated with a W&W approach, consisting of approximately 50% data from previous cohort series and 50% unpublished data. Local regrowth occurs mostly in the first 2 years and in the bowel wall, emphasising the importance of endoscopic surveillance to ensure the option of deferred curative surgery. Local unsalvageable disease after W&W was rare. European Registration of Cancer Care financed by European Society of Surgical Oncology, Champalimaud Foundation Lisbon, Bas Mulder Award granted by the Alpe d'Huzes Foundation and Dutch Cancer Society, and European Research Council Advanced Grant.

Viscosity is an important property of out-of-equilibrium systems such as active biological materials and driven non-Newtonian fluids, and for fields ranging from biomaterials to geology, energy technologies and medicine. Non-invasive viscosity measurements typically require integration times of seconds. Here, we demonstrate measurement speeds reaching 20 μs, with uncertainty dominated by thermal molecular collisions for the first time. We achieve this using the instantaneous velocity of a trapped particle in an optical tweezer. To resolve the instantaneous velocity we develop a structured-light detection system that allows particle tracking over femtometre length scales and 16-ns timescales. Our results translate viscosity from a static averaged property to one that may be dynamically tracked on the timescales of active dynamics. This opens a pathway to new discoveries in out-of-equilibrium systems, from the fast dynamics of phase transitions to energy dissipation in motor molecule stepping and to violations of fluctuation laws of equilibrium thermodynamics.A structured-light-based detection of a particle trapped in optical tweezers enables ultrafast velocity and viscosity determination.

The performance of light microscopes is limited by the stochastic nature of light, which exists in discrete packets of energy known as photons. Randomness in the times that photons are detected introduces shot noise, which fundamentally constrains sensitivity, resolution and speed 1 . Although the long-established solution to this problem is to increase the intensity of the illumination light, this is not always possible when investigating living systems, because bright lasers can severely disturb biological processes 2 – 4 . Theory predicts that biological imaging may be improved without increasing light intensity by using quantum photon correlations 1 , 5 . Here we experimentally show that quantum correlations allow a signal-to-noise ratio beyond the photodamage limit of conventional microscopy. Our microscope is a coherent Raman microscope that offers subwavelength resolution and incorporates bright quantum correlated illumination. The correlations allow imaging of molecular bonds within a cell with a 35 per cent improved signal-to-noise ratio compared with conventional microscopy, corresponding to a 14 per cent improvement in concentration sensitivity. This enables the observation of biological structures that would not otherwise be resolved. Coherent Raman microscopes allow highly selective biomolecular fingerprinting in unlabelled specimens 6 , 7 , but photodamage is a major roadblock for many applications 8 , 9 . By showing that the photodamage limit can be overcome, our work will enable order-of-magnitude improvements in the signal-to-noise ratio and the imaging speed. A quantum microscope obtains signal-to-noise beyond the photodamage limits of conventional microscopy, revealing biological structures within cells that would not otherwise be resolved.

Novel biobased polymers based on lignin building blocks are synthesized and systematically characterized. The three prominent aromatic aldehydes that can be obtained from oxidative degradation of lignin, namely p‐hydroxybenzaldehyde (H), vanillin (V), and syringaldehyde (S), are chemically modified into radically polymerizable styrenic monomers presenting either a methoxy or butoxy (‐OBu) group at the para‐position. The transformation of these molecules is accomplished and optimized individually on each compound. Subsequently, polymers are successfully prepared by free radical polymerization in homogeneous conditions (in solution using ethyl lactate as green solvent) and in heterogeneous conditions (in aqueous emulsion using a biosourced surfactant). Novel polymeric materials with high thermal stability and a glass transition temperature (Tg) tunable between 40°C and 110°C are obtained, depending on the monomer used.

During the last decade, the smart grid (SG) concept has started to become a reality, mainly thanks to the technical progress achieved in telecommunications, informatics and power electronics, among other domains, leading to an evolution of the traditional electrical grid into an intelligent one. Nowadays, the SG can be seen as a system of smart systems that include cyber and physical parts from different technologies that interact with each other. In this context, intelligent buildings (IBs) constitute a paradigm in which such smart systems are able to guarantee the comfort of residents while ensuring an appropriate tradeoff of energy production and consumption by means of an energy management system (EMS). These interconnected EMSs remain the objective of potential cyber-attacks, which is a major concern. Therefore, this paper conducts a survey, from a multidisciplinary point of view, of some of the main security and privacy issues related to IBs as part of the SG, including an overview of EMS, smart meters, and the main communication networks employed to connect IBs to the overall SG. Future research directions towards a security enhancement from both technical and human perspectives are also provided.

Conventional pig production systems are characterized by fully slatted floors and space restrictions, hindering pigs from foraging and roaming. In contrast, providing pigs with outdoor access allows them to express a wide range of behaviors, but might challenge their health. In this context, we hypothesized that giving pigs regular outdoor access might lower stress exposure with positive impacts for health and welfare. A total of 145 male and 148 female pigs, housed in a conventional barn, were provided (OUT) or not (IN) with access to a grassy paddock twice a week from the age of 77 days to slaughter. The OUT pigs had lower salivary cortisol levels than the IN pigs. Regular access to a pasture also lowered the severity of body lesions. While it had no consequences on animal growth, it was associated with a reduced frequency of diarrhea in pigs. Despite lower leukocytes counts in the OUT pigs compared to the IN ones, higher proportion of the OUT pigs developed humoral response against L. intracellularis . Thus, providing regular access to a paddock for growing pigs had positive impacts on their health and welfare, with no consequence on their performance.

Background Patients’ expectations regarding medical information in advanced stages of cancer are still poorly understood. Tailoring information to advanced cancer patients is a subtle task. We developed a question prompt list (QPL) that serves as a patient-oncologist communication aid in France. Methods A four-step sequential mixed method involving patients with luminal B/triple-negative metastatic breast cancer or metastatic uveal melanoma ( N  = 110) and patients’ partners, oncologists, and researchers ( N  = 18) was used. In-depth interviews and questionnaires focused on the information needed at the disclosure of metastasis or resistance to treatment (step 1), the formulation of questions and procedures for use in oncology visits (steps 2 and 3), and the acceptability of the final tool (stage 4). Results The initial version of the QPL consists of 17 questions covering 5 themes (disease, current treatment, other options, living with cancer, prognosis). In step 2, 13 questions were added, 2 were merged, and 5 were deleted; a short form (4 questions) and recommendations for clinical use were proposed. In step 3, 2 questions were merged, and 6 were deleted. Four oncologists (27% of the target population) took part in step 4, and the QPL was discussed with 20 patients, revealing a positive appraisal. Conclusion We provide a rigorously developed, relevant, concise, and acceptable question prompt list for clinical application in the advanced cancer care setting in France. Further research needs to assess whether this tool actually facilitates oncologist–patient communication and improves satisfaction with care and health outcomes. Trial registration The study is listed on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04118062) and registered under identification n° IRRID “International Registered Report Identifier”: DERR1-10.2196/26414.

The rapid evolution of electronics and communication technologies in the last years has contributed to the expansion of Precision Livestock Farming applications. In this context, animal geolocation systems applied to extensive farming are interesting for farmers to optimize their daily work organization. Nevertheless, the deployment of these solutions implies several technical challenges which must be resolved, mainly the energy consumption and the suitability of the communication protocols. A recently developed solution that deals with these technical challenges is the e-Pasto platform, which is composed of low power geolocation devices embedded into collars that offer an energetic autonomy of at least seven months, completed with a visualization user interface. The autonomy is assured employing a duty-cycle operation that results in one geolocation position measurement per hour. This work studies the employ of accelerometers to overcome this limitation assuring, at the same time, the required autonomy for the geolocation device. The authors also propose an algorithm that processes the acceleration data in order to identify the steps of an individual. The whole solution (step identification and geolocation) has been validated by means of several experimental tests.

Palladium (Pd) nanoparticle catalysis has attracted increasing attention due to its efficient catalytic activity and its wide application in environmental protection and chemical synthesis. In this work, Pd nanoparticles (about 71 nm) were synthesized in aqueous solution by microwave-assisted thermal synthesis and immobilized in beech wood blocks as Pd@wood catalysts. The wood blocks were first hydrothermally treated with 10% NaOH solution to improve the internal structure and increase their porosity, thereby providing favorable attachment sites for the formed Pd nanoparticles. The stable deposition of Pd nanoparticle clusters on the internal channels of the wood blocks can be clearly observed. In addition, the catalytic performance of the prepared Pd@wood was investigated through two model reactions: the reduction of 4-nitrophenol and Cr(VI). The Pd@wood catalyst showed 95.4 g−1 s−1 M−1 of normalized rate constant knorm and 2.03 min−1 of the TOF, respectively. Furthermore, Pd nanoparticles are integrated into the internal structure of wood blocks by microwave-assisted thermal synthesis, which is an effective method for wood functionalization. It benefits metal nanoparticle catalysis in the synthesis of fine chemicals as well as in industrial wastewater treatment.