Bio-based Products from Lignocellulosic Waste Biomass: A State of the Art

This review presents data on the chemical composition of harvest residues and food industry by-products as widely abundant representatives of lignocellulosic waste biomass. Pretreatment methods, with special emphasis on biological methods, are presented as an important step in utilization of lignocellulosic waste biomass for the production of sustainable biofuels and high-value chemicals. Special attention was paid to the methods of lignin isolation and its possible utilization within lignocellulosic biorefinery. The objectives of circular bioeconomy and the main aspects of lignocellulosic biorefinery are highlighted. Finally, current data on industrial, pilot, and research and development plants used in Europe for the production of a variety of bio-based products from different feedstocks are presented. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

3‐Color bipartite Ramsey number of cycles and paths

The k-colour bipartite Ramsey number of a bipartite graph H is the least integer n for which every k-edge-coloured complete bipartite graph Kn,n contains a monochromatic copy of H. The study of bipartite Ramsey numbers was initiated, over 40 years ago, by Faudree and Schelp and, independently, by Gy´arf´as and Lehel, who determined the 2-colour Ramsey number of paths. In this paper we determine asymptotically the 3-colour bipartite Ramsey number of paths and (even) cycles

Directed Ramsey number for trees

We call a family F of subsets of [n] s-saturated if it contains no s pairwise disjoint sets, and moreover no set can be added to F while preserving this property (here [n] = {1, . . . , n}). More than 40 years ago, Erd˝os and Kleitman conjectured that an s-saturated family of subsets of [n] has size at least (1 − 2 −(s−1))2n. It is easy to show that every s-saturated family has size at least 1 2 · 2 n, but, as was mentioned by Frankl and Tokushige, even obtaining a slightly better bound of (1/2 + ε)2n, for some fixed ε > 0, seems difficult. In this note, we prove such a result, showing that every s-saturated family of subsets of [n] has size at least (1 − 1/s)2n. This lower bound is a consequence of a multipartite version of the problem, in which we seek a lower bound on |F1| + . . . + |Fs| where F1, . . . , Fs are families of subsets of [n], such that there are no s pairwise disjoint sets, one from each family Fi , and furthermore no set can be added to any of the families while preserving this property. We show that |F1| + . . . + |Fs| ≥ (s − 1) · 2 n, which is tight e.g. by taking F1 to be empty, and letting the remaining families be the families of all subsets of [n]

Large cliques and independent sets all over the place

We study the following question raised by Erd\H{o}s and Hajnal in the early 90's. Over all $n$-vertex graphs $G$ what is the smallest possible value of $m$ for which any $m$ vertices of $G$ contain both a clique and an independent set of size $\log n$? We construct examples showing that $m$ is at most $2^{2^{(\log\log n)^{1/2+o(1)}}}$ obtaining a twofold sub-polynomial improvement over the upper bound of about $\sqrt{n}$ coming from the natural guess, the random graph. Our (probabilistic) construction gives rise to new examples of Ramsey graphs, which while having no very large homogenous subsets contain both cliques and independent sets of size $\log n$ in any small subset of vertices. This is very far from being true in random graphs. Our proofs are based on an interplay between taking lexicographic products and using randomness.Comment: 12 page

Clique minors in graphs with a forbidden subgraph

The classical Hadwiger conjecture dating back to 1940's states that any graph of chromatic number at least $r$ has the clique of order $r$ as a minor. Hadwiger's conjecture is an example of a well studied class of problems asking how large a clique minor one can guarantee in a graph with certain restrictions. One problem of this type asks what is the largest size of a clique minor in a graph on $n$ vertices of independence number $\alpha(G)$ at most $r$. If true Hadwiger's conjecture would imply the existence of a clique minor of order $n/\alpha(G)$. Results of Kuhn and Osthus and Krivelevich and Sudakov imply that if one assumes in addition that $G$ is $H$-free for some bipartite graph $H$ then one can find a polynomially larger clique minor. This has recently been extended to triangle free graphs by Dvo\v{r}\'ak and Yepremyan, answering a question of Norin. We complete the picture and show that the same is true for arbitrary graph $H$, answering a question of Dvo\v{r}\'ak and Yepremyan. In particular, we show that any $K_s$-free graph has a clique minor of order $c_s(n/\alpha(G))^{1+\frac{1}{10(s-2) }}$, for some constant $c_s$ depending only on $s$. The exponent in this result is tight up to a constant factor in front of the $\frac{1}{s-2}$ term.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur

Halfway to Rota’s Basis Conjecture

In 1989, Rota made the following conjecture. Given n bases B1, . . . , Bn in an n-dimensional vector space V , one can always find n disjoint bases of V , each containing exactly one element from each Bi (we call such bases transversal bases). Rota’s basis conjecture remains wide open despite its apparent simplicity and the efforts of many researchers (for example, the conjecture was recently the subject of the collaborative “Polymath” project). In this paper we prove that one can always find (1/2 − o(1))n disjoint transversal bases, improving on the previous best bound of Ω(n/ log n). Our results also apply to the more general setting of matroids

Monochromatic trees in random tournaments

We prove that, with high probability, in every 2-edge-colouring of the random tournament on n vertices there is a monochromatic copy of every oriented tree of order O(n/ \sqrt{log n}. This generalizes a result of the first, third and fourth authors, who proved the same statement for paths, and is tight up to a constant factor

Minimum saturated families of sets

We call a family F of subsets of [n] s-saturated if it contains no s pairwise disjoint sets, and moreover no set can be added to F while preserving this property (here [n] = {1, . . . , n}). More than 40 years ago, Erd˝os and Kleitman conjectured that an s-saturated family of subsets of [n] has size at least (1 − 2 −(s−1))2n. It is easy to show that every s-saturated family has size at least 1 2 · 2 n, but, as was mentioned by Frankl and Tokushige, even obtaining a slightly better bound of (1/2 + ε)2n, for some fixed ε > 0, seems difficult. In this note, we prove such a result, showing that every s-saturated family of subsets of [n] has size at least (1 − 1/s)2n. This lower bound is a consequence of a multipartite version of the problem, in which we seek a lower bound on |F1| + . . . + |Fs| where F1, . . . , Fs are families of subsets of [n], such that there are no s pairwise disjoint sets, one from each family Fi , and furthermore no set can be added to any of the families while preserving this property. We show that |F1| + . . . + |Fs| ≥ (s − 1) · 2 n, which is tight e.g. by taking F1 to be empty, and letting the remaining families be the families of all subsets of [n]