Nature-based solutions as a pretreatment to enhance the removal of contaminant of emerging concern in wastewater

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Química, Facultat de Química, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2023-2024, Tutora: Núria López VinentThe Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 6, established by the United Nations in 2015 as part of Agenda 2030, aims to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. However, according to the United Nations' 2021 World Water Development Report, the current state of water is significantly far from achieving this goal. More than 2 billion people live in countries facing constant water stress, and approximately 4 billion suffer severe physical water scarcity for at least one month per year. Factors such as population growth, socio-economic development, and changes in consumption patterns are expected to increase water demand by 50% to 80% in the coming decades. Moreover, accelerated climate change could exacerbate this situation by rapidly reducing water availability globally. In response to this scenario, the reuse of wastewater emerges as a crucial sustainable development strategy to address the scarcity crisis. However, it is essential that wastewater undergoes proper treatment to remove all harmful elements resulting from various human activities. Emerging microcontaminants such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, personal care products, and steroid hormones are examples of substances that must be eliminated from water bodies, despite being detected at very low concentrations (from ng/L to μg/L). Conventional wastewater treatment systems were not initially designed to completely remove these persistent compounds, underscoring the need to implement additional technologies such as advanced oxidation processes, activated carbon adsorption, or membrane filtration to significantly enhance their removal. Constructed Wetlands (CWs) are promising nature-based technologies for removing various types of microcontaminants due to their simplicity, low investment and operational costs. These wetlands are periodically flooded flat land areas with aquatic plants acting as natural filters. Through mechanisms like biodegradation, phytodegradation, photodegradation, rhizofiltration, and other processes, CWs can effectively eliminate heavy metals, nutrients, and organic matter.However, they face challenges such as long retention times, large space requirements, and may not be suitable for certain compounds unaffected by biological or adsorption processes. To improve the efficiency of the CWs and overcome these challenges, it is proposed to combine them with advanced oxidation processes. This can enhance treatment efficiency by reducing the load of organic matter and suspended solids before the oxidation stage. Additionally, the use of a natural waste product from the food industry in the CWs will be investigated due to its high adsorption capacity, and the effect of recirculation in these systems will be studied to optimize contaminant removal and nitrification-denitrification. The goal is to develop a more efficient and environmentally friendly treatment, also exploring the possibility of reusing the treated effluents for agricultural irrigation. By adding a layer of almond shell as a natural adsorbent, layers of 2 and 4 cm, greater removal was observed compared to the HC without this layer, with removal increasing by 70% for the 2 cm layer and 80% for the 4 cm layer. Therefore, the thickness of this layer influences the removal of microcontaminants. On the other hand, values such as DOC and TSS were also reduced by an average of 45% and 80% respectively. Nitrite levels decreased by almost 100%, and nitrate levels increased in all CWs due to the presence of oxygen. Finally, it was observed that the removal performance of the hybrid system (CW + AOP) increased compared to the processes separately, achieving an average removal of between 85-96%. In this case, the organic adsorbent layer is not as significant as in the separate CWs

“Flora Italiana Digitale”: an interactive identification tool for the Flora of Italy

The digital facilities of the second edition of Pignatti’s “Flora d’Italia” are presented. A software, called FID (i.e. “Flora Italiana Digitale”) will link together a random-access interactive identification tool, a thesaurus, synoptic tables and one template for each single species, including a distribution map (referred to the Italian regions), “ecograms”, a text-box and up to 24 highresolution colour images. The FID follows a “shareware phylosophy”. All contents and images can be integrated and/or replaced over time, in order to continuously improve the diagnostic and qualitative performance of the provided utilities. Ideally, the community of users should interact on the web, so that every user could easily become content provider

Sequestrati dalla vendetta: “rimanere chiusi fuori dall’oggetto”

RiassuntoA partire dal loro lavoro di psicoterapeute e attraverso alcuni frammenti clinici che si riferiscono ad un gruppo di adolescenti svoltosi in un quartiere a rischio di Palermo, le Autrici analizzano la dimensione mafiosa non restringendola al solo comportamento criminale; piuttosto declinandola lungo alcuni significanti: non identità e gruppo mafioso che colonizza e sottomette lo psichismo del singolo; fantasmi familiari potenti e spietati che impediscono il costituirsi di sé originali e autonomi; personalità impastate di indifferenza emotiva e vendicatività. Significanti che rendono conto delle vaste aree di desertificazione e pietrificazione – resistenza al cambiamento – avvertita dagli psicoterapeuti che prendono in carico giovani di famiglie mafiose. Parole chiave: mafia, psicoterapia, gruppo, vendetta, identità, resistenza, cambiamentoKidnapped by revenge: “being locked out of the object”Abstract Starting from their work as psychotherapists and by means of some clinical fragments which refer to a group of teenagers of a neighbourhood at risk in Palermo, the Authoresses analyze the Mafia dimension not limiting it to a criminal behaviour only. They rather decline it along some signifiers: non identity and mafia group which colonizes and subjugates the indi-vidual’s psychism. Powerful and merciless family ghosts who prevent from building original and autonomous selves. Personalities kneaded with emotional indifference and vindictiveness. Signifiers which account for the large desertification and petrification areas – resistance to change – that psychotherapists, who deal with young people belonging to Mafia families, are able to feel. Key word: mafia, psychotherapy, group, revenge, identity, resistance, chang

Carbohydrate esterases involved in deacetylation of food components by the human gut microbiota

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L'alessitimia come disturbo della regolazione affettiva

Alexithymia is a theoretical construct concerning the ability to contact our feelings and the ability to describe them in words. It is very useful in clinical experience and also in empirical research for its operationalization and applicability possibility. After more than 40 years from its original definition, with clinical observation of patients defined “psychosomatics” according a classic definition, alexithymia has become one of the most investigated disease in the last decades. This paper aims to explore etiopathogenetic hypotheses and contemporaneous prospective within which it is possible to understand the relevance of the construct both in clinical experience and in empirical research. Furthermore, the paper examines alexithymia assessment methods to provide a complete and updated description of tools now available for clinical research. We also wish to underline the fundamental limit in a detailed study on alexithymia: the absence of psychometric tools to assess the disease in developmental age. This limit is related to the difficulty of building research tools able to understand the developmental movement in emotional processing capacity during childhood. However, there are recent preliminary studies on children/teens and preteens which pave the way for research in this direction

Technical pipeline for screening microbial communities as a function of substrate specificity through fluorescent labelling

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The Rorschach method for obesity assessment: clinical study on a group of obese women

SUMMARY. Aim. The purpose of this study is to explore through the Rorschach method the psychological and personological profile of the woman with obesity. Methods. The Rorschach test was administered to 10 women with body mass index of 41.86±9.9 kg/m2 at the clinic for obesity surgical treatment at the University Hospital “Paolo Giaccone” of Palermo. Results. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Rorschach responses detected in the study show: limited practical and creative sense in managing daily life situations, rigid control of emotions, affective turmoil, sense of inadequacy; sufficient examination of reality and adaptation social. Conclusion. The Rorschach method can be the privileged instrument for obesity, for its remarkable projective value, because it allows to capture the psychic suffering of the obese person, the representation and the image of the self, to identify the interaction between psycho-physical state and emotional investments

La prescripción adquisitiva de dominio en el sistema jurídico peruano: una revisión sistemática de la literatura científica del 2015-2019

A través de este trabajo de investigación se busca analizar de manera analítica la institución de la prescripción adquisitiva de dominio en el Perú, las dificultades a nivel jurídico que afronta el poseedor que busca afianzar su derecho cumpliendo los requisitos establecidos por el art. 950 del Código Civil, por ello planteamos la pregunta de investigación: ¿Protege al usucapiente el sistema jurídico peruano en el proceso de la prescripción adquisitiva de dominio? El objetivo de la investigación es identificar los aportes jurídicos de diversos países y autores, para lo cual se examinaron fuentes de información como Google Académico, Vez y Metabuscador, en un intervalo de tiempo del 2015 a 2019, en idioma español obteniendo 18 publicaciones. Durante la selección se utilizó el método de análisis y síntesis, cuyos resultados fueron importantes para nuestra investigación, pese a las limitaciones en revistas jurídicas, cantidad de publicaciones

Polysaccharide degradation by the Bacteroidetes: mechanisms and nomenclature

The Bacteroidetes phylum is renowned for its ability to degrade a wide range of complex carbohydrates, a trait that has enabled its dominance in many diverse environments. The best studied species inhabit the human gut microbiome and use polysaccharide utilization loci (PULs), discrete genetic structures that encode proteins involved in the sensing, binding, deconstruction, and import of target glycans. In many environmental species, polysaccharide degradation is tightly coupled to the phylum-exclusive type IX secretion system (T9SS), which is used for the secretion of certain enzymes and is linked to gliding motility. In addition, within specific species these two adaptive systems (PULs and T9SS) are intertwined, with PUL-encoded enzymes being secreted by the T9SS. Here, we discuss the most noteworthy PUL and non-PUL mechanisms that confer specific and rapid polysaccharide degradation capabilities to the Bacteroidetes in a range of environments. We also acknowledge that the literature showcasing examples of PULs is rapidly expanding and developing a set of assumptions that can be hard to track back to original findings. Therefore, we present a simple universal description of conserved PUL functions and how they are determined, while proposing a common nomenclature describing PULs and their components, to simplify discussion and understanding of PUL systems