Healthcare Professionals’ Perceptions and Concerns towards Domestic Violence during Pregnancy in Southern Italy

Background: Literature on pregnancy highlighted a large number of women abused by their partners, especially among low-income teenagers attending hospital for pregnancy check-ups. Pregnancy represents a key moment for diagnosing domestic violence. Method: This study explores health professionals’ perceptions and concerns about domestic violence against women in services dealing with pregnant women. The twenty-four interviewees were from an Obstetrical-Gynecological walk-in Clinic in the south of Italy. The textual data has been complementarily analyzed by means of two dierent procedures: Symbolic-structural semiotic analysis and Thematic content analysis. Results: What emerges is that the interviewees of the clinic do not regard the issue of domestic violence as a matter of direct interest for the health service. The clinic is seen as a place for urgent contact, but one where there is not enough time to dedicate to this kind of patient, nor an adequate space to care for and listen to them. Obstetricians and health personnel expressed a negative attitude when it comes to including questions regarding violence and abuse in pre-natal reports. Training for health and social professionals and the empowering of institutional support and networking practices are needed to increase awareness of the phenomenon among the gynecological personnel

Special Issue on “Advances in Bioprocess Technology”

This Special Issue, “Advances in Bioprocess Technology”, focuses on the latest advancements in sustainable bioprocess technologies [...

Butanol production by clostridium acetobutylicum in a series of packed biofilm bed reactors

The reactor design plays a key role in the fermentative production of biobutanol. The high cell concentration that may be reached in confined – biofilm, membrane, recycling - cell reactors offers high conversion rates. To the authors knowledge, the concentration of solvents in the broth from biofilm reactors reported in literature is not particularly high and it negatively affects the successive stages for butanol recovery. The low concentration of solvents in the produced stream is typically due to the inhibitory effect of solvents on the fermentation. Therefore, the butanol bioreactor productivity is as low as the bioreactor behaviour approaches the CSTR limit. The aim of this contribution is to report recent results on the design of a continuous biofilm reactor to optimize the process performances. Clostridium acetobutylicum DSM 792 was adopted for the fermentation process. The conversion was carried out in 4 packed bed reactors (PBRs) connected in series: the first reactor of the series was kept under acidogenesis and the successive reactors were kept under solventogenesis. Tests were carried out feeding the reactor system with solutions bearing glucose. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Special Issue on “Bioreactor System: Design, Modeling and Continuous Production Process”

Biochemical engineering deals with the processing of biological or chemical materials using enzymes or living cells as biological catalysts. At a central position in a biotechnolog- ical process is the bioreactor. The term bioreactor refers to a device, or system that contains substrates and enzymes or cells as biocatalysts and provides an environment in which the biocatalysts can perform their functions. The characteristics of enzyme biocatalysts resemble more or less those of chemical catalysts in that their activities degrade with time, whereas cells are self-multiplying living systems. Both types of biocatalysts have undergone successful developments in producing various product

Processes for biobutanol production from renewable resources

The impact of petroleum fuel emissions and more rapid diminishing petroleum reserves have increased the research for alternative biofuel sources. In this scenario, recently is rising the biorefinery concept. A biorefinery is a facility that produces fuels, power, heat, and value-added chemicals from biomass conversion. The study carried out during the present Ph.D. program aimed at investigating the butanol production process by fermentation from renewable resources. The activities, in order to pursue the biorefinery concept, were articulated according to three paths :i)Feedstock market and techno-economic feasibility assessment of butanol production; ii)Biomass Pretreatment; iii)Butanol production and characterization of the ABE fermentation process. These studies were carried out at the "Enco" Engineering Consulting Company, at the "University of Western Ontario" Canada and at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica, dei Materiali e della Produzione Industriale of the University of Naples 'Federico II'. Waste to energy: feedstocks market assessment The cost of the substrate represents about 60% of the overall production cost for a fermentation process. For this reason, feedstock available at high mass rate, with a constant availability over the year and low cost is a key issue for the success of the butanol production. A survey of potential "waste biomass" for butanol production was proposes. The maximum butanol production rate from each biomass has been estimated taking into account the feedstock availability rate, the average composition and the butanol yield. Furthermore, a study aiming at investigating the techno-economic feasibility of butanol production from lignocellulosic biomass was carried out. A potential flowsheet to produce butanol by conversion of a lignocellulosic biomass has been simulated by means of the software Aspen Plus®. The production process has been splitted into three sections: the upstream section, the fermentation section, and the butanol recovery section. Particular attention has been paid to the upstream process. The upstream units have been analysed according the approximated cost-estimation methods integrated with the simulation software Aspen Plus®. Biomass Pretreatment A new class of solvents DES (Deep Eutectic Solvent) has been investigated to obtain fermentable sugars from corncob. Corncob, a byproduct of corn grain production, is currently being used as a potential feedstock for cellulosic ethanol production in the United States, as it has a low lignin and high carbohydrate contents. DESs exhibit similar physico-chemical properties to ionic liquids, but they are environmentally friendlier and much cheaper. The pretretated corncob was characterized in term of lignin content, inhibitors concentration, crystallinity index and enzymatic digestibility. Butanol production and characterization of the ABE fermentation process The study was aimed at the assessment of the butanol production by C. acetobutylicum. Xylose and lactose are used as carbon source. Xylose is one of the mains components of the lignocellulose hydrolysates, lactose is used to mime cheese-whey, a wastewater stream released from the cheese industry. In order to optimize a continuous biofilm reactor, which is characterized by a heterogeneous cell population, the kinetics of acidogenic and solventogenic cells are investigated. Acids production by acidogenic cells and butanol production by solventogenic cells were investigated using different reactor configurations: CSTR under controlled pH and CSTR with microfiltration unit respectively. Operating conditions of the continuous tests were selected to maximize the butanol production and butanol selectivity

Special Issue on “Bioreactor System: Design, Modeling and Continuous Production Process”

Biochemical engineering deals with the processing of biological or chemical materials using enzymes or living cells as biological catalysts [...

Enzyme Encapsulation in Liposomes: Recent Advancements in the Pharmaceutical and Food Sector

Nanocarriers have found numerous applications in pharmaceutical and food sectors due to their unique physical and chemical properties. In particular, liposomes are the most extensively studied kind of nanoparticles for these applications. They are spherical colloidal systems characterized by lipid membranes enclosing an aqueous core. This versatile structure enables the incorporation of hydrophilic, hydrophobic, and amphiphilic molecules, making them optimal candidates for the controlled release of drugs and enzymes. Despite numerous promising applications, liposomes face challenges such as low colloidal stability, inefficient drug encapsulation, and high production costs for large-scale applications. For this reason, innovative methods, such as microfluidics, electroporation, and supercritical CO2, are currently being investigated to overcome these limitations. This review examines the recent applications of liposomes in enzyme encapsulation within the pharmaceutical and food sectors, emphasizing production challenges and emerging technological developments

Non-Thermal Plasma as a Biomass Pretreatment in Biorefining Processes

Climatic changes and the growing population call for innovative solutions that are able to produce biochemicals by adopting environmentally sustainable procedures. The biorefinery concept meets this requirement. However, one of the main drawbacks of biorefineries is represented by the feedstocks’ pretreatment. Lately, scientific research has focused on non-thermal plasma, which is an innovative and sustainable pretreatment that is able to obtain a high sugar concentration. In the present review, literature related to the use of non-thermal plasma for the production of fermentable sugar have been collected. In particular, its sugar extraction, time, and energy consumption have been compared with those of traditional biomass pretreatments. As reported, on one hand, this emerging technology is characterized by low costs and no waste production; on the other hand, the reactor’s configuration must be optimized to reduce time and energy demand

Non-Thermal Plasma as a Biomass Pretreatment in Biorefining Processes

Climatic changes and the growing population call for innovative solutions that are able to produce biochemicals by adopting environmentally sustainable procedures. The biorefinery concept meets this requirement. However, one of the main drawbacks of biorefineries is represented by the feedstocks’ pretreatment. Lately, scientific research has focused on non-thermal plasma, which is an innovative and sustainable pretreatment that is able to obtain a high sugar concentration. In the present review, literature related to the use of non-thermal plasma for the production of fermentable sugar have been collected. In particular, its sugar extraction, time, and energy consumption have been compared with those of traditional biomass pretreatments. As reported, on one hand, this emerging technology is characterized by low costs and no waste production; on the other hand, the reactor’s configuration must be optimized to reduce time and energy demand