Cover Feature: Acid Hydrotropic Fractionation of Lignocelluloses for Sustainable Biorefinery: Advantages, Opportunities, and Research Needs (ChemSusChem 15/2021)

Hydrotropic Fractionation of Birch Wood into Cellulose and Lignin: A New Step Towards Green Biorefinery

Hydrotropic treatment is an attractive process that uses water-soluble and environmentally friendly chemicals. Currently, this method is practically unexploited on a large scale due to the long treatment times required. In this study, the hydrotropic process was modified by the addition of hydrogen peroxide, formic acid, or both. The modified treatments were more selective than the reference, a...

Lignocelluloses Feedstock Biorefinery as Petrorefinery Substitutes

The material needs from our society are reaching the crisis point, as the demand for resources will soon exceed the capacity of the present fossil resource based infrastructure [1]. Currently, fossil-based energy resources, such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas, are responsible for about three quarters of the primary energy consumption in our world. While decreasing crude-oil reserves, enhan...

Spatial Computing∗: Accomplishments, Opportunities, and Research Needs

We present a perspective on the societal accomplishments, recent cultural shifts, challenges, and opportunities in spatial computing based on the discussions at the 2012 Computing Community Consortium (CCC) visioning workshop, “From GPS and Virtual Globes to Spatial Computing – 2020,” held at the National Academies’ Keck Center to assess interdisciplinary developments and research challenges in...

Research in Reproduction: Challenges, Needs, and Opportunities

After delivering a student lecture on the quantitative attributes of human infertility, the very poor quality of human sperm in comparison to other species, and the biologically unlikely long “time-topregnancy” statistics even among young people, I generally pose to my audience of several hundred young and healthy students the following question. “All of these characteristics would be enough to...

Research needs and opportunities. Maintaining the momentum.