Air pollution and the increasing production of greenhouse gases has prompted greater use of renewable energy sources; the EU has set a target that the use of green energy should be at 32 percent by 2030. With this in mind, in the last 10 years, the demand for pellets in Italy has more than doubled, making Italy the second largest consumer in Europe. The quality of the pellets burned in stoves is crucial to indoor and outdoor pollution. Among other parameters, moisture and ash are used to classify pellets according to EN ISO 17225:2014. This work involved the analysis of the organic and inorganic fraction of both some finished products on the Italian market and some raw materials (e.g., wood chips) sampled according to the technical standard EN 14778:2011. The analytical results showed the presence of some substances potentially harmful to human health such as formaldehyde, acetone, toluene and styrene for the organic fraction and nickel, lead and vanadium for the inorganic fraction. The chemometric approach showed that it is the inorganic fraction which is most responsible for the diversification of the samples under study. The detection of some substances may be a warning bell about the impact of such materials, both for the environment and for human health.

UNASSIGNED: Rising number of the nonresponding dermatophytic infections raises deep concerns among the dermatologists across the nation. Variations in the quality of itraconazole may be a contributing factor to nonresponse in certain dermatophytic infections. This article will address this issue in a simple way of analyzing things in an OPD and may help us in being aware and taking the right foot forward.
UNASSIGNED: To assess the quality of itraconazole brands by observing the morphological properties of pellets/beads in different brands.
UNASSIGNED: In this study, 10 brands of itraconazole that are commonly used in clinical practice were randomly selected. Pellet counts and qualitative morphological analysis of pellets as size (small, large, or mixed), shape (uniform or nonuniform), and presence of amorphous material was performed by three independent observers. Also, dissolution profile of some brands was assessed by adding the pellets in equal quantity of water.
UNASSIGNED: The pellet counts of brands varied from 856 pellets per capsule in brand 1 to 109 pellets per capsule in brand 8. Brand 1, brand 2, and brand 7 pellets were small and uniform in morphology. Brand 3, brand 4, and brand 10 pellets were mixed in size but uniform in morphology. Brand 9 pellets were mixed and nonuniform whereas brand 5, brand 6, and brand 8 pellets were mixed in size, nonuniform in shape, and had presence of amorphous material. Dissolution test revealed that brand 5 dissolved rapidly and turned clear water color to milky white.
UNASSIGNED: A simple dermoscopy examination of itraconazole pellets may provide thoughtful insights about the quality of itraconazole brand. It may be considered as routine practice for all dermatophytic infection planned for treatment with itraconazole.

UNASSIGNED: Testosterone (T) therapy has been shown to be breast protective in both pre- and post-menopausal patients. Additionally, estradiol (E) does not cause breast cancer (BC) in the majority of the world\'s literatures. This study aimed to investigate the incidence of invasive BC (IBC) in pre- and postmenopausal women treated with T therapy and T in combination with E (T/E).
UNASSIGNED: Since January 2010, a total of 2,377 pre- and post-menopausal women were treated with T or T/E implants. IBC rates were reported based on newly diagnosed IBC cases in the total study. Total cases divided by the total sample size and years in study was expressed as an incidence per 100,000 person-years (P-Ys). The BC incidence was compared with age-specific Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) incidence rates.
UNASSIGNED: As of October 2020, 14 cases diagnosed with IBC have been found in 9,746 P-Y of follow up for an incidence of 144 cases per 100,000 P-Y, substantially less than the age-specific SEER incidence rates (223/100,000), placebo arm of Women\'s Health Initiative Study (330/100,000), and never users of hormone therapy from the Million Women Study (312/100,000).
UNASSIGNED: T and/or T/E pellet implants significantly reduced the incidence of BC in pre- and post-menopausal women. The addition of E did not increase the incidence over using T alone. This is the second multi-year long-term study demonstrating the benefits of T therapy in reducing the incidence of IBC.

In this study, the pyrolysis behavior and kinetics of raw biomasses and their pellets were studied by Coats Redfern and DAEM methods. The results demonstrated that the similar activation energies obtained by both methods confirmed accuracy of the kinetics calculation. The activation energy of the pellets was 132.49-232.44 kJ mol-1, slightly higher than those of raw biomasses, which was 120.58-210.55 kJ mol-1. The results from Coats Redfern method showed that the pyrolysis of all the samples were controlled by mass and heat diffusion. DAEM revealed that the activation energies of the pellets were higher than those of raw biomasses during hemicellulose and cellulose decomposition stages, and was opposite for the lignin decomposition stage. Physical structure characterization indicated that the pellets had smaller surface area and more compact surface than those of their raw biomasses. Hence, the mass and heat diffusion were suppressed and more cross-linking reactions occurred during pellets pyrolysis.

Filamentous fungi are well-established production hosts that feature a strong interconnection between morphology, physiology, and productivity. For penicillin production in Penicillium chrysogenum, industrial processes frequently favor a pellet morphology comprising compact hyphal agglomerates. Inherently these tightly packed entanglements lead to inactive, degrading sections within the pellet\'s core because of limitations. Optimal process design requires detailed knowledge of the nature of the limitations and localization of productive zones in the biomass, which is generally obtainable through modeling and complex analytical methods such as oxygen microelectrode and histological investigations. Methods that combine physiological and morphological insight are crucial yet scarce for filamentous fungi. In this study, we used time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry in combination with oxygen and glucose tracer substrates, requiring little effort for sample preparation and measurement. Our method is capable of analyzing oxygen and substrate uptake in various morphological structures by the use of 18O as a tracer. In parallel, we can assess productive biomass regions through identification of penicillin mass fragments to simultaneously study oxygen diffusion, substrate incorporation, and productive biomass sections.

UNASSIGNED: Fungal fermentation is used to produce a diverse repertoire of enzymes, chemicals, and drugs for various industries. During submerged cultivation, filamentous fungi form a range of macromorphologies, including dispersed mycelia, clumped aggregates, or pellets, which have critical implications for rheological aspects during fermentation, gas/nutrient transfer, and, thus, product titres. An important component of strain engineering efforts is the ability to quantitatively assess fungal growth phenotypes, which will drive novel leads for morphologically optimized production strains.
UNASSIGNED: In this study, we developed an automated image analysis pipeline to quantify the morphology of pelleted and dispersed growth (MPD) which rapidly and reproducibly measures dispersed and pelleted macromorphologies from any submerged fungal culture. It (i) enables capture and analysis of several hundred images per user/day, (ii) is designed to quantitatively assess heterogeneous cultures consisting of dispersed and pelleted forms, (iii) gives a quantitative measurement of culture heterogeneity, (iv) automatically generates key Euclidian parameters for individual fungal structures including particle diameter, aspect ratio, area, and solidity, which are also assembled into a previously described dimensionless morphology number MN, (v) has an in-built quality control check which enables end-users to easily confirm the accuracy of the automated calls, and (vi) is easily adaptable to user-specified magnifications and macromorphological definitions. To concomitantly provide proof of principle for the utility of this image analysis pipeline, and provide new leads for morphologically optimized fungal strains, we generated a morphological mutant in the cell factory Aspergillus niger based on CRISPR-Cas technology. First, we interrogated a previously published co-expression networks for A. niger to identify a putative gamma-adaptin encoding gene (aplD) that was predicted to play a role in endosome cargo trafficking. Gene editing was used to generate a conditional aplD expression mutant under control of the titratable Tet-on system. Reduced aplD expression caused a hyperbranched growth phenotype and diverse defects in pellet formation with a putative increase in protein secretion. This possible protein hypersecretion phenotype could be correlated with increased dispersed mycelia, and both decreased pellet diameter and MN.
UNASSIGNED: The MPD image analysis pipeline is a simple, rapid, and flexible approach to quantify diverse fungal morphologies. As an exemplar, we have demonstrated that the putative endosomal transport gene aplD plays a crucial role in A. niger filamentous growth and pellet formation during submerged culture. This suggests that endocytic components are underexplored targets for engineering fungal cell factories.

Fungi assisted microalgae bioflocculation is an emerging, efficient and cost-effective microalgal harvesting method, but no study has systematically evaluated and compared fungal spore-assisted (FSA) and fungal pellet-assisted (FPA) microalgal harvesting methods. In this study, harvesting Chlorella sp. cells by co-culture with Penicillium sp. spores or pellets was compared. Temperature, glucose concentration, pH and fungi:algae ratio were the critical parameters for harvesting efficiency. The highest flocculation efficiency (99%) of FSA method was achieved in 28 h at 40 °C, 160 rpm, 5 g glucose/L and 1.1 × 104 cells/mL (spore). FPA method can harvest 98.26% algae cells in 2.5 h at 34 °C, 160 rpm, pH 4.0 with the fungi:algae ratio of 1:2. The carbon input for FPA is only half of that for FSA. FPA takes less time and needs less glucose input compared with FSA and may be more promising to be further developed as an effective microalgae bioflocculation method.