A new transparent flat woody film was developed by direct dissolution of finely divided Japanese beech wood in formic acid at room temperature for 4−7 days and subsequent slow evaporation of the solvent on a substrate. The obtained woody film was bendable and foldable without breaking (it could be used for origami) and had a relatively high Young’s modulus and tensile strength. The thermal analyses showed that the woody film was mechanically and thermally stable even at relatively high temperatures and can be utilized up to 180 °C without softening. The film absorbed almost the same amount of water as that absorbed by the cellulose film and had very high biodegradability, which was comparable with that of cellulose. The film was prepared without removing any constituents from wood and using a very simple processing method. We think that this work opens the way for the production of biodegradable and sustainable “molded wood” materials.

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The effects of sulfates on enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) were investigated in three municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), which treat sewage containing several concentrations of sulfates. The behaviour of sulfates and phosphates in the anaerobic oxic process was analysed by considering the daily inflow rate and water quality. Although phosphorus release and uptake were recognized in all plants, phosphorus release from the WWTPs that were treating high-sulfate wastewater (high-sulfate WWTP), was lower than that of the WWTP treating low-sulfate wastewater (lowsulfate WWTP). In the high-sulfate WWTPs, sulfate decreased in the anaerobic zone and increased in the oxic zone. Analysis of the sulfate reduction and sulfur oxidation activities of the sludge showed that both activities were dependent on the influent sulfate concentration. The relative abundance of SRB which oxidize organic matters completely in high-sulfate WWTPs tends to be higher than that in low-sulfate WWTPs. On the other hand, a lower relative abundance of polyphosphate accumulating organisms (PAOs) was recognized in the high-sulfate WWTPs.

To address the problem of marine pollution from discarded plastics, we developed a highly biodegradable woody film, with almost the same components as wood, from the formic acid solution of ball-milled wood. We found that the woody film was not easily degraded by cultured solution of hand bacteria (phylum Proteobacteria was dominant). However, the film was easily biodegraded when in cultured solution of soil (Firmicutes, especially class Bacilli, was dominant) for 4 weeks at 37 °C, or when buried in the soil itself, both under aerobic conditions (Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria were dominant) for 40 days at room temperature and under anaerobic conditions (Firmicutes, especially family Ruminococcaceae, was dominant) for 5 weeks at 37 °C. Moreover, when film was buried in the soil, more carbon dioxide was generated than from soil alone. Therefore, the film was not only brittle but formed of decomposable organic matter. We showed that the film does not decompose at the time of use when touched by the hand, but it decomposes easily when buried in the soil after use. We suggest that this biodegradable woody film can be used as a sustainable raw material in the future.www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ were then purified and pooled for sequencing. Sequencing was performed using the Illumina MiSeq platform at Kanazawa University. The raw sequence data were analysed following Hewawasam et al. 27 . Data were clustered to each operational taxonomic unit (OTU) at the 97% similarity level, and the assignment of OTUs was carried out using Greengenes 28 and PyNAST 29 .Creation of heat maps. Data were analysed in R 30 and R Studio (R-Tools Technology, Ontario, Canada).The R and R Studio can be downloaded from the following URL: https://cran.r-project.org/, https://rstudio.com/ products/rstudio/download/. We used the version 3.5.3 for R, and 1.1.463 for R Studio.The OTUs with a low frequency of appearance were excluded, and the samples with a small number of total reads were excluded. Subsequently, the "rarefy" function was performed with the package "vegan" 31 in order to compare samples with different numbers of reads. Heat maps are used for visualisation in data analysis and can be created from R's "heatmap" function. In this study, the heat map was generated using the package "heatmap3" 32 , which allows customisation of heat maps.