Cardioviruses comprise a genus of picornaviruses that cause severe illnesses in rodents, but little is known about the prevalence, diversity, or spectrum of disease of such agents among humans. A single cardiovirus isolate, Saffold virus, was cultured in 1981 in stool from an infant with fever. Here, we describe the identification of a group of human cardioviruses that have been cloned directly from patient specimens, the first of which was detected using a pan-viral microarray in respiratory secretions from a child with influenza-like illness. Phylogenetic analysis of the nearly complete viral genome (

This work compares the structure of industrially isolated lignin samples from kraft pulping and three alternative processes: butanol organosolv, supercritical water hydrolysis, and sulfur dioxide/ethanol/water fractionation. Kraft processes are known to produce highly condensed lignin, with reduced potential for catalytic depolymerization, whereas the alternative processes have been hypothesized to impact the lignin less. The structural properties most relevant to catalytic depolymerization are characterized by elemental analysis, quantitative 13C and 2 D HQSC NMR spectroscopy, gel permeation chromatography, and thermogravimetric analysis. Quantification of the β‐O‐4 ether bond content shows partial depolymerization, with all samples having less than 12 bonds per 100 aromatic units. This results in theoretical monomer yields of less than 5 %, strongly suggesting the alternative fractionation processes generate highly condensed lignin structures that are no more suitable for catalytic depolymerization than kraft lignin. However, the different thermal degradation profiles suggest there are physicochemical differences that could be leveraged in other valorization strategies.

The rejection of process impurities from crystallizing products is an essential step for the purification of pharmaceutical drugs and for the isolation of active pharmaceutical ingredients with the right crystal quality attributes. While several impurity incorporation mechanisms have been reported in the literature, the frequency of those mechanisms in actual industrial processes is largely unknown. This work presents the outcome of a joint investigation by crystallization scientists from two pharmaceutical companies and an academic institution, on the prevalence of impurity retention mechanisms in cooling and antisolvent crystallizations. A total of 52 product-impurity pairs have been explored in detail using the so-called Solubility-Limited Impurity Purge (SLIP) test as the diagnostic tool to identify the underlying impurity retention mechanism of already crystallized materials with challenging impurities. The results show that formation of solid solutions is the most common mechanism, where the impurity and product are partially miscible in the solid state. In 73% of cases, only one solid solution phase was obtained in which the impurity became incorporated into the crystal lattice of the product (α phase). In 6% of the examples, two solid solution phases were obtained, where the second solid phase (β phase) comprised predominantly the impurity and the product was the minor component. The remaining impurity retention mechanisms (21%) are related to solid-state immiscible impurities that precipitated from solution resulting in a physical mixture between the product and the impurity. The reasons for the results are discussed through a comprehensive analysis of theoretical reported retention mechanisms, which includes physical constraints for the scale-up of isolation processes, thermodynamic assessments using ternary phase diagrams, and restrictions in the context of current pharmaceutical syntheses of small organic molecules. Three industrial case studies are presented that exemplify how knowledge of the retention mechanisms can be used to delineate appropriate strategies for process design and to effectively purge these impurities during crystallization or washing.

It has been known that the yield of lignin monomers during lignin depolymerization is limited by the irreversible condensations of lignin in the fractionation and/or depolymerization process. In this study, we report a new oxidative catalytic fractionation (OCF) process with a simple and effective one-pot but two-step approach to depolymerize lignin to lignin-derived chemicals (LDCs) using polyoxometalate (POM) as the only catalyst. First, the POM effectively catalyzed the methoxylation of the active α-OH groups of lignin in a methanol and water mixture at low temperature (100 °C), and 96% of the stabilized lignin in the lignocellulose sawdust was extracted to the solution simultaneously. Then the lignin solution was heated to an elevated temperature (140 °C) in the same solvent. As a result, 74.0 wt % of the lignin (based on the weight of the Klason lignin in the wood) was converted to LDCs, including 45.9 wt % aromatic monomers.

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