Production of compost from logging residues.

The implementation of forest management generates logging residue which can be used in several ways. One of the option is to use of logging residue in the composting process. Therefore, this study determined the possibility of producing compost based on logging residue and the produced fertilizer used to fertilize forest nurseries. Pine chips and sewage sludge were used for carrying out the study. The compost, as well as the leachate produced during composting, were characterized by high NPK content. The leachate collected at the end of the experiment was characterized by nitrogen content of approximately 6500 mg‧dm-3, phosphorus of approximately 450 mg‧dm-3, and potassium of approximately 500-700 mg‧dm-3. In contrast, the compost produced contained approximately 0.57 g‧kg-1 nitrogen, approximately 0.39 g‧kg-1 phosphorus, and approximately 0.24 g‧kg-1 potassium. The disadvantage in terms of the usefulness of the resulting fertilizer in forest nurseries is its pH, which exceeded 9.0.

Studies on the application of single-stranded DNA and PNA probes for electrochemical detection of miRNA 141.

The abnormal concentration of microRNAs (miRNAs) can be associated with occurrence of various diseases including cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative, hence they can be considered as potential biomarkers. An attractive approach could be the application of electrochemical methods, particularly where hybridization event between single-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (ssDNA) or peptide-nucleic acid (PNA) with miRNA strand happens. Recently, the use of various nanomaterials such as gold nanoparticles, graphene oxide, quantum dots as well as catalyzed hairpin assembly or hybridization chain reaction were proposed to further enhance the performance of elaborated sensors. Herein, we present the studies on selection of receptor layer composition for detection of miRNA 141. The possibility of formation of receptor layer and further duplex monolayer between ssDNA or PNA with miRNA was analyzed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) technique. The interaction of ssDNA and PNA probes with miRNA was further verified using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and quartz - crystal microbalance (QCM) techniques. On the basis of impedance spectroscopy it was shown that the use of unlabelled ssDNA as receptor layer provided 0.1 pM detection limit. This shows that proposed biosensor that is simple in preparation and use is an attractive alternative to other recently presented approaches.