Fish processing industry has experienced significant growth, playing an important role in the world economy. The increased exploration of marine resources contributes to the generation of considerable amounts of biowaste, which ends up as discards. In the face of the resultant disposal and environmental problems, many efforts have been made to deal with the fishery waste in more efficient ways. Nowadays, these by-products are regarded as important sources of high added value compounds, such as hydroxyapatite, collagen, gelatin, lipids, enzymes, hydrolysates and bioactive peptides, with great potential for human health applications. The present paper aims to review the current methods of extraction and characterization of added value products from fish by-products, as well as their actual and potential applications.

Personal-care products (PCPs) involve a variety of chemicals whose persistency along with their constant release into the environment raised concern to their potential impact on wildlife and humans health. Regarded as emergent contaminants, PCPs demonstrated estrogenic activity leading to the need of new methodologies to detect and remove those compounds from the environment.Molecular imprinting starts with a complex between a template molecule and a functional monomer, which is then polymerized in the presence of a cross-linker. After template removal, the polymer will contain specific cavities. Based on a good selectivity towards the template, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have been investigated as efficient materials for the analysis and extraction of the so called emergent pollutants contaminants.Rather than lowering the limit of detections, the key theoretical advantage of MIP over existing methodologies is the potential to target specific chemicals. This unique feature, sometime named specificity (as synonym to very high selectivity) allows to use cheap, simple and/or rapid quantitative techniques such as fast separation with ultra-violet (UV) detection, sensors or even spectrometric techniques. When a high degree of selectivity is achieved samples extracted with MIPs can be directly analysed without the need of a separation step. However, while some papers clearly demonstrated the specificity of their MIP toward the targeted PCP, such prove is often lacking, especially with real matrices, making it difficult to assess the success of the different approaches.This review paper focusses on the latest development of MIPs for the analysis of personal care products in the environment, with particular emphasis on design, preparation and practical applications of MIPs.3

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In pastures, the incidence of weeds reduces the productivity and quality of forage. The identification of the weed species in pastures is fundamental to choose the renewal method. Thus, the objective of this work was to perform phytosociology before and after the renewal of a Brachiaria decumbens pasture, with the implantation of agrosilvopastoral systems. Eighteen different crop arrangements for pasture renewal were evaluated. The renewal systems were by eucalyptus integration (at 12 x 2 m or 12 x 3 m spacings) with maize, Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu (palisade grass) and/or Macrotyloma axillare (perennial horsegram), or monoculture and intercropping of palisade grass and perennial horsegram, as well as the evaluation of the application or not of the herbicide bentazon, at the recommended dose for maize crops (0.72 kg ha-1). Relative frequency, relative density, relative abundance, relative dominance, coverage value index, importance value index, dry matter and similarity index were evaluated. In the first survey, before the pasture renewal, 23 plant species were identified. After the implantation of agrosilvopastoral systems, the species Sida cordifolia, Lantana camara and B. decumbens were the only occurring ones before and after the renewal of the pasture with agrosilvopastoral systems. The use of palisade grass and the application of the herbicide were efficient in controlling weeds. In systems that contained palisade grass and perennial horsegram, the latter was not found in the survey conducted one year after the implantation.

Abbreviations:AIBN -azobisisobutyronitrile; CL -cross-linker; EDMA -ethylene glycol dimethacrylate; Kd -dissociation constant; MAA -methacrylic acid; MIDE -molecularly imprinted dispersive extraction; MIP -molecularly imprinted polymer; NIP -nonimprinted polymer; PVA -polyvinyl alcohol; Qmax -maximum binding concentration; Rrecovery; T -template. Keywords:Molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP), matrix effect, molecularly imprinted dispersive extraction coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography. 2 AbstractA molecularly imprinted polymer for melamine was prepared by suspension polymerization, using melamine as template, methacrylic acid as functional monomer and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate as cross-linker.The optimal template/monomer and monomer/cross-linker ratios were obtained, being defined as 1/15 and 1/12, respectively. The template removal was performed by Soxhlet extraction with methanol containing 10% of acetic acid, in two cycles of 24 h each. Under optimal conditions the imprinted polymer was used as a dispersive extraction sorbent to extract melamine from different milk samples, before HPLC-DAD analysis.The validated method presented a limit of detection of 0.6 mg/kg. From the analysis of six different milks, melamine was detected in two of the considered samples in a maximum concentration of 9.3 ± 0.3 mg/kg.3