关键词： Microalgae   Electrocoagulation optimization   Harvesting   Biomass valorisation   Metal recovery  

摘要： Electrocoagulation is a promising technology to harvest microalgal biomass. However, the commonly used aluminum electrodes release undesired salts that decrease biomass value. In this study, alternative iron, zinc, and magnesium electrodes and operational parameters pH, time and current density were studied to harvest Nannochloropsis oceanica. For recovery efficiency and concentration factor the initial pH was most important using iron electrodes, while time and current density were more relevant using zinc and magnesium electrodes. Optimal parameters resulted in biomass recovery efficiencies > 95%, biomass was concentrated 2.8-7.2 times and contained 15.7-29.1% ashes. Elemental analysis revealed metal salts in harvested biomass resulting from electrode corrosion. Finally, ash contents could be reduced by 65% using EDTA as a chelating agent. The electrocoagulation harvested microalgal biomass enriched in essential metals may be a promising bioresource for agricultural growth inducers, or functional ingredients for feed.

关键词： alternative refrigerants   binary mixtures   cycle performances   low-GWP   thermophysical models  

摘要： Aiming to explore environmentally friendly working fluids replace R134a for automotive air conditioning applications, seven potential pure refrigerants were analyzed first in terms of safety, environmental characteristics, and cycle performances. It was found that the pure refrigerants have some defects when applied individually. However, using the principle of complementary advantages, the mixtures employed in automotive air conditioning can make up for the shortcomings existing in the pure refrigerants. On this basis, the thermophysical models of vapor-liquid equilibrium, enthalpy, entropy, and critical properties of binary mixtures were established. Also, the properties and cycle performances of 14 blends were investigated, and the results indicated that the predicted models of vapor-liquid equilibrium have high accuracy, where the average absolute relative deviations of pressures and the average absolute deviations of vapor-phase mole fractions were less than 2% and 0.005, respectively. M1 (R13I1/R152a [30/70]) and M11 (R13I1/R290 [40.3/59.7]) showed superiorities in cycle performances and environmental and safety characteristics. Moreover, the operating pressures of which were close to that of R134a, and they were expected to become the substitutes for R134a in automotive air conditioners.

关键词： Laminated composite shell   Higher-order theory   Triangular shell element  

摘要： Composite curved shells are widely utilized as structural components in aerospace engineering. To inspire the potentiality of such structure, it is very necessary to well understand mechanical behaviors of composite curved shells. Compared to the composite plates, it is more difficult to predict accurately interlaminar stresses of composite curved shells. Therefore, this paper attempts to propose an alternative triangular composite shell element in terms of the Reddy-type global-local higher-order theory. In the present model, the continuity conditions of transverse shear stresses are enforced in advance to fulfill compatibility of transverse shear stresses at adjacent layers, which can improve precision of interlaminar stresses. In order to evaluate performance of the proposed shell element, several typical examples have been analyzed. Moreover, the results acquired from the present model are compared with the three-dimensional elasticity solutions and other published results. At the same time, a compression experiment of the thin-walled cylindrical grid structure is carried out to further verify the capability of the present model. These examples show that the proposed composite shell element can be used as an alternative method for static analysis of multi-layer thin and thick shell structures.

关键词： food protein-induced enterocolitis syndrome (FPIES)   fish   bony fish   cartilaginous fish  

摘要： In the Mediterranean region, fish is a common cause of food protein-induced enterocolitis syndrome (FPIES) in children. No laboratory tests specific to FPIES are available, and oral food challenge (OFC) is the gold standard for its diagnosis and testing for achievement of tolerance. Children with FPIES to fish are usually advised to avoid all fish, regardless of the species. Fish are typically classified into bony and cartilaginous, which are phylogenetically distant species and therefore contain less cross-reacting allergens. The protein beta-parvalbumin, considered a pan-allergenic, is found in bony fish, while the non-allergenic alpha-parvalbumin is commonly found in cartilaginous fish. Based on this difference, as a first step in the therapeutic process of children with FPIES caused by a certain fish in the bony fish category (i.e., hake, cod, perch, sardine, gilthead sea bream, red mullet, sole, megrim, sea bass, anchovy, tuna, swordfish, trout, etc.), an OFC to an alternative from the category of cartilaginous fish is suggested (i.e., blue shark, tope shark, dogfish, monkfish, skate, and ray) and vice versa. Regarding the increased mercury content in some sharks and other large species, the maximum limit imposed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for weekly mercury intake must be considered. An algorithm for the management of fish-FPIES, including alternative fish species, is proposed.

关键词： Chia flour waste   Vacuum pyrolysis   Fatty acids   Omega-3   Omega-6   Calcium-enriched biochar  

摘要： The consumption of chia (Salvia hisp ' anica L.) seeds products has increased recently and it has been suggested that the inclusion of this functional food in a daily human diet could contribute to improving consumers' health. The present study focuses on the extraction of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids from chia flour residues using the vacuum pyrolysis (VP) technique as an alternative free-solvent extraction method. The pyrolysis conditions and their effects on the quality of the bio-oil containing the fatty acids were evaluated. VP experiments were carried out in a nitrogen atmosphere between 300 and 700 degrees C under vacuum for 20 min. The best results were achieved at 400 degrees C, where the oil fraction (38% yield) was enriched in high proportions of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. 1H NMR analysis of the oil indicated 67.5% of alpha-linolenic acid and 18% of linoleic acid in the bio-oil, which are recovery values similar to those found in the literature. Moreover, extraction of fatty acids from chia flour waste with organic solvents was carried out in order to compare these procedures with the VP technique. On the other hand, XRPD analysis of the carbonaceous solid obtained as a subproduct from the VP of chia flour showed that this material was rich in attractive calcium crystalline compounds, such as calcite and calcium oxalate. These results indicate that pyrolysis products of chia flour residues, i.e., oil as well as biochar, have important properties that can be exploited in different fields.

关键词： Alternative water supply systems   Mixed-use buildings   Net zero water   Mains water consumption   Sustainability criteria  

摘要： The water crisis in urban areas has manifested concerns for sustainable water supply practices in buildings. Although efforts have been taken to reduce freshwater consumption through demand management techniques and alternative supply strategies to some extent, when it comes to a more sophisticated concept like net zero water (NZW) use, practically implemented cases are rare. Due to building characteristics, geographical location, and uncertainties in the decision-making process, the feasibility of the NZW target needs to be explored. This research used a framework with a case study in Melbourne, Australia, to evaluate alternative water supply scenarios that may have the potential to approach this target in mixed-use buildings. Alongside their technical performance in reducing mains water consumption, wastewater discharge, and stormwater runoff, alternative systems were analyzed against environmental, economic and social aspects of sustainability. For each sustain ability criterion, an indicator was selected. Through the proposed scenarios, the goal of NZW use was not fully achieved. However, the three performance indicators exhibited considerable reductions in net water flows. Supposing that the three sustainability aspects are equally valued, a hybrid utilization of rainwater and treated greywater may be the preferred option for mixed-use buildings in a temperate climate.

关键词： graph limits   s-convergence  

摘要： We show that s-convergence of graph sequences is equivalent to the convergence of certain compact sets, called shapes, of Borel probability measures. This result is analogous to the characterization of graphon convergence (with respect to the cut distance) by the convergence of envelopes, due to Dolezal, Grebik, HladkATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE, Rocha, and Rozhon.

关键词： Clip domain serine protease   Alternative splicing   Antimicrobial peptides   Prophenoloxidase   Macrobrachium nipponense  

摘要： Clip domain serine protease (cSPs) play an important role in the innate immune defense of crustaceans. In this study, a clip domain serine protease (MncSP) and its alternative transcript (MncSP-isoform) were identified from Macrobrachium nipponense. The full-length cDNA sequences of MncSP and MncSP-isoform were 2447 and 2351 bp with open reading frames comprising 1497 and 1401 bp nucleotides and encoding 498 and 466 amino acids, respectively. The genome of MncSP had 10 exons and 9 introns. MncSP contained all 10 exons, whereas MncSP-isoform lacked the second exon. MncSP and MncSP-isoform contained a signal peptide, a clip domain, and a Tryp_SPc domain. Phylogenetic tree analysis showed that MncSP and MncSP-isoform clustered with cSPs from Palaemonidae. MncSP and MncSP-isoform were widely distributed in hemocytes, heart, hepatopancreas, gills, stomach, and intestine. The expression profiles of MncSP and MncSP-isoform in the hemocytes of M. nipponense changed after simulation by Vibrio parahaemolyticus or Staphylococcus aureus. The RNAi of MncSP could inhibit the expression of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), including crustins and anti-lipopolysaccharide factors. Phe-noloxidase activity was also down-regulated in MncSP-silenced prawns. This study indicated that MncSP participated in the synthesis of AMPs and the activation of prophenoloxidase.

关键词： Automobiles   Measurement   Roads   Semantics   Optimization   Training   Histograms   Semantic segmentation   autonomous driving   Wasserstein training   actor-critic  

摘要： Semantic segmentation is important for many real-world systems, e.g., autonomous vehicles, which predict the class of each pixel. Recently, deep networks achieved significant progress w.r.t. the mean Intersection-over Union (mIoU) with the cross-entropy loss. However, the cross entropy loss can essentially ignore the difference of severity for an autonomous car with different wrong prediction mistakes. For example, predicting the car to the road is much more servery than recognize it as the bus. Targeting for this difficulty, we develop a Wasserstein training framework to explore the inter-class correlation by defining its ground metric as misclassification severity. The ground metric of Wasserstein distance can be pre-defined following the experience on a specific task. From the optimization perspective, we further propose to set the ground metric as an increasing function of the pre-defined ground metric. Furthermore, an adaptively learning scheme of the ground matrix is proposed to utilize the high-fidelity CARLA simulator. Specifically, we follow a reinforcement alternative learning scheme. The experiments on both CamVid and Cityscapes datasets evidenced the effectiveness of our Wasserstein loss. The SegNet, ENet, FCN and Deeplab networks can be adapted following a plug in manner. We achieve significant improves on the predefined important classes, and much longer continuous play time in our simulator.