Method for milk whey microfiltration with filtrate pulsed backpressure and installation for its implementation

During deep processing of whey using microfiltration, the loss of membrane efficiency can take place. In this work, an installation for microfiltration of milk whey has been developed. It includes pumps, containers with liquids, throttling valves, a pressure gauge, and a microfiltration cell with a tubular ceramic membrane. A thin titanium oxide layer was deposited on the inner surface of the porous alumina tube. The outer diameter of the tubes is 10 mm, the wall thickness is 2 mm, the length of the tubes is 45 cm. A homogenized aqueous dispersion of sugar beet fiber was used as an agent that improves the performance of the installation by creating a pulsed backpressure of the filtrate. It is shown that the use of a finely ground suspension of dietary fiber during microfiltration of milk whey through a tubular ceramic membrane prevents the formation of protein deposits on the membrane and in its pores. The installation allows obtaining a suspension of dietary fiber, enriched with milk protein, as an additional product. The protein-enriched fiber suspension left over after microfiltration can be used in food production, for example, as a thickening agent in the production of yogurts.

Infrastructure asset diagnostics: Enabling smarter asset management decisions within the electricity distribution industry

<p>This thesis examines the opportunities for better asset management within the electricity distribution industry. The project partner, a supplier of distribution products, observed their customers are often purchasing incorrect equipment for maintenance operations. This observation led the project partner to believe a lack of accurate asset knowledge exists within these electricity distribution businesses (EDBs). Coupled with the information that much of the installed asset base of these EDBs is approaching end of life, it was proposed to investigate the suspected lack of asset condition and type knowledge with the intention of developing the Infrastructure Asset Diagnostic Tool (IADT). A literature review was conducted to determine the current state of asset diagnostics within the electricity distribution industry. The principles of lean start-up business development have been used to isolate the most needed technology within the New Zealand marketplace through interviews with industry personnel. These interviews helped identify a possible Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the IADT, and also indicated that providing the IADT as a professional service would be the most appropriate model for the MVP variant. Condition and type knowledge of wooden poles, conductors and line hardware was found to be the most lacking. It was recommended to focus product development on the assessment of these assets. The project partner has contracted two smart tool suppliers for the analysis of poles and conductor clearances. These products were then integrated to enable accurate assessments of wooden poles. An additional product identified as an aside during the interviews, was for a simple pole designing application which could be used in the field. An existing product from one of the smart tool suppliers contracted can fulfil this requirement. Possible benefits from IADT use were calculated for a sample EDB. These calculations indicated accurate condition assessment of wooden poles could lead to a saving of up to $5.4 million per year. This saving would equate to a possible reduction in time for securing pole integrity on this network from 30.8 years to just 5.9 years through more effective use of available funding. This reduction would lead to enhanced network reliability and improved public safety in a much shorter time frame than present, therefore this study recommends implementing the MVP form of the IADT at an initial EDB.</p>

Infrastructure asset diagnostics: Enabling smarter asset management decisions within the electricity distribution industry

<p>This thesis examines the opportunities for better asset management within the electricity distribution industry. The project partner, a supplier of distribution products, observed their customers are often purchasing incorrect equipment for maintenance operations. This observation led the project partner to believe a lack of accurate asset knowledge exists within these electricity distribution businesses (EDBs). Coupled with the information that much of the installed asset base of these EDBs is approaching end of life, it was proposed to investigate the suspected lack of asset condition and type knowledge with the intention of developing the Infrastructure Asset Diagnostic Tool (IADT). A literature review was conducted to determine the current state of asset diagnostics within the electricity distribution industry. The principles of lean start-up business development have been used to isolate the most needed technology within the New Zealand marketplace through interviews with industry personnel. These interviews helped identify a possible Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the IADT, and also indicated that providing the IADT as a professional service would be the most appropriate model for the MVP variant. Condition and type knowledge of wooden poles, conductors and line hardware was found to be the most lacking. It was recommended to focus product development on the assessment of these assets. The project partner has contracted two smart tool suppliers for the analysis of poles and conductor clearances. These products were then integrated to enable accurate assessments of wooden poles. An additional product identified as an aside during the interviews, was for a simple pole designing application which could be used in the field. An existing product from one of the smart tool suppliers contracted can fulfil this requirement. Possible benefits from IADT use were calculated for a sample EDB. These calculations indicated accurate condition assessment of wooden poles could lead to a saving of up to $5.4 million per year. This saving would equate to a possible reduction in time for securing pole integrity on this network from 30.8 years to just 5.9 years through more effective use of available funding. This reduction would lead to enhanced network reliability and improved public safety in a much shorter time frame than present, therefore this study recommends implementing the MVP form of the IADT at an initial EDB.</p>

Designing and Distinguishing Meaningful Artisan Food Experiences

We examine consumer expectations about how specialty versus conventional food products affect well-being and how small, artisan producers can use that information to design better customer experiences. Drawing on recent work examining the costs and benefits of pleasure- and meaning-based consumption, we investigate whether consumer expectations that specialty products are more meaningful lead to increased desire for additional product information. We selectively sampled from the target market of interest: high-involvement consumers who regularly consume a food (cheese) in both more typical and specialty forms. The authors manipulate product type (typical versus special) within participant and measure differences in expected pleasure and meaning as well as a variety of behaviors related to and preference for additional product information. We find that these high-involvement consumers expect special food products to provide both more meaningful (hypothesized) and more pleasurable consumption experiences (not hypothesized) than typical food products. Consistent with our theory, consumer use of, search for, and preference for additional product information was greater for special products. A causal mediation analysis revealed that expectations of meaning mediate the relationship between product type and utility of product information, an effect which persists controlling for the unexpected difference in expected pleasure.

LABOUR AND KAPITAL: ULTIMATE PRODUCT OF SOCIETY

The structure of the working day from the point of view "a necessary and additional product and its cost" is considered, two divisions of a social production, the productive capital and the income of a society, and also concepts " productive force" and "labour productivity" are determined. It was possible to specify "the law of the profit" and "the law of efficiency of a social production" and to formulate the unknown person till now "the law of proportional development of a social production by the example of change of structure of an end-product of a society".

Mathematical Modeling As a Tool for Improving the Financial and Economic Activities of the Bank

This article discusses some methods and practical examples of mathematical modeling that are used in banking. The calculation of the profit received by two different Russian banks when selling the same additional product in excess of the issued loan is given. Attention is paid to one of the main tasks of any banking structure, namely, constant adaptation to changes in the external environment, which are manifested during the management of credit and deposit policy. Using the correlation analysis, the dependence between the two values of the bank’s credit activity is demonstrated. Two of the most interesting topics of metamathematic modeling – fuzzy logic and neural network modeling-are also considered.

Assessing Label Frames and Emotional Primes in the Context of Animal Rearing—Response of an Explorative fNIRS Study

Against the background of rising societal interest for sustainable food and nutrition choices, food labels have gained importance in providing important information to consumers. However, little is known about how the differences between quality frames in labels are evaluated and how priming might serve as an anchor for label perception. This study aims to observe the neural reaction of this in the context of differently framed food labels for products of animal origin, claiming the presence or absence of an additional quality aspect and under the impulse of emotional priming. In an explorative setup, we measured the neural prefrontal cortex activity of 26 participants with the neuroimaging technology fNIRS. An idyllic prime and a prime related to a label claiming an additional product quality led to increased neural activity in the OFC and dlPFC. Shedding light on what elements are of importance to identify products that meet consumers’ requirements in terms of quality aspects, this could indicate that the prime stressed the meaning of the label. This strengthens the argument to positively phrase and anchor frames regarding quality attributions as opposed to negative declarations. It further demonstrates the ability of fNIRS to capture processing through labels and primes in the context of consumer behavior.

Application-Level Interoperability for Blockchain Networks

Decentralized digital manufacturing can contribute in advancing automation to overcome the limitations posed by most of today's manufacturing systems due to the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, certain challenges, such as attestation and certification of the product, tracing the product throughout the entire process, and ensuring the protection of intellectual property (IP) rights, are hindering its widespread adoption. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution for decentralized digital manufacturing of medical devices and supplies during the Covid-19 pandemic. We develop Ethereum smart contracts to govern and track the different participants' transactions throughout the process in a manner that is decentralized, transparent, traceable and trackable, auditable, trustworthy, and secure. We incorporate the decentralized storage of the InterPlanetary file system (IPFS) into the Ethereum blockchain to store and fetch manufacturing records, Internet of things (IoT)-based devices records, and additional product and digital manufacturing process details. We present the system architecture and algorithms along with their full implementation details. Furthermore, we present cost and security analyses to show that the proposed solution is cost-efficient and resilient against well-known vulnerabilities and security attacks. We make our smart contracts code publicly available on GitHub.

Nitrogen monoxide as dopant for enhanced selectivity of isomeric monoterpenes in drift tube ion mobility spectrometry with 3H ionization

The ion mobility spectra of the isomeric monoterpenes α-pinene, β-pinene, myrcene, and limonene in drift tube ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) with 3H radioactive ionization are highly similar and difficult to distinguish. The aim of this work was to enhance the selectivity of IMS by the addition of nitrogen monoxide (NO) as dopant and to investigate the underlying changes in ion formation responsible for the modified ion signals observed in the ion mobility spectra. Even though 3H-based-IMS systems have been used in hyphenation with gas chromatography (GC) for profiling of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), the investigation of ion formation still remains challenging and was exemplified by the investigated monoterpenes. Nonetheless, the formation of monomeric, dimeric, and trimeric ion clusters could be tentatively confirmed by a mass-to-mobility correlation and the highly similar pattern of ion signals in the monomer region was attributed to isomerization mechanisms potentially occurring after proton transfer reactions. The addition of NO as dopant could finally lead to the formation of additional product ions and increased the selectivity of IMS for the investigated monoterpenes as confirmed by principal component analysis (PCA). The discrimination of monoterpenes in the volatile profile is highly relevant in the quality control of hops and was given as the example for application. The results indicate that additional product ions were obtained by the formation of NO+ adduct ions, next to hydride abstraction, charge transfer, or fragmentation reactions. This approach can potentially leverage selectivity issues in VOC profiling of complex matrices, such as food matrices or raw materials in combination with chemometric pattern recognition techniques. Graphical abstract