Towards Accurate Dielectric Property Retrieval of Biological Tissues for Blood Glucose Monitoring

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Computational Modelling Approach for the Optimization of Apple Juice Clarification using Immobilized Pectinase and Xylanase Enzymes

Apple juice is typically marketed as a clear juice, and hence enzymatic treatments are common practices in juice industry. However, enzymatic treatments have been shown to face some challenges when process efficiency, and cost effectiveness are concerned. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the enzymatic treatment process to maximize efficiency, and reuse enzymes to minimize the overall cost via immobilization. In this context, the present work features the immobilization of pectinase and xylanase from M. hiemalis on genipin-activated alginate beads, with subsequent evaluation of its efficacy in apple juice clarification. A central composite rotatable design (CCRD), coupled with artificial neural network (ANN) for modeling and optimization was used to design the experiments. Deploying a coupling time up to 120 min, and an agitation rate of 213 rpm (pectinase) - 250 rpm (xylanase), a maximum fractional enzyme activity recovered was observed to be about 81–83% for both enzymes. Optimum enzyme loading and genipin concentration were found to be 50 U/ml and 12% (w/v), respectively. The immobilized enzyme preparations were suitable for up to 5 repeated process cycles, losing about 45% (pectinase) - 49% (xylanase) of their initial activity during this time. The maximum clarity of apple juice (%T660, 84%) was achieved at 100 min when pectinase (50 U/ml of juice) and xylanase (20 U/ml of juice) were used in combination at 57 °C. The immobilized enzymes are of industrial relevance in terms of biocompatibility, recoverability, and operational-storage stability

Intelligent Embedded Software: New Perspectives and Challenges

Intelligent embedded systems (IES) represent a novel and promising generation of embedded systems (ES). IES have the capacity of reasoning about their external environments and adapt their behavior accordingly. Such systems are situated in the intersection of two different branches that are the embedded computing and the intelligent computing. On the other hand, intelligent embedded software (IESo) is becoming a large part of the engineering cost of intelligent embedded systems. IESo can include some artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems such as expert systems, neural networks and other sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) models to guarantee some important characteristics such as self-learning, self-optimizing and self-repairing. Despite the widespread of such systems, some design challenging issues are arising. Designing a resource-constrained software and at the same time intelligent is not a trivial task especially in a real-time context. To deal with this dilemma, embedded system researchers have profited from the progress in semiconductor technology to develop specific hardware to support well AI models and render the integration of AI with the embedded world a reality

Circular economy practices and strategies in public sector organizations: An integrative review

The concept of the Circular Economy (CE) is an increasingly attractive approach to tackling current sustainability challenges and facilitating a shift away from the linear “take-make-use-dispose” model of production and consumption. The public sector is a major contributor to the CE transition not only as a policy-maker but also as a significant purchaser, consumer, and user of goods and services. The circularization of the public sector itself, however, has received very little attention in CE research. In order to explore the current state of knowledge on the implementation of CE practices and strategies within Public Sector Organizations (PSOs), this research aims to develop an overview of the existing literature. The literature review was designed combining a systematic search with a complementary purposive sampling. Using organizational sustainability as a theoretical perspective, the main results showed a scattered landscape, indicating that the limited research on CE practices and strategies in PSOs has focused so far on the areas of public procurement, internal operations and processes, and public service delivery. As a result of this literature review, an organizational CE framework of a PSO is proposed providing a holistic view of a PSO as a system with organizational dimensions that are relevant for the examination and analysis of the integration process of CE practices and strategies. This innovative framework aims to help further CE research and practice to move beyond current sustainability efforts, highlighting that public procurement, strategy and management, internal processes and operations, assessment and communication, public service delivery, human resources dimensions, collaboration with other organizations, and various external contexts are important public sector areas where the implementation of CE has the potential to bring sustainability benefits

Wastewater Treatment, Valorization and Reuse

This book deals with the latest developments regarding urban and industrial wastewaters’ adapted treatment with various technologies. It focuses, through valuable publications, on the shifting of the wastewater management paradigm from “treatment and disposal” to “the 4Rs principle: Reduce, Recycle, Reuse, and Recover”. The adapted wastewater treatment step will allow (i) the disposal of supplementary water amounts that could be safely reused in order to tackle the water-scarcity problem, and (ii) the preservation of the environment against pollution. Finally, this book will contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and other international related initiatives

Metaheuristics “In the Large”

Many people have generously given their time to the various activities of the MitL initiative. Particular gratitude is due to Adam Barwell, John A. Clark, Patrick De Causmaecker, Emma Hart, Zoltan A. Kocsis, Ben Kovitz, Krzysztof Krawiec, John McCall, Nelishia Pillay, Kevin Sim, Jim Smith, Thomas Stutzle, Eric Taillard and Stefan Wagner. J. Swan acknowledges the support of UK EPSRC grant EP/J017515/1 and the EU H2020 SAFIRE Factories project. P. GarciaSanchez and J. J. Merelo acknowledges the support of TIN201785727-C4-2-P by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. M. Wagner acknowledges the support of the Australian Research Council grants DE160100850 and DP200102364.Following decades of sustained improvement, metaheuristics are one of the great success stories of opti- mization research. However, in order for research in metaheuristics to avoid fragmentation and a lack of reproducibility, there is a pressing need for stronger scientific and computational infrastructure to sup- port the development, analysis and comparison of new approaches. To this end, we present the vision and progress of the Metaheuristics “In the Large”project. The conceptual underpinnings of the project are: truly extensible algorithm templates that support reuse without modification, white box problem descriptions that provide generic support for the injection of domain specific knowledge, and remotely accessible frameworks, components and problems that will enhance reproducibility and accelerate the field’s progress. We argue that, via such principled choice of infrastructure support, the field can pur- sue a higher level of scientific enquiry. We describe our vision and report on progress, showing how the adoption of common protocols for all metaheuristics can help liberate the potential of the field, easing the exploration of the design space of metaheuristics.UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) EP/J017515/1EU H2020 SAFIRE Factories projectSpanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness TIN201785727-C4-2-PAustralian Research Council DE160100850 DP20010236

Various Adsorbents for Water Purification Processes

The development of effective treatment methods or the synthesis of new effective adsorbents capable of selective sorption of toxic substances is now of great importance. This reprint contains articles focused on wastewater treatment containing heavy metal ions, and hormones from synthetic and real solutions using different types of adsorbent, such as synthetic ion exchangers, natural and synthetic aluminosilicates, zeolites, magnetic multiwall carbon nanotubes, biosorbents, imprinted polymers, and magnetic adsorbents, as well as cost estimation of activated carbon production from waste nutshells by physical activation could be found