Development of integrated cellulose- and starch-based ethanol production and process design for improved xylose conversion

Transportation fuels from renewable resources such as ethanol are one of the alternatives to ensure energy security and decrease the net emission of carbon dioxide. First-generation ethanol production from sugar- and starch-based raw materials (1G) is today well established in many countries, and the focus of research has thus shifted to the development and demonstration of the production of second-generation bioethanol from lignocellulose (2G). This thesis deals with the development of process configurations for bioethanol production from wheat straw integrated with wheat starch-based ethanol production. One part of the work focused on integration in simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) of steam-pretreated wheat straw (SPWS) with pre-saccharified, completely saccharified or fermented wheat meal using baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mixing wheat straw and pre-saccharified or saccharified wheat meal was shown to be beneficial for both 1G and 2G ethanol production. Not only the ethanol concentrations, but also the ethanol yields, increased when pre-saccharified wheat meal was mixed with SPWS. The highest ethanol yield achieved was higher than that obtained with SSF of either raw material alone. Ethanol yields above 80% of the theoretical (from the hexose sugars) and ethanol concentrations of about 6% (w/v) were achieved in batch SSF. Ethanol concentrations at such levels reduce the energy demand in distillation, thus lowering the production cost. Since wheat straw contains a large amount of xylose, integrated process configurations were developed and investigated in an attempt to improve xylose utilization by a xylose-fermenting, genetically modified strain, S. cerevisiae TMB3400, in the second part of the work. The most promising configuration for co-fermentation of glucose and xylose was separate hydrolysis and co-fermentation of SPWS, as this allowed the glucose concentration to be controlled by the wheat-starch hydrolysate feed. An ethanol yield of 92% was achieved after fermentation based on glucose and xylose, and almost complete xylose consumption was achieved. In the last part of the work, differences in the performance of two mutated strains of S. cerevisiae TMB3400 were revealed. It was shown that KE6-13i was more tolerant to inhibitors, while KE6-12 performed better in less inhibitory environments

Mapping Digital Media: Hungary

Examines trends in media consumption; digital media's effects on public service broadcasters, journalism, and civic activism; trends in digital technology and business; and new media regulations' impact on freedom of expression. Makes recommendations

The Triumph of Function over Form The Role of Analytic Philosophy in Planning and Analysing Modern Architecture

The most dominant dialectical succession of architectural thinking during the 20th Century was between form and function. The latter of these two modern ways of architectural thinking is based on the results of Carnapian Neopositivism. The keywords of this philosophical school, that are empiricism, logic, verification, unity of language and science, could still be applied to interpreting modern architecture. I will explain the antecedents and the first connection between analytic philosophy and architecture, and some characteristic points of their influence during the 20th Century: the triumph of function over form as analogous to triumph of analytic philosophy over metaphysics.After the theoretic grounding of the form-function debate, I am going to focus first on the characteristic appearance of form: the Façadism of Socialist Realism in the architecture of East-Central Europe. Second, I will explain that architectural tendencies of classical modernism did not disappear in this period, they were just hidden in case of public buildings or migrated to the industrial planning. Third, I am going to claim that after this socialist realist gap, the architectural theory and planning tendencies of the interwar period – especially the work of Le Corbusier – returned and continued

Robotic Specialization in Autonomous Robotic Structural Assembly

Robotic in-space assembly of large space structures is a long-term NASA goal to reduce launch costs and enable larger scale missions. Recently, researchers have proposed using discrete lattice building blocks and co-designed robots to build high-performance, scalable primary structure for various on-orbit and surface applications. These robots would locomote on the lattice and work in teams to build and reconfigure building-blocks into functional structure. However, the most reliable and efficient robotic system architecture, characterized by the number of different robotic 'species' and the allocation of functionality between species, is an open question. To address this problem, we decompose the robotic building-block assembly task into functional primitives and, in simulation, study the performance of the the variety of possible resulting architectures. For a set consisting of five process types (move self, move block, move friend, align bock, fasten block), we describe a method of feature space exploration and ranking based on energy and reliability cost functions. The solution space is enumerated, filtered for unique solutions, and evaluated against energy and reliability cost functions for various simulated build sizes. We find that a 2 species system, dividing the five mentioned process types between one unit cell transport robot and one fastening robot, results in the lowest energy cost system, at some cost to reliability. This system enables fastening functionality to occupy the build front while reducing the need for that functional mass to travel back and forth from a feed station. Because the details of a robot design affect the weighting and final allocation of functionality, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the effect of changing mass allocations on architecture performance. Future systems with additional functionalities such as repair, inspection, and others may use this process to analyze and determine alternative robot architectures

СЛЕДЫ ГУННОВ В ИБЕРИИ

A great horsemen alliance, the Huns has created a strong empire in Inner Asia. Some branches moved gradually westward from the 1st century BC and they reached the edge of Europe or the Caucasus region, where they settled down. Many scholars denied that Huns left traces in this region for a long time, in spite of that scholars thought that Sarmatians and Alans populated it. The recent archaeological comparative researches and the anthropological result confirmed their presence not only the Northern part of Caucasus, but the Southern Caucasus as well. Based on these results, I also looked for additional evidences on the ancient settlement of the Huns. I was sure that Huns lived there, because the Hungarian chronicles of the Middle Ages recorded the history of the Maeotic region connecting the wandering of Hungarian people. During my research I realised that Caucasian Iberian and Hungarian kings had a common ancestor: Nimrod, the great hunter. Meanwhile the Hungarian chronicle connected Nimrod with Huns, the Georgian archaeological finds-polychrome style – showed similarities with Nebrotids treasures with Huns. It would not be a coincidence. Moreover, I found three significant similar motifs both in Caucasus, Inner Asian and Carpathian basin, which related to Huns. Thus, the ancient presence of Huns in the territory of South Caucasus, present day Georgia were confirmed by four disciplines in the late Ancient period.  Великий союз всадников – гунны – создали сильную империю во Внутренней Азии. Некоторые их ветви постепенно переместились на запад с I века до н.э., и достигли края Европы или Кавказского региона, где и обосновались. Многие ученые отрицали, что гунны долгое время оставляли следы в этом регионе, несмотря на то, что считается, что его населяли сарматы и аланы. Недавние археологические сравнительные исследования и антропологический результат подтвердили их присутствие не только в северной части Кавказа, но и на Южном Кавказе. Основываясь на этих результатах, я искала дополнительные доказательства древнего поселения гуннов, поскольку была уверена, что там жили гунны, ввиду того, что венгерские хроники средневековья фиксировали историю маеотического региона, связывающего странствия венгерского народа. Во время моих исследований я выявила общего предка кавказских иберийских и венгерских королей – великого охотника Нимрода. Между тем, венгерская хроника связывала Нимрода с гуннами, грузинские археологические находки - полихромный стиль – показали сходство с небротидных сокровищ с гуннами, что не может являться совпадением. Более того, я обнаружила три значительных сходных мотива как на Кавказе, во Внутреннем Азии, так и в Карпатском бассейне, которые связаны с гуннами. Таким образом, древнее присутствие гуннов на территории Южного Кавказа, современной Грузии, было подтверждено четырьмя дисциплинами позднего античного периода

Pseudo Numerical Ranges and Spectral Enclosures

We introduce the new concepts of pseudo numerical range for operator functions and families of sesquilinear forms as well as the pseudo block numerical range for n×n operator matrix functions. While these notions are new even in the bounded case, we cover operator polynomials with unbounded coefficients, unbounded holomorphic form families of type (a) and associated operator families of type (B). Our main results include spectral inclusion properties of pseudo numerical ranges and pseudo block numerical ranges. For diagonally dominant and off-diagonally dominant operator matrices they allow us to prove spectral enclosures in terms of the pseudo numerical ranges of Schur complements that no longer require dominance order 0 and not even <1. As an application, we establish a new type of spectral bounds for linearly damped wave equations with possibly unbounded and/or singular damping

Assessment of individual- and group-level behavioral variation in dairy cattle: from personality to social networks

Currently little consideration is given to individuality and social behavior when managing dairy cow groups. This thesis assessed three objectives: 1) Investigating personality in adult lactating cows, 2) comprehensive analysis of social networks in a free-stall barn, 3) facilitating the automated assessment of agonistic behavior. Findings suggest that the level of individuals and the level of social groups should also be taken into account when assessing dairy cattle welfare. The presented automatic method for detecting agonistic behavior and dominance is one important step in this direction

Criticality transition for positive powers of the discrete Laplacian on the half line

We study the criticality and subcriticality of powers $(-\Delta)^\alpha$ with $\alpha>0$ of the discrete Laplacian $-\Delta$ acting on $\ell^2(\mathbb{N})$. We prove that these positive powers of the Laplacian are critical if and only if $\alpha \ge 3/2$. We complement our analysis with Hardy type inequalities for $(-\Delta)^\alpha$ in the subcritical regimes $\alpha \in (0,3/2)$. As an illustration of the critical case, we describe the negative eigenvalues emerging by coupling the discrete bilaplacian with an arbitrarily small localized potential.Comment: 16 page