Sustainable management of peel waste in the small-scale orange juice industries: A Colombian case study

Appropriate waste management in emerging economies like Colombia should be an asset for the overall sustainability. In the Orange Peel Waste case, incineration and Anaerobic Digestion are challenging solutions for the orange juice agro-industrial sector for avoiding the landfill, which is the conventional practice. However, these alternatives should be assessed in order to determine their feasibility. This paper aims to understand if incineration and Anaerobic Digestion are potential alternatives to landfill form a techno-economic and environmentally perspective. To this aim, a comparative Life Cycle Assessment was carried out in four scenarios. In the first scenario coal and landfill are used as source of energy and landfill disposal in the actual orange juice process. In the second scenario, the peels are incinerated to avoid landfill and reduce the need for coal. The third scenario includes the valorization of the peels by means of Anaerobic Digestion which produces biogas for the plant energy requirements. In the fourth scenario, apart from the energy from biogas, the digestate becomes a fertilizer for use in the orange crops. The results revealed that scenario III and IV are environmentally friendly options compared to Scenario I, but they incur higher costs than Scenario II. Carbon footprint found that 1.55 kg of CO2 are saving when coal substitution is reduced from 0.493 kg in SI to 0.279 kg in SII. Therefore, Scenario II is more suitable for the Colombian socioeconomic reality since Scenario II is not only techno-environmentally achievable, but also economically feasible. The methodology used in this case study could be applied to other countries or small and medium scale technologies and could also be useful for the scientific community, enterprises and policy-makers.The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Fondo Regional de Tecnología Agropecuaria FONTAGRO [Contract:ATN/RF 16111RG, 2016] and of the Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación, Doctorados Nacionales [Contract:727, 2015]. Also this article is the result of the work developed through the "Programa de investigación reconstrucción del tejido social en zonas de pos-conflicto en Colombia" [SIGP 57579] withthe research project "Competencias empresariales y de innovación para el desarrollo económico y la inclusión productiva de las regiones afectadas por el conflicto colombiano" [SIGP 58907]. Finally, the authors would like to express their appreciation to FLP Procesados Company for providing the data for the case study

Fractura de Maisonneuve abierta: una entidad infrecuente: a propósito de un caso y revisión de la literatura

Introducción. La fractura de Maisonneuve representa aproximadamente el 5% de todas las fracturas de tobillo tratadas quirúrgicamente. Debido a que suelen ser fracturas cerradas, presentamos el caso de una fractura de Maisonneuve abierta por su infrecuencia. Caso Clínico. Varón de 63 años que acudió a urgencias tras traumatismo de miembro inferior derecho. En la exploración se evidenció una solución de continuidad de la piel en cara medial de tobillo con exposición de maléolo tibial. La radiografía mostró una apertura de la mortaja tibio-peronea y una fractura espiroidea en el tercio proximal del peroné. Se realizó osteosíntesis con dos tornillos canulados. Tras 12 meses de seguimiento, el paciente presenta una puntuación media de 86,8 puntos en la escala AOFAS. Conclusión. Ante una luxación abierta de tobillo, debe sospecharse una fractura de Maisonneuve aunque sea poco frecuente, siendo la osteosíntesis una opción terapéutica eficaz en este tipo de fracturas.Introduction. Maisonneuve fracture represents approximately 5% of all surgically treated ankle fractures. Because these fractures are usually closed, we present the case of a Maisonneuve open fracture owing to its rarity. Case report. A 63-year-old man presented to his emergency department after a right leg trauma. Physical examination revealed a skin solution of continuity above the ankle joint, with a medial tibial malleolus exposure. The radiography showed an opening of the tibiofibular mortise and a spiral fracture of the proximal third of the fibula. Fixation with two cannulated screws was performed. After 12 months of follow up, the patient has an average score of 86.8 points on the AOFAS scale. Conclusion. In the face of an open ankle dislocation, a Maisonneuve open fracture should be suspected in spite of its infrequency, being the osteosynthesis an effective therapeutic option in this type of fracture

Ontology-based data access with databases: a short course

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) is regarded as a key ingredient of the new generation of information systems. In the OBDA paradigm, an ontology defines a high-level global schema of (already existing) data sources and provides a vocabulary for user queries. An OBDA system rewrites such queries and ontologies into the vocabulary of the data sources and then delegates the actual query evaluation to a suitable query answering system such as a relational database management system or a datalog engine. In this chapter, we mainly focus on OBDA with the ontology language OWL 2QL, one of the three profiles of the W3C standard Web Ontology Language OWL 2, and relational databases, although other possible languages will also be discussed. We consider different types of conjunctive query rewriting and their succinctness, different architectures of OBDA systems, and give an overview of the OBDA system Ontop

Using Nonlinear Response to Estimate the Strength of an Elastic Network

Disordered networks of fragile elastic elements have been proposed as a model of inner porous regions of large bones [Gunaratne et.al., cond-mat/0009221, http://xyz.lanl.gov]. It is shown that the ratio $\Gamma$ of responses of such a network to static and periodic strain can be used to estimate its ultimate (or breaking) stress. Since bone fracture in older adults results from the weakening of porous bone, we discuss the possibility of using $\Gamma$ as a non-invasive diagnostic of osteoporotic bone.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Present status of IGEX dark matter search at Canfranc Underground Laboratory

One IGEX 76Ge double-beta decay detector is currently operating in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory in a search for dark matter WIMPs, through the Ge nuclear recoil produced by the WIMP elastic scattering. A new exclusion plot has been derived for WIMP-nucleon spin-independent interactions. To obtain this result, 40 days of data from the IGEX detector (energy threshold 4 keV), recently collected, have been analyzed. These data improve the exclusion limits derived from all the other ionization germanium detectors in the mass region from 20 GeV to 200 GeV, where a WIMP supposedly responsible for the annual modulation effect reported by the DAMA experiment would be located. The new IGEX exclusion contour enters, by the first time, the DAMA region by using only raw data, with no background discrimination, and excludes its upper left part. It is also shown that with a moderate improvement of the detector performances, the DAMA region could be fully explored.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, talk delivered at the 7th International Workshop on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP 2001), September 2001, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy (to appear in the Conference Proceedings, Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.)

Improved constraints on WIMPs from the International Germanium Experiment IGEX

One IGEX 76Ge double-beta decay detector is currently operating in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory in a search for dark matter WIMPs, through the Ge nuclear recoil produced by the WIMP elastic scattering. A new exclusion plot, has been derived for WIMP-nucleon spin-independent interactions. To obtain this result, 40 days of data from the IGEX detector (energy threshold E \~ 4 keV), recently collected, have been analyzed. These data improve the exclusion limits derived from all the other ionization germanium detectors in the mass region from 20 GeV to 200 GeV, where a WIMP supposedly responsible for the annual modulation effect reported by the DAMA experiment would be located. The new IGEX exclusion contour enters, by the first time, the DAMA region by using only raw data, with no background discrimination, and excludes its upper left part. It is also shown that with a moderate improvement of the detector performances, the DAMA region could be fully explored.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Physics Letters B (revised version after referee's comments, some figures added

New constraints on WIMPs from the Canfranc IGEX dark matter search

The IGEX Collaboration enriched 76Ge double-beta decay detectors are currently operating in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory with an overburden of 2450 m.w.e. A recent upgrade has made it possible to use them in a search for WIMPs. A new exclusion plot has been derived for WIMP-nucleon spin-independent interaction. To obtain this result, 30 days of data from one IGEX detector, which has an energy threshold of ~4 keV, have been considered. These data improve the exclusion limits derived from other germanium diode experiments in the ~50 GeV DAMA region, and show that with a moderate improvement of the background below 10 keV, the DAMA region may be tested with an additional 1 kg-year of exposure.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physics Letter

Do solar neutrinos decay?

Despite the fact that the solar neutrino flux is now well-understood in the context of matter-affected neutrino mixing, we find that it is not yet possible to set a strong and model-independent bound on solar neutrino decays. If neutrinos decay into truly invisible particles, the Earth-Sun baseline defines a lifetime limit of \tau/m \agt 10^{-4} s/eV. However, there are many possibilities which must be excluded before such a bound can be established. There is an obvious degeneracy between the neutrino lifetime and the mixing parameters. More generally, one must also allow the possibility of active daughter neutrinos and/or antineutrinos, which may partially conceal the characteristic features of decay. Many of the most exotic possibilities that presently complicate the extraction of a decay bound will be removed if the KamLAND reactor antineutrino experiment confirms the large-mixing angle solution to the solar neutrino problem and measures the mixing parameters precisely. Better experimental and theoretical constraints on the $^8$B neutrino flux will also play a key role, as will tighter bounds on absolute neutrino masses. Though the lifetime limit set by the solar flux is weak, it is still the strongest direct limit on non-radiative neutrino decay. Even so, there is no guarantee (by about eight orders of magnitude) that neutrinos from astrophysical sources such as a Galactic supernova or distant Active Galactic Nuclei will not decay.Comment: Very minor corrections, corresponds to published versio

Pulse Shape Discrimination in the IGEX Experiment

The IGEX experiment has been operating enriched germanium detectors in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory (Spain) in a search for the neutrinoless double decay of 76Ge. The implementation of Pulse Shape Discrimination techniques to reduce the radioactive background is described in detail. This analysis has been applied to a fraction of the IGEX data, leading to a rejection of ~60 % of their background, in the region of interest (from 2 to 2.5 MeV), down to ~0.09 c/(keV kg y).Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure