Search Results (711)

Wheat milling by-products are nutrient-rich sidestreams whose valorization is limited by low phenolic bioaccessibility and high phytate levels. This study investigates how sourdough fermentation using a mixed starter (Lactiplantibacillus plantarum, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Wickerhamomyces anomalus) modulates the functional properties of whole wheat germ (WWG), defatted wheat germ (DWG), defatted wheat bran (DWB), and wheat middlings (WMs), tested alone or blended with 20% semolina. Fermentation performed shifts in a substrate-dependent manner: it reduced phytic acid content by up to 60% in WWG and WMs while increasing free amino nitrogen (FAN) up to 2.6 mg/g d.b. Conversely, defatted matrices (DWG and DWB) exhibited structural resistance, showing stagnation in both phytate degradation and FAN accumulation, likely due to industrial hexane-treatment limitations. Total phenolic content (TPC) and antioxidant activities (DPPH, ABTS, FRAP) assessed via the extraction-free QUENCHER method revealed that conventional solvent extraction underestimates the bioactive potential by 40–60%. Fermentation significantly enhanced radical-scavenging activity across all matrices. However, ferric-reducing power (FRAP) increased exclusively in WWG and WMs (up to 18–19 µmol Fe (II)E/g d.b.), proving strictly dependent on phytic acid degradation. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) revealed a clear trend toward convergence in the functional profiles of heterogeneous matrices during long-term bioprocessing. Controlled sourdough fermentation represents an effective strategy to upcycle specific cereal sidestreams into functional ingredients, though industrial defatting constraints require structural optimization. Full article

The substantial volume of agrifood processing side streams represents a global sustainability challenge that requires transformation of agricultural residues into high-value molecular components. Grape pomace (GP) is a major winemaking co-product whose chemical diversity remains underutilized due to a lack of high-resolution structural data. This study applies advanced analytical platforms to provide a comprehensive molecular characterization of oligosaccharides (OS) and phenolics in GP from four grape varieties (Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, and Merlot) from California. Results demonstrate that the molecular signature of the material is highly dependent on the variety and its corresponding processing; white wine pomaces exhibited significantly higher residual sugars and generally greater OS diversity compared to red wine pomaces. Using LC-Q-ToF-MS, 39 oligosaccharides were identified, primarily composed of hexoses and pentoses. Characterization of the OS building blocks via LC-QqQ-MS revealed the dominance of glucose and fructose, followed by arabinose and xylose. In parallel, targeted phenolics quantification by UPLC-DAD showed that (+)-catechin and (−)-epicatechin accounted for up to 50% of quantified phenolics in Chardonnay pomace and 45% in Pinot Noir pomace. This work highlights the molecular intricacies of GP, providing a compositional foundation for its targeted valorization. Full article

This review provides a comprehensive assessment of the global production of common edible, specialty, and industrial vegetable oils, with particular emphasis on the generation and valorization of by-products and side-streams within integrated biorefinery frameworks. Attention is given to the main residues generated during oil processing, including oilseed cakes and meals, husks and shells, pomace, refining side-streams, and process wastewaters. The chemical composition of these residues is discussed, highlighting their richness in proteins, dietary fibers, residual lipids, polyphenols, fatty acids, and other bioactive compounds that determine their suitability for downstream valorization. Current management practices are critically assessed, ranging from conventional disposal methods, such as landfilling and incineration, to modern valorization pathways, including anaerobic digestion for biogas production, composting, production of bio-based chemicals, recovery of high-value nutraceuticals, and integration into circular biorefinery models. Special attention is given to green extraction technologies with emphasis on the need for pilot-scale validation, efficient solvent recycling strategies, and integration with existing oil-processing infrastructure. Overall, this review identifies vegetable oil industry by-products and side-streams as technically promising feedstocks for multi-product biorefineries, while emphasizing that industrial implementation will depend on feedstock standardization, solvent recovery and reuse, regulatory acceptance, and integrated techno-economic and life-cycle assessments. Full article

Reliable communication infrastructure is a fundamental component of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITSs), particularly in scenarios involving maritime corridors and emergency traffic management. In locations where optical fiber deployment is geographically constrained, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted free-space optical (FSO) relay links provide a flexible and rapidly deployable alternative. However, atmospheric attenuation, turbulence-induced fading, and wind-induced UAV misalignment can severely degrade link reliability and disrupt real-time transport data streams. This study proposes a payload-efficient multiple-input multiple-output free-space optical (MIMO-FSO) relay architecture based on a multi-output/single-input (MOSI) uplink and a single-output/multi-input (SOMI) downlink. Here, MOSI denotes multiple ground-based transmit apertures directed toward a single UAV receiving aperture, whereas SOMI denotes one UAV transmitting aperture serving multiple ground-based receiving apertures. Unlike conventional symmetric UAV-assisted MIMO-FSO relays that may duplicate diversity hardware on the aerial node, the proposed design shifts the parallel optical branches to the ground stations and keeps only one optical receiver and one optical transmitter on board the UAV. Under the adopted 4 × 4 comparison assumption, this reduces the UAV-side optical branch count from eight to two, corresponding to a 75% branch-count reduction proxy. System performance is evaluated over a 1.54 km relay link. The analytical framework describes Beer–Lambert attenuation, log-normal/gamma–gamma turbulence, and statistical pointing errors; in the OptiSystem implementation, their combined effects are represented by equivalent aggregate losses of 25 dB/km for atmospheric absorption/scattering and 25.5 dB/km for turbulence- and pointing-related degradation. Comparative simulations for SISO, 2 × 2, and 4 × 4 configurations show that the proposed 4 × 4 architecture increases the Q-factor from 8.38 to 18.25 and changes the OptiSystem-reported minimum BER from 2.73 × 10⁻¹⁷ to 9.95 × 10⁻⁷⁵. Because a finite simulation cannot statistically validate error probabilities of this magnitude through raw error counting, values far below 10⁻¹² are interpreted primarily as comparative indicators of receiver decision margin. The findings provide simulation-based evidence that the proposed architecture is a scalable candidate for resilient optical wireless backhaul in smart transport corridors under adverse propagation conditions. Full article

Large language models can emit fluent text while leaving intermediate semantic structure implicit. We study whether explicit event-role and logical-primitive side-state can improve a pretrained decoder without damaging its language behavior. We introduce PAT-ER, a decoder architecture with a normal token stream, an event-role register stream, and a primitive register stream. The primitive stream is motivated by the view that logical primitives answer characteristic semantic questions, such as what licenses a conclusion, what conflicts with it, or why evidence is insufficient. Across eight seeds on the same Qwen3-0.6B backbone, replacing token-pooled auxiliary heads with typed PAT-ER registers improves primitive macro-F1 by 0.209 (95% CI [0.182, 0.237]) and role-to-primitive macro-F1 by 0.091 (95% CI [0.074, 0.110]) with no language-model loss cost. A generic-register control shows that this is not merely the effect of adding latent registers: typed PAT-ER improves over generic registers by 0.116 primitive macro-F1 and 0.110 role-to-primitive macro-F1, with both confidence intervals excluding zero. A warm-started model then recovers pretrained language quality (LM loss 1.344 versus 2.555 for the frozen-backbone register model) while retaining most side-state behavior. Finally, a decoupled interface mode produces robust schema-grounded function calls on 242 held-out prompts (Hermes parse 0.952, exact arguments 0.981, JSON validity 1.000, IDK F1 1.000) while base-mode side-state metrics remain byte-identical to the warm-start baseline. The model is not a theorem prover and does not achieve perfect unseen tool-name copying; the contribution is a measured architecture signal and a usable, guarded interface. Full article

Marine rest raw materials are often undervalued or wasted despite their nutrient and bioactive composition. Calanus finmarchicus, harvested primarily for its omega-3-rich oil, yields a side-stream protein hydrolysate, C. finmarchicus hydrolysate (CFH), during commercial enzyme-assisted extraction. Although currently used as a feed ingredient, CFH contains low-molecular-weight peptides and free amino acids with potential for human health applications. This study evaluated the gastrointestinal stability of CFH and the impact of digestion on bioactivity using a static in vitro gastrointestinal digestion model. Fresh-frozen and freeze-dried C. finmarchicus were included to provide comparative data. Antioxidant capacity was measured by ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) and oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) assays, and antidiabetic activity by dipeptidyl peptidase-IV (DPP-IV) and protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) inhibition assays. The hydrolysate maintained its antioxidant capacity throughout digestion (at 165 min: FRAP: 27.5 ± 0.6 µmol TE/g dry weight (DW); ORAC: 411 ± 37 µmol TE/g DW). Digestion increased its DPP-IV inhibitory activity, with the inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) decreased from 3.73 to 1.96 mg/mL (p ≥ 0.05). PTP1B inhibitors were nonselective and detected only at 0 and 30 min. These findings support our hypothesis that CFH may serve as a nutraceutical for humans and provide a rationale for subsequent in vivo studies. However, further identification of bioactive components and in vivo validation are warranted. Full article

Marine by-products, including fishery discards, seafood-processing residues, aquaculture wastes, crustacean shells, and seaweed-derived side streams, are heterogeneous feedstocks rich in proteins, lipids, minerals, chitinous materials, polysaccharides, and bioactive compounds. This review examines insect-mediated bioconversion as a controlled biorefinery strategy for transforming these unstable marine residues into functional aquafeed ingredients and value-added bioproducts. We compare major marine feedstock classes and industrially relevant insects, with emphasis on substrate–insect matching, moisture control, salinity, lipid and ash load, texture, spoilage risk, and safety. Particular attention is given to how marine substrates can tailor insect meal, insect oil, chitinous fractions, hydrolysates, frass, and functional feed additives. The review further summarizes aquafeed applications of insect-derived products, including fishmeal and fish-oil replacement, protein and amino acid quality, lipid enrichment, gut health, immunity, and disease resistance in aquatic animals. Microbiome-assisted strategies, such as fermentation, enzymatic pretreatment, and gut or substrate microbial management, are discussed as tools to improve substrate stability, digestibility, and product quality. Finally, safety, regulation, scale-up, life cycle assessment, and techno-economic issues are considered. Overall, marine insect biorefineries should be optimized not only for biomass yield, but also for product quality, traceability, and application-specific safety. Full article

Outdoor industrial sites, including logistics terminals, construction yards, and civil infrastructure worksites, increasingly require supervisory systems for monitoring autonomous mobile units under variable wireless and operational conditions. This study presents an edge-cloud telemetry platform that connects V2X on-board and roadside units to a normalized data pipeline and an operator dashboard. The architecture assigns frame reception and data validation to the edge layer, while cloud services perform stream ingestion, storage, querying, and visualization using a Kafka-Elasticsearch-Grafana stack. A fixed supervisory schema was defined for position, heading, speed, mission state, battery level, and error flags so that virtual fields used in early validation can later be replaced by measured signals without changing downstream interfaces. Physical field validation was conducted using a single test vehicle in a construction-site emulation environment to evaluate communication continuity and dashboard refresh behavior. Multi-unit applicability was examined at the architecture and schema levels, and a preliminary payload-level capacity estimate was derived using the telemetry frequency and payload-length assumptions. Under the tested site conditions, the system maintained continuous reception and visualization over an approximately 700 m distance from the RSU-side reference location. The measured end-to-end display delay averaged 0.78 s, with a standard deviation of 0.059 s and a maximum of 0.96 s. Under a 10 Hz status-message condition, the estimated pure-payload traffic was approximately 23 kbps per mobile unit. These results indicate that V2X-based edge-cloud telemetry can provide a practical baseline for supervisory monitoring in outdoor industrial sites, while simultaneous multi-vehicle validation, detailed network-load evaluation, and long-term field testing remain necessary future work. Full article

Peri-urban regions around Southeast Asian megacities connect agriculture, markets, food-service facilities, households, and municipal waste systems, yet comparable data for individual waste streams are often unavailable. This study presents a screening framework for selecting the first organic waste streams and node types to measure in Tangerang Raya, Indonesia, before treatment performance data are available. The framework complements, rather than replaces, city scale circularity monitoring, life cycle assessment, and technology selection tools. Public and institutional data were screened by evidence class and temporal and spatial compatibility. The core Peri-Urban Organic Waste Circularity Readiness Index (PU-OCRI) evaluates five intrinsic criteria: feedstock concentration, source separation readiness, treatment pre-screening compatibility, institutional readiness, and the safety/quality gate. Scores represent collective author judgments linked to a criterion level evidence trail; they have not been independently rated by local stakeholders or empirically calibrated. Korea linked support is assessed separately and cannot affect the index. Available evidence included 3248.1 t of large chili production in Kabupaten Tangerang in 2024, 798,406 t yr⁻¹ of reported potential municipal-waste generation in Kota Tangerang in 2024, and a planning-based estimate that 52.89% of non-residential waste in Kota Tangerang Selatan was biogenic organic material. Under equal weights, market-linked organics scored 76/100 and garden and landscape organics 72; production-side residues and household food waste each scored 56, and mixed residual waste scored 32. In 100,000 weight only simulations, market linked organics ranked first in 65.9% of runs and garden and landscape organics in 31.2%. When each score was allowed to vary by one point and sampled together with the weights, the corresponding first-rank frequencies were 50.7% and 40.7%. These results define a provisional paired audit hypothesis, not evidence of superior circular-economy performance. A required 8–12-week comparison of market/food-service and garden/landscape nodes will apply predefined criteria for mass stability, contamination, safety, treatment feasibility, cost, and operator and stakeholder participation before scores are updated or any treatment or scale-up decision is made. Korea-linked cooperation is limited to digital logging, training, QA/QC, and pilot-operation protocols. Data provenance is explicit: the 798,406 t yr⁻¹ value is the issuing agency’s population × per-capita estimate, whereas 52.89% is an author calculated category sum (kitchen + garden + wood) used only as a screening proxy, not as a direct stream level measurement or the plan’s official aggregate organic fraction. Full article

An experimental setup has been developed that enables the conversion of a complex stream of polydisperse droplets generated by an ultrasonic dispenser into a stream of nearly identical droplets falling through a vertical channel. The fall of droplets of an aqueous NaCl solution in this channel, filled with heated dry air, is studied. Water from the droplets evaporates quickly, and crystals of a solid salt crust form on their surface. At a later stage of the process, the remaining solution is removed from the droplet using a jet of water vapor that passes through the pores of the polycrystalline crust. It was first observed that some of the drying droplets suddenly shifted to one side under the influence of the reactive force generated by the vapor jet. Images obtained using a scanning electron microscope show that the salt particles formed have a diameter of around 25 µm, are slightly porous, and consist of numerous crystals. It has been proven that these particles do not have a central cavity. The use of seawater and the role of salt particles in protecting against thermal radiation from fires are briefly discussed. Calculations based on Mie theory have shown that the contribution of light scattering by thin-walled hollow sea salt particles formed above the ocean surface during relatively slow evaporation of seawater droplets can be significant to the ocean’s heat balance. Full article

A cyber–physical underwater vehicle is equipped with bio-inspired flapping fins positioned on the sides of the vehicle’s main body. The proposed control surfaces are inspired by fish pectoral fins, generating forces and moments that can potentially be harnessed for maneuvering, hovering and station keeping. The streamwise and cross-stream forces produced by the fins are characterized for a range of reduced frequencies and Strouhal numbers. The streamwise forces are shown to be predominantly a function of the fin’s projected frontal area, while the lateral forces also depend on the Strouhal number. When operated simultaneously, different flapping synchronizations can be employed for specific goals; a symmetric motion suppresses the lateral forces, while an anti-symmetric motion decreases the peaks of the streamwise force produced. The cyber–physical vehicle demonstrates how the pair of fins can successfully maneuver the vehicle in the lateral direction. Full article

Photosynthetic biogas upgrading (PBU) using microalgae is a promising biological approach for converting raw biogas into biomethane while recovering nutrients and fixing part of the biogenic CO₂ into algal biomass. Unlike conventional physicochemical technologies, which mainly separate CO₂ from CH₄, PBU can combine gas upgrading with wastewater or digestate treatment, nutrient recycling, and biomass production. This review assesses the current state of PBU technology, with particular emphasis on high-rate algal ponds, absorption columns, and closed photobioreactors. It examines the main operating parameters that control gas–liquid mass transfer, carbonate buffering, and photosynthetic activity, including the liquid-to-gas ratio, pH, alkalinity, temperature, light regime, light intensity, and gas retention time. Special attention is given to the combined effects of the L/G ratio, pH, and alkalinity, as these parameters strongly influence CO₂ absorption, CH₄ enrichment, and O₂ contamination of the upgraded gas. The use of wastewater or anaerobic digestate instead of synthetic growth media is identified as an important sustainability advantage, particularly at wastewater treatment plants with existing anaerobic digestion and nutrient-rich side streams. However, digestate use may also create operational challenges related to turbidity, ammonium inhibition, solids, and variable composition. Available studies indicate that PBU may reduce operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions under favorable conditions while creating additional value from algal biomass. Nevertheless, wider deployment is still limited by high land requirements, seasonal variability, O₂ contamination, biomass harvesting, and limited evidence from large-scale systems. Future development should therefore focus on improved oxygen management, more efficient reactor designs, nanoparticle-assisted enhancement of photosynthetic activity, better integration with wastewater treatment, and AI-supported monitoring and control to improve process stability and support scale-up. Full article

An automated CFD-based workflow for the design, evaluation, and comparative optimization of 2D tidal-stream turbine blade sections is presented for early-stage design exploration. The workflow is intended to efficiently derive an improved section using a consistent and higher fidelity evaluation approach, which is particularly relevant for floating tidal concepts where the effective angle of attack can vary. HEEDS is used to manage a SHERPA optimization loop, while candidate geometries are regenerated in Rhino Grasshopper through a control point parameterization with thickness bounds and smooth interpolation. STAR-CCM+ simulations are executed in an automated manner and the resulting lift and drag responses are returned to HEEDS to evaluate performance over four representative angles of attack, 0, 3, 6, and 9 deg. A total of 1000 design evaluations are conducted for a baseline NACA 63–815 section at Reynolds number 1 × 10⁷, using a two metric formulation that targets high mean lift to drag ratio while limiting the maximum drag coefficient within the same angle set. The optimization history shows rapid early improvement followed by a plateau and identifies a final best design at Design 746. Compared with the original section, the optimized section increases lift and improves the lift-to-drag ratio across the operating range, while keeping the peak drag constrained. Cavitation inception characteristics also improve, with the optimized section delaying inception at the same lift criterion and sustaining a cavitation free state at higher lift for the same cavitation number. Pressure coefficient distributions indicate that these changes are primarily associated with altered suction side loading in the front to mid chord region and modified pressure recovery behavior. A preliminary full 3D RANS CFD rotor comparison under a prescribed rotor geometry further shows that the optimized section can improve rotor power performance in the main operating TSR range, although the benefit becomes limited at high TSR. Full article

The growing share of intermittent renewable electricity has increased the need for long-duration storage in industrial energy systems. Meanwhile, many industrial processes still release recoverable low-grade waste heat. Introducing this heat into pumped thermal energy storage (PTES) can improve thermal integration, but industrial waste heat is often unsteady, and its temperature and mass flow fluctuations may disturb the charging process. This study investigates an air-based reverse Brayton PTES system assisted by an industrial hot-water waste heat stream of approximately 100 °C. A dynamic model was developed in Simulink/Simscape. The shaft speed is fixed at 3000 rpm, and a PID controller regulates the molten-salt flow rate to maintain the thermal storage temperature. The results show that increasing the waste heat temperature from 95 °C to 105 °C mainly changes the charging-side heat distribution. The waste heat utilization power increases from 36.0 MW to 37.9 MW, while the regenerator power decreases from 126.8 MW to 122.0 MW. The thermal storage power increases slightly from 117.0 MW to 119.0 MW, with the mechanical input fixed at 81.0 MW. The influence of waste heat temperature is concentrated near the low-temperature heat exchanger, regenerator, and turbine outlet. Under dynamic disturbances, faster temperature ramps increase short-term deviations, but the PID-based molten-salt flow regulation keeps the storage temperature close to 550 °C, indicating that the proposed control strategy can suppress moderate thermal disturbances during charging. When waste heat temperature and mass flow rate vary together, same-direction changes strengthen the disturbance, whereas opposite-direction changes partly offset it. These results clarify the disturbance propagation mechanism of fluctuating industrial waste heat in the PTES charging loop and provide a basis for the dynamic design and temperature-control strategy of waste-heat-assisted PTES systems. Full article

Reasoning-intensive multimodal retrieval suffers from a counter-intuitive bottleneck: on MM-BRIGHT multimodal-to-text (Query+Image → Documents), the strongest dense multimodal encoder reaches only 27.6 nDCG@10 and the rest of the dense vision–language retrievers cluster between 10.0 and 23.0. The visual signal, encoded as a dense vector, adds noise rather than evidence; even augmenting strong text retrievers with raw image captions degrades performance by up to 12.0 points. We propose VISA, a Visual Symbolic Agent that re-casts multimodal-to-text as text retrieval over three parallel streams. A Vision LLM is dispatched in three roles via separate prompts: a zero-shot router that classifies the query image into up to three parser types from a fixed taxonomy of nine (chart, circuit, equation, screenshot, code, figure, diagram, map, photograph); typed parsers that extract structured text per type; and a holistic captioner. The agent constructs three text streams (raw query, query ⊕ symbolic, query ⊕ caption), scores each with a single frozen 4B-parameter retrieval LLM, and fuses the per-document scores via Reciprocal Rank Fusion or a confidence-weighted linear combination. The whole agent contains no trainable parameters. The key novelty is a change of substrate: rather than projecting the query image into a dense multimodal vector that competes with text, VISA is, to our knowledge, the first retrieval system to convert the image into typed symbolic text and keep retrieval entirely text-side, so that a frozen text retriever can match the literal tokens (axis values, variable names, function signatures) that answering documents actually contain. Across all 29 MM-BRIGHT multimodal-to-text domains, VISA achieves 32.4 nDCG@10, an absolute improvement of +4.8 over the strongest dense multimodal encoder and substantially larger margins over the remaining six dense vision–language baselines. Per-domain analysis shows VISA maintains its margin across STEM and software domains where image content is structure-heavy. In practical terms, VISA is training-free and model-agnostic: it requires no fine-tuning, reuses any off-the-shelf vision LLM and text retriever, caches all per-image parsing so re-runs cost only three query encodes, and can therefore be dropped into an existing text-retrieval stack to add reasoning-intensive multimodal capability without building or training a multimodal encoder. Full article