Engineering

Technology Focus Subsea processing is an enabling technology for deepwater-oilfield development. The primary technologies of interest are fluid separation and pumping. There are also many supporting technologies that must be targeted toward subsea processing, such as flow assurance, controls, power distribution, performance monitoring, maintenance and repair, high-integrity pipeline-protection systems, and high-pressure/high-temperature technology. Subsea processing is a significant technology that presents and will continue to bring many challenges and opportunities to the industry. Can we safely and economically move traditional field-processing equipment from the surface to the ocean floor? There is a strong incentive to eliminate (or greatly reduce the size of) surface-supported processing facilities; they are expensive and heavy, they can certainly be the long-lead item on a schedule, and they are susceptible to environmental (weather) effects that will affect operations. The b...

Over a course of centuries, various food processing technologies have been explored and implemented to provide safe, fresher-tasting and nutritive food products. Among these technologies, application of emerging food processes (e.g., cold plasma, pressurized fluids, pulsed electric fields, ohmic heating, radiofrequency electric fields, ultrasonics and megasonics, high hydrostatic pressure, high pressure homogenization, hyperbaric storage, and negative pressure cavitation extraction) have attracted much attention in the past decades. This is because, compared to their conventional counterparts, novel food processes allow a significant reduction in the overall processing times with savings in energy consumption, while ensuring food safety, and ample benefits for the industry. Noteworthily, industry and university teams have made extensive efforts for the development of novel technologies, with sound scientific knowledge of their effects on different food materials. The main objective ...

Beans, peas, and lentils are all types of pulses that are extensively used as foods around the world due to their beneficial effects on human health including their low glycaemic index, cholesterol lowering effects, ability to decrease the risk of heart diseases and their protective effects against some cancers. These health benefits are a result of their components such as bioactive proteins, dietary fibre, slowly digested starches, minerals and vitamins, and bioactive compounds. Among these bioactive compounds, γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a non-proteinogenic amino acid with numerous reported health benefits (e.g. anti-diabetic and hypotensive effects, depression and anxiety reduction) is of particular interest. GABA is primarily synthesised in plant tissues by the decarboxylation of l-glutamic acid in the presence of glutamate decarboxylase (GAD). It is widely reported that during various processes including enzymatic treatment, gaseous treatment (e.g. with carbon dioxide), and fe...

Networks play more and more important role for human life and activity, both in critical occupations (aviation, power industry, military missions etc.), and in everyday life (home computers, education, leisure). Interaction between human and other elements of human-machine system have changed, because they coincide in the information habitat. Human-system integration has reached new level of defense needs. The paper will introduce features of information society in respect of a human and corresponding changes in HF/E: (1) information becomes a tool, goal, mean and environment of a human activity, (2) it becomes a part of the human nature and this makes him/her unprotected, (3) human psycho-physiological status becomes not only a basis of effective performance, but an object of control and support, and means of a human security and safety should be a part of information habitat, (4) networking environment becomes an independent actor in a human activity. Accompanying cyber-security c...

The turbulent Rayleigh–Taylor instability is investigated in the limit of strong mode-coupling using a variety of high-resolution, multimode, three dimensional numerical simulations (NS). The perturbations are initialized with only short wavelength modes so that the self-similar evolution (i.e., bubble diameter Db∝amplitude hb) occurs solely by the nonlinear coupling (merger) of saturated modes. After an initial transient, it is found that hb∼αbAgt2, where A=Atwood number, g=acceleration, and t=time. The NS yield Db∼hb/3 in agreement with experiment but the simulation value αb∼0.025±0.003 is smaller than the experimental value αb∼0.057±0.008. By analyzing the dominant bubbles, it is found that the small value of αb can be attributed to a density dilution due to fine-scale mixing in our NS without interface reconstruction (IR) or an equivalent entrainment in our NS with IR. This may be characteristic of the mode coupling limit studied here and the associated αb may represent a lower ...

One of the main tasks of the Power System Operators is to ensure a proper, safe, and trouble-free operation and development of power grids. Growth of power system is inseparably linked to a connection of both renewable and classical new energy sources. For network operators and potential investors, it is essential to know the place and volume of generation capacity that can be connected to the grid. A publication of such data is currently a legal obligation for many operators. This paper proposes a method of determining the bus connection capacity in power grid of any type with the use of black-box optimization. Calculations and analyses were performed with a full, nonlinear model of the analyzed network. Obtained results show the effectiveness of this method for both single and multiple nodes in any configuration. All the constraints relevant for the proper and safe system operation, such as bus voltages, line loads, and short-circuit currents, both in a steady-state and (n-1) cont...

The present article discusses the importance of language, in general, and English, in particular, in the context of engineering education in Nepal. It mainly discusses the importance and application of language laboratory for the enhancement of skills and proficiency of English language in the learners of Bachelor's level in engineering in Nepal. The main objective of the present article is to highlight the importance of teaching and learning of English language in the B.E. level in engineering by using language laboratory. In course of the present study, literature available in different accessible sources was reviewed for collecting necessary data and designing theoretical framework for the same. From the study, it has been found that language laboratory is tremendously helpful in creating favourable atmoshphere for language learning and helping the learners to acquire necessary language skills useful to them in sharpening their study at present and streamlining their research...

Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) have emerged as a prominent tool in agriculture. Since photosynthetic function is a significant measurement of phytotoxicity and an assessment tool prior to large-scale agricultural applications, the impact of engineered irregular-shaped ZnO NPs coated with oleylamine (ZnO@OAm NPs) were tested. The ZnO@OAm NPs (crystalline size 19 nm) were solvothermally prepared in the sole presence of oleylamine (OAm) and evaluated on tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) photosystem II (PSII) photochemistry. Foliar-sprayed 15 mg L−1 ZnO@OAm NPs on tomato leaflets increased chlorophyll content that initiated a higher amount of light energy capture, which resulted in about a 20% increased electron transport rate (ETR) and a quantum yield of PSII photochemistry (ΦPSII) at the growth light (GL, 600 μmol photons m−2 s−1). However, the ZnO@OAm NPs caused a malfunction in the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) of PSII, which resulted in photoinhibition and increased ROS ac...

Inorganic nanoparticles (INPs) have dynamically emerged in plant protection. The uptake of INPs by plants mostly depends on the size, chemical composition, morphology, and the type of coating on their surface. Herein, hybrid ensembles of glycol-coated bimetallic CuZn and ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) have been solvothermally synthesized in the presence of DEG and PEG, physicochemically characterized, and tested as nano-fungicides. Particularly, nanoflowers (NFs) of CuZn@DEG and ZnO@PEG have been isolated with crystallite sizes 40 and 15 nm, respectively. Organic coating DEG and PEG (23% and 63%, respectively) was found to protect the NFs formation effectively. The CuZn@DEG and ZnO@PEG NFs revealed a growth inhibition of phytopathogenic fungi Botrytis cinerea and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum in a dose-dependent manner with CuZn@DEG NFs being more efficient against both fungi with EC50 values of 418 and 311 μg/mL respectively. Lettuce (Lactuca sativa) plants inoculated with S. sclerotiorum were...

As Mary Douglas famously put it, ‘where there is dirt there is system’ (1991 (1966): 35). She was concerned particularly with the cultural systems that determine the ideas about dirt that motivate and constrain people’s actions with material objects. This paper assumes that such motivations and constraints may affect consumers’ willingness to keep or to dispose of their possessions, and therefore have an impact on product longevity. It reports on ongoing empirical research using product analysis, ethnographic interviews, a questionnaire and student design work into the possibility of increasing the longevity of vacuum cleaners by design interventions. Because its object of study is a cleaning product used in everyday cleaning practices, the research naturally connects with Douglas’ ideas as well as more recent work such as Dant 2003 that focuses on how people deal practically with the materiality of dirt, not determined by cultural categories. This paper builds on Vaussard et al.’s ...