The Application of Mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) Oil in Cosmetic Formulations

The depletion of natural resources, the increasing use of valuable land surface for human activities, and the generation of waste are detrimental to the planet. Sustainable alternatives to guarantee a sufficient supply of food, feed, and biomaterials are needed. Insects may hold an interesting position in a circular economy to tackle contemporary societal challenges. Using insects for food, feed, biomaterial production, and to valorize side-streams, have gained increased interest. Mealworms are amenable to large-scale farming. Herein, the potential of mealworm oil for implementation in a cosmetic hand cream is evaluated. It is shown that mealworms are rich in oil (≈30% of the dry weight), and the oil can be extracted using hexane or ethyl acetate as a solvent. The euthanization step of mealworms has profound effect on the free fatty acid content. The fatty acid profile indicates a large proportion of unsaturated fatty acids, which is promising for use in cosmetic applications. In a proof of concept, the mealworm oil is implemented in a hand cream and compared to hand cream containing macadamia nut oil. No differences in odor and aspect/stability are observed, but mealworm creams are slightly less white color. Mealworm oil is suitable for cosmetics applications. Practical applications: Several insect species can be sustainably reared on low-value organic side-streams, requiring only small amounts of land-surface, less water, and producing less greenhouse gases. In addition, they have short life cycles and can be reared continuously and locally. This implies that insects are an interesting source of biological materials including proteins and oils. Insect oils, including oil of mealworms, have interesting fatty acid profiles that make them amenable to replace oils of vegetable origin for applications within cosmetics. The results indicate that mealworm oil can be a novel, sustainable ingredient for use in the cosmetics industry.     

Mineralogy of air-pollution-control residues from a secondary lead smelter: environmental implications

The mineralogy and solubility of air-pollution-control (APC) residues from a secondary lead (Pb) smelter have been studied on samples from the Príbram smelter, Czech Republic, recycling car batteries, with the emphasis on their potential environmental effect. The presence of dominant anglesite (PbSO4) and laurionite (Pb(OH)Cl) was observed in a sintered residue from after-burning chambers (800-1000 degrees C). In contrast, low-temperature Pb-bearing phases, such as KCl x 2PbCl2 and caracolite (Na3Pb2(SO4)3Cl), were detected in the major APC residue from bag-type fabric filters. Metallic elements, zinc (Zn), cadmium (Cd), and tin (Sn) were found homogeneously distributed within this residue. The formation of anglesite, cotunnite (PbCl2), (Zn,Cd)2SnO4, and (Sb,As)2O3 was observed during the sintering of this APC residue at 500 degrees C in a rotary furnace. The 168 h leaching test on filter residue, representing the fraction that may escape the flue gas treatment system, indicated rapid release of Pb and other contaminants. Caracolite and KCl x 2PbCl2 are significantly dissolved, and anglesite and cotunnite form the alteration products, as was confirmed by mineralogical analysis and PHREEQC-2 modeling. The observed Pb-bearing chlorides have significantly higher solubility than anglesite and, following emission from the smelter stack, can readily dissolve, transferring Pb into the environmental milieu (soils, water, inhabited areas).     

Sustainability decision support system based on collaborative control theory

Industries nowadays have more insight into corporate environmental, social and economic sustainability than ever before. Sustainability issues in various industries are all about choices – finding ways to be more strategic and reducing waste and energy, while benefiting the bottom line. Because of the complexity of sustainability decisions and strategies, these insights call for applying advanced control techniques. In this article we review the concepts of sustainability and its practical issues, specifically focusing on the issues of supply networks. Sustainability issues are usually complex because beyond their inherent challenges, there are conflicts among stakeholders within organizations and between organizations; hence, more useful methods are required for effective solutions. We consider Decision Support Systems (DSSs) to help optimize solutions related with sustainability issues, and review their concepts and usefulness based on previous work. We also suggest strategies applying the Collaborative Control Theory (CCT) principles to augment DSS by a new Sustainability – Decision Support Protocol (S-DSP) in order to overcome certain weaknesses. To model and illustrate the benefit of S-DSP as a control protocol, two practical supply delivery/production problems are analyzed. The results highlight how better collaborative solutions can be achieved to maximize the sustainability of supply networks. It is envisioned that sustainability decision support by such cyber-supported collaboration protocols will contribute to overcome the emerging challenges of sustainability planning and control.     

Synthesis and magnetorheological characteristics of ribbon‐like,polypyrrole‐coated carbonyl iron suspensions under oscillatory shear

One of the crucial problems of classical magnetorheological (MR) fluids is their high rate of sedimentation. This disadvantage may be substantially eliminated using core‐shell particles. The aim of this study is to prepare spherical carbonyl iron (CI) particles coated with conducing polymer polypyrrole (PPy) with ribbon‐like morphology. Scanning electron microscopy proved the formation of the ribbon‐like layer onto CI particles while Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy confirmed the chemical structure of PPy. The magnetic properties observed via vibrating sample magnetometer showed decreased magnetization saturation of core‐shell‐structured particles due to the existence of non‐magnetic surface layer. MR measurements performed under oscillatory shear flow as a function of the applied magnetic flux density, temperature, and particle concentration showed that core‐shell particle‐based MR suspension exhibits sufficient MR performance for practical applications. Moreover, the suspension stability is promoted significantly when core‐shell particles are used as a dispersed phase. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013     

Large scale integration of wind power: moderating thermal power plant cycling

Power plant cycling in thermal plants typically implies high costs and emissions. It is, therefore, important to find ways to reduce the influence of variations in wind power generation on these plants without forsaking large amounts of wind power. Using a unit commitment model, this work investigates the possibility to reduce variations by means of a moderator, such as a storage unit or import/export capacity. The relation between the reduction in CO₂‐emissions and the power rating of the moderator is investigated, as well as the benefit of a moderator which handles weekly variations compared with a moderator which has to be balanced on a daily basis. It is found that a daily balanced moderator yields a decrease in emissions of about 2% at 20% wind power grid penetration. The reduction in emissions is mainly due to an avoidance of start‐up and part load emissions and a moderator of modest power rating is sufficient to achieve most of this decrease. In the case of a weekly balanced moderator, emissions are reduced as the moderator power rating increases. At 40% wind power grid penetration, a weekly balanced moderator reduces emissions with up to 11%. The major part of this reduction is due to the avoidance of wind power curtailment. The simulated benefit (CO₂‐emissions and costs) from adding a general moderator is compared with emissions from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies and cost data of five available moderator technologies; transmission capacity, pumped hydro power, compressed air energy storage, flow batteries and sodium sulphur batteries. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Antifungal activity of lauric acid derivatives against Aspergillus niger

The antifungal effects of lauric acid and four lauric acid derivatives (monolauroylglycerol, D-laurate A, T-laurate A, 6-O-lauroysucrose) were tested on the spore germination and the growth rate of Aspergillus niger DMF 0801. The results showed that the tested substances varied in their antifungal activity and they also confirmed the relation of the structure of tested substances and their antifungal effects. Monolauroylglycerol at concentration level between 0.2 and 1.8 mmol l^-1 caused the highest inhibition of spore outgrowths whereas 6-O-lauroysucrose at concentration between 0.05 and 1.8 mmol l^-1 did not exhibit inhibition of spore germination. The inhibition of colony growth rate was detected mainly at presence of 6-O-lauroysucrose.     

Personality trait development from age 12 to age 18: Longitudinal, cross-sectional and cross-cultural analyses.

Three studies were conducted to assess mean level changes in personality traits during adolescence. Versions of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa, Jr., & R. R. McCrae, 1992a) were used to assess the 5 major personality factors. A 4-year longitudinal study of intellectually gifted students (N = 230) was supplemented by cross-sectional studies of nonselected American (N = 1,959) and Flemish (N = 789) adolescents. Personality factors were reasonably invariant across ages, although rank-order stability of individual differences was low. Neuroticism appeared to increase in girls, and Openness to Experience increased in both boys and girls; mean levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were stable. Results extend knowledge of the developmental curve of penalty traits backward from adulthood and help bridge the gap with child temperament studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Die Wechselwirkung Laurin- und Stearinsäure/Ni-NiO-System des Katalysators

The Interaction between Lauric and Stearic Acid and the Ni-NiO Catalyst System The reactivity of the Ni-NiO catalytic system of following degrees of reduction: 0, 35–65 and 100% Ni with the pure chemical quality lauric and stearic acids during the catalyst passivating conditions 75–115°C were followed in the time period 0–100 hours. The quantity of interaction product of nickel salts of fatty acids in the catalyst is controlled both of the initial reactivity of the Ni-NiO system with the fatty acids and of the kinetics of the zero reaction order. Although the lauric acid is expressively more reactive than the stearic acid, the activity of the in this way prepared catalysts tested in hydrogenation of free fatty acids did not show significant differences.     

A comparative performance study of common and popular task‐centric programming frameworks

Programmers today face a bewildering array of parallel programming models and tools, making it difficult to choose an appropriate one for each application. An increasingly popular programming model supporting structured parallel programming patterns in a portable and composable manner is the task‐centric programming model. In this study, we compare several popular task‐centric programming frameworks, including Cilk Plus, Threading Building Blocks, and various implementations of OpenMP 3.0. We have analyzed their performance on the Barcelona OpenMP Tasking Suite benchmark suite both on a 48‐core AMD Opteron 6172 server and a 64‐core TILEPro64 embedded many‐core processor. Our results show that the OpenMP offers the highest flexibility for programmers, and this flexibility comes to a cost. Frameworks supporting only a specific and more restrictive model, such as Cilk Plus and Threading Building Blocks, are generally more efficient both in terms of performance and energy consumption. However, Intel's implementation of OpenMP tasks performs the best and closest to the specialized run‐time systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.