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This paper aims to verify the effect of 12 weeks of grape juice (GJ) consumption associated with aerobic exercise on the variation of the hypertensive elderly pressure.

A total of 45 hypertensive elderly of both sexes were distributed into: control group (CG, n = 10), exercise group (EG, n = 10), juice group (JG, n = 12) and juice and exercise group (JEG, n = 13). Blood pressure and heart rate were checked weekly before exercise in JG and JEG, and before and after intervention in all groups, with JG and JEG supplemented with 200 mL of GJ. Three weekly sessions of moderate walking were applied.

There was a reduction in EG, JG and JEG for systolic pressure and diastolic only for JG and JEG. The GJ consumption to the practice of aerobic exercise provided reductions in the arterial pressure of hypertensive, in addition to stabilization of the diastolic pressure.

Although the objective of the study was to compare the effect and value of intervention with controls, the study had no intervention in food consumption, which could have led to more significant results. There was a limitation in the control drink, leading the study not to be blind, which may have impaired the results. However, it is probably not a bias, as the groups were divided by residence area, and therefore, had no direct contact with the other groups. Another limitation was that the sample size was still small, which would lead to more reliable results. Finally, although the existing limitations cannot be disregarded, the results of this research are very promising, especially when the objective is the effect of GJ and aerobic exercise on blood pressure, with the possibility of implementing supplemental GJ and the inclusion or not of exercise to the hypertensive elderly.

The paper deals with the benefits of GJ consumption associated with aerobic physical exercise on the blood pressure of elderly hypertensive patients. Considering that GJ along with physical exercise was enough to reduce the blood pressure of hypertensive elderly, this may be a new model to be used to reduce and/or control blood pressure, and GJ and the exercise to be part of the daily life of the population.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of the probiotic addition (Lactobacillus paracasei ssp.) on the physicochemical characteristics and antioxidant capacity of white grape juice during refrigerated storage (4°C/28 days). This paper also aims to evaluate the survival of the probiotic culture in the product and under simulated gastrointestinal conditions.

Two formulations of white grape juices were evaluated, one with 2 per cent of probiotic culture addition and the other of pure juice.

The addition of probiotic culture resulted in products with a darker-reddish coloration (L* = 30.6-30.8 and a* = 0.6-0.9) and a lower content of total phenolic compounds (599-697 µg EAG mL⁻¹) (p = 0.05). However, it improved the color stability and maintained the antioxidant activity 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (p > 0.05). The viability of the probiotic culture (>10⁹ colony forming unit · 200 mL⁻¹) in the juice was maintained during 21 days of storage, but in simulated gastrointestinal conditions, the functional properties could be guaranteed during the 28 days of refrigerated storage.

The white grape juice is a suitable medium for incorporation of Lactobacillus paracasei.

The survival of the probiotic cultures to the simulated gastrointestinal tract may be significant, even if the product does not have the recommended minimum counts.

The purpose of this paper is to survey the technical performance of the cement industry including those related to procedures; groundwork of raw materials, fuels and semi-finished products for processing; accessibility of machinery, plant and equipment for various operations; arrangement and process control management.

A broad range of survey and research was reviewed, and all revealed the methods to recognize the key influences for development of green technology. The study explores the present scenario of green manufacturing (GM) strategies of Indian cement companies and provides the industrial ecology, ways of reducing energy consumption, environmental impact data collection, design and control of manufacturing systems and integration of product and manufacturing system. It also reveals the problems in decision-making systems owing to the impact of the green product design. Here, in this paper, all information is obtained by the medium of internet, journals, articles, and magazines.

This paper describes a problem of global warming, gas, water and other wastages emissions at the time of cement manufacturing and put forward a path that enables decision makers to assess the perception of GM in their organization and in prioritizing GM efforts.

This perspective survey is to provide an integrative outlook of performance methods for GM practices in the Indian cement industries. It gives important information, which expectantly will help in cement industry to adopt GM practices. This paper fills the gap in the literature on identification, establishment, and validation of performance measures of GM for Indian cement industries.

The purpose of this paper is to outline an early adopter “low energy” domestic dwelling, one of the social houses built by a collaboration between a university, the local council. The origins of this project are from the early days of interest in sustainable housing, the 1970s. The dwellings were innovative and built to what became known as “the Salford design” which performed to unusual specifications, using approximately 75 per cent less energy than the UK average for space heating and over 40 per cent less than for houses built to what were then the standard building regulations.

A qualitative and interpretative stance was deemed to be the most appropriate. Within that lens, interviews were chosen as the primary research instrument.

A marked feature of the results is the variation in energy consumption by different households. A Salford-designed house could be habitable throughout the year without any space heating at all, comfortable at 10 per cent and very comfortable at 25 per cent of normal consumption.

As there continues to be interest and commitment to reducing energy – not just from the United Kingdom but also on a worldwide scale – the United Nations Conference of the Parties known as COP 22 (2016) met in Morocco to take forward many of the initiatives outlined in the Paris Agreement 2015. It is of interest, then, that the latest set of interviews showed that the houses built to the innovative and original 1970s’ Salford design principles, protected by highly insulated well-sealed envelopes, are even presently functioning at a relatively low energy threshold.

The purpose of this paper is to propose physically based varying fidelity surrogates to be used in structural design optimization of space trusses. The main aim is to demonstrate its efficiency in reducing the number of high fidelity (HF) runs in the optimization process.

In this work, surrogate models are built for space truss structures. This study uses functional as well as physical surrogates. In the latter, a grid analogy of the space truss is used thereby reducing drastically the analysis cost. Global and local approaches are considered. The latter will require a globalization scheme (sequential approximate optimization (SAO)) to ensure convergence.

Physically based surrogates were proposed. Classical techniques, namely Taylor series and kriging, are also implemented for comparison purposes. A parameter study in kriging is necessary to select the best kriging model to be used as surrogate. A test case was considered for optimization and several surrogates were built. The CPU time is reduced when compared with the HF solution, for all surrogate‐based optimization performed. The best result was achieved combining the proposed physical model with additive corrections in a SAO strategy in which C1 continuity was imposed at each trust region center. Some guidance for other engineering applications was given.

This is the first time that physical‐based surrogates for optimum design of space truss systems are used in the SAO framework. Physical surrogates typically exhibit better generalization properties than other surrogates forms, produce faster solutions, and do not suffer from dimensionality curse when used in approximate optimization strategies.

Presents a statistical auditing system which gives a methodology for statistical analysis of international trade prices. Discusses how this can help governments and international lending agencies, or internationally trading firms, determine the optimal level of audits and physical inspections of cargoes in order to detect abnormally priced imports and exports, using a cost ‐ benefit approach. Applies a computer program to analyse transactions in any commodity between the USA and any other country, and describes the data set and methodology for determining upper and lower bound prices, using the inter‐quartile range as the benchmark for determining abnormality. Presents results from earlier studies and gives an example of how the proposed statistical auditing system can be used.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of a Brazilian steelmaking company’s reheating process of the hot rolling mill.

The research method is a quantitative modeling. The main research techniques are data envelopment analysis, TOBIT regression and simulation supported by artificial neural networks. The model’s input and output variables consist of the average billet weight, number of billets processed in a batch, gas consumption, thermal efficiency, backlog and production yield within a specific period. The analysis spans 20 months.

The key findings include an average current efficiency of 81%, identification of influential variables (average billet weight, billet count and gas consumption) and simulated analysis. Among the simulated scenarios, the most promising achieved an average efficiency of 95% through increased equipment availability and billet size.

Additional favorable simulated scenarios entail the utilization of higher pre-reheating temperatures for cold billets, representing a large amount of savings in gas consumption and a reduction in CO2 emissions.

This study’s primary innovation lies in providing steelmaking practitioners with a systematic approach to evaluating and enhancing the efficiency of reheating processes.

Cement production has advanced greatly in the last few decades. The traditional fuels used in traditional kilns include coal, oil, petroleum coke, and natural gas. Energy costs and environmental concerns have encouraged cement companies worldwide to evaluate to what extent conventional fuels can be replaced by waste materials, such as waste oils, mixtures of non-recycled plastics and paper, used tires, biomass wastes, and even wastewater sludge. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The work is based on literature review.

The clinker firing process is well suited for various alternative fuels (AF); the goal is to optimize process control and alternative fuel consumption while maintaining clinker product quality. The potential is enormous since the global cement industry produces about 3.5 billion tons that consume nearly 350 million tons of coal-equivalent fossil and AF. This study has shown that several cement plants have replaced part of the fossil fuel used by AF, such waste recovered fuels. Many years of industrial experience have shown that the use of wastes as AF by cement plants is both ecologically and economically justified.

The substitution of fossil fuels by AF in the production of cement clinker is of great importance both for cement producers and for society because it conserves fossil fuel reserves and, in the case of biogenic wastes, reduces greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the use of AF can help to reduce the costs of cement production.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of incremental sheet forming (ISF), using the most common variants, single-point incremental forming (SPIF) and two-point incremental forming (TPIF), to produce prototypes of customized cranial implants using a biocompatible polymer (ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene, UHMWPE), ensuring an appropriate geometric accuracy and cost.

The cranial implant is designed based on computerized tomographies (CT) of the patient, converting them into a 3D model using the software InVesalius. To generate the toolpath for the forming operation computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software is used. Once the cranial implant is manufactured, a 3D scanning system is used to determine the geometric deviation between the real part and the initial design.

The results corroborate that it is possible to successfully manufacture a customized cranial implant using ISF, being able to improve the geometric accuracy using the TPIF variant with a negative die.

This paper is one of the first research works in which a customized cranial implant is successfully manufactured using a flexible technology, ISF and a biocompatible polymer. The use of polymeric implants in cranioplasty is advantageous because of their lightweight, low heat conductivity and mechanical properties similar to bone. Furthermore, the cost of the implant has been calculated considering not only the raw materials and manufacturing time but also the environmental impact, revealing that it is a cheap process with a low lead-time.

It is well known that sustainability is the ideal driving path of the entire world and renewable energy is the backbone of the ongoing initiatives. The current topic of argument among the sustainability research community is on the wise selection of processes that will maximize yield and minimize emissions. The purpose of this paper is to outline different parameters and processes that impact the performance of biogas production plants through an extensive literature review. These include: comparison of biogas plant efficiency based on the use of a diverse range of feedstock; comparison of environmental impacts and its reasons during biogas production based on different feedstock and the processes followed in the management of digestate; analysis of the root cause of inefficiencies in the process of biogas production; factors affecting the energy efficiency of biogas plants based on the processes followed; and the best practices and the future research directions based on the existing life cycle assessment (LCA) studies.

The authors adopted a systematic literature review of research articles pertaining to LCA to understand in depth the current research and gaps, and to suggest future research directions.

Findings include the impact of the type of feedstock used on the efficiency of the biogas plants and the level of environmental emissions. Based on the analysis of literature pertaining to LCA, diverse factors causing emissions from biogas plants are enlisted. Similarly, the root causes of inefficiencies of biogas plants were also analyzed, which will further help researchers/professionals resolve such issues. Findings also include the limitations of existing research body and factors affecting the energy efficiency of biogas plants.

This review is focused on articles published from 2006 to 2019 and is limited to the performance of biogas plants using LCA methodology.

Literature review showed that a majority of articles focused mainly on the efficiency of biogas plants. The novel and the original aspect of this review paper is that the authors, alongside efficiency, have considered other critical parameters such as environmental emission, energy usage, processes followed during anaerobic digestion and the impact of co-digestion of feed as well. The authors also provide solid scientific reasoning to the emission and inefficiencies of the biogas plants, which were rarely analyzed in the past.