Soil contamination with hydrocarbons represents a worldwide problem, especially for oil-rich countries.Soil contamination becomes inevitable due to different accidents, aboveground spills, and leakage, threatening the fauna and flora. The purpose of this study is to remediate One-year aged contaminated soil with crude oil (23490 mg/kg) using the fluidization technique in a laboratory-scale column. Free water and surfactant solutions were used for washing at different operating conditions. The efficiency of the method was evaluated by the calculation of the total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) removal ratio. Without the addition of surfactant, the cleaning operation was not sufficiently efficient, especially at room temperature where the removal ratio was only about 18%. Raising the liquid temperature leads to some improvement where the TPH removal ratio reached 49% at 50°C. With the use of solutions containing Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) as a surfactant, an important enhancement of removal ratio was noted, along with an important reduction in operating time, washing solution volume, and energy consumption. The use of alternatively working/stopping operation mode contributes to the improvement of efficiency. TPH removal ratios up to 99% were obtained under some favorable conditions. This research shows encouraging results for expanding towards the industrial level with clean and sustainable resources

This research deals with the development of an optimization system to minimize employee noise exposure in the work environment. It is known from the literature that continuous exposure to high noise levels can cause heart overload, stress, fatigue, and increase accident numbers at a production line. Thus, it is necessary to develop acoustic solutions at an industrial level that could minimize failures and accident occurrences. The rules that regulate occupational noise exposures allow an assessment of the degrees of exposure and subsequent corrections of working conditions. It is observed that the exposure is necessary for further evaluation and correction. Therefore, this research proposes to simulate occupational noise exposure conditions through mathematical models implemented in C++, using the GUROBI linear optimization package and to act previously to minimize ONIHL (Occupational Noise-Induced Hearing Loss). One of this work results is based on Doses Values, TWA (Time Weighted Average) and Distances Covered, using these three factors simultaneously through the optimization, it obtains a route that minimizes exposure and avoids ONIHL. Although there is a need for balanced doses between employees, to this end, the Designation Problem was implemented. Thus, with the routes obtained by optimization, an efficient allocation task was made for the maintenance crew, resulting in minimized and balanced doses. This model was applied to a real industrial plant that will not be identified, only methodology and results obtained will be presented.

The presence of water, food and energy crises, both at the global and regional levels, as well as their deterioration under conditions of climate change, with an insufficient level of technical condition of existing irrigation systems, increase the strategic importance of irrigation as the guarantor of the agricultural sector sustainable development.
This makes it necessary to increase, foremost, energy and overall (technical, technological, economic, and environmental) efficiency of the closed irrigation network of irrigation systems. In this regard, the complex that includes organisational-technological, technical, and resource-saving groups of measures was developed. Estimation of energy and overall efficiency of the closed irrigation network of irrigation systems at the implementation of developed complex were executed on the example of the agricultural enterprise located in the Petropavlovsk district of the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine. For this purpose, machine experiment based on a use of the set of optimisation, forecasting and simulation models was implemented, including the model of climatic conditions, the model of water regime and water regulation technologies, as well as the model of crop yields on reclaimed lands.
According to the obtained results, established that implementation of the complex reduces the consumption of irrigation water by 2.2–30.7% and electricity consumption by 12.9–38.2%. The rate of specific costs decreases from 1.6 to 1.32–1.47, and the coefficient of environmental reliability increases by 5.6–16.7%. At the same time, the profitability index increases from 1.07 to 1.75–2.57, and the discounted payback period decreases from 18 to 8–5 years.

Recycling of aluminium returnable material through its reuse is now an essential component of the production of aluminium alloy castings. The main goal is to find a suitable ratio of the primary alloy and the returnable material in the batch, thus determining the right compromise between the price and the quality of the casting. Experimental alloys were evaluated by thermal analysis, combination of structural analytical techniques and selected mechanical properties. The alloys were also subjected to tearing susceptibility testing. The increase in the returnable material amount resulted in changes in the alloy properties at the first increase in volume to 20%. After exceeding the balanced ratio (50:50), there was considerable degradation of the microstructure, failure to achieve the minimum values of some mechanical properties required by the standard, and the alloy showed increased susceptibility to tearing.

A i m: The main purpose of this article is to present the main assumptions of the FRAILTOOLS project and the characteristics of the recruitment process in the Polish part of the study.

M a t e r i a l a n d M e t h o d s: The FRAILTOOLS project is a prospective observational study conducted in 5 European countries. The study included people aged 75 and older. Each participating center was required to recruit 388 patients, which corresponded to 97 subjects in each clinical setting by center. Recruitment took place in clinical settings (hospital geriatric acute care, geriatric outpatient clinic, primary health care) and in social conditions (nursing homes). The frailty syndrome was assessed among study participants using 7 different scales. The follow-up period was 18 months.

R e s u l t s: In Poland, 268 elderly subjects took part in the study, which constituted 69.1% of planned recruitment. The majority of participants were acute care patients (108 participants). A high percentage of people successfully recruited for the study was seen in nursing homes (83.5% of predicted number). The lowest recruitment came from primary healthcare (53 participants) and geriatric outpatient clinic (26). About a quarter of recruited participants were lost during follow-up period. The poorest results of control visits were observed among patients from geriatric wards and geriatric outpatient clinic.

C o n c l u s i o n s: The recruitment process for older people in Poland was satisfactory, mainly in hospitalized and institutionalized patients. The worst enrollment result was observed among outpatients. A detailed analysis of enrollment problems among the older Polish population is necessary to determine the optimal recruitment strategy and retain eligible study participants.

The unbalance of the neutral point voltage is an inherent problem of three-level neutral-point-clamped (NPC) inverter, the effect of neutral point voltage balancing which is caused by voltage vector is analyzed, and the relationship of the voltage offset and neutral point voltage is studied in this paper. This paper proposes a novel neutral point balance strategy for three-level NPC inverter based on space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM). A voltage offset is added to the modulation wave, and a closed-loop neutral point voltage balance control system is designed. In the control system, the dwelling time of synthesis voltage vectors for SVPWM is varied to solve the problem of the unbalance of the neutral point voltage, the sequence of the voltage vectors maintains unchanging. Simulation and experimental results show the neutral point voltage balancing control strategy based on SVPWM is effective.

To keep genetic diversity, flowering plants have developed a self-incompatibility system, which can prevent self-pollination.

It has been reported that calcium concentration in pistil papilla cells was increased after self-pollination

in transformed self-incompatible Arabidopsis thaliana. In this study, we found that CML27 changed its expression

level for both mRNA and protein when compared to transcriptome and proteome. At the same time, CML27 was

expressed in the anther and pistil at a high level and reached up to 5-fold up-regulated expression in the pistil

at 1 h post-pollination when compared to 0 min. In order to find out potential proteins that may interact with

BoCML27, BoCML27 was expressed in and isolated from E. coli. After its co-incubation with Brassica oleracea

pistil proteins, the products were separated on SDS-PAGE gels. We found a specific band at the position between

130–180 kDa. Through LC-MS-MS (Q-TOF) analysis, eight proteins were identified from the band. The proteins

include 26S proteasome non-ATPase regulatory (26S), Phospholipase D, alpha 2 (PLDα2) involved in Ca2+ binding

and Coatomer subunit alpha-2-like (Coatomer) involved in vesicle mediated transport. All of these identified

proteins provide new insights for the self-incompatibility response in B. oleracea, specific for increasing Ca2+

concentration in pistil papilla cells.