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This paper describes the creativity, design, and construction of a customized sago machine with a kneading pipe, filter, storage tank, and shredder. The main objective of this innovation is to maximize the conversion of sago stems into superior starch. Sago, an essential food staple in many areas, is typically processed by hand, which results in tedious and time-consuming processes. This project focuses on developing an automated and efficient system to drastically increase productivity and the simplicity of use and transform the sago processing sector.

Stoneflies are a globally threatened aquatic insect order. In Arkansas, a diverse group of winter stonefly (Capniidae: Allocapnia) have not been surveyed since the 1980s, likely because species-level identification requires the rarely-collected adult form. Allocapnia mohri, a regional endemic, was previously commonly found in mountainous, intermittent streams from the Ouachita Mountains ecoregion north to the Ozark Highlands, but no species distributional models including land use or climate variables exist to our knowledge. We collected adults from 71 stream reaches from the historic Arkansas range from November to April 2020 and 2021. We modeled distributions using random forest (RF) models populated with landscape, climate, and both data to determine which were most predictive of species presence. Correlations between landscape or climate variables and presence were examined using multiple logistic regression. The landscape RF models performed better than the climate or landscape + climate RF models. A. mohri presence sites tended to have a greater elevation, a lower mean July temperature, and a greater percentage of very slow infiltration soils in the watershed, compared to absence sites. A. mohri was absent at the Ouachita Mountains sites and may be experiencing a range contraction or migration northward.

This article presents the device and the principle of operation of forage grain crushers that use the centrifugal force of inertia to supply the working bodies—which occurs as a result of rotation of the rotor with a vertical axis. The results of some tests of machines working on this principle have been characterized. Attention is drawn to the disadvantages of most research works, namely the lack of premises for creating shredders of this class with a wide range of performance. The aim of this work is to establish the relationship between the design and technological parameters for the operation of a centrifugal-rotary shredder using the theory of similarity and a dimensional analysis. Moreover, the experimental data show an empirical relationship when calculating the efficiency for the shredder model considered above. By applying the similarity criteria, dimensionless complexes were obtained, which allow to determine the significance of the parameters selected at the initial stage for the efficiency of the shredder. The novelty of this research is the application of the theory of similarity and the use of dimensional analysis, which allowed for scaling the results of the experimental data and obtaining a centrifugal-rotary shredder with higher efficiency, while maintaining the quality of the obtained product. This technique indicates the energy costs of the grinding process, which can be used to select the ratio of parameters in the shredder that would ensure that a minimum amount of energy is consumed.

In order to accelerate deployment of distributed recycling by providing low-cost feed stocks of granulated post-consumer waste plastic, this study analyzes an open source waste plastic granulator system. It is designed, built, and tested for its ability to convert post-consumer waste, 3D printed products and waste into polymer feedstock for recyclebots of fused particle/granule printers. The technical specifications of the device are quantified in terms of power consumption (380 to 404 W for PET and PLA, respectively) and particle size distribution. The open source device can be fabricated for less than $2000 USD in materials. The experimentally measured power use is only a minor contribution to the overall embodied energy of distributed recycling of waste plastic. The resultant plastic particle size distributions were found to be appropriate for use in both recyclebots and direct material extrusion 3D printers. Simple retrofits are shown to reduce sound levels during operation by 4dB-5dB for the vacuum. These results indicate that the open source waste plastic granulator is an appropriate technology for community, library, maker space, fab lab, or small business−based distributed recycling.