Effectiveness of ozone in combination with controlled atmosphere on quality characteristics including lignification of carrot sticks

Fresh-cut carrots were ozonized in water (1:2 w/v; @ 200 mg O₃/h) for 10 min and stored under controlled atmosphere (CA) conditions (2% O₂, 5% CO₂ and 93% N₂) at 6 ± 1 °C and 85% RH for up to 30 d. Ozonation was found to reduce lignification and maintaining the keeping quality of fresh-cut carrots during CA storage. The maximum decrease in respiration and ethylene emission rates were obtained by the combination of CA with ozone followed by CA alone and ozonation compared with the control samples kept under low temperature (6 ± 1 °C). Significant (p < 0.05) reduction in ascorbic acid, carotenoids and oxidative enzymes such as polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and peroxidase (POD) were observed due to ozonation and CA storage. The control of lignification by ozone in synergy with CA was characterized by decrease in L∗ values. The results highlighted the positive role of ozonation in combination with CA storage in controlling lignification and microbial spoilage of carrot sticks.     

Effect of cholinesterase inhibitor malathion on whole body irradiated rats

Under physiological conditions, erythrocytes of the horse metabolized 638 +/- 37 (+/-SE) nmoles glucose/ml cells/hr at 37 degrees C compared to 942 +/- 31 for the cat, 1,329 +/- 44 for the dog, and 1,485 +/- 43 for man. On an absolute basis, pentose phosphate metabolism was similar between species, with species differences in erythrocyte glucose tulization attributable to differences in Embden-Meyerhof pathway metabolism. By examining pentose phosphate pathway recycling, it appears that some functional compartmentation exists within erythrocytes.     

Boolean neural network realization of an adder-subtractor cell

A great deal of interest has emerged recently in the field of Boolean neural networks. Boolean neural networks require far less training than the conventional neural networks and have a variety of applications. They are also strong candidates for VLSI design. In this paper, a technique for learning representation of an adder-subtractor cell has been proposed. The technique can be exploited for the VLSI design of an arithmetic unit for a pipelined digital computer.     

ReIDD: reliability-aware intelligent data dissemination protocol for broadcast storm problem in vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have emerged as fast growing networks with aims to provide safety, and comfort to the onboard passengers. But, in this environment reliable data dissemination to the destination nodes is one of the biggest challenges as there may be a congestion in the network due to blind flooding of messages to their final destination, called as broadcast storm which may lead to the performance degradation with respect to the metric such as-message delivery, reliability and response time. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a reliability-aware intelligent data dissemination protocol for broadcast storm problem in VANETs. We have solved the above specified problem using game theory concepts in which players, strategy space and decisions with respect to the current state of the system. To reduce the message overhead with respect to the communication cost among the players of the game, in the proposed scheme, messages are routed to the next destination by selecting the most reliable path in an intelligent manner. A coalition game is formulated among the vehicles by considering vehicles as the players in the game. Each player in the game has an initial payoff value based upon the parameters such as-communication range, storage requirements, and computation power. Based upon the payoff value of the players in the game, different coalitions/clusters are formulated among the players in the proposed scheme. Then, the players send the messages to the other vehicles/players within the same coalition which increases the reliability of transmission. In the proposed scheme, messages are unicasted to their final destination in an intelligent manner. Different algorithms are designed for coalition formation, maintenance, and reliability-aware data dissemination. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using various evaluation metrics such as-service time, packet delivery ration, and throughput. The results obtained prove the effectiveness of the proposed scheme as compared to the other state-of-the-art existing schemes.     

Quantifying and mapping biodiversity and ecosystem services: Utility of a multi-season NDVI based Mahalanobis distance surrogate

There is an urgent need for techniques to rapidly and periodically measure biodiversity and ecosystem services over large landscapes. Conventional vegetation classification and mapping approaches are based on discrete arbitrary classes which do not capture gradual changes in forest type (and corresponding biodiversity and ecosystem services values) from site to site. We developed a simple multi-date NDVI based Mahalanobis distance measure (called eco-climatic distance) that quantifies forest type variability across a moisture gradient for complex tropical forested landscapes on a single ecologically interpretable, continuous scale. This Mahalanobis distance, unlike other distance measures takes into account the variability in the reference class and shared information amongst bands as it is based on the covariance matrix, and therefore is most useful to summarize ecological distance of a pixel to a reference class in multi-band remotely sensed space In this study we successfully apply this measure as a surrogate for tree biodiversity and ecosystem services at two nested scales for the Western Ghats Bio-diversity hotspot. Data from over 500 tree-plots and forest type maps was used to test the ability of this remotely sensed distance to be a surrogate for abundance based tree-species compositional turn-over and as a continuous measure of forest type and ecosystem services. Our results suggest a strong but scale dependant relationship between the remotely-sensed distance measure and floristic distance between plots. The multi-date NDVI distance measure emerges as very good quantitative surrogate for forest type and is a useful complement to existing forest classification systems. This surrogate quantifies forest type variability on a single, continuous quantitative scale and has important applications in conservation planning and mapping and monitoring of hydrologic and carbon storage and sequestration services.     

The effect of ball milling on the melting behavior of Sn–Cu–Ag eutectic alloy

Sn–Ag–Cu (SAC) solder alloys are the best Pb free alternative for electronic industry. Since their introduction, efforts are made to improve their efficacies by tuning the processing and composition to achieve lower melting point and better wettability. Nanostructured alloys with large boundary content are known to depress the melting points of metals and alloys. In this article we explore this possibility by processing prealloyed SAC alloys close to SAC305 composition (Sn-3wt%Ag-0.5wt%Cu) by mechanical milling which results in the formation of nanostructured alloys. Pulverisette ball mill (P7) and Vibratory ball mills are used to carry out the milling of the powders at room temperature and at lower temperatures (−104 °C), respectively. We report a relatively smaller depression of melting point ranging up to 5 °C with respect to original alloys. The minimum grain sizes achieved and the depression of melting point are similar for both room temperature and low-temperature processed samples. An attempt has been made to rationalize the observations in terms of the basic processes occurring during the milling.     

Quality Characteristics and Glass Transition Temperature of Hydrocolloid Pre-Treated Frozen Pre-Cut Carrot

The effect of hydrocolloid pre-treatment, i.e., pectin, carboxy methyl cellulose, xanthan gum and sodium alginate on textural properties, drip losses and sensory quality as well as on glass transition temperature (T_g′′′) of the frozen-thawed pre-cut carrots was studied. Untreated frozen samples showed detrimental effects in texture and also excessive drip losses while the carrot tissue integrity was well retained in the hydrocolloid pre-treated samples. As the concentration of the hydrocolloid increased, hardness and fracturability were also found to increase. However, adhesiveness was observed to follow a reverse trend. Xanthan gum (0.4%) resulted in higher texture retention than other hydrocolloids used as well as than the control samples. Hydrocolloids imparted lightness and higher red and yellowness to the carrot samples due to reduced solute mobility and moisture conditioning effects. Overall acceptability of the hydrocolloid pre-treated samples was found to be more than the experimental control samples. All the hydrocolloids were found to be effective in increasing the T_g′′′ to an extent, ?2.73 to ?0.28°C compared with T_g′′′ (?5.4°C) of untreated carrot samples. T_g′′′ increased to almost 74% in CMC (0.4%) pre-treated samples. The maximum enhancement was found in carboxy methyl cellulose followed by pectin, sodium alginate, and xanthan gum. The threshold concentrations in terms of sensory attributes were determined for optimal conditioning of the product prior to freezing.     

Nondestructive Monitoring of Ripeness in Mango Cultivars by Acoustic Resonance Spectroscopy

Mango cultivars, i.e. Neelam, Alphonso, Banganapalli, Totapuri, and Mallige were subjected to acoustic resonance spectroscopy at unripe, semi-ripe, and ripe stages, as well as in case of ripe bruised fruits. The Neelam variety of mango was screened for internal infestation by means of acoustic spectroscopy. Acoustic data on dominant and first frequencies, damping ratio, and firmness indices were obtained and correlated with mechanical penetration tests as well as a/b values of the tristimulus color profile. The correlations between mechanical tests and acoustic parameters varied from 0.81 to 0.933. However, damping ratio and dominant frequency along with firmness index showed a better correlation with penetration test vis-à-vis first frequencies. The correlations between acoustic parameters and a/b tristimulus color values showed lesser extent and significance of correlations ranging from 0.416 to 0.667. The correlations were found to be positive or negative depending on the specific acoustic parameters. However, in the case of internally infested Neelam, the drop in the first frequency was found to be a significant acoustic indicator. Nondestructive quality monitoring by acoustic spectroscopy was found as such to be consistent as far as the tissue softening and bruising are concerned.