3D printing technology: The new era for food customization and elaboration

BackgroundDigitalizing food using 3-Dimensional (3D) printing is an incipient sector that has a great potential of producing customized food with complex geometries, tailored texture and nutritional content. Yet, its application is still limited and the process utility is under the investigation of many researchers.Scope and approachThe main objective of this review was to analyze and compare published articles pertaining 3D food printing to ensure how to reach compatibility between the huge varieties of food ingredients and their corresponding best printing parameters. Different from previously published reviews in the same journal by Lipton et al. (2015) and Liu et al. (2017), this review focuses in depth on optimizing extrusion based food printing which supports the widest array of food and maintains numerous shapes and textures. The benefits and limitations of 3D food printing were critically reviewed from a different perspective while providing ample mechanisms to overcome those barriers.Key findings and conclusionsFour main obstacles hamper the printing process: ordinance and guidelines, food shelf life, ingredients restrictions and post processing. Unity and integrity between material properties and process parameters is the key for a best end product. For each group, specific criteria should be monitored: rheological, textural, physiochemical and sensorial properties of the material its self in accordance with the process parameters of nozzle diameter, nozzle height, printing speeds and temperature of printing. It is hoped that this paper will unlock further research on investigating a wider range of food printing ingredients and their influence on customer acceptability.     

Manufacturing setup cost reduction and quality improvement for the distribution free continuous-review inventory model with a service level constraint

Over several decades, the continuous-review inventory model has been widely studied based on various assumptions and restrictions such as those related with quality improvement, service level constraint, and setup cost reduction. We extend Moon and Choi's [1] model by assuming setup cost reduction and quality improvement. A distribution free approach is employed such that only mean and standard deviation need to be known. The total system cost is minimized with respect to decision variables against the worst possible distribution scenario. The benefit of using quality improvement and setup cost reduction in this model is shown. Numerical examples show that this model offers significant improvements over existing models. Finally, sensitivity analysis of the key parameters is also presented.     

Market response to the public display of energy performance rating at property sales

Energy labels have generally received positive response from consumers and have moved the market for white goods and cars in the direction of more energy-efficient products. On the real estate market, it was expected that an energy label, rating the energy performance of a property based on a national energy performance certificate (EPC) might receive similar response. However, in Denmark no response to the energy performance rating was observed for 15 years. This was a surprise considering that Denmark was the first country to implement an A to G rating of the energy performance of buildings. A statistical examination of data on property sales prices and energy performance ratings was carried out. All relevant property transaction data from 2007 till 2012 were examined and they showed that energy performance ratings had an impact on property sales prices. However, before June 2010, the impact was modest, whereas after June 2010 the impact of energy performance ratings on property sales prices increased significantly as a result of an EU requirement to display the energy performance rating in connection with property sales. On this background, it was concluded that a public display of the energy performance rating is fundamental for market response.     

Energy performance ratings and house prices in Wales: An empirical study

This paper investigates the effect of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) ratings on residential prices in Wales. Drawing on a sample of approximately 192,000 transactions, the capitalisation of energy efficiency ratings into house prices is investigated using two approaches. The first adopts a cross-sectional framework to investigate the effect of EPC rating on price. The second approach applies a repeat-sales methodology to investigate the impact of EPC rating on house price appreciation. Statistically significant positive price premiums are estimated for dwellings in EPC bands A/B (12.8%) and C (3.5%) compared to houses in band D. For dwellings in band E (−3.6%) and F (−6.5%) there are statistically significant discounts. Such effects may not be the result of energy performance alone. In addition to energy cost differences, the price effect may be due to additional benefits of energy efficient features. An analysis of the private rental segment reveals that, in contrast to the general market, low-EPC rated dwellings were not traded at a significant discount. This suggests different implicit prices of potential energy savings for landlords and owner-occupiers.     

Chaotic communication systems in the presence of parametric uncertainty and mismatch

A recently developed synchronization scheme in (Phys. Lett. A 2007; 361 :108–114) is applied to design a secure communication system with parametric uncertainties and mismatches in this paper. Based on the bounds of the uncertainties and mismatches and a pre‐specified bound of the synchronization error, a scheme is given to determine an upper bound of impulsive intervals. With the scheme, the synchronization error is ensured to approach to and stay within the given pre‐specified bound and this in turn guarantees that signals can be decoded accurately. To further enhance system security, it is also proposed to transmit functions of the chaotic states at impulsive instants, instead of the states directly. The designed system is tested and verified with text, audio and image encryption and transmission with comparisons to some existing schemes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

在相关多入多出(MIMO)信道中的可变速率多用户分集技术

在本篇文章中,我们研究基于MIMO虚拟信道表述的可变速率多用户分集技术.为实现慢衰落相关信道中的多用户分集,本文在发射端采用随机波束成形技术,并提出一种新的利用MIMO虚拟信道来产生随机波束成形矩阵的方法.同时,我们对期望用户的子信道采用自适应编码调制技术,以进一步提高系统性能.     

Masking page reference patterns in encryption databases on untrusted storage

To support ubiquitous computing, the underlying data have to be persistent and available anywhere-anytime. The data thus have to migrate from devices that are local to individual computers, to shared storage volumes that are accessible over open network. This potentially exposes the data to heightened security risks. In particular, the activity on a database exhibits regular page reference patterns that could help attackers learn logical links among physical pages and then launch additional attacks. We propose two countermeasures to mitigate the risk of attacks initiated through analyzing the shared storage server’s activity for those page patterns. The first countermeasure relocates data pages according to which page sequences they are in. The second countermeasure enhances the first by randomly prefetching pages from predicted page sequences. We have implemented the two countermeasures in MySQL, and experiment results demonstrate their effectiveness and practicality.