Novel pearl millet couscous process for West African markets using a low-cost single-screw extruder

Traditional West African pearl millet couscous products are popular; however, their preparation is laborious, time-consuming and energy-demanding, involving agglomeration, steaming, drying and sieving steps. In this study, a process was developed to produce millet couscous using a high pressure, high temperature and low-cost single-screw extruder. The innovation was to directly process the cooked low-moisture extrudate to a couscous product by drying and milling to the appropriate particle size (ranging between 1 and 2 mm). Throughput for the traditional process as prepared for commercial sale is 50 kg per day, but with the same amount of labour, the extrusion process yields ~350 kg per day. A consumer sensory study held in Niamey (Niger) showed that the extruded millet couscous was comparable to traditional couscous, though this was dependent on selection of the proper millet variety. This novel extrusion process could stimulate small- to medium-scale manufacturing of couscous and couscous-type products in West Africa.     

Use of modelling for optimization and upgrade of a tropical wastewater treatment plant in a developing country.

This paper presents results of a novel application of coupling the Activated Sludge Model No. 3 (ASM3) and the Anaerobic Digestion Model No.1 (ADM1) to assess a tropical wastewater treatment plant in a developing country (Surat, India). In general, the coupled model was very capable of predicting current plant operation. The model proved to be a useful tool in investigating various scenarios for optimising treatment performance under present conditions and examination of upgrade options to meet stricter and upcoming effluent discharge criteria regarding N removal. It appears that use of plant-wide modelling of wastewater treatment plants is a promising approach towards addressing often complex interactions within the plant itself. It can also create an enabling environment for the implementations of the novel side processes for treatment of nutrient-rich, side-streams (reject water) from sludge treatment.     

UV-curable acrylic resins for production of glass laminates

Glass laminates have been readily obtained by photocuring at ambient temperature of an acrylic adhesive consisting either of a liquid resin or a solid thermoplastic polymer. The light-induced polymerization process was followed by real-time infrared spectroscopy. Close to 100% conversion was reached within a few seconds of exposure, by taking as the photoinitiator an α-hydroxy alkylphenone or an aryl phosphine oxide. A liquid formulation containing an aliphatic polyurethane–acrylate oligomer, acrylic acid, and butyl acrylate gives the best performance in terms of reactivity, adhesion, impact resistance, and transparency. The impact resistance was further increased by introducing a polycarbonate core between the two glass plates. The solid thermoplastic polymer was obtained either by casting from a solution containing an aliphatic polyurethane, an acrylate oligomer, and the photoinitiator or by mixing these compounds in the molten state and further extrusion. The glass assembly was heated above the softening temperature (80°C) under a 1 MPa pressure and cured by a 1 min exposure to UV radiation to give a strongly adhesive laminate showing good transparency and long term weatherability. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The role ofAzolla in curbing ammonia volatilization from flooded rice systems

By the year 2020, an additional 300 million tons of rice are needed annually to meet the demands of a growing population. If our natural resource base is to be preserved, intensification strategies should rely on integrated nutrient management, making full use of biological nitrogen fixation. TheAzolla-Anabaena complex is amongst the most effective systems of fixing nitrogen. In this paper we present evidence from greenhouse studies on the potential ofAzolla to curb the volatilization of NH₃ following the application of urea to a mixedAzolla-rice culture, providing a new incentive for developing ways of integratingAzolla in intensive rice cultivation systems.The results of a series of short term greenhouse experiments show that a full cover ofAzolla can significantly reduce losses of applied urea-N from 45 and 50% to 20 and 13% for the 30 and 60 kg N ha^–1 treatments, respectively. About one-quarter of the applied N was tied up in theAzolla biomass. The applied N inhibitedAzolla growth as well as the amount of N fixed. Inoculation with smaller quantities ofAzolla allowing for more vigorousAzolla multiplication was equally effective in reducing NH₃ volatilization and doubled the amount of¹⁵N tied-up byAzolla. The reduction in NH₃ volatilization is largely related to the depression byAzolla of the floodwater pH, which in its absence may reach values between 9 and 10 as a result of algal activity.Early rice growth responded positively to urea as well as the large quantities of appliedAzolla and increased the yield potential of the crop. Smaller quantities ofAzolla alone were not effective in this regard. The conservation of fertilizer N byAzolla, particularly when it fully covered the water, was reflected in a synergistic effect on rice dry matter production, amounting to 9% at the 30 kg N rate and 16% at the 60 kg N rate. In all likelihood this interaction is attributable to the higher efficiency of the applied N. The benefits ofAzolla in conserving basal urea-N even in small quantities (200-500 kg fresh material ha^–1), outweighed competition for the applied N and may be as important as its BNF. The most promising integratedAzolla/rice management systems emerging from our studies should be given further attention under field conditions.     

The Rank-Width of Edge-Coloured Graphs

A C-coloured graph is a graph, that is possibly directed, where the edges are coloured with colours from the set C. Clique-width is a complexity measure for C-coloured graphs, for finite sets C. Rank-width is an equivalent complexity measure for undirected graphs and has good algorithmic and structural properties. It is in particular related to the vertex-minor relation. We discuss some possible extensions of the notion of rank-width to C-coloured graphs. There is not a unique natural notion of rank-width for C-coloured graphs. We define two notions of rank-width for them, both based on a coding of C-coloured graphs by ${\mathbb{F}}^{*}$ -graphs— $\mathbb {F}$ -coloured graphs where each edge has exactly one colour from $\mathbb{F}\setminus \{0\},\ \mathbb{F}$ a field—and named respectively $\mathbb{F}$ -rank-width and $\mathbb {F}$ -bi-rank-width. The two notions are equivalent to clique-width. We then present a notion of vertex-minor for $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graphs and prove that $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graphs of bounded $\mathbb{F}$ -rank-width are characterised by a list of $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graphs to exclude as vertex-minors (this list is finite if $\mathbb{F}$ is finite). An algorithm that decides in time O(n ³) whether an $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graph with n vertices has $\mathbb{F}$ -rank-width (resp. $\mathbb{F}$ -bi-rank-width) at most k, for fixed k and fixed finite field $\mathbb{F}$ , is also given. Graph operations to check MSOL-definable properties on $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graphs of bounded $\mathbb{F}$ -rank-width (resp. $\mathbb{F}$ -bi-rank-width) are presented. A specialisation of all these notions to graphs without edge colours is presented, which shows that our results generalise the ones in undirected graphs.     

Multilevel assessment method for reliable design of composite structures

This work aims at demonstrating the interest of a new methodology for the design and optimization of composite materials and structures. Coupling reliability methods and homogenization techniques allow the consideration of probabilistic design variables at different scales. The main advantage of such an original micromechanics-based approach is to extend the scope of solutions for engineering composite materials to reach or to respect a given reliability level. This approach is illustrated on a civil engineering case including reinforced fiber composites. Modifications of microstructural components properties, manufacturing process, and geometry are investigated to provide new alternatives for design and guidelines for quality control.     

Estimation of nonlinear systems via a Chebyshev approximation approach

This paper proposes to decompose the nonlinear dynamic of a chaotic system with Chebyshev polynomials to improve performances of its estimator. More widely than synchronization of chaotic systems, this algorithm is compared to other nonlinear stochastic estimator such as Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF). Chebyshev polynomials orthogonality properties is used to fit a polynomial to a nonlinear function. This polynomial is then used in an Exact Polynomial Kalman Filter (ExPKF) to run real time state estimation. The ExPKF offers mean square error optimality because it can estimate exact statistics of transformed variables through the polynomial function. Analytical expressions of those statistics are derived so as to lower ExPKF algorithm computation complexity and allow real time applications. Simulations under the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) hypothesis, show relevant performances of this algorithm compared to classical nonlinear estimators.     

Toward effective service composition for real-time SOA-based systems

Many application domains are increasingly leveraging service-oriented architecture (SOA) techniques to facilitate rapid system deployment. Many of these applications are time-critical and, hence, real-time assurance is an essential step in the service composition process. However, there are gaps in existing service composition techniques for real-time systems. First, admission control is an essential technique to assure the time bound for service execution, but most of the service composition techniques for real-time systems do not take admission control into account. A service may be selected for a workflow during the composition phase, but then during the grounding phase, the concrete service may not be able to admit the workload. Thus, the entire composition process may have to be repeated. Second, communication time is an important factor in real-time SOA, but most of the existing works do not consider how to obtain the communication latencies between services during the composition phase. It is clear that maintaining a full table of communication latencies for all pairs of services is infeasible. Obtaining communication latencies between candidate services during the composition phase can also be costly, since many candidate services may not be used for grounding. Thus, some mechanism is needed for estimating the communication latency for composite services. In this paper, we propose a three-phase composition approach to address the above issues. In this approach, we first use a highly efficient but moderately accurate algorithm to eliminate most of the candidate compositions based on estimated communication latencies and assured service response latency. Then, a more accurate timing prediction is performed on a small number of selected compositions in the second phase based on confirmed admission and actual communication latency. In the third phase, specific concrete services are selected for grounding, and admissions are actually performed. The approach is scalable and can effectively achieve service composition for satisfying real-time requirements. Experimental studies show that the three-phase approach does improve the effectiveness and time for service composition in SOA real-time systems. In order to support the new composition approach, it is necessary to effectively specify the needed information. In this paper, we also present the specification model for timing-related information and the extension of OWL-S to support this specification model.