Acid hydrolysis of kappa‐carrageenan as a way of gaining new substances for freezing process modification and protection from excessive recrystallisation of ice

The effects of κ‐carrageenan and its hydrolysates on modification of the freezing process and also on inhibition of excessive recrystallisation of ice in sucrose solutions during storage were compared. Acid hydrolysis of κ‐carrageenan was carried out using sulphuric (H₂SO₄) and hydrochloric acid (HCl). Most effective in the hydrolysis process turned out to be H₂SO₄, which degraded κ‐carrageenan to a molecular mass of around 3 × 10⁶ Da, after 1.5 h of hydrolysis. Addition of 0.005% of the new poligeenan (degraded carrageenan), to a sucrose solution (30%), frozen at ?20 °C, caused a nearly 50% reduction in the phase‐change stages, and consequently, the total time of freezing was shorter. Significant retardation of recrystallisation was observed for both types of poligeenan, but a stronger effect was observed for the oligosaccharides obtained after HCl hydrolysis, and after 96 h of storage at ?8 °C, the equivalent diameter of ice crystals was not greater than 11 μm.     

On generic G-prevalent properties and a quantitative K-S theorem for Cr diffeomorphisms of the circle

We will consider a convex subset of a metric linear space and a certain group of actions G on this set, that allow us to define the notion of Haar zero measure on sets that have zero Haar measure for the translation (by adding) invariant HSY prevalence theory. In this way, we will be able to define the meaning of G-prevalent set according to the pioneering work of Christensen. Our setting considers problems which take into account the convex structure and this is quite different from the previous results on prevalence which consider basically the linear additive structure. In this setting, we will show a kind of quantitative Kupka–Smale theorem, and also we generalize a result about rotation numbers which was first considered by J.-C. Yoccoz (and, also by M. Tsujii). Among other things we present an estimation of the amount of hyperbolicity in a setting that we believe was not considered before.     

Tsallis entropy in dual homogenization of random composites using the stochastic finite element method

This work concerns an application of the Tsallis entropy to homogenization problem of the fiber‐reinforced and also of the particle‐filled composites with random material and geometrical characteristics. Calculation of the effective material parameters is done with two alternative homogenization methods—the first is based upon the deformation energy of the Representative Volume Element (RVE) subjected to the few specific deformations, while the second uses explicitly the so‐called homogenization functions determined under periodic boundary conditions imposed on this RVE. Probabilistic homogenization is made with the use of three concurrent non‐deterministic methods, namely Monte‐Carlo simulation, iterative generalized stochastic perturbation technique as well as the semi‐analytical approach. The last two approaches are based on the Least Squares Method with polynomial basis of the statistically optimized order— this basis serves for further differentiation in the 10th‐order stochastic perturbation technique, while semi‐analytical method uses it in probabilistic integrals. These three approaches are implemented all as the extensions of the traditional Finite Element Method (FEM) with contrastively different mesh sizes, and they serve in computations of Tsallis entropies of the homogenized tensor components as the functions of input coefficient of variation.     

Limit load and failure mechanisms of soda lime glass foam

Foamed glass is widely used in the industry as an insulating material. However, its mechanical properties are not well-investigated yet. Foamed glass is produced from glass waste that causes discrepancy in mechanical properties of the final product. This paper shows a way to increase the limit of the load capacity of foamed glass, which is very fragile and sensitive to mechanical and thermal loading conditions. In this paper, three different methods of load application on cellular glass structure (rough contact, resin and flour interfaces) and their influence on failure mechanisms were investigated in detail. The results of numerical analyses, based on finite elements method and compression strength tests using the digital image correlation method, indicate that the overall strength of the material is limited by boundary effects. A careful adjustment of the interface property is the main factor to draw useful conclusions and to extend load limits of cellular glass in engineering applications.     

The Role of the Mizar Mathematical Library for Interactive Proof Development in Mizar

The Mizar system is one of the pioneering systems aimed at supporting mathematical proof development on a computer that have laid the groundwork for and eventually have evolved into modern interactive proof assistants. We claim that an important milestone in the development of these systems was the creation of organized libraries accumulating all previously available formalized knowledge in such a way that new works could effectively re-use all previously collected notions. In the case of Mizar, the turning point of its development was the decision to start building the Mizar Mathematical Library as a centrally-managed knowledge base maintained together with the formalization language and the verification system. In this paper we show the process of forming this library, the evolution of its design principles, and also present some data showing its current use with the modern version of the Mizar proof checker, but also as a rich corpus of semantically linked mathematical data in various areas including web-based and natural language proof presentation, maths education, and machine learning based automated theorem proving.     

SDN-based architecture for providing quality of service to high-performance distributed applications

The specification of quality of service (QoS) requirements in most of the existing networks is still challenging. In part, traditional network environments are limited by their high administrative cost, although software-defined networks (SDNs), a newer network paradigm, simplify the management of the whole network infrastructure. In fact, SDN provides a simple way to effectively develop QoS provisioning mechanisms. In this sense, we explore the SDN model and its flexibility to develop a QoS provisioning architecture. Through the use of our new architecture, network operators are able to specify QoS levels in a simple way. Each individual data flow can be addressed, and the architecture we propose also negotiates the QoS requirements between the network controller and applications. On the other hand, the network controller continuously monitors the network environment. Then, it allocates network elements resources and prioritizes traffic, adjusting the network performance. We evaluate the feasibility of our QoS provisioning mechanism by presenting three experimental setups under realistic scenarios. For example, for a given scenario where we evaluate file transfers, our results indicate that the additional SDN modules present negligible overhead. Moreover, for a given setup, we observe a reduction of up to 82% in the file transfer times.     

Temporal state change Bayesian networks for modeling of evolving multivariate state sequences: model,structure discovery and parameter estimation

Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery - Many systems can be expressed as multivariate state sequences (MSS) in terms of entities and their states with evolving dependencies over time. In order to...     

Proteases to Improve the Mechanical Characteristics of Durable Press Finished Cotton Fabrics

N‐Methylol reagents are conventional crosslinking agents that are still widely used in textile industry to produce crease‐resistant cotton fabrics. In this work serine proteases were used to recover the strength of fabrics, cross‐linked with N‐hydroxymethylacrylamide. Nearly one half of the strength loss of crosslinked cotton fabrics could be restored after protease treatment, while the wrinkle recovery angle (WRA) decreased only slightly. The enzymatic hydrolysis of the amide cross‐links in the durable pressed cellulose was confirmed by FT‐IR analysis and dyeability with an acid dye.

Effect of protease concentration on the tensile strength recovery, WRA and acid dye dyeability at 30 min reaction time.     

Development of composite membrane PBAT: Zeolite Y for application as rhynchophorol release system

Composite membranes consisting of biodegradable poly(butylene adipate‐co‐terephthalate (PBAT) and zeolite Y (0–10 wt %) were produced by extrusion. Zeolite Y is well dispersed in the membrane up to 5 wt %, but tends to agglomerate at higher contents. The presence of zeolite Y in the composite resulted in an improvement of the thermal stability, mechanical properties, and increased the barrier properties. The interaction of the composite membranes with rhynchophorol was investigated by different techniques, showing that the semiochemical progressively lixiviates PBAT monomers, causing thermal and mechanical properties to decrease. However, no interaction seemed to occur between the rhynchophorol and the zeolite. Studies of diffusion of pheromone through membranes have shown that the addition of the zeolite Y has not contributed significantly to a decrease in the release rate of rhynchophorol, but the presence of the zeolite Y helps to increase chemical, mechanical, and thermal stabilities of the membranes. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018 , 135, 45757.