Effect of Freezing on Functional and Textural Attributes of Cress Seed Gum and Xanthan Gum

Consumer habits have undergone great changes, motivated by the new social lifestyle. These changes have promoted the increase in the production of frozen foods; and as a result, many food applications of some hydrocolloids are limited due to functional loss during freezing. In this study, the effect of freezing treatments (?18 °C for 24 h and ?30 °C for 15 h) on rheological, emulsifying, foaming, and textural characteristics of cress seed gum as a new source of hydrocolloid in comparison with xanthan gum as a commercial gum were investigated. The results demonstrated that cress seed gum had significantly lower viscosity than xanthan gum solution, and the freezing treatments did not have significant impact on rheological properties of both products. Conversion of water to ice leads to an increment in molecular association and improved textural characteristics. The high tendency of cress seed gum chains to associate is attributed to its high mannose to galactose ratio. High stability of cress seed gum and similarity with xanthan gum make it attractive for use in frozen foods as a novel gum to provide specific functionality, minimize the negative effect of freezing, and reduce production costs.     

A Rigorous Yet Simple Dead Oil Viscosity Correlation

A rigorous yet simple correlation for the estimation of dead oil viscosity is proposed. The new correlation requires oil API gravity and system temperature as the only correlation parameters. It calculates the Watson characterization factor as a function of oil API gravity. Hence, the paraffinicity or character of the crude oil is implicitly taken into account. The new correlation was checked against other correlations for a full spectrum of oil API gravities and system temperatures. It performed exceptionally good thus eliminating the lengthy and complex calculation procedure of other correlations.     

Conducting polymer composites of multiwalled carbon nanotube filled doped polyaniline

A multiwalled carbon nanotube (c‐MWNT)/polyaniline (PANI) composite was synthesized by an in situ chemical oxidative polymerization process. With the carbon nanotube loading increased from 0 to 30 wt %, the conductivity also increased and became weakly temperature‐dependent. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy studies showed that the synthesis by an in situ process led to effective site‐selective interactions between the quinoid ring of the PANI and the multiwalled nanotubes, facilitating charge‐transfer processes between the two components. The morphological analysis indicated that the c‐MWNTs were well dispersed and isolated, and the tubes became crowded proportionally to the weight percentage of c‐MWNTs used in the composites. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009     

Field-oriented test methods to evaluate structural build-up at rest of flowable mortar and concrete

Thixotropy of flowable mortar and concrete is an important property that affects stability and form pressure characteristics. The increase in thixotropy can reduce lateral pressure on formwork systems. On the other hand, low thixotropy or a continuous casting is required to eliminate the formation of weak interface between lifts in multilayer casting. Thixotropy can be assessed by determining the rate of structural build-up at rest, which necessitates the use of simple and robust test methods to be quantified. Five field-oriented test methods that can be used for the determination of structural build-up at rest of mortar and concrete are proposed in this paper in an attempt to select a reliable field-oriented test. This includes the inclined plane (IP), portable vane (PV), undisturbed slump spread (USS), cone penetration (CP), and K-slump test methods. The repeatability of these test methods was determined four times using two concrete-equivalent mortars and two self-consolidating concretes (SCC) of different thixotropy levels. The IP, PV, and USS tests showed relative error (RE) values of 0.5?C37?%. The CP test was successfully used to determine structural build-up of mortar; however, it was difficult to assess the thixotropy of concrete. The K-slump test exhibited a RE, less than 12?% for SCC mixtures with low thixotropy, but up to 76?% for highly thixotropic SCC. Good correlations were established among the various structural build-up indices determined from the proposed test methods and those determined by rheometric tests using various concrete.     

AutoRWN: automatic construction and training of random weight networks using competitive swarm of agents

Neural Computing and Applications - Random Weight Networks have been extensively used in many applications in the last decade because it has many strong features such as fast learning and good...     

Feature selection techniques in the context of big data: taxonomy and analysis

Applied Intelligence - Recent advancements in Information Technology (IT) have engendered the rapid production of big data, as enormous volumes of data with high dimensional features grow...     

Experimental and numerical study on the performance of hollow and concrete‐filled elliptical steel columns subjected to severe fire

This paper presents the results of an experimental and validated theoretical study to investigate the performance of steel columns with hollow and concrete‐filled elliptical sections subjected to hydrocarbon fire. The test programme involved 18 columns with 200 × 100 × 8‐mm, 300 × 150 × 8‐mm and 400 × 200 × 8‐mm elliptical sections representing slenderness of 50, 33 and 24, respectively. The 1800‐mm columns were subjected to the severe hydrocarbon fire curve and tested under loadings ratios of 20%, 40% and 60% of the EC3 ultimate strength. The paper presents the obtained experimental results including measured axial and lateral displacements, failure temperatures and failure time. A three‐dimensional model was built using the finite element method (FEM) and was validated using the obtained tests results. The finite element model showed an excellent agreement with tests results of failure temperatures, failure modes, and axial and lateral displacements. However, because of restrictions in the software capabilities, the mechanical–thermal behaviour of concrete including spalling was not considered in the model. The verified finite element model was used to conduct a parametric analysis involving a range of parameters of loading level and slenderness. The study has shown that the concrete‐filled sections have demonstrated an improved fire resistance when compared with the hollow sections under the low loading ratios. The FEM model has successfully predicted the unique thermal profile of elliptical section under fire, which was observed during the tests. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Computation of surface radiation and natural convection in a heated horticultural greenhouse

This study analyses the effects of the radiation exchange inside a horticultural greenhouse, under winter climatic conditions, according to the number of squared heating tubes used. These ones, hot and isothermal, are equidistant inside the greenhouse volume. The governing differential equations are discretized using a finite volume method and the coupling pressure–velocity problem is carried out by the SIMPLER algorithm. The algebraic systems obtained are solved by a conjugate gradient method. Results are reported in terms of isotherms, streamlines and average Nusselt number for Rayleigh number of 10³–10⁶. The contour lines show that the radiative effects are noted near the solid surfaces, and become increasingly important when the Rayleigh number increases. As a result, the rise in the value of Rayleigh number leads to an increase of the overall heat transfer within the greenhouse.     

Enterotoxigenicity and drug sensitivity of Aeromonas hydrophila isolated from well water in Sweden: a case study

A large number of Aeromonas spp. have been found in drinking water from a drilled well in Sweden. Isolates identified as A. hydrophila were tested for production of enterotoxin, hemolysin, enzymes and for resistant patterns to different antibiotics. The enterotoxin-producing A. hydrophila could be responsible for the long-term diarrhoeal case of a 1 1/2 year old child who consumed the contaminated water.