The applied pretreatment (blanching,ascorbic acid) at the manufacture process affects the quality of nectarine purée processed by hydrostatic high pressure

A nectarine purée was manufactured with different pretreatments (thermal blanching or ascorbic acid – AA – addition), and then, the purée was processed by high‐pressure treatment to evaluate the effect of the initial manufacture conditions in the stability of the processed purées. A thermal treatment was also carried out to compare the effect with the high‐pressure processing (HPP). All applied processes were effective to ensure the microbiological safety of the purées. However, the pretreatment (thermal blanching or AA addition) applied during the manufacture affected the final quality of the processed purées. Initially, the AA addition had a protective effect on colour degradation during the manufacture of the purées; however, when these purées were treated by HPP showed less colour stability during storage, lower bioactive compounds content, and antioxidant activity. In contrast, purées with an initial thermal blanching maintained better the quality after HPP and during storage.     

General Framework for Rotation Invariant Texture Classification Through Co-occurrence of Patterns

The use of co-occurrences of patterns in image analysis has been recently suggested as one of the possible strategies to improve on the bag-of-features model. The intrinsically high number of features of the method, however, is a potential limit to its widespread application. Its extension into rotation invariant versions also requires careful consideration. In this paper we present a general, rotation invariant framework for co-occurrences of patterns and investigate possible solutions to the dimensionality problem. Using local binary patterns as bag-of-features model, we experimentally evaluate the potential advantages that co-occurrences can provide in comparison with bag-of-features. The results show that co-occurrences remarkably improve classification accuracy in some datasets, but in others the gain is negligible, or even negative. We found that this surprising outcome has an interesting explanation in terms of the degree of association between pairs of patterns in an image, and, in particular, that the higher the degree of association, the lower the gain provided by co-occurrences in comparison with bag-of-features.     

A review of energy efficiency label of street lighting systems

There are very few countries that have provisions addressing the energy efficiency of the whole street lighting system, such as Spain or the Netherlands. Nevertheless, there is not an agreement about how energy efficiency must be assessed. The Spanish Government contemplates it in the Royal Decree 1890/2008 with the goal of improving energy savings and efficiency. However, this has not obtained the expected results. Nowadays, energy efficiency of this kind of systems is assessed using a label. In the case of Spain, this label only assesses one magnitude. The contributions of this paper are two evaluation systems (kiviat diagram and pie chart) which assess five magnitudes: lamps, energy efficiency index, light pollution, renewable energy contribution, and harness of the luminous flux using dimming. After that, a survey was done to study several subjects: (1) if citizens are aware about the efficiency of street lighting systems, (2) whether the sample of colors used in the label is adequate, and (3) if our proposed systems could replace the current evaluation system. Finally, the paper finishes with the conclusions of the survey.     

Influence of grape composition and winemaking on the anthocyanin composition of red wines of Tannat

The anthocyanin composition of Tannat red wines obtained with four winemaking techniques was evaluated in different years. The wines were elaborated with traditional maceration (TM), cold pre‐fermentative maceration, delayed extraction of anthocyanins and extended maceration. Two vinifications were carried out for each technique, employing 70 kg of grapes in each one. The anthocyanin composition of wines was analysed by high‐performance liquid chromatography–diode array detection. The results confirm the fundamental role of the grape composition on the anthocyanin composition of the wines. The winemaking had an important effect on the total concentration of anthocyanins and also may modify the anthocyanic profile of wines. The wines obtained with TM had higher or similar content of anthocyanins than those elaborated with the other techniques. Canonical discriminant analysis of data showed that vintage has a greater effect on anthocyanin concentration than winemaking techniques.     

Influence of depth and geological structure on the transmission of blast vibrations

Vibrations generated by blasting carried out during the quarrying of material induce dynamic stresses that can give rise to damage of diverse considerations in surrounding buildings and structures. The adverse effects of vibrations caused by explosives used in mining and civil works can be controlled by suitably planning blasting operations, appropriately managing and optimising the equipment used, and monitoring the processes that cause these vibrations. The aims of the present study were to discuss and test the existence of a damping of underground vibrations, besides defining a transmission law for such vibrations which will depend on the directionality between the blast and the measurement point. Besides, the damages that vibrations can produce on the rock mass are evaluated. Their effects are very similar to those produced by an earthquake that disconnects the rock mass integral blocks.     

A bill of materials-based approach for end-of-life decision making in design for the environment

Re-use, recycling or remanufacturing of products and components are good alternatives for reducing the environmental problems resulting from the huge amounts of waste currently arriving at landfills. A new approach is proposed in this paper for enhancing these alternatives from the earliest stages of product design. Given the product structure (obtained from its bill of materials (BOM)) and the joining and geometrical relationships among the components (obtained from the three-dimensional, computer-aided design representation), a model is proposed that will determine the EOL (EOL) strategy, i.e. the depth of disassembly inside the structure and the final end (re-use, recycle, remanufacture or disposal) for each disassembled part leading to the highest profit. A scatter search (SS) metaheuristic is used to determine the disassembly cost at each level of the BOM. The model presents a number of major improvements with respect to previous research. It addresses the problems of simultaneously determining both the best EOL strategy and the disassembly sequence, as well as allowing removal of components not only over the two or three Cartesian axes and affording the possibility of modifying the encountered strategy in a further step so as to fulfil other business criteria (such as disassembly time, resources availability or maximum waste generation rate).     

Application of digital image correlation at the microscale in fiber-reinforced composites

Digital image correlation (DIC) is applied to analyzing the deformation mechanisms under transverse compression in a fiber-reinforced composite. To this end, compression tests in a direction perpendicular to the fibers were carried out inside a scanning electron microscope and secondary electron images obtained at different magnifications during the test. Optimum DIC parameters to resolve the displacement and strain field were computed from numerical simulations of a model composite and they were applied to micrographs obtained at different magnifications (250×, 2000×, and 6000×). It is shown that DIC of low-magnification micrographs was able to capture the long range fluctuations in strain due to the presence of matrix-rich and fiber-rich zones, responsible for the onset of damage. At higher magnification, the strain fields obtained with DIC qualitatively reproduce the non-homogeneous deformation pattern due to the presence of stiff fibers dispersed in a compliant matrix and provide accurate results of the average composite strain. However, comparison with finite element simulations revealed that DIC was not able to accurately capture the average strain in each phase.     

Ontology-based approach to Basic Grafcet formalization

In recent years, various proposals have been put forth to formalize the Grafcet graphical language. The objective of this paper is to propose an ontology-based approach to formalize this language. The authors have implemented a semi-coarse grain ontology written in Ontology Web Language and have tested it by including it in an existing educational tool for the teaching of Grafcet language for use in programmable logic controllers.     

Precise segmentation of the bulbar conjunctiva for hyperaemia images

Hyperaemia is an excess of blood in a tissue that causes the appearance of an unusual red hue in the affected area. It is a common occurrence in the bulbar conjunctiva, where it can be related to multiple pathologies, such as conjunctivitis or dry eye syndrome. Specialists grade hyperaemia by means of a tedious, subjective, non-repeatable and time-consuming process. These drawbacks can be solved with the automatisation of the process by means of image processing techniques. The automatic segmentation of the conjunctiva is an important part of the process, as it ensures the absence of noise in posterior stages of the methodology. However, there are several issues of illumination and focus in the input videos that difficult the process. In this work, several segmentation algorithms are proposed and compared in order to obtain an accurate location of the bulbar conjunctiva.     

Stability,performance and sensitivity analysis of I.I.D. jump linear systems

This paper presents a symmetric Kronecker product analysis of independent and identically distributed jump linear systems to develop new, lower dimensional equations for the stability and performance analysis of this type of systems than what is currently available. In addition, new closed form expressions characterising multi-parameter relative sensitivity functions for performance metrics are introduced. The analysis technique is illustrated with a distributed fault-tolerant flight control example where the communication links are allowed to fail randomly.