Effects of Water and Gelatinized Starch on the Viscoelasticity of Pizza Dough and the Texture of Pizza Crust

The soft texture of the pizza crust rim is generated by baking at a high temperature for a short period in a stone oven. In the case of baking in an electric oven, the pizza dough is baked at a much lower temperature and for a longer period, resulting in a harder texture. To improve the texture of electric oven-baked pizza crust, the effects of water and gelatinized starch on the viscoelasticity of pizza dough and the texture of pizza crust were investigated. Rheological properties (storage modulus, loss modulus, and yield stress) of pizza dough decreased with an increase in water content. When wheat flour in the dough was partially replaced with pre-gelatinized wheat starch, the rheological properties of the dough were maintained even at a high-water content. These results indicate that water-enriched dough can be prepared with gelatinized starch and baked using an electric oven. There was no significant difference in apparent density between the conventional and modified pizza crusts. Water content of the crumb part of the modified crust was significantly higher than that of the conventional crust. Texture analysis revealed that the modified pizza crust showed significantly lower stress at high strain than the conventional crust. In addition, sensory evaluation showed that the modified pizza crust exhibited greater firmness and stickiness than the conventional crust, which was attributed to the increased water content with gelatinized starch of the dough.     

Synthesis of Ti-based bulk quasicrystal by shock compression

We attempted to produce a Ti₄₅Zr₃₈Ni₁₇ bulk icosahedral (i) quasicrystal by a shock compression technique, in which a single-stage powder gun discharges a flyer plate that consolidates the target powders. The results were also compared with those by a conventional hot-pressing. The powder mixtures for the shock compression were blended by two kinds of methods; that is, gently mixing in a vial, and mechanically alloying by a planetary ball mill. A large bulk i-phase sample, with a Ti₂Ni crystal phase, was synthesized from mechanically alloyed powders after shock compression at a higher flyer velocity, although the conventional hot-pressing at 3 MPa synthesized only the Ti₂Ni phase. For the gently mixed powders, no reaction occured even after shock compression. High-pressure and high-temperature produced during shock compression, and milling process were key factors to obtain the i-phase. The Vickers hardness and the wetting contact angle with pure water under an atmospheric pressure for the bulk sample containing the i-phase were about 7 GPa and about 70°, respectively.     

2R Regeneration of Time-Interleaved Multiwavelength Signals Based on Higher Order Four-Wave Mixing in a Fiber

All-optical 2R regeneration of two-wavelength time-interleaved signals is demonstrated using higher order four-wave mixing in a fiber. In this regeneration scheme, a single fiber and a pump are shared by the two channels. The results show that interchannel crosstalk can be avoided when pulses in the two channels are time separated by more than ~3 times their pulsewidth. A possible power monitoring to determine suitable time-interleaving condition is also discussed.     

Antihypertensive Effect of Salt-Free Soy Sauce,a New Fermented Seasoning,in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

ABSTRACT: In this study, we focused on the antihypertensive effect of newly fermented salt-free soy sauce (SFS) in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). A 13-wk oral administration of SFS was performed daily in 8- to 21-wk-old SHRs with a dose of 200 mg/kg of body weight/d. The systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressures were measured for each week during the experimental period. As a result, a significant (P < 0.01) BP lowering effect was observed from the 5th d to the end of the experiment in the SFS group compared with the control group (ΔSBP_21-wk: 27 mmHg, ΔDBP_21-wk: 20 mmHg). In contrast to such substantial effect by SFS intake, angiotensin I-converting enzyme activities in blood and local organs as well as pharmaceutical parameters such as serum Na⁺ or K⁺ level did not show any significant difference between in both SFS and control groups. Vasoconstriction experiment using thoracic aorta rings from 21-wk SHRs provided an interesting result that the rings from the SFS group evoked a >2-fold higher increase in the angiotensin II-stimulated constrictive response compared with the rings from the control group (P = 0.012), which suggested that the SFS-intake would be effective in possessing a higher vessel tone. Practical Application: In this study, we investigated the antihypertensive effect of newly fermented SFS in SHRs. As a result of 13-wk SFS-administration, we found a significant antihypertensive effect of the SFS. This finding strongly demonstrates that the developed SFS would be greatly beneficial for health and useful for health-related industries.     

Molecular evidence for maternal inheritance of the chloroplast genome in tea,Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze

BACKGROUND: Tea is the most consumed beverage worldwide after water. Yet very little is known about the genetics of tea in comparison with other crop species. Here we have taken advantage of the polymorphic nature of microsatellite DNA to investigate the mode of chloroplast inheritance in tea, Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze. This is important for the correct interpretation of phylogeny and introgression data as well as assessing the suitability of chloroplast transformation as a means for transgene containment in tea. RESULTS: The study was based on six Japanese tea cultivars, namely Aj2, CK23, Hatsumomiji, Nka05, Yamanoibuki and Kanayamidori used to generate four informative families. The parental pairs in the crosses differed at a single chlroroplast locus with respect to an imperfect microsatellite repeat of 16 nucleotide bases. In agreement with earlier cytological studies, all 61 progeny displayed a cpDNA profile that was consistent with the maternal inheritance of chloroplasts in tea. CONCLUSIONS: The data generated here provide the first molecular evidence of the plastid inheritance in tea. However, we suggest that additional families and polymorphic markers be screened for increasing the confidence in the observed maternal inheritance of chloroplasts in this important crop species. Copyright © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry     

Criteria for versatile GaN MOVPE tool:high growth rate GaN by atmospheric pressure growth

Growth rate has a direct impact on the productivity of nitride LED production.Atmospheric pressure growth of GaN with a growth rate as high as 10μm/h and also Al_0.1Ga_0.9N growth of 1μm/h by using 4 inch by 11 production scale MOVPE are described.XRD of（002） and（102） direction was 200 arcsec and 250 arcsec, respectively.Impact of the growth rate on productivity is discussed.     

Probabilistic enhancement of approximate indexing in metric spaces

Some approximate indexing schemes have been recently proposed in metric spaces which sort the objects in the database according to pseudo-scores. It is known that (1) some of them provide a very good trade-off between response time and accuracy, and (2) probability-based pseudo-scores can provide an optimal trade-off in range queries if the probabilities are correctly estimated. Based on these facts, we propose a probabilistic enhancement scheme which can be applied to any pseudo-score based scheme. Our scheme computes probability-based pseudo-scores using pseudo-scores obtained from a pseudo-score based scheme. In order to estimate the probability-based pseudo-scores, we use the object-specific parameters in logistic regression and learn the parameters using MAP (Maximum a Posteriori) estimation and the empirical Bayes method. We also propose a technique which speeds up learning the parameters using pseudo-scores. We applied our scheme to the two state-of-the-art schemes: the standard pivot-based scheme and the permutation-based scheme, and evaluated them using various kinds of datasets from the Metric Space Library. The results showed that our scheme outperformed the conventional schemes, with regard to both the number of distance computations and the CPU time, in all the datasets.     

Fabrication of aluminium foams from powder by hot extrusion and foaming

In order to produce aluminium foams for light-weight and energy absorbing structures of automobiles, a method for fabricating aluminium foam from powder mixed with a foaming agent by using a mould is proposed. The method consists of four sequential processes: powder compacting, extruding, foaming and moulding. In the experiment for fabricating aluminium foam from powder, the conditions of powder extrusion and foaming by the heated die are determined from the density of the aluminium foams made without a mould. The experimental results show that the relative density of the aluminium foam made under appropriate conditions is 0.22. In moulding of aluminium foam, a stainless steel pipe is used as a mould and the cylindrical aluminium foam is produced by filling into the pipe mould. The distribution of relative density within the aluminium foam bar is in a range of 0.2–0.3 by rapid cooling of the pipe. To examine the ratio of deformation energy to weight of the pipe including the aluminium foam, a compression test using a press is carried out. The deformation energy of the pipe can be increased with aluminium foam filled by the proposed method.     

Methacrylate-based ionic liquid: radical polymerization/copolymerization with methyl methacrylate and evaluation of molecular weight of the obtained homopolymers

Azobisisobutyronitlite (AIBN)-induced free radical polymerization of a methacrylate-based ionic liquid monomer, 1-(2-methacryloxyethyl)-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (Met-IL) was carried out in a common organic solvent, N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF), and an ionic liquid, 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (EMImTFSI). The molecular weight of the obtained poly(Met-IL) was evaluated by transforming it to non-ionic poly(methyl methacrylate) with hydrolysis of the imidazolium-salt-substituted pendant ester groups and methyl esterification. Radical copolymerization with methyl methacrylate (MMA) was also carried out in both DMF and EMImTFSI. Analysis of copolymer composition revealed that the reactivity of Met-IL was lower than that of MMA in both DMF and EMImTFSI solutions.