Current trends of tropical fruit waste utilization

Recent rapid growth of the world's population has increased food demands. This phenomenon poses a great challenge for food manufacturers in maximizing the existing food or plant resources. Nowadays, the recovery of health benefit bioactive compounds from fruit wastes is a research trend not only to help minimize the waste burden, but also to meet the intensive demand from the public for phenolic compounds which are believed to have protective effects against chronic diseases. This review is focused on polyphenolic compounds recovery from tropical fruit wastes and its current trend of utilization. The tropical fruit wastes include in discussion are durian (Durio zibethinus), mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana L.), rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum), mango (Mangifera indica L.), jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), papaya (Carica papaya), passion fruit (Passiflora edulis), dragon fruit (Hylocereus spp), and pineapple (Ananas comosus). Highlights of bioactive compounds in different parts of a tropical fruit are targeted primarily for food industries as pragmatic references to create novel innovative health enhancement food products. This information is intended to inspire further research ideas in areas that are still under-explored and for food processing manufacturers who would like to minimize wastes as the norm of present day industry (design) objective.     

Pathways of lean manufacturing in wood and furniture industries: a bibliometric and systematic review

European Journal of Wood and Wood Products - As wood and furniture industries have little knowledge of the implementation of lean manufacturing particularly in emerging economies, the purpose of...     

Performance of palm oil‐based dihydroxystearic acid as ionizable molecule in waterborne polyurethane dispersions

Waterborne polyurethane dispersions (WPUDs) containing a renewable palm oil‐based 9,10‐dihydroxystearic acid (DHSA) as an isocyanate‐reactive compound bearing ionizable carboxylic group to incorporate hydrophilic groups into the polymer chain have been successfully prepared. The WPUDs were prepared by using polyether and polyester polyols of 2000 molecular weight, DHSA and its traditional petroleum‐based counterpart 2,2‐bis(hydroxymethyl)‐propionic acid (DMPA), and an aliphatic diisocyanate (isophorone diisocyanate, IPDI). A comparison was made between the properties of WPUDs obtained using blends of DHSA and DMPA at different molar ratios and a reference WPUD based on DMPA. The particle size of polyester type WPUDs containing DHSA was reduced at a 0.5 to 0.5 molar ratio of DMPA to DHSA. A lower initial temperature was used in the preparation of NCO‐prepolymers with DHSA as compared to DMPA and this eased the preparation of WPUDs. The effect of molar ratio of DMPA to DHSA on the properties of films and coatings prepared with WPUDs was evaluated. The best properties were obtained with WPUDs prepared with a 0.5 to 0.5 molar ratio of DMPA to DHSA. The incorporation of renewable palm oil‐based DHSA into WPUDs improved water resistance (lower water uptake) and exhibited good combination of properties including hardness, adhesion strength, tensile strength, and elasticity. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 43614.     

Properties of Si3N4–TiN composites fabricated by spark plasma sintering by using a mixture of Si3N4 and Ti powders

Si₃N₄–TiN composites were successfully fabricated via planetary ball milling of 70 mass% Si₃N₄ and 30 mass% Ti powders, followed by spark plasma sintering (SPS) at 1250–1350 °C. The sintering mechanism for SPS was a hybrid of dissolution–reprecipitation and viscous flow. The electrical resistivity decreased with increasing sintering temperature up to a minimum at 1250 °C and then increased with the increasing sintering temperature. The composites prepared by SPS at 1250–1350 °C could be easily machined by electrical discharge machining. Composite prepared by SPS at 1300 °C showed a high hardness (17.78 GPa) and a good machinability.     

A flexible method to estimate the software development effort based on the classification of projects and localization of comparisons

The estimation of software development effort has been centralized mostly on the accuracy of estimates through dealing with heterogeneous datasets regardless of the fact that the software projects are inherently complex and uncertain. In particular, Analogy Based Estimation (ABE), as a widely accepted estimation method, suffers a great deal from the problem of inconsistent and non-normal datasets because it is a comparison-based method and the quality of comparisons strongly depends on the consistency of projects. In order to overcome this problem, prior studies have suggested the use of weighting methods, outlier elimination techniques and various types of soft computing methods. However the proposed methods have reduced the complexity and uncertainty of projects, the results are not still convincing and the methods are limited to a special domain of software projects, which causes the generalization of methods to be impossible. Localization of comparison and weighting processes through clustering of projects is the main idea behind this paper. A hybrid model is proposed in which the software projects are divided into several clusters based on key attributes (development type, organization type and development platform). A combination of ABE and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to design a weighting system in which the project attributes of different clusters are given different weights. Instead of comparing a new project with all the historical projects, it is only compared with the projects located in the related clusters based on the common attributes. The proposed method was evaluated through three real datasets that include a total of 505 software projects. The performance of the proposed model was compared with other well-known estimation methods and the promising results showed that the proposed localization can considerably improve the accuracy of estimates. Besides the increase in accuracy, the results also certified that the proposed method is flexible enough to be used in a wide range of software projects.     

Statistical forecasting algorithm on circuit level gain transformation due to negative bias temperature instability for the microwave frequency spectrum

Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) is a critical reliability issue for CMOS technology, as this directly impacts the CMOS circuit performance parameters causing system failure. Moreover, NBTI behavior for radio frequency (RF) signals needs more understanding. On the device level, there has been much research on the relation between NBTI and RF. Many of those works contradict each other on the question of RF dependency with NBTI. Hence, the behavior of NBTI must be analyzed at the circuit level using a prediction technique. In this article, we analyzed the circuit level impact of NBTI for microwave frequency and developed a gain transformation technique for RF circuits in the microwave frequency range. To do this, we employed a 65 nm conventional ring oscillator as an RF block and carried out an aging simulation on it. A compatibility analysis was performed on low and high bandwidth microwave signals. The implemented statistical technique can determine the actual operable frequency range, so that the RF circuit can perform with minimal NBTI effect.     

Performance Evaluation of Bioethanol Production through Continuous Fermentation with a Settling Unit

This paper analyses a model for the production of bioethanol that has been calibrated against laboratory data by previous researchers. The authors investigate the improvement in productivity that can be obtained when a centrifuge is used to recycle cells that would otherwise leave the reactor system in the efficient stream. The authors compare the performance of a double reactor cascade, possible employing a settling unit, against that of a single reactor. For the former case, this paper considers the reactor configuration in which the settling unit recycles from the effluent stream of a reactor back in the influent of the same reactor.     

Microstructure and mechanical properties of silicon nitride-titanium nitride composites prepared by spark plasma sintering

Si₃N₄-TiN composites were prepared by spark plasma sintering (conventional sintering (SPS1) and in situ reaction sintering (SPS2)). Homogeneous distribution of equiaxed TiN grains in Si₃N₄ matrix results in the highest microhardness (21.7 GPa) and bending strength (621 MPa) of sample SPS1 sintered at 1550 °C. Dispersion of elongated TiN grains in Si₃N₄ matrix results in the highest fracture toughness (8.39 MPa m^1/2) of sample SPS2 sintered at 1300 °C.     

Fabrication and electrochemical evaluation of polyhedral PANI-coated Co3O4 electrode for supercapacitor application

In this work, conducting polymer modification on metal oxide surfaces was targeted to improve the composite conductivity and stability for electrochemical energy storage applications. Polyhedral cobalt oxide (Co₃O₄) was prepared using a molten salt combustion method and coated with polyaniline (PANI). The composite (PANI-CoM) was characterized using XRD, TGA, FTIR, FESEM, TEM, and BET. From cyclic voltammetry analysis in 6 M KOH, PANI-CoM shows a high C_S (985 F/g) compared to bare Co₃O₄ (278 F/g), indicating that PANI coating has improved pseudocapacitive charge storability of the electrode. The electrolyte diffusion on the internal active surfaces has increased from 11% to 31%, contributed by the reduction of internal resistance by 29%. Activated carbon and ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) were used to manufacture two sets of asymmetrical supercapacitor devices, and PANI-CoM/OMC functioned the best performance with an E_D of 22 Wh/kg at a P_D of 400 W/kg.