CONSUMER SENSORY TEST OF SEVEN VARIETIES OF RICE IN OSH (PILAF) AT FOUR DIFFERENT LOCATIONS IN UZBEKISTAN

This study was done to determine if consumers in Uzbekistan would accept the Long Grain and Bengal rice varieties that are grown in South East Missouri for preparation of Osh. Three hundred and fifty eight consumers from Tashkent, Fergana, Namangan and Andijan participated in a consumer hedonic test involving overall acceptability of the rice varieties Avangard, Bengal, Chinese, Calrose, Devzira, Long Grain and RiceTec in Osh. A nine-point hedonic scale was used to record acceptance of the participants. Analysis of variance and internal preference mapping were performed on the consumer data. Overall, it was seen that Devzira was the most accepted rice variety probably because of its popularity among the local Uzbeks. The mean acceptance score for Long Grain and Bengal (6.1 and 6.0, respectively) showed that the two rice samples were also acceptable to the majority of the consumers, which proved its potential to be exported to Uzbekistan from the U.S.A.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

The Central Asian countries that were part of the former Soviet Union import rice from countries such as Turkey and Thailand to supplement the needs of their general population. The per capita consumption of rice in Uzbekistan (∼12.0 kg/person/year) exceeds the production of rice there. Uzbekistan is an arid region that is not suitable for crops such as rice because it requires a lot of water. Other staple crops like cotton and wheat require less water, and hence fare better in this region. The U.S.A. has become a major player in the rice export industry, and is looking at these Central Asian countries to import rice while encouraging the governments there to grow other staple crops such as cotton and wheat.     

The machine loading and tool allocation problem in a flexible manufacturing system

In this paper the machine loading and tool allocation problem of an FMS is discussed, A mathematical model is developed to determine the routings of parts through the machines and to allocate appropriate cutting tools to each machine to achieve minimum overall machining cost. Computational experience with this model is presented under various system and operation parameter values. Computational refinements based on lagrangean relaxation are also discussed.     

Physical Metallurgy of Beryllium and Its Alloys

Some of the physical metallurgy aspects of beryllium and its alloys have been briefly described and discussed in this paper. To start with, many of the attractive properties of beryllium and some of its major applications have been mentioned. This is followed by a short discussion pertaining to the polymorphism of the metal and the stability of the relevant phases. The solid solution behaviour of beryllium and the formation of beryllium rich intermetallic phases have been dealt with subsequently. Some of the broad characteristics of the phase diagrams of binary beryllium systems have then been mentioned. A short account of beryllium based as well as beryllium containing alloys and composites has been provided after this. The next topic to be discussed is the deformation behaviour of the metal, with particular reference to slip systems, stacking faults, twinning modes and fracture modes. This is followed by a brief account of grain size effects and of recrystallization and grain growth in beryllium. Finally, the brittleness problem in beryllium has been discussed.     

An improved branching scheme for the branch and bound procedure of scheduling n jobs on m parallel machines to minimize total weighted flowtime

A branch and bound procedure to solve the n job, m parallel machine problem for the weighted flowtime criterion has been developed by Elmaghraby and Park (1974) and further modified by Barnes and Brennan (1977). This paper proposes a branching scheme different from theirs and shows its superiority. Also, some new and simple results are presented which are easy to implement to obtain an efficient branch-and-bound algorithm. In addition, a new and improved lower bound is developed which is easy to compute.