Comparison of direct steam injection and steam-jacketed heating in squid protein hydrolysis for energy consumption and hydrolysis performance

Direct steam injection (DSI) and conventional steam-jacketed (SJ) heating systems were compared for energy consumption and hydrolysis performance in producing squid hydrolysates (SH). Hydrolysis was carried out with endogenous enzymes at 55 °C for 90 min and native pH (6.5 ± 0.2), followed by pasteurization at 75 °C for 30 min. Hydrolysis performance was evaluated by monitoring the changes in viscosity, degree of hydrolysis (DH), and protein profile during the course of hydrolysis. The DSI heating process was more energy efficient than SJ heating with significantly less energy usage (∼30% energy reduction), shorter come-up times, and total processing time. While considerable fouling was evident with SJ heating, no fouling was observed with DSI heating. No appreciable differences in hydrolysis performance were observed between DSI and SJ heating, although the DSI-treated hydrolysate exhibited slightly lower values in viscosity and DH, as well as weaker protein band intensities due to dilution caused by steam condensation. The use of a steam filtration unit in DSI not only filtered the incoming steam, but also reduced condensation. Results suggest that DSI heating with steam filtration is an energy efficient and fouling-free process for preparing SH and potentially for other type of enzymatic protein hydrolysates.     

Femtosecond Dynamics in Single Wall Carbon Nanotube/Poly(3-Hexylthiophene) Composites

Femtosecond transient absorption measurements on single wall carbon nanotube/poly(3-hexylthiophene) composites are used to investigate the relaxation dynamics of this blended material. The influence of the addition of nanotubes in polymer matrix on the ultrashort relaxation dynamics is examined in detail. The introduction of nanotube/polymer heterojunctions enhances the exciton dissociation and quenches the radiative recombination of composites. The relaxation dynamics of these composites are compared with the fullerene derivative-polymer composites with the same matrix. These results provide explanation to the observed photovoltaic performance of two types of composites.     

An empirical study on the commercial adoption of digital currencies

Information Systems and e-Business Management - Digital currencies are rapidly evolving Internet currencies that have been increasingly attracting academic, governmental, banking, and business...     

Serverless streaming for emerging media: towards 5G network-driven cost optimization

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Immersive 3D media is an emerging type of media that captures, encodes and reconstructs the 3D appearance of people and objects, with applications in...     

Development of an innovative information system: a fish identification e-key with update capabilities

A dichotomous identification key organizes fishes based on their similarities and differences, and is an essential tool in which ichthyologists, biologists, fishery biologists and others can use for accurate identification of specimens or finding information on correct names, biology and distribution of species. This research work focuses on the development and implementation of a totally new information system that is able to identify correctly fish species names. The developed system is a fully interactive fish identification e-key, which can be used in both forms; locally and remotely via the World Wide Web. This new dichotomous classification e-key provides the capability to identify any species in a compact and easy to use environment, which gives the user excellent operation capabilities and complete information about all included fish species. Moreover, the application provides the capability to search for a random fish species and to show a list which includes all the fish species that currently exist in the application's database. There is an extra attribute that makes the new system novel, and this is its expandability: the information system is fully dynamic having the capability to be extended every time a new species is identified. This attribute is innovative because, until now, there is not any fish identification e-key that gives the user the capability to insert new fish species into the application's database.     

Field patterns of resonant noncircular closed-loop arrays: further analysis

Previous papers have introduced the continuous-current model for resonant closed-loop arrays of cylindrical dipoles and, for a certain class of array shapes, have determined the resulting field patterns analytically. Those analytical calculations involve several approximations. In the present paper, we first study the aforementioned model numerically for the case of elliptical closed-loop arrays. The results-which involve fewer approximations than those of the previous papers, but which refer to different array shapes-imply that elliptical arrays have a bidirectional, highly directive field and, unlike conventional arrays, have no sidelobes. Combining analytical and numerical methods, we then investigate the relationship between the aforementioned continuous-current model and what we call the discrete-current model which, in a certain sense, is more realistic. The results indicate that, subject to suitable conditions, the two models yield virtually identical results. In our analytical investigations, an important tool is the Poisson summation formula for finite sums; we have devoted a stand-alone section to this formula which supplements recent, unrelated publications in antenna theory.     

Natural Origin Lycopene and Its “Green” Downstream Processing

Lycopene is an abundant natural carotenoid pigment with several biological functions (well-known for its antioxidant properties) which is under intensive investigation in recent years. Lycopene chemistry, its natural distribution, bioavailability, biological significance, and toxicological effects are briefly outlined in the first part of this review. The second, major part, deals with various modern downstream processing techniques, which are assessed in order to identify promising approaches for the recovery of lycopene and of similar lipophilic compounds. Natural lycopene is synthesized in plants and by microorganisms, with main representatives of these two categories (for industrial production) tomato and its by-products and the fungus Blakeslea trispora, respectively. Currently, there is a great deal of effort to develop efficient downstream processing for large scale production of natural-origin lycopene, with trends strongly indicating the necessity for “green” and mild extraction conditions. In this review, emphasis is placed on final product safety and ecofriendly processing, which are expected to totally dominate in the field of natural-origin lycopene extraction and purification.     

Accurate and large-scale privacy-preserving data mining using the election paradigm

With the proliferation of the Web and ICT technologies there have been concerns about the handling and use of sensitive information by data mining systems. Recent research has focused on distributed environments where the participants in the system may also be mutually mistrustful. In this paper we discuss the design and security requirements for large-scale privacy-preserving data mining (PPDM) systems in a fully distributed setting, where each client possesses its own records of private data. To this end we argue in favor of using some well-known cryptographic primitives, borrowed from the literature on Internet elections. More specifically, our framework is based on the classical homomorphic election model, and particularly on an extension for supporting multi-candidate elections. We also review a recent scheme [Z. Yang, S. Zhong, R.N. Wright, Privacy-preserving classification of customer data without loss of accuracy, in: SDM’ 2005 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining, 2005] which was the first scheme that used the homomorphic encryption primitive for PPDM in the fully distributed setting. Finally, we show how our approach can be used as a building block to obtain Random Forests classification with enhanced prediction performance.     

Physicochemical Studies of Hard-to-Cook Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris)

Model aqueous systems were used for the study of the cooking quality of beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). These systems were created using graded contents of calcium and magnesium ions, in a ratio of 4:1, to prepare aqueous media with cation content corresponding to 0–400 mg litre^-1 of calcium carbonate. The model systems were used to measure the quality of boiled beans in water of low and high divalent cation content. A boiling time of 60 min was used and the hardness of the boiling beans was measured by an Instron Universal Testing Machine. Cooking of beans in water of low divalent cation content equivalent to 0–50 mg litre^-1 CaCO₃ resulted in well-boiled beans for both types (easy-to-cook and hard-to-cook) of beans. Boiling in water of high divalent cation content led to the formation of very hard beans for both types of bean, while boiling in water of moderate divalent cation content (normal drinking water: 150–250 mg litre^-1 CaCO₃) differentiated between the two categories of beans. These results were further tested by adsorption experiments with divalent cations, on beans boiled (a) in different proportions of boiling water, and (b) in model aqueous systems. The divalent cation content of boiling water and the phytic acid content of the beans proved to be the crucial factors in the hard-to-cook phenomenon of beans. © 1997 SCI.