Replacement of beef fat in Frankfurters by interesterified palm,cottonseed and olive oils

Three interesterified vegetable oils (IVOs) prepared from palm, cottonseed, and olive oil, respectively, have been studied for application to Frankfurters. Beef fat (10%) was replaced by one of the IVOs at 20, 60 or 100%. Fatty acid composition of the lipid fraction in the Frankfurters and saturated/unsaturated ratios were established for all batches. We found that total or partial replacement of beef fat by IVOs did not lead to significant changes in appearance, colour, texture, flavour or sensory score. We conclude that IVOs may be successfully applied as beef fat substitutes in Frankfurters.     

3D Hair sketching for real-time dynamic & key frame animations

Physically based simulation of human hair is a well studied and well known problem. But the “pure” physically based representation of hair (and other animation elements) is not the only concern of the animators, who want to “control” the creation and animation phases of the content. This paper describes a sketch-based tool, with which a user can both create hair models with different styling parameters and produce animations of these created hair models using physically and key frame-based techniques. The model creation and animation production tasks are all performed with direct manipulation techniques in real-time.     

Relation between abrasion resistance and flexural strength of high volume fly ash concrete

In this paper, abrasion of high volume fly ash (HVFA) concretes made with 50% and 70% of cement replacement with fly ash was assessed in terms of its relation to flexural tensile strength. Comparisons were made between normal Portland cement (NPC) concrete and fly ash concrete. Comparisons were also made between fly ash concretes. Investigation results have shown that the abrasion resistance increased as flexural tensile strength increased. Analysis of the results showed that, for concrete with tensile strength of greater than 4–5 MPa, the abrasion resistance of HVFA concrete with 70% replacement with cement was found to be higher than that of counterpart control NPC concrete and concrete made with 50% fly ash. The comparison between the relation of abrasion to compressive strength and abrasion to flexural tensile strength made in terms of R² of the linear regression showed that a stronger relation existed between abrasion and flexural tensile strength than that of abrasion to compressive strength of the concrete studied.

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Résumé L'étude a pour but d'estimer la relation entre la résistance à l'usure avec la résistance à la traction en flexion des bétons contenant de 50% et 70% de cendres volantes. On a comparé le béton pur au béton contenant des cendres volantes. Des comparaisons ont été faites également entre les différents bétons contenant des cendres volantes. Les resultats de la recherche ont montré que la résistance à l'usure augmente à mesure que la résistance à la traction en flexion de 4∼5 MPa ont une résistance à l'usure plus grande s'ils contienneint 70% de cendres volantes que s'ils étaient purs ou contenaient 50% de cendres volantes. La comparaison entre les relation de la résistance à l'usure en compression et de la résistance à l'usure en traction a été établie en termes de R² de la régression linéaire. On a prouvé qu'une relation plus forte a été obtenue entre la résistance à l'usure et la résistance à la traction en flexion par rapport à la résistance à l'usure en compression du béton étudié.

     

Synthesis and characterization of poly(N‐vinyl‐2‐pyrrolidone) grafted sodium alginate hydrogel beads for the controlled release of indomethacin

Graft copolymers of sodium alginate (NaAlg) with N‐vinyl‐2‐pyrrolidone were prepared using azobisisobutyronitrile as initiator. The graft copolymers (NaAlg‐g‐PVP) were characterized with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, elemental analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry. Polymeric hydrogel beads of NaAlg and NaAlg‐g‐PVP were prepared by crosslinking method using glutaraldehyde (GA) as a crosslinker in the hydrochloric acid catalyst (HCl) and these beads were used to deliver anti‐inflammatory drug, indomethacin (IM). Chemical stability of the IM after encapsulation into beads was confirmed by FTIR. Preparation conditions of the NaAlg‐g‐PVP beads were optimized by considering the percentage entrapment efficiency, particle size, swelling capacity and their release data. In vitro release studies were performed in simulated gastric fluid (pH 1.2) for the initial 2 h, followed by simulated intestinal fluid (pH 7.4) for 4 h. Effects of GA concentration, exposure time to GA, drug/polymer (d/p) ratio, and concentration of HCl on the release of IM were discussed. It was observed that IM release from the beads decreased with increasing GA concentration and exposure time. IM release also decreases with increasing d/p ratio and HCl concentration. The highest IM release was obtained to be 77% for beads crosslinked with 0.027M GA. Swelling experiments were also performed to compute molecular mass between crosslinks of the beads. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008     

CFAR processing with switching exponential smoothers for nonhomogeneous environments

Conventional constant false alarm rate (CFAR) methods use a fixed number of cells to estimate the background variance. For homogeneous environments, it is desirable to increase the number of cells, at the cost of increased computation and memory requirements, in order to improve the estimation performance. For nonhomogeneous environments, it is desirable to use less number of cells in order to reduce the number of false alarms around the clutter edges. In this work, we present a solution with two exponential smoothers (first order IIR filters) having different time-constants to leverage the conflicting requirements of homogeneous and nonhomogeneous environments. The system is designed to use the filter having the large time-constant in homogeneous environments and to promptly switch to the filter having the small time constant once a clutter edge is encountered. The main advantages of proposed Switching IIR CFAR method are computational simplicity, small memory requirement (in comparison to windowing based methods) and its good performance in homogeneous environments (due to the large time-constant smoother) and rapid adaptation to clutter edges (due to the small time-constant smoother).     

Robust control of variable speed autonomous underwater vehicle

Set point tracking control of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) via robust model predictive control (RMPC) is considered. Input-constrained RMPC with integral action, which has been developed in our previous work, is used to control the AUV in this study. In order to derive a RMPC control rule, non-linear dynamics of AUV with six degree of freedom is linearized at certain operating points. So, horizontal and vertical plane dynamics of system are represented by linear models which have polytopic uncertainties. Since the derived control rule will be used in real time, the computation time should be reduced. To overcome this computational time problem and get rid of trial–error step of Algorithm 1, a new algorithm is proposed here. The simulations are carried out using the control rule based on this algorithm and these results are presented.     

Performance evaluation of an importance sampling technique in a Jackson network

Importance sampling is a technique that is commonly used to speed up Monte Carlo simulation of rare events. However, little is known regarding the design of efficient importance sampling algorithms in the context of queueing networks. The standard approach, which simulates the system using an a priori fixed change of measure suggested by large deviation analysis, has been shown to fail in even the simplest network settings. Estimating probabilities associated with rare events has been a topic of great importance in queueing theory, and in applied probability at large. In this article, we analyse the performance of an importance sampling estimator for a rare event probability in a Jackson network. This article carries out strict deadlines to a two-node Jackson network with feedback whose arrival and service rates are modulated by an exogenous finite state Markov process. We have estimated the probability of network blocking for various sets of parameters, and also the probability of missing the deadline of customers for different loads and deadlines. We have finally shown that the probability of total population overflow may be affected by various deadline values, service rates and arrival rates.     

Degradation of 4-chloro-2-methylphenol in aqueous solution by electro-Fenton and photoelectro-Fenton processes

Degradation of 4-chloro-2-methylphenol (PCOC), a refractory toxic chemical emitted to the environment from the industrial production of phenoxy herbicides was studied in aqueous solution. Electro-Fenton and photoelectro-Fenton processes were used as the degradation methods. H₂O₂, produced by the reduction of oxygen at carbon cathode reacted with dissolved metal ions to form hydroxyl radicals, which in turn reacted with PCOC sequentially to degrade the aromatic ring. The effects of using different [Fe²⁺]/[PCOC]₀ and the effect of replacing Fe²⁺ by Mn²⁺ ion have been examined. It was found that degradation rate was increased with increasing [Fe²⁺]/[PCOC]₀ ratio from 2 to 4. However, the total charge utilized during the treatment was also increased. The efficiency of PCOC degradation was observed to be higher when Mn²⁺ was used as the catalyst. The mineralization of aqueous solutions of PCOC, withdrawn from the reactor at certain time interval, has been followed by total organic carbon (TOC) decay and dechlorination. A fast and complete degradation of the aromatic ring was achieved in photoelectro-Fenton system. 41.7% TOC decay and complete dechlorination were observed by consuming only 141.4 C electrical charge during a 300 min photoelectron-Fenton treatment. In the case of electro-Fenton system, 280.7 C electrical charge was consumed during 450 min of electrolysis to attain a similar degradation of PCOC. 14.9% TOC removal and 89.3% dechlorination have been obtained in this system under the applied conditions.     

Optimization of demand-related packaging sizes using a p-median approach

The determining of efficient packaging sizes is a key factor in saving material and transportation costs and also in reducing packaging waste. By analyzing the range of items and their contribution to sales-relevant order structures of a globally operating mail order company, a simplified packing algorithm is proposed. In combination with well-known methodologies, this heuristic provides near optimal solutions improving current packaging of eCommerce companies. It is shown that simple, practical heuristics are sufficient to achieve average material savings of more than 10 %. In order to find efficient packaging sizes, a set of them is generated by discretization of packaging dimensions. Given the set of orders and the set of packaging sizes, a p-median approach is applied to find a specified number of optimal, demand-related packaging sizes.     

Determination of the optimum conditions for ion nitriding of AISI 5140 steel

AISI 5140 low alloy steel was ion nitrided under different process parameters including time (1, 4, 8 and 12 h), temperature (400, 450, 500 and 550 °C) and gas mixture ratio (0.05, 0.33, 1 and 3 N₂/H₂). By determining the fatigue strength, surface hardness, compound layer thickness and case depth, the optimum working conditions were determined by using a Taguchi design of experiment. After ion nitriding process, it is aimed to maximize fatigue strength, surface hardness and case depth as well as to minimize compound layer thickness. While the optimum conditions were determined, due to the goals (above aims) more than one being, the trade-off among goals was considered. First of all, each goal was optimised, separately. Then, all the goals were optimised together, considering the priority of the goals, and the optimum results were obtained at 0.05 N₂/H₂ gas mixture ratio, at the temperature of 450 °C and for 12 h process time.