Effect of Methionine Supplementation on Nitrogen Balance in Infants Fed a Low-Cost Soy-Oats Formula

A nitrogen balance study, comparing a low-cost soy-oats infant formula with and without supplemental methionine, was carried out with infants of ages 3 - 26 months at a single equivalent level of nitrogen intake (approximately 850 mg/kg/day). Nitrogen retention was found to be unaffected by methionine supplementation. Com- parison of data obtained in this study with previous research re- vealed that a critical value for intake of total L-sulfur amino acids apparently exists in infants 3 - 26 months of age, below which methionine supplementation will increase nitrogen retention, but above which it will not. This value appears to coincide with that of 49 mg/kg/day recommended for infants by the FNB.     

Influence of weld misalignment and weld metal overmatch on the prediction of fracture in pipeline girth welds

$\text{J-}\text{integral}$ estimates using elastic-plastic finite element calculations, are shown to compare well with experimental results from single edge-notch bend (SENB) specimens made of X483 grade line pipe steel.The influence of weld misalignment and weld metal overmatch on fracture of cracked girth welds is predicted, also using elastic-plastic finite element calculations. Weld metal overmatch reduces plastic strain levels in the weld and appears beneficial in reducing $\text{J-}\text{integral}$ magnitudes. Predicted values of $\text{J-}\text{integral}$ are shown to increase with weld misalignment. However, $\text{J-}\text{integral}$ magnitudes near the critical value for crack growth initiation were only attained after considerable plastic straining at or near limit load. This result suggests that limit load calculations may be more appropriate for prediction of failure of cracked girth welds than conventional fracture techniques.     

Application-Specific Instruction-Set Processor for Retinex-Like Image and Video Processing

This brief presents an application-specific instruction-set processor (ASIP) for real-time Retinex image and video filtering. Design optimizations are addressed at algorithmic and architectural levels, the latter including a dedicated memory structure, an adapted pipeline, bypasses, a custom address generator and special looping structures. Synthesized in CMOS technology, the ASIP stands for its better energy-flexibility tradeoff versus reference ASIC and digital signal processing Retinex implementations.     

Microstructure of Selected Binary Food Powder Mixtures

Binary mixtures of sugar, citric acid, malic acid, soy protein and starch, after exposure to various relative humidities, were analyzed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). It is shown that depending on interparticle surfaceaffinity, concentration and relative humidity, the mixtures could be random, partially random, ordered or partially ordered. The type of bridging, between the aggregated particles depended on their chemical species and the availability of surface moisture.     

Automated fluorimetry in quality control of pasteurized and ultra-high temperature-treated starch soup

Automated monitoring of the microbiological quality of heat-processed foods by the resazurin reduction test was applied to microtitration plate incubator-fluorimeter technology. The appearance and disappearance of the fluorescing peak of resorufin was monitored on microtitration trays. Pasteurized or ultra-high temperature-treated starch-based soup was used as the model food system. Bacillus subtilis spores (ultra-high temperature treatment) and vegetative cells of Enterococcus faecalis (pasteurization) were inoculated into the soup before the heat treatment at levels which resulted in some survival. The timing of appearance of maximum fluorescence correlated with the number of bacteria in pre-incubated samples. Automated resazurin-reduction fluorimetry was compared with conventional plating, turbidometry and microcolony count by the direct epifluorescent filter technique. The results of the resazurin test correlated well with those of all the other methods tested. Fluorimetry had the advantage that the results could be read within 1–5h and the reproducibility was superior to the other methods.     

On plastic potentials for anisotropic metals and their derivation from the texture function

Summary Plastic yielding of anisotropic metals can be either described by a macroscopic constitutive relation or assessed by means of a model which correlates single and polycrystal behaviors. The mathematical identification of the plastic work rate derived from the two approaches, for all strain rate tensors, leads to a fit of the polycrystal yield surface by an analytical function. When a quadratic from is assumed, the macroscopic anisotropy parameters become explicit functions of the texture coefficients. This identification method is applied to calculate yield surfaces andR-values of rolled and annealed steel sheets: theR-values and in general the flow rule, are more significantly modified by the fitting than the yield surface. Thus, it is worth extending the method to more general constitutive relations which may be given by the form of their work function: alternative forms of the work function for plastic materials are explored, especially in the bearing of convexity and homogeneity where quadratic forms have a distinct advantage. Finally, it is shown that the identification of the work function allows to express the phenomenological coefficients as analytical functions of the texture parameters for many forms of the work function; in the other cases, these coefficients may be obtained by linear or non-linear regression.