Contribution of Compositional Parameters to the Oxidative Stability of Olive and Walnut Oil Blends

Oil blending was conducted to study the effects of changes in fatty acid composition (FAC), tocopherols and total phenol content (TPC) on oxidative stability of virgin olive oil (VOO):walnut oil (WO) blends. The measurement of the antioxidant activity of bioactive components present in the parent oils and blends was achieved by their ability to scavenge the free stable 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical (DPPH·). The highest percentage of DPPH· inhibition was found for pure VOO, and the lowest one for pure WO. EC₅₀ values obtained from the DPPH assay correlated significantly and inversely with TPC. The generation of volatile flavor components in VOO indicated the predominance of C₆ compounds produced through biochemical (enzymatic) pathways, whereas WO showed increased concentrations of medium chain (C₇–C₁₁) aldehydes produced through chemical (oxidative) pathways. The results obtained confirm the importance of VOO phenolics in providing protection against oxidation in VOO and VOO/WO blends. However, considering the impact of FAC and the content of endogenous antioxidant substances mentioned previously on the oxidative stability of the oils analyzed, the effect of an elevated unsaturation level (WO) prevails over a high amount of such bioactive components (VOO).     

酶催化合成大豆甾醇油酸酯的工艺研究

以大豆甾醇和油酸为原料,在酶的催化下合成大豆甾醇油酸酯,采用高效液相色谱对产物进行定性定量分析,通过单因素实验考察催化剂脂肪酶的种类和用量、醇酸摩尔比、反应温度和反应时间等对大豆甾醇油酸酯产率的影响,并通过正交实验优化大豆甾醇油酸酯的合成工艺条件。采用红外光谱对产物进行了表征。结果表明:大豆甾醇油酸酯的最佳合成工艺条件为催化剂N435脂肪酶用量6%(以大豆甾醇和油酸的总质量计)、醇酸摩尔比1∶1、反应温度50℃、反应时间30 h、异辛烷用量10 mL(大豆甾醇为1 mmol时),在最佳条件下大豆甾醇油酸酯产率为86. 51%;红外表征说明合成的产物为大豆甾醇油酸酯。     

New closed-form expressions for SNR estimates of Nakagami fading channels by the method of moments

Method of moments has been a parameter estimation technique appropriate to calculate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimates in fading channel models in which an optimal technique like maximum likelihood estimation is not mathematically tractable. In this article, the ratio of the second moment squared to the fourth moment of the received signal envelope is considered to calculate an exact expression for the SNR estimate in Nakagami-m fading channel for M-QAM and \(\theta \)-MQAM modulations as well as expressions to evaluate the variance and the mean of the estimate. The paper presents two useful contributions for SNR estimation theory on Nakagami fading. Besides the exact algebraic expression for the estimate for a generalized QAM modulation scheme, its performance is evaluated through a statistical linearization argument.     

Parallelization and improvement of the MDV-SW algorithm for HEVC intra-prediction coding

The Journal of Supercomputing - The new video coding standard high-efficiency video encoding (HEVC) greatly improves the efficiency of intra-prediction with respect to previous standards. However,...     

Wind farm simulations based on a DFIG machine using parallel programming

The Journal of Supercomputing - New computational techniques for simulating a large array of wind turbines are highly needed to model modern electrical grid networks. In this paper, an...     

Biofilm formation in Haas palatal expanders with and without use of an antimicrobial agent: an in situ study

Orthodontic appliances causes specific alterations in oral environment, including reduction of pH, increase of dental biofilm and elevation of salivary microbial levels, causing an increased risk for dental caries. This study evaluated, using microbial culture and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the in situ contamination by mutans streptococci (MS) of different surfaces of Haas palatal expanders with and without use of chlorhexidine gluconate mouthrinses (CHX). Thirty‐four patients were randomly assigned to two groups (n = 17/group), using placebo (Group I) and 0.12% CHX (Group II—Periogard^®) mouthrinses twice a week. After 4 months, appliances were submitted to microbiological processing and after fragments were analyzed by SEM. Mann–Whitney U test (α = 5%) was used to assess differences between groups on the appliances' different surfaces and to compare the contamination on the free and nonfree surfaces of these components. There was no difference (p = 0.999) between groups regarding the number of MS colonies/biofilms on the nonfree surfaces, which showed intense contamination. However, free surfaces of Group II presented less contamination (p < 0.001) than those of Group I in all appliances' components. Results of the microbial culture were confirmed by SEM. Use of 0.12% CHX was effective in reducing the formation of MS colonies/biofilms on free surfaces of Haas expanders, in situ.     

Design and Implementation of an Extended Collectives Library for Unified Parallel C

Unified Parallel C(UPC) is a parallel extension of ANSI C based on the Partitioned Global Address Space(PGAS) programming model,which provides a shared memory view that simplifies code development while it can take advantage of the scalability of distributed memory architectures.Therefore,UPC allows programmers to write parallel applications on hybrid shared/distributed memory architectures,such as multi-core clusters,in a more productive way,accessing remote memory by means of different high-level language constructs,such as assignments to shared variables or collective primitives.However,the standard UPC collectives library includes a reduced set of eight basic primitives with quite limited functionality.This work presents the design and implementation of extended UPC collective functions that overcome the limitations of the standard collectives library,allowing,for example,the use of a specific source and destination thread or defining the amount of data transferred by each particular thread.This library fulfills the demands made by the UPC developers community and implements portable algorithms,independent of the specific UPC compiler/runtime being used.The use of a representative set of these extended collectives has been evaluated using two applications and four kernels as case studies.The results obtained confirm the suitability of the new library to provide easier programming without trading off performance,thus achieving high productivity in parallel programming to harness the performance of hybrid shared/distributed memory architectures in high performance computing.     

Growth Kinetics of the Fe2B Layers and Adhesion on Armco Iron Substrate

In this work, a kinetic model was suggested to evaluate the boron diffusion coefficient in the Fe₂B layers grown on the Armco iron substrate by the powder-pack boriding. This thermochemical treatment was carried out in the temperature range of 1123-1273 K for treatment times ranging from 2 to 8 h. The boron diffusion coefficient in the Fe₂B layers was estimated by solving the mass balance equation at the (Fe₂B/substrate) interface with an inclusion of boride incubation time. To validate the present model, the simulated value of Fe₂B layer thickness was compared with the experimental value obtained at 1253 K for a treatment time of 5 h. The morphology of Fe₂B layers was observed by SEM and optical microscopy. Metallographic studies showed that the boride layer has a saw-tooth morphology in all the samples. The layer thickness measurements were done with the help of MSQ PLUS software. The Fe₂B phase was identified by x-ray diffraction method. Finally, the adherence of Fe₂B layers on the Armco iron substrate was qualitatively evaluated by using the Daimler-Benz Rockwell-C indentation technique. In addition, the estimated value of boron activation energy was compared to the literature data.     

Walnut (Juglans regia L.): genetic resources,chemistry, by‐products

Walnut (Juglans regia L.) is the most widespread tree nut in the world. There is a great diversity of genotypes differing in forestry, productivity, physical and chemical nut traits. Some of them have been evaluated as promising and may serve as germplasm sources for breeding. The nutritional importance of the nut is related to the seed (kernel). It is a nutrient‐dense food mainly owing to its oil content (up to 740 g kg^?1 in some commercial varieties), which can be extracted easily by screw pressing and consumed without refining. Walnut oil composition is dominated largely by unsaturated fatty acids (mainly linoleic together with lesser amounts of oleic and linolenic acids). Minor components of walnut oil include tocopherols, phospholipids, sphingolipids, sterols, hydrocarbons and volatile compounds. Phenolic compounds, present at high levels in the seed coat but poorly extracted with the oil, have been extensively characterised and found to possess strong antioxidant properties. The oil extraction residue is rich in proteins (unusually high in arginine, glutamic and aspartic acids) and has been employed in the formulation of various functional food products. This review describes current scientific knowledge concerning walnut genetic resources and composition as well as by‐product obtainment and characteristics. Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry