Physical Properties of Pecans Relating to Shelling Efficiency

Inshell pecans of 21 cultivars and numbered trial selections were evaluated for selected physical properties and for their adaptability to be efficiently shelled by existing commercial technology. Processing efficiency was based on yield of unbroken half kernels during shelling. There were highly significant differences among varieties in both selected physical properties and shelling efficiency. Correlations between shelling efficiency and physical properties were determined. Results showed that percent total kernel, inshell length/diameter ratio and shell thickness were the physical properties that appeared to have the greatest effect on shelling efficiency.     

Cotyledon Structure of Resting Peanut (Arachis Hypogaea L. cv. Florunner) Seed Before and After Hydraulic Pressing

The cotyledon structure of resting peanut (Arachis hypogaea L. cv. Florunner) seed before and after hydraulic pressing was investigated with light and scanning electron microscopy. Observations were made of the appearance of cell walls and the major subcellular components: spherosomes (oil reserve bodies), aleurone grains and starch grains. Major findings include previously unreported cell wall damage and surface fissures that may be important to processors who express the oil from peanuts.     

Polyphenol Oxidase System in Red Delicious Apples

The polyphenol oxidase system (E.C. 1.14.18.1) in‘Red Delicious’apples (Malus domestica) was investigated. Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) revealed two active isoenzymes as detected with pyrocatechol substrate. The crude enzyme extract (acetone powder) was found to have one optimum pH of 6.2 and one optimum temperature for the browning reaction of 30°C with the experimental conditions described. The Michaelis constant (Km) as an average of the two active enzyme forms was 2.2 × 10^?lM pyrocatechol and the average maximum velocity (Vmax) was 4.8 × 10^?l AA390 per minute.     

Establishing Thermal Processes for Products with Straight-Line Heating Curves from Data Taken at Other Retort and Initial Temperatures

Heat penetration data were obtained at high and low retort temperatures (RTs) and at high and low product initial temperatures in two can sizes for food products displaying straight-line heating curves in an agitating retort. The extrapolation of data to other RTs was found to be a safe practice for products heating with conduction or significant induced convection. Extrapolating to lower RTs for intermediate viscosity products slightly underpredicted required processing times. The effect of initial temperature was consistent with that found in a previous study for broken-heating products in a still retort, in that heat penetration tests conducted at different initial temperatures can have a significant influence on process establishment, depending on the product.     

Physicochemical Properties of Ovalbumin and Lysozyme Treated with Oleic Acid

Results from polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis confirmed that proteins were more negatively charged in the presence of oleic acid. The electrophoretic mobility of unmodified and modified lysozyme was of opposite but similar magnitude. Critical micelle concentration (50.0 μ M) of oleic acid suggested that association between the fatty acid and proteins was mostly hydrophobic. Muramidase activity of modified lysozyme and difference spectra of modified ovalbumin suggested that oleic acid was partially or totally surrounding the proteins. Improved freeze-thaw characteristics of treated egg white were attributed to greater negative charge and instability of proteins produced by oleic acid.     

Compact charge and capacitance modeling of undoped ultra-thin body (UTB) SOI MOSFETs

We present an analytic, explicit and continuous charge model for a long-channel UTB (ultra-thin body) SOI (silicon-on-insulator) MOSFET, from which analytical expressions of the total capacitances are obtained. Our model is valid from below to well above threshold, without suffering from discontinuities between the regimes. It is based on a unified charge control model derived from Poisson’s equation. The drain-current, charge and capacitances expressions result in continuous explicit functions of the applied bias.The calculated capacitance characteristics are validated by 2D numerical simulations showing a very good agreement for different silicon film thicknesses.     

Power limits for secondary devices operating on TV white spaces

The use of TV white spaces as an alternative to overcome spectrum scarcity is a huge opportunity for new telecommunication systems and services. While being attractive for its desirable propagation characteristics, this part of the spectrum imposes a major difficulty from design and regulatory perspectives: how to optimize the use of spectrum and to ensure the protection of primary users, TV systems for example, at the same time. This paper discusses strategies to be adopted by geo-location database operators to calculate adaptive maximum permitted power levels for secondary devices, according to permissible levels of interference into the digital terrestrial television primary system.     

Dispersion in finlines on semiconductor and the S-parameters of a step discontinuity

The Transverse Transmission Line method is used for the characterization of bilateral and unilateral finlines on a semiconductor substrate and in conjunction with the modal method, for the calculation of the scattering parameters due to a step discontinuity on a unilateral finline with a lossless dielectric substrate. Numerical results of the effective dielectric constant, attenuation constant and characteristic impedance for the bilateral and unilateral finlines on semiconductor substrates, and results of scattering parameters of a step discontinuity for unilateral finline, are presented.     

Explicit model for the gate tunneling current in double-gate MOSFETs

In this paper, we present an explicit compact quantum model for the gate tunneling current in double-gate metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (DG-MOSFETs). Specifically, an explicit closed-form expression is proposed, useful for the fast evaluation of the gate leakage in the context of electrical circuit simulators. A benchmarking test against 1D self-consistent numerical solution of Schrödinger–Poisson (SP) equations has been performed to demonstrate the accuracy of the model.     

A methodology to design the link cost functions for impairment aware routing algorithms in optical networks

We propose a methodology to design the link cost function and, consequently, a systematic form to design a RWA algorithm. We call this methodology link cost function design (LCFD) and it consists of four steps: The choice of the link cost function input variables, the expansion of the cost function in terms of a series, the selection of an overall network performance indicator as the optimization target, and finally, the execution of an optimization process to find the series coefficients that optimize the network performance indicator based on off-line network simulations. The optimization process is performed by a computational intelligence technique, the particle swarm optimization. The proposed methodology (LCFD) is used to design an adaptive IA-RWA algorithm, which we call Power Series Routing (PSR). The effectiveness of both methodology and IA-RWA algorithm is investigated. The PSR is compared with other algorithms found in the literature by means of computational simulations and our proposal presented lower blocking probabilities with shorter computation time. Furthermore, we investigate the sensitivity and the ability of the proposed PSR to adapt itself to topological changes in the network due to both link/node addition/failure. We also investigate the behavior of the PSR in a scenario where the traffic load distribution is randomly chosen (non-uniform traffic), and we compared it to other three routing algorithms.