GROWTH OF STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS S-6 AND YERSINIA ENTEROCOLITICA CDC A2635 IN COW, SOY AND WINGED BEAN MILKS

The two common foodborne pathogens, Staphylococcus aureus S-6 and Yersinia enterocolitica CDC A2635 were inoculated into whole cow, soy and winged bean milks and incubated at three different temperatures (10°, 25°, 37°C) to evaluate the potential for their growth. The legume milks were prepared by a hot grind method from either whole soybeans (Essex variety) or whole winged beans (Chimbu variety). In general, both foodborne pathogens grew well in all test media. However, S. aureus incubated at 10°C for 120 h, and Y. enterocolitica incubated at 37°C for 48 h were the only two conditions in which less than 10⁸ cells/mL were obtained.     

Dilatometric Sintering of Ti-2A1 and Ti-5AI Elemental Powders

The effect of Al addition (2 and 5 at. pct) on sintering kinetics of Ti power were investigated. Al reduces the sintering rates, sinter density, increases activation energy of sintering and accelerates the grain growth. Sintering was controlled by mixed mode, i.e. transient liquid phase sintering, formation of intermetallics, and Ti grain boundary diffusion in TiAl2 and other intermetallics.     

Single pass kernel k-means clustering method

In unsupervised classification, kernel k-means clustering method has been shown to perform better than conventional k-means clustering method in identifying non-isotropic clusters in a data set. The space and time requirements of this method are O(n ²), where n is the data set size. Because of this quadratic time complexity, the kernel k-means method is not applicable to work with large data sets. The paper proposes a simple and faster version of the kernel k-means clustering method, called single pass kernel k -means clustering method. The proposed method works as follows. First, a random sample $\mathcal{S}$ is selected from the data set $\mathcal{D}$ . A partition $\Pi_{\mathcal{S}}$ is obtained by applying the conventional kernel k-means method on the random sample $\mathcal{S}$ . The novelty of the paper is, for each cluster in $\Pi_{\mathcal{S}}$ , the exact cluster center in the input space is obtained using the gradient descent approach. Finally, each unsampled pattern is assigned to its closest exact cluster center to get a partition of the entire data set. The proposed method needs to scan the data set only once and it is much faster than the conventional kernel k-means method. The time complexity of this method is O(s ²?+?t?+?nk) where s is the size of the random sample $\mathcal{S}$ , k is the number of clusters required, and t is the time taken by the gradient descent method (to find exact cluster centers). The space complexity of the method is O(s ²). The proposed method can be easily implemented and is suitable for large data sets, like those in data mining applications. Experimental results show that, with a small loss of quality, the proposed method can significantly reduce the time taken than the conventional kernel k-means clustering method. The proposed method is also compared with other recent similar methods.     

QUALITY OF CABBAGE PART III: EFFECTS OF BLANCHING ON THE NUTRITIONAL QUALITY OF CABBAGE (BRASSICA OLERACEA L.) PROTEINS1

Cabbage was blanched in solution or vacuum impregnated in a solution followed by steam blanching. The crude protein content of untreated dehydrated cabbage was 15,4%. Analysis of fresh as well as blanched cabbage products for amino acids indicated that glutamic acid accounted for about 30% of the recovered amino acids. Steam blanching led to loss of cysteine, the level of which was unaffected by blanching in solution. In vitro availability of amino acids indicated that the predicted biological value and chemical score for the available amino acids were decreased after blanching. Availability of sulfur-containing amino acids was increased when the cabbage was blanched in solution. The electrophoretic patterns for proteins in cabbage blanched in solution and steam-blanched cabbage were similar, but were different from the pattern for protein in fresh cabbage.     

SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPHATE IN LINKED SAUSAGES MADE WITH PORK AND/OR GOAT MEAT

Five combinations of pork and goat were used to formulate linked sausages in reciprocal increments of 25% (e.g., 100% pork, 75% pork/25% goat meat, etc.). Each formulation was made with or without 0.25% sodium acid pyrophosphate (SAPP), stored in a retail case at 3°C and sampled at 0, 3, 6, 9, and 12 days. Sausages made with 25 or 50% goat meat, regardless of SAPP, were not different (P> 0.05) in off flavor from sausages made with 100% pork and SAPP. SAPP decreased pH values, reduced percentages of cooking loss in 4 of 5 comparisons and slightly improved visual color scores for sausages during initial storage periods of 0 and 3 days.     

Interactions Between Phytate, Protein, and Minerals in Whey Fractions of Black Gram

Whey fractions cor taining proteins (albumins), phytate, and minerals were prepared from black gram (Phaseolus mungo L.) cotyledons and were employee to study the interactions between protein, phytate, and minerals at pH 2.80, 6.40, and 8.40. Black gram cotyledons contained 1.7% phytate, of which 88.7% existed in watersoluble form. Phytate phosphorus represented for about 89% of total phosphorus in black gram cotyledons. Recovery of phytate in fraction I (pH 2.80), fraction II (pH 8.40), and fraction III (pH 6.40) was 45%, 69%, and 4%, respectively, after 48 hr dialysis. At pH 2.80, complexation occurred between phytate and proteins. Complexation between phytate and proteins at pH 8.40 was mediated by divalent cations such as calcium, magnesium, and zinc. Fraction II had higher concentrations of divalent cations (calcium, magnesium, and zir c) than the other two fractions I and III.     

Microstructure and corrosion behaviour of gas tungsten arc welds of maraging steel

Superior properties of maraging steels make them suitable for the fabrication of components used for military applications like missile covering, rocket motor casing and ship hulls. Welding is the main process for fabrication of these components, while the maraging steels can be fusion welded using gas tungsten arc welding(GTAW) process. All these fabricated components require longer storage life and a major problem in welds is susceptible to stress corrosion cracking(SCC). The present study is aimed at studying the SCC behaviour of MDN 250(18% Ni) steel and its welds with respect to microstructural changes. In the present study, 5.2 mm thick sheets made of MDN 250 steel in the solution annealed condition was welded using GTAW process. Post-weld heat treatments of direct ageing(480 C for 3 h), solutionizing(815 C for 1 h) followed by ageing and homogenizing(1150 C for 1 h) followed by ageing were carried out. A mixture of martensite and austenite was observed in the microstructure of the fusion zone of solutionized and direct aged welds and only martensite in as-welded condition. Homogenization and ageing treatment have eliminated reverted austenite and elemental segregation. Homogenized welds also exhibited a marginal improvement in the corrosion resistance compared to those in the as-welded, solutionized and aged condition. Constant load SCC test data clearly revealed that the failure time of homogenized weld is much longer compared to other post weld treatments, and the homogenization treatment is recommended to improve the SCC life of GTA welds of MDN 250 Maraging steel.     

CompactChain: an efficient stateless chain for UTXO-model blockchain

In this work, we propose a stateless blockchain called CompactChain, which compacts the entire state of the UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) based blockchain systems into two RSA accumulators. The first accumulator is called Transaction Output (TXO) commitment which represents the TXO set. The second one is called Spent Transaction Output (STXO) commitment which represents the STXO set. In this work, we discuss three algorithms: (i) To update the TXO and STXO commitments by the miner. The miner also provides the proofs for the correctness of the updated commitments; (ii) To prove the transaction’s validity by providing a membership witness in TXO commitment and non-membership witness against STXO commitment for a coin being spent by a user; (iii) To update the witness for the coin that is not yet spent; The experimental results evaluate the performance of the CompactChain in terms of time taken by a miner to update the commitments and time taken by a validator to verify the commitments and validate the transactions. We compare the performance of CompactChain with the existing state-of-the-art works on stateless blockchains. CompactChain shows a reduction in commitments update complexity and transaction witness size which inturn reduces the mempool size and propagation latency without compromising the system throughput (Transactions per second (TPS)).