Utilisation of modified atmosphere packaging to extend the shelf life of Khalas fresh dates

Completely matured tamr stage dates are widely available and consumed throughout the year. However, for some date varieties, the earlier khalal stage crunchy fruit is considered a premium product. This work examines the use of modified atmosphere packaging to extend the shelf life of khalal dates under refrigerated conditions. Modified atmosphere packaging with 10% or 20% CO₂ in air was successful in reducing the rate of the ripening processes while control‐packaged dates showed signs of ripening development such as significant weight loss and darkening in date colour (identified visually and as low lactic acid bacteria measurements at 18 and 27 days after packaging), similar to that observed in tamr stage fruit.     

Prediction of strength parameters of FRP-confined concrete

This research deals with the prediction of compressive strength and crushing strain of FRP-confined concrete using neural networks and regression models. Basic information on neural networks and the types of neural networks most suitable for the analysis of experimental results are given. A set of experimental data, covering a large range of parameters, for the training and testing of neural networks is used. The prediction models based on neural network are presented. The influence of raw and the non-dimensional group of variables on compressive strength and crushing strain of FRP-confined concrete is studied through sensitivity analysis, which provided a basis for the development of a new regression based model. The neural networks based model gave high prediction accuracy and the results demonstrated that the use of neural networks in assessing the compressive strength and crushing strain of FRP-confined concrete is both practical and beneficial.     

Correction to: An improved binary sparrow search algorithm for feature selection in data classification

Neural Computing and Applications -     

Interfacial electrochemistry and electrodeposition from some ionic liquids: In situ scanning tunneling microscopy, plasma electrochemistry, selenium and macroporous materials

In this paper we report on recent results from our group, namely on the interface ionic liquid/electrode, plasma electrochemistry and electrodeposition of selenium and of macroporous structures. Ionic liquids show an interesting and liquid dependent surface chemistry: in some liquids the long range “herringbone” superstructure of Au(1 1 1) is visible, in others it is not. Glow discharge plasmas can be employed as a contact free electrode to make nanoparticles in solutions, e.g. nanoparticles of germanium. Selenium can be electrodeposited from ionic liquids under environmental conditions in an open cell and both the red and the grey phases of selenium are feasible. With the help of self organized opal structures of polystyrene spheres macroporous materials of Ag, Al and conducting polymers can be made. The prospects and limits of ionic liquids in surface electrochemistry and electrodeposition are shortly discussed.     

FATIGUE CRACK GROWTH DUE TO TWO SUCCESSIVE SINGLE OVERLOADS

The behaviour of fatigue growth and cyclic tip deformation of long cracks due to two successive single overloads was investigated both experimentally and numerically. The results show the effect of the ratio of the second and first overloads, and the crack increment between the two overloads. The contributions of both crack tip blunting and residual stress fields were separated and accommodated in a previously developed crack tip deformation parameter, which was utilized to predict the resulting fatigue crack growth behaviour. The following trends were experimentally observed. Should the ratio of the second and first overloads not be less than one, fatigue crack growth rates followed the predictions based on the second overload. Otherwise, either of the following two situations resulted: (1) when the two overloads were closely applied, the second overload caused an initial acceleration in growth rates followed by a behaviour controlled by the first overload; (2) when the second overload was applied after the crack growth had reached its minimum rate due to the first overload, more retardation in growth rate was observed. Based on the model developed in the paper, it is possible to enhance the retardation effect of an overload if this overload is preceded by another overload. This enhancement depends on the ratio of the two overloads and the crack increment between them.     

Performance evaluation of cyclic prefix CDMA systems with frequency domain interference cancellation

Direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS/CDMA) systems transmitting over multipath channels suffer from intersymbol interference (ISI) and multiple access interference (MAI). Recently, DS/CDMA with frequency domain equalization (FDE) has attracted much attention for its ability to obtain an excellent performance even in strong frequency selective fading channels. However, the presence of residual interference after the FDE degrades the orthogonality among the spreading codes and hence the BER performance deteriorates. Parallel interference cancellation (PIC) is an effective method to suppress the MAI and improve the CDMA system capacity. In this paper, we propose three interference cancellation architectures for downlink cyclic prefix CDMA systems. The common thread between these three architectures is their implementation in frequency domain. A comparison between such architectures is presented. Simulation results show that the combination of PIC and FDE provides an efficient solution to suppress the MAI in downlink CDMA systems over frequency selective fading channels.     

Matching point features under small nonrigid motion

This paper describes a method for matching point features between images of objects that have undergone small nonrigid motion. Feature points are assumed to be available and, given a properly extracted set of feature points, a robust matching is established under the condition that the local nonrigid motion of each point is restricted to a circle of radius δ, where δ is not too large. This is in contrast to other techniques for point matching which assume either rigid motion or nonrigid motion of a known kind. The point matching problem is viewed in terms of weighted bipartite graph matching. In order to account for the possibility that the feature selector can be imprecise, we incorporate a greedy matching strategy with the weighted graph matching algorithm. Our algorithm is robust and insensitive to noise and missing features. The resulting matching can be used with image warping or other techniques for nonrigid motion analysis, image subtraction, etc. We present our experimental results on sequences of mammograms, images of a deformable clay object and satellite cloud images. In the first two cases we provide quantitative comparison with known ground truth.     

Quasi sliding mode‐based single input fuzzy self‐tuning decoupled fuzzy PI control for robot manipulators with uncertainty

This paper presents a robust adaptive control strategy for robot manipulators, based on the coupling of the fuzzy logic control with the so‐called sliding mode control (SMC) approach. The motivation for using SMC in robotics mainly relies on its appreciable features. However, the drawbacks of the conventional SMC, such as chattering effect and required a priori knowledge of the bounds of uncertainties can be destructive. In this paper, these problems are suitably circumvented by adopting a reduced rule base single input fuzzy self tuning decoupled fuzzy proportional integral sliding mode control approach. In this new approach a decoupled fuzzy proportional integral control is used and a reduced rule base single input fuzzy self‐tuning controller as a supervisory fuzzy system is added to adaptively tune the output control gain of the decoupled fuzzy proportional integral control. Moreover, it is proved that the fuzzy control surface of the single‐input fuzzy rule base is very close to the input/output relation of a straight line. Therefore, a varying output gain decoupled fuzzy proportional integral sliding mode control approach using an approximate line equation is then proposed. The stability of the system is guaranteed in the sense of the Lyapunov theorem. Simulations using the dynamic model of a 3DOF planar manipulator with uncertainties show the effectiveness of the approach in high speed trajectory tracking problems. The simulation results that are compared with the results of conventional SMC indicate that the control performance of the robot system is satisfactory and the proposed approach can achieve favorable tracking performance, and it is robust with regard to uncertainties and disturbances. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.