Development of an optimised papaya pulp nectar using a combination of irradiation and mild heat

Papaya does not sufficiently maintain desired fresh fruit quality when shipped long distances due to an easily bruised soft skin and a short shelf life. This leads to both a large supply of pulp from unsightly fruit that is never shipped and low sales due to blemished fruit. Unfortunately, traditional preservation methods (pasteurisation) negatively alter papaya’s fresh flavour. Thus to effectively utilise available papaya pulp, processing requires an approach that enables retention of papaya’s natural flavours without excessive heat. Papaya fruit (Carica papaya L., var.’s Rainbow (yellow-fleshed) and SunUp (red-fleshed)) were pulped, diluted, and processed with mild heat (80 °C, 5 min), irradiation (5 kGy or 7.5 kGy) or combinations of both. Irradiation resulted in a significant reduction in ascorbic acid content. Mild heat treatment significantly reduced pectinesterase activity and microbiological viability. Irradiation followed by heat further enhanced destruction of Listeria innocua and Clostridium sporogenes and retained the flavour and a nutritional profile closest to untreated controls. The product was microbiologically safe with acceptable enzyme levels and would be shippable under refrigeration.     

Middle distillates from hydrocracking of FT waxes: Composition,characteristics and emission properties

A light cobalt catalyzed Fischer–Tropsch (FT) wax was subjected to hydrocracking in the range of temperature 319–351 °C and hydrogen pressure between 3.5 and 6.0 MPa. The catalyst used was platinum on amorphous silica–alumina. Hydrocracking reaction led to an increase of middle distillate yield up to 85% with a contemporary increase of iso-paraffins concentration which resulted in a remarkable improvement of cold flow properties of the products. The freezing point of C₁₀–C₁₄ fraction passed from ?23 to ?45 °C while the pour point of C₁₅–C₂₂ fraction decreased from 13 to ?23 °C. The latter fraction displayed high cetane numbers ranging between 75 and 80. Changes in carbon distribution and molecular structure of products during hydrocracking have been rationalized in the light of the accepted hydrocracking mechanism where n-paraffins undergo to consecutive isomerization reactions leading to isomers with progressively higher branching degree and concomitant cracking reaction. Experimental evidences support the view that apparent reactivity of n-paraffins is chain length dependent, increasing with the molecular weight. Detailed characterization by NMR and GC showed that branching groups abundance in the middle distillate products was the following: methyl ? ethyl > propyl.Emission tests carried out with FT diesel and commercial ultra low sulfur diesel showed that FT diesel has excellent combustion properties and leads to a reduction of emissions.     

Correlations involving modulae and cross-polarization time constants for a series of polyurethane elastomers

Correlations between the macroscopic bulk polymer properties storage modulus (E′) and loss modulus (E″) and the microscopic property of cross-polarization as represented by the time constant T_CH have been established for a series of polyurethane elastomers. The dependence of E′, E″, and T_CH as a function of molecular weight, rigid domain concentration, and temperature are graphically presented as a series of log plots. An experimental relationship is presented that shows that the distribution of motions of the flexible domains appears to be the major factor in the success of these correlations.     

Studies of thermal transition behavior in plasticized poly(vinyl butyral-co-vinyl alcohol) with solid-state NMR and thermal analysis techniques

Samples of plasticized poly(vinyl butyral-co-vinyl alcohol) (PVB) are found to exhibit multiple thermal transitions as observed by dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Arrhenius plots using DSC and DMA data suggest that two of the transitions are glass-type ones. Variable temperature solid-state ¹³C-NMR experiments show a temperature-dependent line-broadening pattern for all PVB backbone carbons with maximum broadening at 55°C or at about 50°C above the second-order-type transitions α₁ and α₂ as measured by DSC. Using Arrhenius plots, the NMR transition is found to best correlate with α₁, which is consistent with glass transition behavior. The solid-state NMR spectra also show that vinyl alcohol tacticity remains unresolved up to a temperature of about 95°C, beyond which line narrowing begins to occur. High-temperature thermal transitions are also observed by DSC and DMA, which suggest that the onset of motion involving vinyl alcohol sequences may be responsible for these transitions.     

金属推型V-带无级变速箱损耗机理仿真部分1:带组摩擦造成的转矩损失

以推型金属带为基体的无级变速箱(CVT)的动力传递效率低于有级变速箱,大家已往认识到采用CVT改进发动机/负荷匹配新取得的燃料经济性的好处有被取消的趋势.本组三篇论文详细阐述了发生在作为第一级用来取得效率改进的带传动中损耗机理的研究.已经进行试验研究了涉及推型金属V-带CVT空载和低载的转矩损失.本第一篇论文述及发生在金属带CVT由于带推块和带间相对运动造成主要转矩损失的新分析方法.本研究考虑到其他研究中的新发现并改进了金属V-带的设计.本文中采用几种不同的试验方法提供的实验数据推荐了转矩损失的数字模型.本组第二篇论文阐述了由于带轮变形的许多附加转矩损失机理.在第三篇论文中阐述了根据本文的发现提出带滑动损失的分析.     

Deconvolution estimation of nerve conduction velocity distribution

A conduction velocity distribution (CVD) estimator that incorporates volume conductor modeling of the nerve-evoked response is introduced in this paper. The CVD estimates are obtained from two compound nerve action potentials (CNAP) recorded at the skin surface. A third channel is introduced in order to assess the estimator performance in the experimental case. The relevance of using an accurate signal model is shown by comparing the performance of the proposed estimator with a previous approach based on a different CNAP model. The performance of the proposed estimator is evaluated for simulated and experimental data. The study assesses signal-to-noise ratio immunity and sensitivity to errors in the model parameters.     

Nonlinear adaptive filtering of stimulus artifact

Noninvasive measurements of somatosensory evoked potentials have both clinical and research applications. The electrical artifact which results from the stimulus is an interference which can distort the evoked signal, and introduce errors in response onset timing estimation. Given that this interference is synchronous with the evoked signal, it cannot be reduced by the conventional technique of ensemble averaging. The technique of adaptive noise cancelling has potential in this regard however, and has been used effectively in other similar problems. An adaptive noise cancelling filter which uses a neural network as the adaptive element is investigated in this application. The filter is implemented and performance determined in the cancelling of artifact for in vivo measurements on the median nerve. A technique of segmented neural network training is proposed in which the network is trained on that segment of the record time window which does not contain the evoked signal. The neural network is found to generalize well from this training to include the segment of the window containing the evoked signal. Both quantitative and qualitative measures show that significant stimulus artifact reduction is achieved.