The function of bleaching earths in the processing of palm,palm kernel and coconut oils

The results presented in the literature, which attempt to elucidate the mechanisms by which triglyceride oils are bleached by earths, are reviewed. The impact of this work and how the mechanistic proposals affect changes in oil properties are considered, with particular emphasis on the needs of the palm oil processor. Important properties include color, metals and phosphorus content and oxidative stability of the oil. Investigations made in our own laboratories have been aimed at elucidating the effect of varying physical and chemical properties of the bleaching earth on the quality of bleached and deodorized oils. Techniques used in this work are pore-size distribution, surface area, scanning and transmission electron microscopy and a variety of chemical and X-ray analysis methods. The ability to vary such parameters in montmorillonite clays by alteration of process conditions to give materials with specific performance characteristics is demonstrated. Comparisons are made between acid-activated montmorillonites and other clay types.     

Perturbation techniques for detecting domain errors

Perturbation testing is an approach to software testing which focuses on faults within arithmetic expressions appearing throughout a program. This approach is expanded to permit analysis of individual test points rather than entire paths, and to concentrate on domain errors. Faults are modeled as perturbing functions drawn from a vector space of potential faults and added to the correct form of an arithmetic expression. Sensitivity measures are derived which limit the possible size of those faults that would go undetected after the execution of a given test set. These measures open up an interesting view of testing, in which attempts are made to reduce the volume of possible faults which, were they present in the program being tested, would have escaped detection on all tests performed so far. The combination of these measures with standard optimization techniques yields a novel test-data-generation method called arithmetic fault detection     

Optical networks for local loop applications

Some of the options for optical technology within the local loop environment are examined. In particular, passive shared access networks have been considered in some detail. These networks show great promise for delivering existing telephone services to small to medium business customers (4-30 lines) economically by the early 1990s. Extending fiber to the home will also be possible by virtue of a similar passive network infrastructure for customers requiring new broadband services beyond the single telephone line. For one-line plain old telephone service (POTS) customers, an intermediate approach of terminating the fiber network at the final network distribution point, with copper retained for the final leg, may be used prior to the provision of broadband services. A key feature of the passive optical network architecture is the use of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) as an upgrade strategy, allowing graceful upgrading from telephone services to multichannel high-definition television (HDTV) on gigabit/second bearers and full two-way switched broadband services employing wavelength routing across the network     

Long-term transients in a reactor under forced concentration cycling

In the approach to a cycle-invariant state in the forced feed concentration cycling of the CO oxidation over a NiO catalyst, a very long transient has been observed lasting 80 ks or more. This transient appears to be associated only with CO pretreatment of the catalyst and is not a general phenomenon. The slow convergence to the cycle-invariant state reported in certain modelling calculations in the literature appears to have a different cause.     

A new polysilicon CMOS self-aligned double-gate TFT technology

In this paper, a new polysilicon CMOS self-aligned double-gate thin-film transistor (SA-DG TFT) technology is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The self-alignment between the top- and bottom-gate is realized by a backlight exposure technique. The structure has an ultrathin channel region (300 /spl Aring/) and a thick source/drain region. Experimental results show that this technology provides excellent current saturation due to a combination of the effective reduction in the drain field and the full depletion of the ultrathin channel. Moreover, for n-channel devices, the SA-DG TFT has a 4.2 times higher on-current (V/sub gs/=20V) as compared to the conventional single-gate TFT. Whereas for the p-channel devices, the SADG TFT has a 3.6 times higher on-current (V/sub gs/=-20V) compared to the conventional single-gate device.     

Prediction of thermal comfort in a building during a cold spell

The comfort diagrams and the so-called PMV-PPD values are already used today directly and indirectly in a wide field in technical practice, even at a standard level. This theory is known also in Hungary, and the PMV-PPD values have been used by us for the solution of a design problem. The task was to elaborate a calculation method, an index number suitable for the determination of the thermal confort effect in the case of occasional underheating of residential and communal buildings in winter.The results of this work are presented in this paper.     

Wavelength-switchable fiber laser using acoustic waves

We report a wavelength-switchable fiber ring laser that includes a Bragg grating-based acoustooptic superlattice modulator. Wavelength switching of the laser emission is achieved by controlling the peak reflectivity of the different reflection bands that appear on both sides of the Bragg wavelength when a longitudinal acoustic wave propagates along the grating.     

Photoconductive Terahertz antenna with radial symmetry

It has been demonstrated recently that it is possible to guide broadband Terahertz pulses utilising a novel coaxial waveguide. This technique is hindered by the difficulty in exciting the radially polarised fundamental mode of the waveguide. To optimise mode matching, a novel radially symmetric photoconductive Terahertz antenna is proposed. Using finite element method simulations and analytical calculations, it is shown that this antenna can generate the desired radial polarisation.     

Application of a multi-channel system for continuous monitoring and an early warning system.

A multi-channel continuous toxicity monitoring system developed in our laboratory, based on two-stage mini-bioreactors, was successfully implemented in the form of computer-based data acquisition. The multi-channel system consists of a series of a two-stage minibioreactor systems connected by a fiber optic probe to a luminometer, and uses genetically engineered bioluminescent bacteria for the detection of the potential toxicity from the soluble chemicals. This system can be stably and continuously operated due to the separation of the culture reactor from the test reactor and accomplish easy and long-term monitoring without system shut down by abrupt inflows of severe polluting chemicals. Four different recombinant bioluminescent bacteria were used in different channels so that the modes of the samples toxicities can be reasonably identified and evaluated based upon the response signature of each channel. The bioluminescent signatures were delivered from four channels by switching one at once, while the data is automatically logged to an IBM compatible computer. We also achieved the enhancement of the system through the manipulation of the dilution rate and the use of thermo-lux fusion strains. Finally, this system is now being implemented to a drinking water reservoir and river for remote sensing as an early warning system.     

Optimal morphological pattern restoration from noisy binary images

A theoretical analysis of morphological filters for the optimal restoration of noisy binary images is presented. The problem is formulated in a general form, and an optimal solution is obtained by using fundamental tools from mathematical morphology and decision theory. Consideration is given to the set-difference distance function as a measure of comparison between images. This function is used to introduce the mean-difference function as a quantitative measure of the degree of geometrical and topological distortion introduced by morphological filtering. It is proved that the class of alternating sequential filters is a set of parametric, smoothing morphological filters that best preserve the crucial structure of input images in the least-mean-difference sense