Effects of viscosity on the bitterness and astringency of grape seed tannin

To examine the separate effects of viscosity and sweetness on astringency, aqueous solutions of grape seed tannin (GST) were thickened with carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) from 2 to 45 cP (experiment 1) or sweetened with 0 to 1.8 g/L aspartame (experiment 2). Trained subjects continuously rated astringency and bitterness in duplicate. Subjects were categorized by the salivary flow induced by citric acid and ability to taste n-propyl thiouracil (PROP). In experiment 1, maximum intensity and total duration of astringency were significantly decreased as viscosity rose, although time to maximum intensity of astringency was not affected. Maximum intensity and total duration of bitterness were not significantly affected by increasing viscosity; however, the onset of bitterness was significantly delayed. In experiment 2, increasing sweetness had no affect on any astringency parameter, although maximum intensity of bitterness was significantly decreased. Neither PROP nor salivary flow-status had any effect on perception of bitterness or astringency in either experiment.     

Analysis of PLR for Shared Switch Fabrics

A modular upgrade design for packet transport switch nodes is presented where packet loss is dramatically reduced by intra‐module and inter‐module buffer sharing. This modular design offers significant cost and power reduction in a high‐data‐rate system where buffers are highly costly and power‐greedy.     

Optimal power system operation using parallel processing system and PSO algorithm

In recent studies, PSO algorithm is applied to solve OPF problem. However, population based optimization method requires higher computing time to find optimal point. This shortcoming is overcome by a straightforward parallelization of PSO algorithm. The developed parallel PSO algorithm is implemented on a PC-cluster system with 8 Intel Pentium IV 2 GHz processors. The proposed approach has been tested on the test systems. The results showed that computing time of parallelized PSO algorithm can be reduced by parallel processing without losing the quality of solution.     

Base station location in a cellular CDMA system

We consider a cellular CDMA system in which blocking is enforced when the relative interference exceeds a certain threshold level. This paper addresses a radio network design problem in such a CDMA system. Given the data of call‐traffic distributed over the service area and potential sites of base stations, the objective of the problem is to locate base stations so as to minimize the associated cost for establishing base stations while keeping the probability of blocking under control. We develop an efficient algorithm for solving the design problem. Computational experiments with real‐world data are conducted to show both the efficiency and the practicality of the proposed design method. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Parametric GLRT for Multichannel Adaptive Signal Detection

This paper considers the problem of detecting a multichannel signal in the presence of spatially and temporally colored disturbance. A parametric generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) is developed by modeling the disturbance as a multichannel autoregressive (AR) process. Maximum likelihood (ML) parameter estimation underlying the parametric GLRT is examined. It is shown that the ML estimator for the alternative hypothesis is nonlinear and there exists no closed-form expression. To address this issue, an asymptotic ML (AML) estimator is presented, which yields asymptotically optimum parameter estimates at reduced complexity. The performance of the parametric GLRT is studied by considering challenging cases with limited or no training signals for parameter estimation. Such cases (especially when training is unavailable) are of great interest in detecting signals in heterogeneous, fast changing, or dense-target environments, but generally cannot be handled by most existing multichannel detectors which rely more heavily on training at an adequate level. Compared with the recently introduced parametric adaptive matched filter (PAMF) and parametric Rao detectors, the parametric GLRT achieves higher data efficiency, offering improved detection performance in general.     

Effects of mineral oil coating on internal quality of chicken eggs under refrigerated storage

The selected internal qualities (weight loss, Haugh unit, yolk index, and albumen pH) of noncoated and mineral oil‐coated chicken eggs during 15 weeks of storage at 4 °C and/or during 5 weeks of storage at 25 °C were evaluated. Results indicated that, without refrigeration, the noncoated and mineral oil‐coated eggs rapidly changed from AA to C and B grades as measured by Haugh unit, respectively, after 5 weeks of storage. However, the AA quality of the noncoated eggs could be maintained under refrigerated storage (4 °C) for at least 5 weeks. The mineral oil coating and refrigerated storage (4 °C) synergistically minimised weight loss and preserved the albumen and yolk qualities of chicken eggs during a long‐term storage. At 4 °C, the mineral oil‐coated eggs preserved the initial AA grade for at least 15 weeks with l.19% weight loss.     

Reductive debromination of polybrominated diphenyl ethers in anaerobic sediment and a biomimetic system

Because of the bioaccumulation of penta- and tetrapolybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants in biota,the environmental biotransformation of decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209) is of interest. BDE-209 accounts for more than 80% by mass of PBDE production and is the dominant PBDE in sediments. Most sediments are anaerobic and reports of microbial reductive dehalogenation of hydrophobic persistent organohalogen pollutants are numerous. Reductive debromination of BDE-209 in the environment could provide a significant source of lesser-brominated PBDEs to biota. Moreover, a recent study showed that BDE-209 debrominates in sewage sludge, and another demonstrated that some halorespiring bacteria will debrominate BDE-209. To determine whether reductive debromination of BDE-209 occurs in sediments, parallel experiments were conducted using anaerobic sediment microcosms and a cosolvent-enhanced biomimetic system. In the biomimetic system, reductive debromination occurred at rates corresponding to bromine substitution levels with a BDE-209 half-life of only 18 s compared with a halflife of almost 60 days for 2,2',4,4'-tetrabromodiphenyl ether. In sediment, the measured debromination half-life of BDE-209 was well over a decade and was in good agreement with the predicted value obtained from the biomimetic experiment. Product congeners were predominantly double para-substituted. BDE-209 debrominated in sediment with a corresponding increase in nona-, octa-, hepta-, and hexa-PBDEs. Nine new PBDE congeners appeared in sediment from reductive debromination. Given the very large BDE-209 burden already in sediments globally, it is important to determine whether this transformation is a significant source of lesser-brominated PBDEs to the environment.     

Physiological deterioration of cassava roots

Rapid post-harvest physiological deterioration of cassava roots (Manihot esculenta Crantz) appears to be due essentially to wound responses, comparable to those observed in other plant storage organs. The wound responses observed include: increased activity of phenylalanine ammonia lyase, an enzyme associated with phenol biosynthesis; increased activity of peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase; formation of phenols/polyphenols including leucoanthocyanidins, catechins, sco-poletin and condensed tannins, and often the formation of a wound periderm. In cassava, the responses did not remain localised at wound surfaces in roots when held at low storage humidity but spread through the roots causing a discolouration of the vascular tissue and storage parenchyma. Roots stored at high humidity showed a more typical wound response with localised production of phenols and periderm formation.