Color changes,nitrite content,and rehydration capacity of edible bird's nest by advanced drying method

This article presents the authors’ first attempt to improve quality of edible bird’s nest through continuous and intermittent low-temperature drying (25 and 40°C) with infrared and ultraviolet C (UVC) treatments. The attributes of quality were compared in regard to quality of hot-air-dried samples at 70–90°C. Experimental results showed that a significant improvement in the quality of edible bird’s nest in terms of minimizing color changes and rehydration capacity using intermittent low-temperature drying with infrared and UVC drying profile. However, it was also found that any drying method has less significant effect on the nitrite content of edible bird’s nest.     

Changes in racial identity among African American college students following the election of Barack Obama.

The current study considered the influence of the 2008 presidential election on the racial identity of African American college students (Mage = 19.3 years; 26.3% male). The design of the study consisted of 2 components: longitudinal and daily. The longitudinal component assessed 3 dimensions of racial identity (centrality, private regard, and public regard) 2 weeks before and 5 months after the election, and the daily diary component assessed racial identity and identity exploration on the days immediately before and after the election. Daily items measuring identity exploration focused on how much individuals thought about issues relating to their race. Analyses considered the immediate effects of the election on identity exploration and the extent to which changes in exploration were shaped by racial identity measured prior to the election. We also considered immediate and longer term changes in racial identity following the election and the extent to which longer term changes were conditioned by identity exploration. Findings suggest that the election served as an “encounter” experience (Cross, 1991, 1995, pp. 60–61), which led to increases in identity exploration. Moreover, analyses confirmed that changes in identity exploration were most pronounced among those with higher levels of racial centrality. Results also suggest that the election had both an immediate and a longer term influence on racial identity, which in some instances was conditioned by identity exploration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Housing Equity Withdrawal in Australia: Prevalence,Patterns and Motivations in Mid-to-late Life

In an era of population ageing, the primary home is increasingly viewed as a personal resource that can perform a pension role in retirement. This article assesses the extent to which Australians aged 45 years and over withdraw housing equity through in situ mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW), downsizing and selling up. We find that the incidence of housing equity withdrawal has increased over the last decade despite a global financial crisis. MEW is the dominant form of equity release among those under pension age, while downsizing or selling up is more frequent among those above pension age. Downsizing and selling up are more likely to be prompted by adverse life events than MEW. Selling up is typically an option of last resort. Our findings offer insights into important debates around homeownership societies and the welfare role performed by owner-occupied housing in mid-to-late life.     

Synthesis and Characterization of Naphthalene End-Capped Divinylbenzene for OTFT

An organic field-effect transistor was fabricated based on a thin film of 1,4-bis-(2-naphthalen-2-ylvinyl)benzene (BNDV). The organic semiconductor was deposited via thermal evaporation on a chemically modified silicon dioxide surface. The thermal, optical, electronic, and surface properties of the BNDV compound were investigated by thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) absorption, photoluminescence spectroscopies, cyclic voltammetry, x-ray diffraction, and atomic force microscopy. The BNDV had good oxidation stability and exhibited a field-effect performance with a mobility of 0.062 cm²/V s, a subthreshold slope of 0.4 V, and an on/off ratio of 2.45 × 10⁵.     

Pile Behavior due to Excavation-Induced Soil Movement in Clay. I: Stable Wall

A series of centrifuge model tests has been conducted to investigate the behavior of a single pile subjected to excavation-induced soil movements behind a stable retaining wall in clay. The results reveal that after the completion of soil excavation, the wall and the soil continue to move and such movement induces further bending moment and deflection on an adjacent pile. For a pile located within 3?m behind the wall where the soil experiences large shear strain (>2%) due to stress relief as a result of the excavation, the induced pile bending moment and deflection reach their maximum values sometime after soil excavation and thereafter decrease slightly with time. For a pile located 3?m beyond the wall, the induced pile bending moment and deflection continue to increase slightly with time after excavation until the end of the test. A numerical model developed at the National University of Singapore is used to back-analyze the centrifuge test data. The method gives a reasonably good prediction of the induced bending moment and deflection on a pile located at 3?m or beyond the wall. For a pile located at 1?m behind the wall where the soil experiences large shear strain (>2%) due to stress relief resulting from the excavation, the calculated pile response is in good agreement with the measured data if the correct soil shear strength obtained from postexcavation is used in the analysis. However, if the original soil shear strength prior to excavation is used in the analysis, this leads to an overestimation of the maximum bending moment of about 25%. The practical implications of the findings are also discussed in this paper.     

A context switchable fuzzy inference chip

This paper describes a novel design of a fuzzy inference chip that allows for real-time online context switching. A context refers to a situation or scenario of an application requiring specific domain knowledge. In particular, our focus is on the class of applications involving embedded fuzzy control. The domain knowledge therefore refers to fuzzy rules and memberships. The kind of applications being considered is real-time in nature, which necessitates the implementation of hardware for fuzzy inferencing. The chip architecture is described and details on the design of the chip is presented.     

Syntactic control of concurrency

We consider a finitary procedural programming language (finite data-types, no recursion) extended with parallel composition and binary semaphores. Having first shown that may-equivalence of second-order open terms is undecidable we set out to find a framework in which decidability can be regained with minimum loss of expressivity. To that end we define an annotated type system that controls the number of concurrent threads created by terms and give a fully abstract game semantics for the notion of equivalence induced by typable terms and contexts. Finally, we show that the semantics of all typable terms, at any order and in the presence of iteration, has a regular-language representation and thus the restricted observational equivalence is decidable.     

Acceleration tests to determine salient pole synchronous motorinrush currents and torques

Determining torque and current at locked rotor and various slips during the acceleration test on a synchronous machine is very tedious and time consuming. Induction and synchronous machines behave similarly during acceleration except that synchronous machine acceleration can include a pulsation torque. Because of the salient poles, conditions exist where the synchronous motor has minimum torque at quadrature axis and maximum torque at direct axis during locked rotor or stall. Since synchronous machines do not have large numbers of rotor bars in the amortisseur winding, like the induction motor has in the squirrel cage, their stall times tend to be shorter. Due to the shorter stall time and large starting torque, locked-rotor torque and current are generally determined from acceleration tests conducted at reduced voltage rather than by tests at stand-still. Data showing that saturation effects impact both torque and current are presented in this paper. The data shows that the voltage index that has to be applied to the torque and current measured at reduced voltage varies with speed and can be obtained from a series of acceleration tests     

Automatic Subassembly Detection from a Product Model for Disassembly Sequence Generation

The time taken for the generation of assembly or disassembly sequences is proportional to the number of components in the assembled product. For each additional component considered, the number of possible sequences to assemble (or disassemble the product) increases combinatorially. Research work had been carried out to reduce this complexity so that unfeasible assembly sequences could be discounted. A significant approach to further reduce the time for the generation of the assembly sequences is to group components together into subassemblies and then to treat these subassemblies as "individual components". This will reduce the number of components involved in the search or generation of assembly sequences, and hence reducing the sequence generation time. This paper presents a methodology for automatically extracting subassemblies from a product in order to simplify the disassembly or assembly sequence generation.     

Analysis of dynamic brain imaging data

Modern imaging techniques for probing brain function, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, intrinsic and extrinsic contrast optical imaging, and magnetoencephalography, generate large data sets with complex content. In this paper we develop appropriate techniques for analysis and visualization of such imaging data to separate the signal from the noise and characterize the signal. The techniques developed fall into the general category of multivariate time series analysis, and in particular we extensively use the multitaper framework of spectral analysis. We develop specific protocols for the analysis of fMRI, optical imaging, and MEG data, and illustrate the techniques by applications to real data sets generated by these imaging modalities. In general, the analysis protocols involve two distinct stages: "noise" characterization and suppression, and "signal" characterization and visualization. An important general conclusion of our study is the utility of a frequency-based representation, with short, moving analysis windows to account for nonstationarity in the data. Of particular note are 1) the development of a decomposition technique (space-frequency singular value decomposition) that is shown to be a useful means of characterizing the image data, and 2) the development of an algorithm, based on multitaper methods, for the removal of approximately periodic physiological artifacts arising from cardiac and respiratory sources.