Comparison of the Stress-Intensity and Johnson-and-Holloway Criteria for Crack Branching in Rectangular Bars

The angular and radial dependencies of the mirror-mist boundaries predicted by the stress-intensity and Johnson-and-Holloway criteria were compared with experimentally determined shapes of the boundaries in rectangular specimens fractured in tension and flexure. The stress-intensity criterion provided better predictions than the Johnson-and-Holloway criterion.     

Gel formation in mullite precursors obtained via tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) pre-hydrolysis

Tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) and aluminium chloride were taken as sources of SiO2 and Al2O3 to prepare precursors of mullite by pre-hydrolysis of TEOS under refluxing conditions. Gelation was carried out at different pH values and the effect of the pH of gelation on the subsequent temperature-induced phase transformations was characterized by differential thermal analysis, powder X-ray diffraction and 29Si and 27Al solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. A pH-dependent exothermic peak was observed at 980°C. Strong acidic conditions (pH=1.5) were found to be beneficial for improving the mixing scale of the Al–Si components, leading to a mullitization temperature of 1200° and a sharp 980°C exothermic peak. In strong basic conditions (pH=11.5), no evident 980°C exothermic peak was detected, and the mullitization temperature was as high as 1350°C, probably due to heterogeneity in the mixing scale of the Al–Si components in the precursor system. A gel formation process has been proposed.     

The System MgO-MgCl2-H2O at 23°C

Solubilities of MgO in aqueous HC1 solutions at 23°±3°C were measured and combined with analyses of neat magnesium oxychloride cements, cured in sealed containers, to construct an equilibrium phase diagram for the system MgO-MgCl₂-H₂O. Specific gravities and acidities of solutions saturated with MgO and relative humidities of vapor phases over sealed samples were measured and combined with XRD data to define the compositions in equilibrium with two crystalline phases. Studies of relative reaction rates indicated that the 5–1–8 phase crystallizes more rapidly than the 3·1·8 phase and that cements near the 3·1·8 composition react rapidly with atmospheric CO₂ to form the chlorocarbonate phase.     

New variance expressions for systematic sampling: the filtering approach

We present a collection of variance models for estimators obtained by geometric systematic sampling with test points, quadrats, and n‐boxes in general, on a bounded domain in n‐dimensional Euclidean space ?ⁿ, n = 1, 2, ... , and for systematic rays and sectors on the circle. The approach adopted ? termed the filtering approach ? is new and different from the current transitive approach. This report is only preliminary, however, because it includes only variance models in terms of the covariogram of the measurement function. The estimation step is in preparation.     

INCIDENCE OF MESOPfflLIC ANAEROBIC BACTERIA AND LACTIC ACID BACTERIA ON SLICED BREAD UNDER MODIFIED ATMOSPHERE PACKAGING DURING STORAGE

A total of 192 samples of sliced bread of different composition, water content and pH were selected to test the efficiency of modified atmospheres packing (MAP) on total mesophilic anaerobic bacteria and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) counts during MAB storage. The addition of calcium propionate and the storage temperature influenced significantly the counts. During most of the storage period at 15–20C, the concentration of O₂ was very low and that of CO₂ was constant or increased according to the atmosphere used. LAB counts increased in a significant way in the first week under CO₂ atmospheres. For the sliced bread, the highest counts were obtained under CO₂ atmospheres. In general, we consider that the presence/absence of calcium propionate added had a greater influence than the MAP conditions.     

Low-cost,Concurrent Checking of Pointer and Array Accesses in C Programs

Illegal pointer and array accesses are a major cause of failure for C programs. We present a technique called ‘guarding’ to catch illegal array and pointer accesses. Our implementation of guarding for C programs works as a source-to-source translator. Auxiliary objects called guards are added to a user program to monitor pointer and array accesses at run time. Guards maintain attributes to catch out of bounds array accesses and accesses to deallocated memory. Our system has found a number of previously unreported errors in widely-used Unix utilities and SPEC92 benchmarks. Many commonly used programs have bugs which may not always manifest themselves as a program crash, but may instead produce a subtly wrong answer. These programs are not routinely checked for run-time errors because the increase in execution time due to run-time checking can be very high. We present two techniques to handle the high cost of run-time checking of pointer and array accesses in C programs: ‘customization’ and ‘shadow processing’. Customization works by decoupling run-time checking from original computation. A user program is customized for guarding by throwing away computation not relevant for guarding. We have explored using program slicing for customization. Customization can cut the overhead of guarding by up to half. Shadow processing uses idle processors in multiprocessor workstations to perform run-time checking in the background. A user program is instrumented to obtain a ‘main process’ and a ‘shadow process’. The main process performs computations from the orignal program, occasionally communicating a few key values to the shadow process. The shadow process follows the main process, checking pointer and array accesses. The overhead to the main process which the user sees is very low – almost always less than 10%. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cryopreservation of <i>Cyrtopodium hatschbachii</i> Pabst (Orchidaceae) immature seeds by encapsulation-dehydration

The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficiency of the encapsulation-dehydration technique for cryopreservation of Cyrtopodium hastchbachii Pabst seeds. Immature seeds of this species were cryopreserved by an encapsulation-dehydration technique. Seeds of five immature pods, 120 days after pollination, were encapsulated in 3% calcium alginate matrix and pretreated in liquid medium supplemented with 0.08 M sucrose (24 h), 0.15 M sucrose (24 h), 0.25 M sucrose (48 h), 0.5 M sucrose (24 h) and 0.75 M sucrose (24 h) in shaker at 60 rpm. Alginate beads were dehydrated 5 h in silicagel and immersed in liquid nitrogen for 12 h. Cryopreserved beads were thawed at 30°C for 1 min, rehydrated using the same liquid mediums [0.75 M sucrose (24 h), 0.5 M sucrose (24 h), 0.25 M sucrose (48 h) and 0.15 M sucrose (24 h)] and cultivated in half strength Murashige & Skoog medium (1962) with the addition of 2 g/L activated charcoal. Sixty four percent of seeds survived and developed into acclimatized plants after being cryopreserved. In this work, the encapsulation-dehydration technique was employed for first time in Cyrtopodium hatschbachii.     

Manufacturing quality density,control and maintenance

The purpose of this paper is to define conceptually and operationally, a measure of quality density in manufacturing. This is expressed in terms of a manufacturing process propensity to ‘output’ units which are defectives, as a function of the manufactured production output, the manufacturing deterioration process, maintenance, quality control, and generally the risks a manufacturing process is subjugated to. Particularly, we assume that the production process induces ‘shocks’ which lead to poorer manufactured quality, while maintenance efforts are continually being employed to restore the process propensity to produce units of better quality. Quality control is used then to monitor the output quality of units produced. Using a methodology of level crossing in stochastic point processes, the stationary probability distribution of a manufactured output quality is defined. Applications to production quality management, combined quality and maintenance management, as well as quality control are considered. Finally, an exponential shock model is resolved analytically.