Enzymatic Browning Control in Minimally Processed Mushrooms

Treatments to control discoloration of minimally processed mushrooms were investigated. Whole or sliced mushrooms were immersed in browning inhibitor solutions and evaluated for color change during storage. Browning was more intense in first break mushrooms than in second, and in unwashed mushrooms compared to washed. However, washing sometimes induced purple discolorations, associated with bacterial lesions. Other discolorations were induced by hypochlorite, 4-hexylresor-cinol, and acidic dips. The most effective treatment was a combination of sodium erythorbate, cysteine, and EDTA at pH 5.5. Addition of preservatives to browning inhibitor dips did not improve storage life. However, dipping in 5% hydrogen peroxide prior to application of browning inhibitors significantly increased shelf-life.     

Improving Detection of Vibrio vulnificus in Octopus variabilis by PCR

PCR methods can detect foodborne pathogenic bacteria with simplicity, specificity and speed. In order to improve sensitivity and speed of PCR methods for detection of Vibrio vulnificus in small octopus homogenate, several media and culture conditions were compared. Modified brain heart infusion media containing 2% NaCl and adjusted to pH 8.0 and 30°C was most effective for enrichment of the bacteria. Procedures affecting the efficiency of template DNA extraction and target DNA amplification were also optimized. By these combined efforts, a PCR procedure capable of detecting V. vulnificus as low as 10 cells/mL within 10h was developed.     

FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF CLOSURE BEHAVIOUR OF FATIGUE CRACKS IN RESIDUAL STRESS FIELDS

An elastic-plastic finite element analysis with high order elements is performed to examine closure behaviour of fatigue. cracks in residua1 stress fieids and the numerical results are then compared with experimental results. The finite element analysis, performed under plane stress using 8-node isoparametric elements, can predict fatigue crack closure behaviour through residual stress fields very well. The crack opening and closing behaviour through a compressive residual stress field is found to be complicated and influenced by the applied load magnitude and the location of the crack tip. Three different types of crack opening behaviour, namely, normal, unsymmetric partial and symmetric partial crack opening behaviour are observed through a compressive residual stress field. The partial crack opening stress intensity factor including the partial crack opening effect is recommended for the prediction of fatigue crack growth through a compressive residual stress field.     

Effects of Electrical Stimulation and Hot Boning on Functional Characteristics of Preblended Beef Muscle in Model Systems

Thirty beef carcasses were used to determine the effects of electrical stimulation (ES) and hot boning on the emulsifying capacity (EC) and thermal emulsion stability (TES) of preblended Triceps brachii (TB) muscle (long head) from sides assigned to one of four treatments: (1) conventionally boned after chilling at 2–8°C until 48 hr postmortem (CB); (2) hot boned at 1 hr postmortem (HB); (3) ES during bleeding and conventionally boned at 48 hr postmortem (ESCB); and (4) ES during bleeding and hot boned at 1 hr postmortem (ESHB). HB preblended samples had greater EC and TES values than CB preblended samples in both nonstimulated (P < 0.05) and stimulated carcasses. When compared to nonstimulated sides, ES decreased (P < 0.05) these values in both ESHB and ESCB sides.     

Fabrication of ultrafine Nd-Fe-B powder by a modified reduction-diffusion process

In order to obtain ultrafine Nd-Fe-B powder, a spray-dried precursor was treated by reduction-diffusion (R/D) process.And, unlike the conventional R/D process, calcium reduction that is a crucial step for the formation of Nd2Fe14B was performed without conglomerating the precursor with Ca powder.By adopting this modified process, it is possible to synthesize the hard magnetic Nd2Fe14B at the reaction temperature as low as 850 ℃.The average size of Nd2Fe14B particles that are uniformly distributed in the optimally treated powder was ＜ ＜1 μm.Most Nd2Fe14B particles were enclosed with thin layers of Nd-rich phase.Typical magnetic properties of such powder without eliminating impurity CaO were iHc=～5.9 kOe, Br=～5.5 kG, and (BH)max=～6 MGOe.     

Characteristics of thermally-enhanced bentonite grouts for geothermal heat exchanger in South Korea

The thermal conductivity and viscosity of bentonite grouts have been evaluated and compared each other to determine the suitability of these materials for backfilling vertical boreholes of ground heat exchangers.Seven bentonite grouts from different product sources were considered in this paper.Two additives,silica sand and graphite were added in bentonite grouts to enhance thermal performance.The bentonite grouts indicate that both the thermal conductivity and the viscosity increase with the content of sil...     

VColor*: a practical approach for coloring large graphs

Graph coloring has a wide range of real world applications, such as in the operations research, communication network, computational biology and compiler optimization fields. In our recent work [1], we propose a divide-andconquer approach for graph coloring, called VColor. Such an approach has three generic subroutines. (i) Graph partition subroutine: VColor partitions a graph G into a vertex cut partition (VP), which comprises a vertex cut component (VCC) and small non-overlapping connected components (CCs). (ii) Component coloring subroutine: VColor colors the VCC and the CCs by efficient algorithms. (iii) Color combination subroutine: VColor combines the local colors by exploiting the maximum matchings of color combination bigraphs (CCBs). VColor has revealed some major bottlenecks of efficiency in these subroutines. Therefore, in this paper, we propose VColor*, an approach which addresses these efficiency bottlenecks without using more colors both theoretically and experimentally. The technical novelties of this paper are the following. (i) We propose the augmented VP to index the crossing edges of the VCC and the CCs and propose an optimized CCB construction algorithm. (ii) For sparse CCs, we propose using a greedy coloring algorithm that is of polynomial time complexity in the worst case, while preserving the approximation ratio. (iii) We propose a distributed graph coloring algorithm. Our extensive experimental evaluation on real-world graphs confirms the efficiency of VColor*. In particular, VColor* is 20X and 50X faster than VColor and uses the same number of colors with VColor on the Pokec and PA datasets, respectively. VColor* also significantly outperforms the state-ofthe- art graph coloring methods.