Effect of virgin coconut oil cake on physical,textural, microbial and sensory attributes of muffins

A study was carried out to develop muffins by substituting refined wheat flour (RWF) with virgin coconut oil (VCO) cake (0–50 g/100 g flour blend). Progressive replacement of RWF with VCO cake resulted in significant (P < 0.05) decrease in peak viscosity of flour blends (from 2527.75 cP in the control to 389.5 cP in 50 g VCO cake/100 g flour blend) and the muffins height (from 34.26 mm in the control to 26.88 mm in 50 g VCO cake/100 g flour blend). Significant colour change was observed in the crust and crumb regions. Free fatty acid and microbial analysis revealed that the quality of muffin samples was unaffected by the addition of VCO cake during 16‐day storage at both refrigerated (4 ± 2 °C) and ambient temperature (35 ± 2 °C). Incorporation of 40 g VCO cake/100 g flour blend significantly (P < 0.05) increased the overall acceptability of the muffins (with a maximum score of 8.5). Muffins with 40 g VCO cake/100 g flour blend were enriched with protein (8.49 g/100 g), fat (18.46 g/100 g), crude fibre (1.14 g/100 g) and minerals (1.15 g/100 g).     

Comparative separation analysis of direct and reverse flotation of dolomite fines

In the present investigation, beneficiation of a low-grade dolomite fines was carried out with the aim to remove the siliceous gangue content. Extensive experimental studies on direct and reverse flotation were carried out on low-grade ore by varying the critical process variables, and the performance was compared. The experimental results show that it is possible to reduce the silica content following both direct and reverse flotation processes. Further, direct flotation results show better control over the quality of the product while reverse flotation has an edge on the product yield.     

On the dynamic response of buried orthotropic cylindrical shells under moving load

This paper deals with the dynamic response of a buried orthotropic infinite cylindrical shell subjected to a radial line load moving along the shell axis. A thin shell theory formulation has been used and only axisymmetric response has been investigated. The shell is assumed to be perfectly bonded to the surrounding medium (soil) of infinite extent. Orthotropy parameters of the shell have been varied over a wide range to bring out their effects on the shell response. Results have been obtained for different soil conditions—hard, medium and soft.     

Simulation of impact, based on an approach to detect interference

This paper describes a method for simulating impacts which occur during the motion of planar mechanisms. An interference detection method is proposed. Using this, distance between bodies can be determined during simulation, without having to solve a system of nonlinear equations. The approach is illustrated by simulating a cam–follower mechanism. Impact is modelled using nonlinear compliance at the point of contact, and friction is modelled as Coulomb’s friction. Numerical integration is partially validated using energy balance.     

Full-Scale Measurements to Investigate Rain–Wind Induced Cable-Stay Vibration and Its Mitigation

Large-amplitude vibrations are known to occur in the main stays of cable-stayed bridges in the presence of rain and wind. Although this problem first surfaced in many bridges around the world in the mid-1980s, it was not until 1996 when the Texas Department of Transportation began to investigate this problem in the United States. Both wind-tunnel and full-scale tests were conducted simultaneously to better understand this phenomenon and devise mitigation methods to reduce the vibrations. Full-scale tests were conducted on four cable stays of the Veterans’ Memorial Bridge near Port Arthur, Tex., over a period of three years. This paper presents observations from selected full-scale data and compares them to wind-tunnel test results as well as results found in past literature. Some observations regarding assessment of a distributed passive mitigation device that was installed on one of the cable stays in the field to control vibrations in the presence of rain and wind are also presented. Wind-tunnel tests show that this device is very effective. Limited data collected from the field after the installation of the device gives some evidence of its effectiveness in reducing the vibrations.     

The Effect of Detection and Restoration Times for Error Recovery in Communication Networks

Detection and restoration times are oftenignored when modeling network reliability. In thispaper, we develop Markov Regenerative Reward Models(MRRM) to capture the effects of detection andrestoration phases of network recovery. States of the MRRMrepresent conditions of network resources, while statetransitions represent occurrences of failure, repair,detection, and restoration. Reward rates, assigned to states of the MRRM are computed based on aperformance model that accounts for contention. Wecompare our model with ones that ignore these parametersand show significant differences, in particular for transient measures.     

Assessing the antifungal activity of a new oral lipid-based amphotericin B formulation following administration to rats infected with Aspergillus fumigatus

The purpose of this study was to assess the antifungal activity of a new oral amphotericin B (AmpB) lipid-based formulation following administration to rats infected with Aspergillus fumigatus. Aspergillus fumigatus inoculum (2.1-2.5 × 10⁷ colony forming units [CFU]) were injected via the jugular vein; 48h later male albino Sprague-Dawley rats (350-400 g) were administered either a single oral dose of AmpB incorporated into Peceol (50 mg AmpB/kg), physiologic saline (nontreated controls) or Peceol alone (vehicle control) once daily for 4 days. To assess antifungal activity Brain, Lung, Heart, Liver, Spleen and Kidney sections were homogenized with normal saline (1 mL/g of tissue) and a 0.1-mL aliquot was spread plated onto a Sabourand dextrose agar plate. The plates were incubated for 48 hr at 37°C, at which time the number of fungal CFU were determined and corrected for tissue weight. In addition, plasma galactomannan antigen concentrations were determined. Data was reported as mean ± standard error of the mean. The AmpB-Peceol oral formulation significantly decreased total fungal CFU concentrations recovered in all the organs added together, brain CFU concentrations, spleen CFU concentrations and plasma galactomannan antigen concentrations compared to baseline. No significant differences in lung, heart, liver and kidney CFU concentrations between treatment and control groups were observed. Peceol vehicle control did not exhibit any antifungal activity. These findings suggest that a new oral lipid-based formulation of AmpB incorporated into Peceol can significantly decrease brain and spleen CFU concentrations and plasma galactomannan antigen concentrations compared to non-treated controls.     

Effects of Doppler spread on adaptive orthogonal frequency division multiplexing channel capacity employing diversity in multipath environments

This paper derives the capacity of a fading channel with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing transmission employing diversity techniques and adaptive policies in Rayleigh fading environments. The effects of Doppler shift f_d on channel capacity are analysed. The main contribution of this work is to model intercarrier interference as a function of f_d and symbol duration T_s. Two diversity techniques are considered (i) maximal ratio combining (MRC) and (ii) selective combining (SC). Three adaptive policies are combined with MRC and SC to estimate the following channel capacity: (i) optimal rate adaptive; (ii) optimal power and rate adaptive; and (iii) channel inversion with fixed rate adaptive. Closed‐form expressions and bounds on channel capacity employing different diversity techniques are derived. Simulation results are given. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An analytical approach to architecture-based software performance and reliability prediction

Conventional approaches to analyze the behavior of software applications are black box based, that is, the software application is treated as a whole and only its interactions with the outside world are modeled. The black box approaches ignore information about the internal structure of the application and the behavior of the individual parts. Hence, they are inadequate to model the behavior of a realistic software application, which is likely to be made up of several interacting parts. Architecture-based analysis, which seeks to assess the behavior of a software application taking into consideration the behavior of its parts and the interactions among the parts is thus essential. Most of the research in the area of architecture-based analysis has been devoted to developing analytical models, with very little, if any effort being devoted to how these models might be applied to real software applications. In order to apply these models to software applications, methods must be developed to extract the parameters of the analytical models from information collected during the execution of the application. In this paper, we present an experimental approach to extract the parameters of architecture-based models from code coverage measurements obtained during the execution of the application. To facilitate this, we use a coverage analysis tool called automatic test analyzer in C (ATAC), which is a part of Telcordia Software Visualization and Analysis Toolsuite (TSVAT) developed at Telcordia Technologies. We demonstrate the approach by predicting the performance and reliability of an application called Symbolic Hierarchical Automated Reliability Predictor (SHARPE), which has been widely used to solve stochastic models of reliability, performance and performability.