Effect of heating and acidic pH on characteristics of wheat gluten suspension

The effects of different pH treatments with and without heating on the characteristics of wheat gluten suspension was investigated. At pH 1, maximum changes in colour were observed with a concurrent 65% decrease in protein free-thiol content compared to the control gluten. The SDS-Extractability of protein (SDS-EP) chromatogram eluted at lower retention time and the presence of bands at the top lane even during reducing conditions in SDS-PAGE gel suggested complex formation involving bonds other than disulphides. An increase in the free-amino group content and the presence of an additional peak at a higher retention time in the SDS-EP chromatogram was suggestive of hydrolysis. At pH 2 and 3, similar decreases in SDS-EPs and free-thiol content indicated formation of complexes. When heated, the free-thiol content of the dispersions increased compared to the non-heated dispersions indicating disruption of disulphide bonds with changes in gluten structure and size distribution.     

Essential oil nanoemulsions: antibacterial activity in contaminated fruit juices

Many human acid tolerant bacterial and fungal pathogens can be transmitted through the consumption of the contaminated fruit juices. We aim to formulate essential oil nanoemulsions (basil, black seed, turmeric, clove & cinnamon), determine their ability to clear contamination by food borne bacterial pathogens from fruit juices. The antibacterial activity of the optimised formulations was tested in the fruit juices against bacterial pathogens causing gastrointestinal tract infections. The minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of clove emulsions ranged from 15.6 to 25 μL mL⁻¹. Cinnamon oil emulsion had an MBC ranging between 15 and 31 μL mL⁻¹. At MBC, cinnamon oil emulsions caused a 6log₁₀ decrease in viable counts by 8 h and maintained the sterility of fruit juices for 7 days at ambient temperature. Thus, clove and cinnamon microemulsions can be used as juice additives to control food borne bacterial pathogens and maintain the bacterial sterility of fruit juices.     

Reaction of wood with inorganic salts

Wood samples and veneers of Hevea brasiliensis (Rubber wood) and Acacia auriculaeformis treated with aqueous solutions of chromium trioxide, ferric chloride and ferric nitrate were studied for water repellency and their reaction with wood constituents. FTIR spectra obtained from wood surface treated with chromium trioxide indicate the formation of a water insoluble complex between chromium trioxide and aromatic ring of lignin, whereas no reaction takes place with ferric salts. Treatment of wood by chromium trioxide was found to be effective in imparting water repellency in wood.     

Mass transfer kinetics during osmotic dehydration of pomegranate arils

The mass transfer kinetics during osmotic dehydration of pomegranate arils in osmotic solution of sucrose was studied to increase palatability and shelf life of arils. The freezing of the whole pomegranate at -18 °C was carried out prior to osmotic dehydration to increase the permeability of the outer cellular layer of the arils. The osmotic solution concentrations used were 40, 50, 60°Bx, osmotic solution temperatures were 35, 45, 55 °C. The fruit to solution ratio was kept 1:4 (w/w) during all the experiments and the process duration varied from 0 to 240 min. Azuara model and Peleg model were the best fitted as compared to other models for water loss and solute gain of pomegranate arils, respectively. Generalized Exponential Model had an excellent fit for water loss ratio and solute gain ratio of pomegranate arils. Effective moisture diffusivity of water as well as solute was estimated using the analytical solution of Fick's law of diffusion. For above conditions of osmotic dehydration, average effective diffusivity of water loss and solute gain varied from 2.718 × 10(-10) to 5.124 × 10(-10) m(2)/s and 1.471 × 10(-10) to 5.147 × 10(-10) m(2)/s, respectively. The final product was successfully utilized in some nutritional formulations such as ice cream and bakery products.     

Low‐level PGAS computing on many‐core processors with TSHMEM

Diminishing returns from increased clock frequencies and instruction‐level parallelism have forced computer architects to adopt architectures that exploit wider parallelism through multiple processor cores. While emerging many‐core architectures have progressed at a remarkable rate, concerns arise regarding the performance and productivity of numerous parallel‐programming tools for application development. Development of parallel applications on many‐core processors often requires developers to familiarize themselves with unique characteristics of a target platform while attempting to maximize performance and maintain correctness of their applications. The family of partitioned global address space (PGAS) programming models comprises the current state of the art in balancing performance and programmability. One such PGAS approach is SHMEM, a lightweight, shared‐memory programming library that has demonstrated high performance and productivity potential for parallel‐computing systems with distributed‐memory architectures. In the paper, we present research, design, and analysis of a new SHMEM infrastructure specifically crafted for low‐level PGAS on modern and emerging many‐core processors featuring dozens of cores and more. Our approach (with a new library known as TSHMEM) is investigated and evaluated atop two generations of Tilera architectures, which are among the most sophisticated and scalable many‐core processors to date, and is intended to enable similar libraries atop other architectures now emerging. In developing TSHMEM, we explore design decisions and their impact on parallel performance for the Tilera TILE‐Gx and TILEPro many‐core architectures, and then evaluate the designs and algorithms within TSHMEM through microbenchmarking and applications studies with other communication libraries. Our results with barrier primitives provided by the Tilera libraries show dissimilar performance between the TILE‐Gx and TILEPro; therefore, TSHMEM's barrier design takes an alternative approach and leverages the on‐chip mesh network to provide consistent low‐latency performance. In addition, our experiments with TSHMEM show that naive collective algorithms consistently outperformed linear distributed collective algorithms when executed in an SMP‐centric environment. In leveraging these insights for the design of TSHMEM, our approach outperforms the OpenSHMEM reference implementation, achieves similar to positive performance over OpenMP and OSHMPI atop MPICH, and supports similar libraries in delivering high‐performance parallel computing to emerging many‐core systems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Studies of the polymerization of methacrylic acid via free-radical retrograde precipitation polymerization process

In this paper, we present some new results of our work in a novel polymerization process (called the free-radical retrograde precipitation polymerization, or FRRPP, process) that occurs at temperatures above the lower critical solution temperature. Our polymerization experiments basically involve the methacrylic acid–poly(methacrylic acid)–water system. Experimental results indicate a gradual increase in conversion with time after what seemingly is the onset of phase separation. In an equivalent solution polymerization system, conversion of methacrylic acid reaches almost 100% at a much shorter time than in the FRRPP system. Molecular weights of poly(methacrylic acid) at different times for the FRRPP system are not dramatically different from those obtained in the solution system. However, the FRRPP system yields a relatively narrow molecular weight distribution at a wide range of conversion compared to that obtained in the equivalent solution system. The unique characteristics of the FRRPP process is shown in the asymptotic time behavior of the free-radical concentration compared to the decay behavior in other polymerization systems. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Suppression of fuel and air stream diluted methane–air partially premixed flames in normal and microgravity

The effects of fuel and air stream dilution (ASD) with carbon dioxide on the suppression of normal and microgravity laminar methane–air partially premixed coflow jet flames were experimentally and numerically investigated. Experiments were conducted both in our normal-gravity laboratory and at the NASA Glenn Research Center 2.2 s drop tower. Measurements included flame topology and liftoff heights of diluted flames, critical diluent mole fractions for flame blowout, and the radiant heat loss from flames. The flames were also simulated using an axisymmetric unsteady numerical code that utilizes detailed chemistry and transport models. In addition, counterflow flame simulation results were used to examine similitude between the counterflow and coflow flame suppression, and further characterize the effectiveness of fuel stream versus ASD on flame extinction. A smaller relative fuel stream dilution (FSD) extinguishes partially premixed flames (PPFs) with increasing premixing as compared to dilution of the air stream. Conversely, smaller ASD is required to extinguish PPFs as they become less premixed and approach nonpremixed (NP) behavior. Fuel stream diluted PPFs and air stream diluted NP flames extinguish primarily through a reactant dilution effect while fuel stream diluted NP flames and air stream diluted PPF are extinguished primarily by a thermal cooling effect. Normal gravity flames lift off and blow out with a smaller diluent mole fraction than microgravity flames. The difference between the fuel and ASD effectiveness increases as the gravitational acceleration is reduced. Radiation heat losses are observed to increase with increasing diluent mole fraction and decreasing gravity.     

Fusion Multistyle Training for Speaker Identification of Disguised Speech

Wireless Personal Communications - Determining the speaker of a given speech utterance from a group of people is referred to as speaker identification. When voice disguising is done by a person,...     

Hemodialysis‐induced bradycardia, “a plumbing issue”: Resolved with catheter repositioning

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is reported as leading cause of death in patients on chronic hemodialysis. Arrhythmias are proposed to be a major predisposing factor for SCD. However, triggers for potentially lethal arrhythmias are not well understood. Here we describe a case of 72‐year‐old man on chronic hemodialysis via permanent Central venous catheter (CVC) who was admitted for evaluation after unwitnessed fall. Within 10 minutes of his first routine dialysis session in the hospital, he had cardiac‐arrest. He was successfully resuscitated within 3 minutes. The next day, fifteen minutes into the dialysis session, he had bradycardia with telemetry demonstrating long sinus pause and he lost consciousness. After few minutes of Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) he regained pulse and consciousness. Further review of the chest X‐ray revealed the tip of CVC to be directly touching the distal Superior Vena Cava (SVC) wall. We felt the catheter tip may have migrated after the fall and now is irritating the Sinoatrial node and triggering bradyarrhythmia. Next day, the CVC was exchanged, and the tip was placed higher up in superior vena‐cava. After repositioning, we started him on dialysis under intensive monitoring, and he tolerated well without any arrhythmia. Subsequent dialysis was uneventful. We describe a case of recurrent symptomatic intra‐dialytic bradycardia due to abnormal positioning of CVC that resolved after the repositioning of the catheter. This case in addition to similar case in nondialysis settlings provides additional insights into mechanisms of fatal arrhythmias in hemodialysis patient having CVC.