Effects of rice koji inoculated with Aspergillus luchuensis on the biochemical and sensory properties of a sailfin sandfish (Arctoscopus japonicus) fish sauce

The effects of rice koji inoculated with Aspergillus luchuensis on the biochemical and sensory properties of fish sauce produced from sailfin sandfish (Arctoscopus japonicus) with different salt concentrations (10% and 20%) were investigated over 10 months. Fish sauces prepared from sailfin sandfish with rice koji and a low salt concentration had higher total nitrogen, amino nitrogen and total free amino acid than did those without rice koji or with a high salt concentration. Sensory evaluation of fish sauces prepared with rice koji and a low salt concentration found better taste, flavour and overall acceptance than those prepared without rice koji during fermentation (P < 0.05). The use of rice koji increased the total nitrogen, amino nitrogen and free amino acid and also enhanced the sensory qualities during fermentation. These results suggest that the use of rice koji can result in a low‐salt fish sauce with better flavour.     

Energy performance evaluation of a novel evaporative cooling technique

High summer conditioning consumption is becoming a tough and critical issue and consequently there is a need to provide buildings with new technologies for energy saving. Current European and Italian legislation is also working in this direction. We present a preliminary experimental evaluation of the energy performance of a new technology which is capable of canceling conduction gains through walls: “water-evaporative walls”, which are not only able to prevent the entrance of energy fluxes from the exterior to the interior, but also to reduce wall temperatures to below the values found indoors. This solution basically suggests equipping standard ventilated façades with a proper water-evaporative system, which exploits the latent heat of water evaporation, in order to absorb summer cooling loads. From the technological point of view, it requires the insertion of a water spraying system and a proper insulating layer in the ventilated air chamber. The insulation will act not only as a standard insulating material, but also as a porous surface to store water sprayed by the system and then gradually release it when needed for cooling. The experimental analyses showed the effectiveness of this technology, which decreases the overall summer energy load in buildings by canceling conduction loads.     

Strategies for industrial and technological development of Middle Eastern countries

Manufacturing sectors in Middle Eastern countries are facing many challenges when competing in local and world markets. These challenges include global and regional trade agreements, the creation of economic superpowers around the globe (North America, Europe, and East Asia) and higher standards to meet international quality requirements. Therefore, many countries in the region will have to rely on industrial and technological development in order ensure sustained economic development and face the above mentioned challenges. This paper discusses the important role of the Technology Triangle (partnership and cooperation between government, private sector, and education sector) in such a development. Issues that insure the effectiveness of the Technology Triangle are considered such as operational factors, financial responsibility, and implementation and monitoring. The paper also lists possible obstacles that can hinder industrial and technological development of Middle Eastern Countries. Finally, the paper will highlight the industrial and technological development of Lebanon after 15 years of civil strife. It reviews the impact of the reconstruction process on the development of a strong industry and Science and Technology institutions. Strategies are proposed for improvements.     

飞鱼籽生物酶法脱囊衣技术研究

以飞鱼籽为原料,鱼籽脱囊衣率为指标,从胰蛋白酶、胶原蛋白酶、碱性蛋白酶和木瓜蛋白酶4种酶中,筛选出胰蛋白酶为最佳使用酶,并采用L9(34)正交实验设计对胰蛋白酶脱除飞鱼籽囊衣工艺参数进行优化。结果表明,酶解液浓度0.8mg/mL、pH9、在20℃下酶解12min,飞鱼籽脱囊衣率可达83%以上。     

Spatiotemporal Landscape Pattern Change in Response to Future Urbanisation in Maricopa County,Arizona, USA

Urban growth combined with increasing population modifies landscape structure and functions at various scales. Identifying the accumulated effects of urbanisation on landscape composition and configuration over time is crucial to anticipate the functional change of altered landscape and to gauge landscape sustainability. Focusing on critical ecosystems, this study aims to understand how landscape patterns will evolve in response to the proposed development plans in Maricopa County, Arizona. Two primary GIS data layers were developed including the urban ecosystem layer with different natural land cover types (e.g. desert shrub, grassland, green space, and agriculture) and the urbanisation layer with residential, commercial, and recreational land use. To examine the spatiotemporal pattern change, urbanisation scenarios were designed with a basis on development status and implementation certainty, along with landscape metrics calculation. The findings demonstrated how the landscape metrics behave differently across different urbanisation conditions and which type of landscape will be most likely sensitive to future urbanisation processes. The study provides significant implications for landscape planning and guides planners to seek more optimal alternatives among various policy decisions.     

Identifying the period of a step change in high‐yield processes

Quality control charts have proven to be very effective in detecting out‐of‐control states. When a signal is detected a search begins to identify and eliminate the source(s) of the signal. A critical issue that keeps the mind of the process engineer busy at this point is determining the time when the process first changed. Knowing when the process first changed can assist process engineers to focus efforts effectively on eliminating the source(s) of the signal. The time when a change in the process takes place is referred to as the change point. This paper provides an estimator for a period of time in which a step change in the process non‐conformity proportion in high‐yield processes occurs. In such processes, the number of items until the occurrence of the first non‐conforming item can be modeled by a geometric distribution. The performance of the proposed model is investigated through several numerical examples. The results indicate that the proposed estimator provides a reasonable estimate for the period when the step change occurred at the process non‐conformity level. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An R package for assessment of statistical downscaling methods for hydrological climate change impact studies

Due to inherent bias the climate model simulated precipitation and temperature cannot be used to drive a hydrological model without pre-processing – statistical downscaling. This often consists of reducing the bias in the climate model simulations (bias correction) and/or transformation of the observed data in order to match the projected changes (delta change). The validation of the statistical downscaling methods is typically limited to the scale for which the transformation was calibrated and the driving variables (precipitation and temperature) of the hydrological model. The paper introduces an R package ”musica” which provides ready to use tools for routine validation of statistical downscaling methods at multiple time scales as well as several advanced methods for statistical downscaling. The musica package is used to validate simulated runoff. It is shown that using conventional methods for downscaling of precipitation and temperature often leads to substantial biases in simulated runoff at all time scales.     

Assessing the risk of climate change for buildings: A comparison between multi-year and probabilistic reference year simulations

Given a changing climate, there is a need to provide data for future years so that practicing engineers can investigate the impact of climate change on particular designs and examine any risk the client might be exposed to. In addition, such files are of use to building scientists in developing generic solutions to problems such as elevated internal temperatures and poor thermal comfort. With the release of the UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) [1], and the publication of a methodology for the creation of probabilistic future reference years using the UKCP09 weather generator [2], it is possible to model future building performance. However, the collapse of the distribution of possibilities inherent in the UKCP09 method into a single reference year or a small number of reference years, potentially means the loss of most of the information about the potential range of the response of the building and of the risk occupants might be subject to. In this paper we model for the first time the internal conditions and energy use of a building with all 3000 example years produced by the UKCP09 weather generator in an attempt to study the full range of response and risk. The resultant histograms and cumulative distribution functions are then used to examine whether single reference years can be used to answer questions about response and risk under a changing climate, or whether a more probabilistic approach is unavoidable.