Investigation of engineering properties for usability of Lefke stone (Osmaneli/Bilecik) as building stone

Lefke stone is a sandstone that has been widely used in mosques, madrasas, churches, and houses as building stone. The geological features and engineering properties of Lefke stone outcropped in the southern part of Osmaneli/Bilecik were investigated in field and laboratory studies. Samples acquired during the fieldwork were tested to determine the physical, mechanical, durability, and hygrothermal properties in the laboratory. The mean physico-mechanical properties of Lefke stone yielded apparent density of 2.38 g/cm³, specific gravity of 2.68 g/cm³, total porosity of 11.26%, 2.93% water absorption by weight, uniaxial compressive strength of 94 MPa, flexure strength of 11.45 MPa, a 3.90 MPa point load strength, 4.5–5 Mohs hardness, and field Schmidt hammer rebound value of 36. According to durability tests, Lefke stone is resistant to CaCl₂ salt mist but has low resistance to SO₂ aging. Salt crystals placed in the discontinuities of the rock caused slight crack growth. The stone’s resistance to crystallization of sodium sulphate salt is low, and an increase in the volume of salts crystallized in the rock results in low corner strengths. A capillary water-absorption value of 0.0016 kg/m².h places Lefke stone into the category of very low water absorption capacity and permeability. The water vapor diffusion resistance factor (μ) less than 1 indicates that the sandstone has high breathability. Its performance in historical buildings, field observations, and values obtained through laboratory tests confirm that Lefke sandstone can be used as a building stone.

     

On the Classification of Modulation Schemes Using Higher Order Statistics and Support Vector Machines

The recognition of modulation schemes in military and civilian applications is a major task for intelligent receiving systems. Various Automatic Modulation Classification (AMC) algorithms have been developed for this purpose in the literature. However, classification with low computational complexity as well as reasonable processing time is still a challenge. In this paper, a feature-based approach along with various classifiers is employed based on statistical features as well as higher-order moments and cumulants. An over-the-air (OTA) recorded dataset consisting of four analog and ten digital modulation schemes are used for testing the proposed method at 0–20 dB SNR. The overall accuracy for quadratic Support Vector Machine (SVM) is found to be as high as 98% at 10 dB. The comparison of the results with other AMC papers published in the literature indicates that the proposed method present higher accuracy, especially for realistic channel induced OTA dataset.

     

Determination of conformational changes of polyphenol oxidase and peroxidase in peach juice during mild heat treatment using FTIR spectroscopy coupled with chemometrics

The effect of thermal treatment on activity and structural changes of polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and peroxidase (POD) in peach juice was investigated. The D₇₀ values for PPO and POD were 10.38 and 13.68 min, respectively. The z values for PPO and POD were found to be 3.35 and 23.15 °C, respectively. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was used to determine the conformational changes. With the increase in temperature, α-helix and β-sheet were decreased, and β-turn and aggregated β-sheet structure were increased for PPO, random coil and β-sheet decreased, while aggregated β-sheet structure increased for POD. In contrast, an increase in α-helix structure of POD was observed which was thought to be effective in POD regeneration. Furthermore, native and denatured forms of enzymes were discriminated by using principle component analysis (PCA), and models that correlated activity and secondary structural components with infrared spectra were constructed by using partial least square (PLS).