Synergistic effect of high-intensity ultrasound and β-cyclodextrin treatments on browning control in apple juice

This work evaluated the synergistic effects of combined high-intensity ultrasound (HIU) with β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) treatments on inhibiting browning of apple juice and explored the mechanism through simulation system. The combined treatment of 300 W HIU with 0.006 g mL⁻¹ β-CD had a synergistic impact on maintaining juice colour, resulting in a 39.06% reduction in browning degree, only a 36.64% decrease in total phenolic content, and a 17.82% reduction in PPO activity. The inhibition of enzymatic browning in simulated system revealed that HIU suppressed the enzyme (Polyphenol oxidase, PPO) and β-CD inhibited enzyme (PPO) and embedded substrate (polyphenol). The results of spectroscopic analysis showed that the particle-size distribution of PPO narrowed, the content of α-helix in the secondary structure increased, the fluorescence intensity increased, and the maximum wavelength was red-shifted after HIU and β-CD treatment. Changes in structure could further result in PPO activity loss. Hence, the combined treatment could synthetically alleviate the browning of apple juice.     

Experimental Thermal Performance Characterization of Flat Grooved Heat Pipes

ABSTRACT

The thermal characterization of aluminum flat grooved heat pipes is performed experimentally for different groove dimensions. Three heat pipes with groove widths of 0.2?mm, 0.4?mm, and 1.5?mm are used in the experiments. The effect of the amount of the working fluid is extensively studied for each groove width. The results reveal that, although all three succeed in dissipating the heat input through the phase change of the working fluid by continuous evaporation and condensation, the effectiveness of the heat transfer increases with reduced groove width. Furthermore, it is observed that there exists an optimum operating point, where the temperature difference between the heating and cooling sections is at a minimum, and the magnitude of this temperature difference is a strong function of the groove width. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the combined effects of groove dimensions and the amount of the working fluid, from fully flooded to dry, is reported for the first time for aluminum flat grooved heat pipes.     

Corrosion fatigue short crack growth behaviour in a high strength steel

The influence of an aggressive environment (0.6 M, aerated NaCl solution) on short fatigue crack initiation and growth behaviour has been studied. The study involved three major test series, namely: air fatigue, corrosion fatigue, and intermittent air fatigue/corrosion fatigue. The above tests carried out under fully reversed torsional loading conditions at a frequency of 5 Hz, showed that it was the non-metallic inclusions which took part in crack initiation resulting from debonding at metal matrix/inclusion interface and pitting of inclusions in both air and corrosove environments, respectively. Short fatigue crack growth results in these two environments obtained by using plastic replication technique, indicated a large effect of microstructure i.e. prior austenite grain boundaries. The stage/stages at which the environmental contribution was dominant has been discussed by considering the results achieved from intermittent tests. However, the mechanisms involved in corrosion fatigue short crack growth have also been described in the light of results obtained from futher investigations carried out by conducting corrosion fatigue tests under applied cathodic potential conditions and tests on hydrogen pre-charged specimens under air fatigue and uniaxial tension conditions.     

Assessment of the energy and exergy utilization efficiencies in the Turkish agricultural sector

This study deals with evaluating the energy and exergy utilization efficiencies in the Turkish agricultural sector over a 12‐year period from 1990 to 2001. In the energy and exergy analyses, two main energy sources, namely fuels and electricity, are taken into consideration, while the sectoral energy and exergy efficiencies are compared for this period. These main energy sources include diesel for tractors and other vehicles, and electricity for pumps. Overall energy utilization efficiencies are obtained to vary between 29.1 and 41.1%, while overall exergy utilization efficiencies are found to range from 27.9 to 37.4% in the analysed years, respectively. It may be concluded that the present technique proposed here may be used as a useful tool in analysing and evaluating the energy and exergy utilization efficiencies, identifying energy efficiency and/or energy conservation opportunities and dictating the energy strategies of countries. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Study of Lateral Spread of Ions Emitted from 2.3 kJ Plasma Focus with Hydrogen and Nitrogen Gases

The characteristics of ion beams of hydrogen and nitrogen with different filling pressures emitted from the plasma focus device of 2.3 kJ energy are investigated. CR-39 SSNTDs are employed for the registration of tracks of ions. The exposed detectors are etched in 6N NaOH solution at 70°C and then examined with an optical microscope. The ion flux is estimated to be of the order of 10^5–6 tracks/cm². The flux with the radial position does not exhibit any regular pattern of variation.     

Statistically correlated multi-task learning for autonomous driving

Neural Computing and Applications - Autonomous driving research is an emerging area in the machine learning domain. Most existing methods perform single-task learning, while multi-task learning...     

Medical image segmentation with transform and moment based features and incremental supervised neural network

In this study, a novel incremental supervised neural network (ISNN) is proposed for the segmentation of medical images. Performance of the ISNN is investigated for tissue segmentation in medical images obtained from various imaging modalities. Two feature extraction methods based on transform and moments are comparatively investigated to segment the tissues in medical images. Two-dimensional (2D) continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and the moments of the gray-level histogram (MGH) are computed in order to form the feature vectors of ultrasound (US) bladder and phantom images, X-ray computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) head images. In the 2D-CWT method, feature vectors are formed by the intensity of one pixel of each wavelet-plane of different energy bands. The MGH represents the tissues within the sub-windows by using the spatial variation of image intensities. In this study, the ISNN and Grow and Learn (GAL) network are employed for the segmentation task. It is observed that the ISNN has significantly eliminated the disadvantages of the GAL network in the segmentation of the medical images.     

Theory of reflectivity of an asymmetric mirror

By using the concept of transfer matrices and Bloch waves, we have derived a set of equations that provide insight into the operation of asymmetric Bragg reflectors that have been demonstrated to be useful in achieving high reflectivities in strained-material systems. These equations will be useful in the design of asymmetric mirrors and can be used to compare the trade-offs between the conventional, symmetric (quarter-wavelength), and asymmetric mirrors.     

Aeroelastic tailoring using lamination parameters

The aim of the present work is to passively reduce the induced drag of the rear wing of a Formula One car at high velocity through aeroelastic tailoring. The angle-of-attack of the rear wing is fixed and is determined by the required downforce needed to get around a turn. As a result, at higher velocity, the amount of downforce and related induced drag increases. The maximum speed on a straight part is thus reduced due to the increase in induced drag. A fibre reinforced composite torsion box with extension-shear coupled upper and lower skins is used leading to bending-torsion coupling. Three-dimensional static aeroelastic analysis is performed loosely coupling the Finite Element code Nastran and the Computational Fluid Dynamics panel code VSAERO using ModelCenter. A wing representative of Formula One rear wings is optimised for minimum induced drag using a response surface methodology. Results indicate that a substantial induced drag reduction is achievable while maintaining the desired downforce during low speed turns.     

Vic-dioximes: A new class of sensitive materials for chemical gas sensing

Vic-dioximes, a class of organic chemical compounds, are proposed and characterized for the first time as sensitive materials for volatile organic compound sensing with sorption based chemical gas sensors. Their peculiar sensing properties described in this work originate in the oxime functional group which is a powerful H bond donor interacting strongly but reversibly with H bond acceptors. These specific interactions result in a high preferential enrichment of analyte molecules with H bonding acceptor capabilities in the sensitive material. Accordingly, sensitivity and selectivity for these compounds of vic-dioxime based sensors are high. The advantageous sensing properties are demonstrated in this work with quartz crystal microbalance sensors using 11 selected volatile organic compounds and a set of vic-dioximes varied in their substituents. Vic-dioximes with short alkylthiol substituents were found highly sensitive to such H bond acceptors as organic amines, alcohols, and esters with partition coefficients up to 26,000. At the same time they showed low affinity for aromatic compounds and chlorocarbons. Vic-dioximes are considered powerful sensing materials and interesting for practical use in chemical gas sensor arrays.