Indigestible fraction and starch availability in peas measured in vitro

 Profiles of flavonoid compounds of Apis mellifera and Melipona spp. honeys from Venezuela were analysed to evaluate entomological-dependent differences. The presence of ellagic acid was a characteristic of A. mellifera honeys from Venezuela, but its presence was variable in Melipona spp. samples. The number of flavonoid types present in individual samples did not exceed six and occasionally only one phenolic type was present. The diversity of flavonoid compounds in tropical honeys from Venezuela was lower than that previously measured in temperate honeys. Flavonoids such as myricetin, an unidentified chalcone and a flavonol glycoside were only found in Melipona honeys but not in all the samples; therefore, they cannot be foreseen as entomological markers to differentiate between the Apis and Melipona honeys under study. A preliminary discussion is made regarding flavonoids present in Melipona honeys and their probable link with the putative anticataract action of stingless bee-honeys. Received: 22 February 1996     

Non‐digestible carbohydrates in Brazilian soybean seeds [Glycine max (L.) Merril]

Non‐digestible carbohydrate fraction (NDCF) consists of a range of bioactive compounds that escape digestion in the small intestine. NDCF is mainly composed of dietary fibre (DF) and non‐digestible oligosaccharides (NDO). The objective of this work was to analyse directly and compare the NDCF in two Brazilian cultivars of soybean seed with commercial flour. Brazil is the second major soybean producer in the world. The seed cultivars showed on average a NDCF value of 32.80 g per 100 g dry weight (dw). Regarding DF, insoluble DF (IDF) was the main fraction amounting on average to 98%. Uronic acids were significantly higher than neutral sugar (NS) in IDF and soluble DF (SDF) fractions. There was a considerable amount of Klason lignin – on average 84.14% of DF. Regarding NS profile, mannose was the most important sugar in SDF, whereas galactose and arabinose were predominant in IDF. Stachyose was the main oligosaccharide in NDO. DF and NDO were in the same proportion (94.2:5.8) in tested cultivars. No differences in swelling, water retention, or oil retention capacities between seed cultivars were detected. This study on non‐digestible carbohydrate components in soybean seed gives a different approach to the current nutritional knowledge on protein and oil constituents.     

Mango peel fibres with antioxidant activity

 Antioxidant compounds associated with some types of dietary fibres may be responsible in part for the beneficial effects on health of high-dietary-fibre diets. The antioxidant activity of a high-dietary-fibre mango peel product and of some commercial samples was determined by the ferric thiocyanate colorimetric method. At a concentration of 0.05%, the antioxidant activity of mango peel dietary fibre was 0.75 times as effective as that of 2-tert-butyl-4-hydroxyanisol (BHA) and 1.4 and 3.4 times higher, respectively, than that of French PARAD’OX (a commercial polyphenols concentrate) and of DL-α-tocopherol. All Bran, Quaker Oats, lemon and apple fibre did not exhibit any antioxidant capacity. The obtention of high-dietary-fibre products with bioactive compounds could be useful for the food industry and the antioxidant activity may be a new property to consider in the quality evaluation of these ingredients. Received: 25 January 1996 / Revised version: 10 June 1996     

Fluid flow identification on base of the pressure difference measured on the secant of a pipe elbow

The paper presents a new method for indirect flow rate measurement in elbow flow meters. The idea of the method consists in selecting such a Reynolds number value, assumed as a coefficient in fluid flow equations, which fulfils with set accuracy the condition of equality between the measured and the computed pressure difference at the end points of the secant of the elbow arch. The calculus takes into account also the accurate flow geometry, the values of coefficients which describe the thermo-physical properties of the fluid at the measurement temperature, and proper equations of the turbulence model. A special test stand was arranged in order to implement the proposed method in practice. The numerical computations were carried out using the software package FLUENT 6.1. The results of calculations were compared with the corresponding results of measurements achieved on the stand, as well as ones found in the bibliography [?, ?]. A comparison of the outcome of calculations with experimental readings shows a high grade of consistence.     

An application of PSO technique for harmonic elimination in a PWM inverter

Harmonic elimination problem in PWM inverter is treated as an optimization problem and solved using particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique. The derived equation for computation of total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output voltage of PWM inverter is used as the objective function in the PSO algorithm. The objective function is minimized to contribute the minimum THD in the voltage waveform and the corresponding switching angles are computed. The method is applied to investigate the switching patterns of both unipolar and bipolar case. While minimizing the objective function, the individual selected harmonics like 5th, 7th, 11th and 13th can be controlled within the allowable limits by incorporating the constraints in the PSO algorithm. The results of the unipolar case using five switching angles are compared with that of a recently reported work and it is observed that the proposed method is effective in reducing the voltage THD in a wide range of modulation index. The simulated results are also validated through suitable experiments.     

Simplified method for vitamin E determination in rat adipose tissue and mammary glands by high-performance liquid chromatography

A method for vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) measurement in rat adipose tissue and mammary gland has been developed and validated. Tissues were homogenized in ethanol-water (1:1) and extracted with n-hexane. Vitamin K1 was used as internal standard. Separation was performed by HPLC with methanol-water (96.5:3.5) as eluent in a Nucleosil C18 column (15 x 0.46 cm) at 40 degrees C. Detection was by fluorescence with excitation at 295 nm and emission at 350 nm for vitamin E and at 330 and 440 nm for vitamin K1. Standards and tissue extracts were checked for linearity giving correlation coefficients over 0.99 in a range of concentrations from 0.56 to 4.51 nmol/g in adipose tissue and from 2.18 to 17.4 nmol/g in mammary gland tissue. Intra-assay precision (R.S.D.) varied between 3 and 4%, whereas inter-assay precision was between 8 and 9%. Recoveries ranged between 95 +/- 3% and 98 +/- 11% for the two tissues, respectively. Vitamin E was measured in rats that had previously received one oral dose of this vitamin. Whereas vitamin E content in adipose tissue did not differ between late-pregnant and virgin rats, it was significantly higher in mammary gland of pregnant rats, and this difference could be related to the enhanced lipoprotein lipase activity in this group.     

Decoder side Wyner–Ziv frame estimation using Chebyshev polynomial-based FLANN technique for distributed video coding

Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing - In this paper, a Chebyshev polynomial-based functional link artificial neural network (CFLANN) technique for Wyner–Ziv (WZ) frame estimation...     

Capability of DICE Circuit to Withstand Ionizing Radiations

Memory devices continue to be an irreplaceable part of most semiconductor circuits. This is expected to continue to rise in the coming years. Thus, there is a need to incorporate radiation hardness in all memory elements. There are numerous techniques to make a circuit immune to radiations at processing level, circuit level or design level. One of the most accepted methods of achieving resilience to radiations at design level is DICE (Dual Interlocked Storage Cell). The efficiency and range of operation of DICE structure can be improved through various factors. Sizing of transistors as well as pulse width and amplitude of striking pulse of radiation are key parameters in determining successful circuit operation. Effect of varying these parameters on the circuit operation is studied with the help of simulation results. The self restoring logic in the design has a certain threshold after which the circuit is unable to regain its original value.

     

Significant physical attributes affecting quality of Indian black (CTC) tea

In this research work, an attempt was made to discriminate different grades of black crush-tear-curl (CTC) tea based upon their physical attributes such as color of brewed liquor, texture, size and shape of the tea granules obtained by machine vision technique. The principal component analysis (PCA) was applied over two types of data. First, tea samples with seven different quality grades but same mechanical grading and second, samples with same quality grade but nine different mechanical grades (Brokens, Fannings and Dust) were considered for analysis, respectively. The results of PCA showed that best discrimination (100%) in both types of data was given by color attributes only. Correlations among tea samples and physical attributes were determined. Based upon these results it may be concluded that color only attributes are the most significant and sufficient for quantification of tea quality whereas other physical attributes contribute so little to quality estimation that they may be ignored.