Pekmez: A Traditional Concentrated Fruit Product

Pekmez is a traditional Turkish food made by using different fruits such as grape, mulberry, fig, apple, and sugar beet. There are two different kinds of pekmez, either liquid pekmez or solid pekmez, produced in Turkey. The stages for processing liquid pekmez for all fruits, except mulberry, include washing, sorting, crushing, pressing, and boiling. By using liquid pekmez, and solidifying and bleaching its agents solid pekmez is produced. Pekmez is a healthful food due to its nutritional content and is used as a main source of energy based on its chemical composition. The carbohydrates in pekmez are generally in the form of natural sugars like glucose and fructose, which is nutritionally important for babies, children, sportsmen, and active workers. Pekmez production and its chemical composition should be adapted to the modern food technology and food safety requirements; at the same time, this adaptation should conserve the authentic properties of the product.     

Fourier transform infrared photoacoustic studies of the adsorption behavior of poly(2‐hydroxypropyl methacrylate) at solid–liquid interface

Adsorption of poly(2‐hydroxypropyl methacrylate) on alumina from dimethylformamide was studied by ultraviolet (UV) and Fourier transform infrared (FT‐IR) photoacoustic spectroscopy (FTIR PA) techniques. Adsorbent amount and concentration effects were investigated. The adsorption results are in conformity with Langmuir's isotherm. The differences observed in Langmuir parameters were explained by polymer–polymer, polymer–solvent, polymer–adsorbent, and solvent–adsorbent interactions. The fraction of carbonyl groups attached to the surface of alumina was calculated with a curve‐fitting computer program. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 85: 2750–2756, 2002     

Studies on the effect of electrode type and substrate temperature on plasma polymerization of two model compounds: Acrylonitrile and hexamethyldisiloxane

Polymers were prepared from saturated (HMDS) and unsaturated (AN) monomers in a radio frequency discharge (plasma). The effect of selected parameters such as electrode type (such as Cu, Zn, Ni, Al), reactor type, and substrate temperature (other parameters constant) on chemical structure and the rate of polymer deposition was examined by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Differences in the nature of electrodes and reactor types were found to yield similar plasma products with similar rates of deposition for two monomers. In the tubular reactor used, deposition rates were observed to decrease with increasing substrate temperatures showing different dependencies on temperature for the monomers tested.     

Two-stage optimisation method for material flow and allocation management in cross-docking networks

Cross-docking is a relatively new logistics strategy in which items are moved from suppliers to customers through cross-docking centres without putting them into long-term storage. An important decision during the planning of cross-docking operations is related to the material flow management in the network, which has great potential to reduce transportation costs. However, until now, there has been a lack of studies regarding operations for both transportation of trucks between locations and trans-shipment of items in cross-docking centres. This study presents a novel two-stage mixed integer linear mathematical model for the transportation problem of cross-docking network design integrated with truck–door assignments to minimise total transportation costs from suppliers to customers. This model also considers incoming/outgoing truck-loading plans and product allocations in the cross-docking area with regard to the two-dimensional physical constraints. Due to the complexity of the problem, a genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to solve large-sized problems. Computational studies are conducted to examine the validity of the two-stage model and performance of the GA. The computational studies show that the introduced model provides a comprehensive plan for material flow management in cross-docking networks and proposed GA is capable of obtaining effective results for the problem within a short computational time.     

Radiation synthesis and characterization of N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone/N-allylthiourea hydrogels and their use in the adsorption of invertase

N-Vinyl-2-pyrrolidone/N-allylthiourea (VP/ATU) copolymeric hydrogels were prepared by γ-irradiating ternary mixtures of VP/ATU/water. The influence of the ATU on the gelation of VP, on the network structure and on the adsorption of invertase was investigated. VP/ATU copolymeric hydrogels were found to swell in the range of 950 – 2 500%. The water diffusion to the hydrogels is a non-Fickian type diffusion and the diffusion coefficients varied from 15.4·10^–8 to 1.5·10^–8 m² s^–1. The adsorption capacity of the hydrogels was found to increase from 8.0 to 380.0 μg invertase/g dry gel with increasing amount of ATU, and loss in activity with adsorption is approximately threefold.     

A new metal chelate sorbent for glucose oxidase: Cu(II)- and Co(II)-chelated poly(N-vinylimidazole) gels

Poly(N-vinylimidazole) (PVIm) gels were prepared by irradiating a binary mixture of N-vinylimidazole (VIm)–water in a ⁶⁰Co-γ source having 4.5 kGy/h dose rate. In the glucose oxidase (GOx) adsorption studies, affinity gels with a swelling ratio of 1100% for PVIm and 40 and 55% for Cu(II)- and Co(II)-chelated PVIm gels, respectively, at pH 6.5 in phosphate buffer were used. FTIR spectra were taken for PVIm and Cu(II)- and Co(II)-chelated PVIm, and glucose oxidase adsorption on these gels, to characterize the nature of the interactions in each species. The results show that PVIm–glucose oxidase interaction is mainly electrostatic and metal ion–chelated PVIm gel–glucose oxidase interaction is of coordinate covalent nature. Cu(II) and Co(II) ions were chelated within the gels via amine groups on the imidazole ring of the gel. Different amounts of Cu(II) and Co(II) ions [maximum 3.64 mmol/g dry gel for Cu(II) and 1.72 mmol/g dry gel for Co(II)] were loaded on the gels by changing the initial concentration of Cu(II) and Co(II) ions at pH 7.0. GOx adsorption on these gels from aqueous solutions containing different amounts of GOx at different pH was investigated in batch reactors. GOx adsorption capacity was further increased when Cu(II) and Co(II) ions were attached [up to 0.53 g GOx/g dry Co(II)-chelated PVIm gels]. More than 90% of the adsorbed GOx was desorbed in 5 h in desorption medium containing 1.0M KSCN at pH 7.0 for plain gel and 0.05M EDTA at pH 4.9 for metal-chelated gel. Nonspecific glucose oxidase adsorption on/in the metal ion–chelated PVIm gel was investigated using 0.02M of phosphate buffer solution. The nonspecific GOx adsorption was determined to be about 18% for PVIm and 8% for the metal ion–chelated PVIm gels. The ionic strength effect was investigated both on PVIm and on the metal ion–chelated PVIm gels for the glucose oxidase adsorption. It was found that ionic strength was more effective on the PVIm gel because of the electrostatic interaction between protonated gel and the deprotonated glucose oxidase side chain. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 82: 446–453, 2001     

Performance analysis of concatenated BCH and convolutional coded OFDM system

ABSTRACT

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a widely used technique for wireless communications. But uncoded OFDM is not sufficient by itself, that is why channel coding is included to increase the system performance. In this study, concatenated Bose Chaudhuri Hocquenghem (BCH) and Convolutional Coded (CC) OFDM system is investigated for multipath fading channel with Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). The simulation results show that the proposed concatenated code needs lower Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) when compared with single BCH code, single convolutional code and even with other concatenated systems. Throughout the simulations BCH coding is performed with 128, 256, 512 Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) lengths; whereas convolutional coding is performed with 1/2, 1/3 coding rates. Furthermore, interleavers are added to the system to prevent the burst errors that occur over the channel. With the proposed system, the best result is obtained by using BCH(511,340) and CC(3,1,7) concatenation which is 8.2 dB SNR value for 10^?3 Bit Error Rate (BER). This result is very close to ideal AWGN channel value, which is 8 dB for 10^?3 BER.