Whey Drying on Porous Carriers

Whey is an undurable product. treated very often as a waste which pollutes the natural environment. Whey which is a valuable source of protein, lactose, vitamins and mineral salts should be utilized completely. The present paper is a proposal of whey drying on porous carriers. It is proved experimentally that the proposed drying method guarantees good product quality.     

Kernel orthonormalization in radial basis function neural networks

This paper deals with optimization of the computations involved in training radial basis function (RBF) neural networks. The main contribution of the reported work is the method for network weights calculation, in which the key idea is to transform the RBF kernels into an orthonormal set of functions (using the standard Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization). This significantly reduces the computing time if the RBF training scheme, which relies on adding one kernel hidden node at a time to improve network performance, is adopted. Another property of the method is that, after the RBF network weights are computed, the original network structure can be restored back. An additional strength of the method is the possibility to decompose the proposed computing task into a number of parallel subtasks so gaining further savings on computing time. Also, the proposed weight calculation technique has low storage requirements. These features make the method very attractive for hardware implementation. The paper presents a detailed derivation of the proposed network weights calculation procedure and demonstrates its validity for RBF network training on a number of data classification and function approximation problems.     

Rapid thermal annealing applied to the optimization of titanium oxide arc

In this work, rapid thermal annealing (RTA) in the 400–700°C range is used to adjust simultaneously the index and thickness of titanium oxide layers in order to achieve an antireflection coating (ARC) in industrial conditions (large solar cells with a high throughput capability). The technique used for high production rate and low cost coating process is the atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition (APCVD) at low temperature.Titanium oxide layers are obtained from the hydrolysis of two precursors, namely the tetraisopropoxide titanate (TPT) and the titanium tetrachloride. In the first case, on silicon substrates at 150°C, we have obtained refractive indices of 1.8–1.9 with layer thicknesses in the range 70–100 nm. In the second case, at 100°C, the refractive index is 2.1–2.2 as deposited and the thickness in the same range. After RTA lasting 120 s at 700°C, the refractive index is 2.25 and the thickness is decreased by 40% with the first precursor, while with chloride, the index increases until 2.4 and the thickness is decreased by 30%. These results are discussed by means of X-ray diffraction and SIMS analysis.     

Revealing Nanomechanical Domains and Their Transient Behavior in Mixed-Halide Perovskite Films

Halide perovskites are a versatile class of semiconductors employed for high performance emerging optoelectronic devices, including flexoelectric systems, yet the influence of their ionic nature on their mechanical behavior is still to be understood. Here, a combination of atomic-force, optical, and compositional X-ray microscopy techniques is employed to shed light on the mechanical properties of halide perovskite films at the nanoscale. Mechanical domains within and between morphological grains, enclosed by mechanical boundaries of higher Young's Modulus (YM) than the bulk parent material, are revealed. These mechanical boundaries are associated with the presence of bromide-rich clusters as visualized by nano-X-ray fluorescence mapping. Stiffer regions are specifically selectively modified upon light soaking the sample, resulting in an overall homogenization of the mechanical properties toward the bulk YM. This behavior is attributed to light-induced ion migration processes that homogenize the local chemical distribution, which is accompanied by photobrightening of the photoluminescence within the same region. This work highlights critical links between mechanical, chemical, and optoelectronic characteristics in this family of perovskites, and demonstrates the potential of combinational imaging studies to understand and design halide perovskite films for emerging applications such as photoflexoelectricity.     

Nutritive quality of the alkaloid-poor Washington lupin (Lupinus polyphyllus lindl var SF/TA) as a potential protein crop

Abstract : An alkaloid-poor line of Washington lupin (Lupinus polyphyllus Lindl var SF/TA) was developed in an experiment started in 1982. The nutritive quality (alkaloid content, protein and amino acids, fat and fatty acids. macro- and micronutrients, fibre, sugars) yields, and seed quality of this line were studied. The results show that the total alkaloid content was low and varied in different seeds from 226 μg g^?1 to 366 μg g^?1 of dry matter. The main alkaloid was lupanine, but 16 other alkaloids (including sparteine and gramine) were also present. The var SF/TA cannot yet be used for human nutrition without processing although it would be a valuable protein crop. The results confirm that seeds which look different also vary in chemical composition.     

X-ray scattering investigations of acrylonitrileethylene oxide block copolymers

Wide angle (WAXS) and small angle (SAXS) X-ray scattering studies are reported on block copolymers of acrylonitrile with ethylene oxide. A distinct structural similarity between the copolymers and acrylonitrile homopolymer has been found. Considerable porosity of the copolymers has been shown. The porosity very largely governs the scattering power. It was found that the pores are three dimensional “particles” (scattering exponent α = 4), probably with smooth surfaces (surface fractal dimension d_s = 2).     

FIR filter optimization using bit-edge equalization in high-speed backplane data transmission

A unique bit-edge equalization (BEE) method for mitigating intersymbol interference (ISI) in high-speed backplane applications is presented. Using a least-mean-square (LMS) adaptive algorithm as a receiver (RX) error convergence engine, the proposed BEE method aims to optimize the bit-edge amplitudes by equalizing only the edges of data bits with an adjustment of the sampling points where the error information is collected. This adjustment of sampling points in turn changes the error information and affects filter coefficients for pulse amplitude modulation. As a result, the channel's far-end 3-level bit-edge eye diagrams can be optimized. This proposed BEE method employs transmitter (TX) pre-coding in conjunction with TX pre-emphasis using a symbol-spaced FIR (SSF) filter. In this work, a detailed analytical comparison of the proposed BEE transceiver architecture with the conventional NRZ bit-centre equalization (BCE) and duobinary transceiver architectures is presented. The simulation results demonstrate that at 10+ Gbps data rates, the proposed BEE is the most effective method for mitigating ISI in relatively high-loss channels.     

Features of the infrared reflection spectra of SmS semiconductor in the homogeneity range

Infrared reflection spectra in the range of 5200–380 cm^?1 were measured for polycrystalline samarium monosulfide samples in the semiconductor phase with compositions Sm_{1 + x} S lying within the homogeneity range (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.17) in the temperature range of 300–600 K. Five peaks with energies in the range of 1150–880 cm^?1, whose positions depend weakly on the composition and temperature. It was shown that the reflection peaks are associated with ⁷ F ₀–⁷ F ₂ transitions of 4f electrons of Sm²⁺ ions.     

Effects of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilisers on yield and on inorganic and organic composition of italian ryegrass grown on phosphorus-deficient soil

Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) S22, grown in a greenhouse in phosphorus-deficient soil in pots was given 40 and 160 mg N/kg of soil (as ammonium nitrate) and 5, 25 and 100 mg P/kg of soil (as calcium tetrahydrogen diorthophosphate). Giving more nitrogen increased yields only when adequate phosphorus was applied. A significant response to added phosphorus was obtained when ryegrass dry matter contained about 0.15% P or less. Nitrogen increased the amount of sugars but decreased that of fructosan. Phosphorus increased the production of both sugars and fructosan. Protein N (expressed as a percentage of total N) increased with increasing amounts of phosphorus given. The largest values for protein N were obtained when grass contained about 0.3 % P in the dry matter. In phosphorus-deficient grass nitrate-N accumulated and the predominant compounds within the free amino acid fraction were asparagine and glutamine. Adding phosphorus decreased the concentrations of both nitrate-N and the amides. The amino acid composition of the grass protein was not affected by the nitrogen and phosphorus treatments.