The effect of rice bran on physicochemical,textural and glycaemic properties of ready-to-eat extruded corn snacks

In this work, corn extruded snack products were enriched with rice bran (RB) at 10% and 15%. A co-rotating twin-screw extruder was used with a feed moisture content of 16 g 100 g⁻¹, a screw speed of 240 r.p.m. and four heating sections of the barrel (100, 140, 150 and 150 °C). The impact of RB inclusion on nutritional profile, starch digestion, physicochemical and textural properties of snack products was evaluated. RB-enriched extrudates showed a lower specific volume and hardness and higher crispness than control. RB at 15% gave a water-holding capacity lower than control. Rheology of extrudate dispersions indicated an increase in elastic interactions and solid-like behaviour with RB supplementation. Differences in rheological properties resulted in attenuation of predictive glycaemic response for RB-enriched snacks.     

Novel pearl millet couscous process for West African markets using a low-cost single-screw extruder

Traditional West African pearl millet couscous products are popular; however, their preparation is laborious, time-consuming and energy-demanding, involving agglomeration, steaming, drying and sieving steps. In this study, a process was developed to produce millet couscous using a high pressure, high temperature and low-cost single-screw extruder. The innovation was to directly process the cooked low-moisture extrudate to a couscous product by drying and milling to the appropriate particle size (ranging between 1 and 2 mm). Throughput for the traditional process as prepared for commercial sale is 50 kg per day, but with the same amount of labour, the extrusion process yields ~350 kg per day. A consumer sensory study held in Niamey (Niger) showed that the extruded millet couscous was comparable to traditional couscous, though this was dependent on selection of the proper millet variety. This novel extrusion process could stimulate small- to medium-scale manufacturing of couscous and couscous-type products in West Africa.     

定距螺旋桨对船用主机外特性的要求分析

为解决定距螺旋桨与船用主机在船舶运行工况的机桨匹配问题,结合船舶系泊和航行试验的相关标准,分析和归纳船舶运行数据,将实船测试与船机桨匹配理论计算相结合,得出运输船和拖轮在常用工况及特殊工况下定距螺旋桨对主机外特性的定量要求,为配套不同细分市场时船用主机的优化和开发提供参考依据。     

A review on ultrasonic spot welding of copper alloys

As a solid state joining process, ultrasonic spot welding has been proven to be a promising technique for joining copper alloys. However, challenges still remain in employing ultrasonic spot welding to join copper alloys. This article comprehensively reviews the current state of ultrasonic spot welding of copper alloys with a number of critical issues including materials flow, plastic deformation, temperature distribution, vibration, relative motion, vertical displacement, interface friction coefficient, online monitoring technique, coupled with the macrostructure and microstructure, the mechanical properties and electrical conductivity. In addition, the future trends in this field are provided.     

Application of higher order spectral features and support vector machines for bearing faults classification

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of rolling element bearings timely and accurately are very important to ensure the reliability of rotating machinery. This paper presents a novel pattern classification approach for bearings diagnostics, which combines the higher order spectra analysis features and support vector machine classifier. The use of non-linear features motivated by the higher order spectra has been reported to be a promising approach to analyze the non-linear and non-Gaussian characteristics of the mechanical vibration signals. The vibration bi-spectrum (third order spectrum) patterns are extracted as the feature vectors presenting different bearing faults. The extracted bi-spectrum features are subjected to principal component analysis for dimensionality reduction. These principal components were fed to support vector machine to distinguish four kinds of bearing faults covering different levels of severity for each fault type, which were measured in the experimental test bench running under different working conditions. In order to find the optimal parameters for the multi-class support vector machine model, a grid-search method in combination with 10-fold cross-validation has been used. Based on the correct classification of bearing patterns in the test set, in each fold the performance measures are computed. The average of these performance measures is computed to report the overall performance of the support vector machine classifier. In addition, in fault detection problems, the performance of a detection algorithm usually depends on the trade-off between robustness and sensitivity. The sensitivity and robustness of the proposed method are explored by running a series of experiments. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve made the results more convincing. The results indicated that the proposed method can reliably identify different fault patterns of rolling element bearings based on vibration signals.     

Research on phase shift characteristics of electromagnetic wave in plasma

The phase shift characteristics reflect the state change of electromagnetic wave in plasma sheath and can be used to reveal deeply the action mechanism between electromagnetic wave and plasma sheath. In this paper, the phase shift characteristics of electromagnetic wave propagation in plasma were investigated. Firstly, the impact factors of phase shift including electron density,collision frequency and incident frequency were discussed. Then, the plasma with different electron density distribution profiles were employed to investigate the influence on the phase shift characteristics. In a real case, the plasma sheath around the hypersonic vehicle will affect and even break down the communication. Based on the hypersonic vehicle model, we studied the electromagnetic wave phase shift under different flight altitude, speed, and attack angle. The results indicate that the phase shift is inversely proportional to the flight altitude and positively proportional to the flight speed and attack angle. Our work provides a theoretical guidance for the further research of phase shift characteristics and parameters inversion in plasma.     

Screening of frozen-thawed conditions for keeping nutritive compositions and physicochemical characteristics of goat milk

Frozen milk can help producers overcome the seasonality of goat milk production, low goat production and short lactation periods, and avoid discarding milk during some special periods. We investigated effects of combination between freezing (cryogenic refrigerator of ?16 to ?20°C or ultra-cryogenic refrigerator of ?76 to ?80°C) and thawing (homeothermy of 20 to 25°C or refrigeration of 2 to 4°C) on nutritive compositions and physicochemical characteristics of raw goat milk during storage period (80 d). Compared with fresh goat milk, the frozen-thawed milk decreased contents of fat, protein, and lactose, as well as surface tension and stability coefficient, whereas increased effective diameter and polydispersity index. The average values of color values (L*, a*, and b*) in 4 group samples changed from 83.01 to 82.25, ?1.40 to ?1.54, 3.51 to 3.81, respectively, and the ΔE of most samples did not exceed 2. In contrast to the other 3 frozen-thawed treatments, goat milk treated with ultra-cryogenic freezing-homeothermic thawing (UFHT) possessed higher fat (5.20 g/100 g), smaller effective particle diameter (0.32 µm), and the lowest polydispersity index value (0.26). The color and confocal laser scanning microscopy images of UFHT were similar to those of fresh goat milk, illustrating UFHT was the optimal approach to maintain the natural quality of goat milk. Our finding provides a theoretical basis for producers to freeze surplus milk.     

四川盆地高石梯-磨溪地区下二叠统气源示踪

以天然气、烃源岩及储层沥青的地球化学特征为主要依据,通过天然气-天然气、储层沥青-烃源岩、天然气-烃源岩3个方面对比,深入探讨四川盆地高石梯-磨溪地区下二叠统天然气来源。研究表明,四川盆地高石梯-磨溪地区下二叠统天然气主要来源于筇竹寺组泥岩。其5项证据分别为:下二叠统天然气乙烷碳同位素小于-30.5‰,甲、乙烷碳同位素倒转是由高演化程度烃源岩所致;多数下二叠统天然气与龙王庙组天然气特征最为相似;GS18,NC1井下二叠统天然气特征与寒武系相似,说明上下层气源一致;高石梯-磨溪地区下二叠统储层沥青地球化学特征与筇竹寺组泥岩最为相似;筇竹寺组泥岩主要为下二叠统供气,这一认识符合干酪根油气生成理论和同位素分馏规律。     

新设备技术在催化裂化装置上的应用

文章介绍了近年来在催化裂化装置上应用的新设备、新技术,如BY型旋风分离器、BSX型旋分式三级旋风分离器、上下拱型三级旋风分离器、下拱型三级旋风分离器、SHS“自蔓延”技术、SWY外取热器、BWJ型喷嘴、自流浇注料、Actehem高耐磨衬里、弓形钢丝纤维、侧拉环锚固钉、分体可拆人孔等的结构特点及实际应用情况。