Influence of the chestnuts drying temperature on the rheological properties of their doughs

Chestnut flour doughs were prepared using chestnut air-dried at 45, 65, and 85 °C with constant load density (8.0 ± 0.6 kg/m²). Mixing curves of doughs using Mixolab^® device showed that chestnut flour doughs dried at 85 °C needed more water absorption to reach the target consistency, (1.1 ± 0.07 Nm). Thermorheological properties were evaluated by means of a controlled stress rheometer. All tested doughs showed shear-thinning behaviour in the steady-shear tests (0.001–1 s^?1). Oscillatory (1–100 rad s^?1 at 0.1% strain), temperature sweep (30–90 °C) and creep-recovery (loading 50 Pa for 60 s) tests showed that flour doughs from chestnuts dried at 85 °C provide interesting properties, particularly remarkable elasticity that is associated with starch gelatinisation. Experimental data were described using various rheological models.     

LIBS based spectroscopic analysis and antidiabetic evaluation of a polyherbal formulation

Although plants have long been a major source of medicine, there is renewed interest in studying the phytochemistry and use of herbal formulations. This paper reports spectroscopic analysis using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) of a polyherbal formulation, whose antidiabetic activity has also been demonstrated on rat models. LIBS analysis revealed the presence of elements such as Na, K, Mg, Ca, H, O and N. The antidiabetic study showed that amongst the four doses studied (50, 100, 150 and 200 mg/kg bw), the dose of 150 mg/kg bw registered the maximum fall in Blood Glucose Level (BGL) in both normal and diabetic (sub and mild) rats in the Glucose Tolerance Test (GTT) study—normal rats (22 %), sub-diabetic (36.6 %) and mild-diabetic (39 %). The dose of 150 mg/kg also showed the maximum fall of 23.7 % and 22 % in BGL during fasting BGL and GTT studies of normal rats, respectively. The formulation also showed significant antioxidant activity assessed using in vitro assays. The study validates for the first time the therapeutic use of an antidiabetic polyherbal formulation.     

Axial mixing in a 15 cm diameter reciprocating plate bubble column

Axial dispersion coefficients (E) in the liquid phase have been measured by unsteady tracer response methods in a 15 cm internal diameter reciprocating plate bubble column, using air and water in countercurrent and cocurrent flow. The operating variables studied were amplitude (0.6–1.27 cm) and frequency (0–5 Hz) of reciprocation, and the superficial velocities of the liquid and gas phases and the spacing between plates. Three types of plate were studied; conventional Karr-type plates with perforation diameters 1.43 cm, plates with smaller (0.635 cm) perforations, and single-perforation (doughnut) plates with internal diameter 7 cm. Measured values of E ranged from about 1 cm²/s to a maximum of 116 cm²/s. In general, the plates with 0.635 cm perforations gave the smallest values of E while the largest values of E were obtained with the doughnut plates, due to vortex ring shedding. The single liquid phase data for the three types of plate were approximately consistent with the correlation of Stevens and Baird (1990). The gas-liquid flow results were interpreted in terms of several different hydrodynamic effects.     

Integrating Collaborative and Reclusive Methods for Effective Recommendations: A Fuzzy Bayesian Approach

Collaborative filtering (CF), the most successful and widely used technique, recommends items based on the preferences of similar users. The main potentials of CF are its cross‐genre recommendation ability, and that it is completely independent of representation of the items being recommended. However, CF suffers from sparsity and cold start problems. On the other hand, a highly effective variant of content‐based filtering (CBF), reclusive methods (RMs) based on the preference of the single individual for whom recommendations to be made, provides a methodology that considers uncertainty and the multivalued nature of item features as well as user preferences in a content‐based framework using fuzzy logic approaches. The adoption of RM paradigm has several advantages when compared to CF such as sparsity and new item problem, but it suffers from overspecialization and limited content analysis. In view of the complementary nature of CF and RM, we develop a hybrid recommender system (RS) that helps in alleviating aforementioned problems in each approach. First, we propose fuzzy naïve Bayesian classifier based CF (FNB‐CF) and RM (FNB‐RM) for handling correlation‐based similarity problems. To overcome individual weaknesses of FNB‐CF and FNB‐RM, we develop a hybrid RS, FNB‐CF‐RM. Effectiveness of our proposed hybrid RS is demonstrated through experimental results using the MovieLens and IMDb data sets.     

Study of uranium sorption using D2EHPA‐impregnated polymeric beads

The extractant‐impregnated polymeric beads (EIPBs), containing Di(2‐ethylhexyl) phosphonic acid (D2EHPA) as an extractant and polyethersulfone as base polymer, were prepared by phase‐inversion method. These beads were characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis to gain insight into the composition and morphology of beads. The beads exhibited good acid stability as no significant structural deformation or leaching out of the extractant was observed in 6M HNO₃ solution, up to the studied equilibration time of 15 days. The synthesized EIPBs were evaluated, for their ability to absorb uranium from aqueous solution, at different concentration and pH values. The kinetics measurement showed that about 90 min of equilibration time was enough to remove saturation amount of uranium from the solution. Kinetic modeling analysis of the extraction results was carried out using pseudo‐first‐order, pseudo‐second‐order, and intraparticle diffusion equations and the corresponding rate constants were determined. The equilibrium data were fitted into different isotherm models and were found to be represented well by the Freundlich isotherm equation. Reusability of the beads was also established by multiple sorption–desorption experiments. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 130: 3355–3364, 2013     

Production of hydrogen through the coupling of dehydrogenation and hydrogenation for the synthesis of cyclohexanone and furfuryl alcohol over different promoters supported on Cu-MgO catalysts

Cu-MgO is found to be an efficient catalyst for the coupling reaction of furfural (FAL) hydrogenation and cyclohexanol (CyOH) dehydrogenation. This process is not only efficient in compensating the thermodynamic equilibrium constraints in the cyclohexanol dehydrogenation and improving the yields towards cyclohexanone but also is a economical route for the synthesis of furfuryl alcohol (FFA) and cyclohexanone (Cyone) as the process do not need any external pumping of hydrogen. The effect of incorporation of various promoters viz., Co, Zn, Fe, Cr, Pd and Ni in Cu-MgO over its activity towards this coupling reaction has been studied. Incorporation of Cr in Cu-MgO catalyst is found be an advantageous in enhancing the yields of both FFA and Cyone. All other promoters though found to show higher activity for the individual reactions of FAL hydrogenation and CyOH dehydrogenation, failed to do the same in their coupling reaction. The stabilization of active species (Cu⁺/Cu⁰) by Cr which also seem to increase the synergetic interaction between Cu and MgO as observed from higher dispersion of copper (from XRD results) and easier reducibility of copper oxide (from TPR results) seem to be the factors behind its higher activity over other promoted catalysts.     

Atomic layer deposition of HfO2 thin films and nanolayered HfO2–Al2O3–Nb2O5 dielectrics

Smooth, 4–6-nm thick hafnium oxide films were grown by atomic layer deposition from HfI₄ or HfCl₄ and H₂O on SiO₂/Si(1 0 0) substrates at 300 °C. Non-uniform films were obtained on hydrogen-terminated Si(1 0 0). The stoichiometry of the films corresponded to that of HfO₂. The films contained small amounts of residual chlorine and iodine. The films deposited on SiO₂/Si(1 0 0) were amorphous, but crystallized upon annealing at 1000 °C. In order to decrease the conductivity, the HfO₂ films were mixed with Al₂O₃, and to increase the capacitance, the films were mixed with Nb₂O₅. The capacitance–voltage curves of the Hf–Al–O mixture films showed hysteresis. The capacitance–voltage curves of HfO₂ films and mixtures of Hf–Al–Nb–O were hysteresis free.     

Robust ego-motion estimation and 3-D model refinement using surface parallax.

We present an iterative algorithm for robustly estimating the ego-motion and refining and updating a coarse depth map using parametric surface parallax models and brightness derivatives extracted from an image pair. Given a coarse depth map acquired by a range-finder or extracted from a digital elevation map (DEM), ego-motion is estimated by combining a global ego-motion constraint and a local brightness constancy constraint. Using the estimated camera motion and the available depth estimate, motion of the three-dimensional (3-D) points is compensated. We utilize the fact that the resulting surface parallax field is an epipolar field, and knowing its direction from the previous motion estimates, estimate its magnitude and use it to refine the depth map estimate. The parallax magnitude is estimated using a constant parallax model (CPM) which assumes a smooth parallax field and a depth based parallax model (DBPM), which models the parallax magnitude using the given depth map. We obtain confidence measures for determining the accuracy of the estimated depth values which are used to remove regions with potentially incorrect depth estimates for robustly estimating ego-motion in subsequent iterations. Experimental results using both synthetic and real data (both indoor and outdoor sequences) illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

Crash reductions related to traffic signal removal in Philadelphia

The effect on intersection crashes of converting one-way street intersections in Philadelphia from signal to multiway stop sign control was estimated. Using crash and traffic volume data for a comparison group, regression models were computed to represent the normal crash experience of signal controlled intersections of one-way streets, by impact type, as a function of traffic volume. An empirical Bayesian procedure was used to estimate what would have been the expected number of crashes at the converted intersections had they not been converted. The empirical Bayesian estimates were compared with actual counts of crashes after conversion. Estimates were obtained for different classes of crashes categorized by impact type, day/night condition, and impact severity. Aggregate results indicate that replacing signals by multiway stop signs on one-way streets is associated with a reduction in crashes of approximately 24%, combining all severities, light conditions, and impact types.