Synergistic effect of high-intensity ultrasound and β-cyclodextrin treatments on browning control in apple juice

This work evaluated the synergistic effects of combined high-intensity ultrasound (HIU) with β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) treatments on inhibiting browning of apple juice and explored the mechanism through simulation system. The combined treatment of 300 W HIU with 0.006 g mL⁻¹ β-CD had a synergistic impact on maintaining juice colour, resulting in a 39.06% reduction in browning degree, only a 36.64% decrease in total phenolic content, and a 17.82% reduction in PPO activity. The inhibition of enzymatic browning in simulated system revealed that HIU suppressed the enzyme (Polyphenol oxidase, PPO) and β-CD inhibited enzyme (PPO) and embedded substrate (polyphenol). The results of spectroscopic analysis showed that the particle-size distribution of PPO narrowed, the content of α-helix in the secondary structure increased, the fluorescence intensity increased, and the maximum wavelength was red-shifted after HIU and β-CD treatment. Changes in structure could further result in PPO activity loss. Hence, the combined treatment could synthetically alleviate the browning of apple juice.     

Corrosion fatigue short crack growth behaviour in a high strength steel

The influence of an aggressive environment (0.6 M, aerated NaCl solution) on short fatigue crack initiation and growth behaviour has been studied. The study involved three major test series, namely: air fatigue, corrosion fatigue, and intermittent air fatigue/corrosion fatigue. The above tests carried out under fully reversed torsional loading conditions at a frequency of 5 Hz, showed that it was the non-metallic inclusions which took part in crack initiation resulting from debonding at metal matrix/inclusion interface and pitting of inclusions in both air and corrosove environments, respectively. Short fatigue crack growth results in these two environments obtained by using plastic replication technique, indicated a large effect of microstructure i.e. prior austenite grain boundaries. The stage/stages at which the environmental contribution was dominant has been discussed by considering the results achieved from intermittent tests. However, the mechanisms involved in corrosion fatigue short crack growth have also been described in the light of results obtained from futher investigations carried out by conducting corrosion fatigue tests under applied cathodic potential conditions and tests on hydrogen pre-charged specimens under air fatigue and uniaxial tension conditions.     

Study of Lateral Spread of Ions Emitted from 2.3 kJ Plasma Focus with Hydrogen and Nitrogen Gases

The characteristics of ion beams of hydrogen and nitrogen with different filling pressures emitted from the plasma focus device of 2.3 kJ energy are investigated. CR-39 SSNTDs are employed for the registration of tracks of ions. The exposed detectors are etched in 6N NaOH solution at 70°C and then examined with an optical microscope. The ion flux is estimated to be of the order of 10^5–6 tracks/cm². The flux with the radial position does not exhibit any regular pattern of variation.     

Statistically correlated multi-task learning for autonomous driving

Neural Computing and Applications - Autonomous driving research is an emerging area in the machine learning domain. Most existing methods perform single-task learning, while multi-task learning...     

Polymer and nanobelt derived nanomaterials: opening doors to revolutionary stadia

ABSTRACT

The state-of-the-art article presents concepts of nanobelt nanofiller, inimitable properties of derived polymeric nanocomposite, applications, and outlook on challenges to gain next generation high-performance materials. Nanobelt is a one-dimensional nanostructured nanomaterial. Owing to minuscule size and high surface area, nanobelt possesses unique structural, optical, electronic, mechanical, and thermal characteristics. Nanobelt exists in various forms such as carbon nanobelt, polymer nanobelt, and inorganic. These nanobelts have been used to develop polymer/nanobelt nanocomposites. Homogeneous dispersion of nanobelt in polymer matrices is desirable to enhance the characteristics of polymer/nanobelt nanocomposite. Consequently, innovations in design, fabrication, and properties of various polymer/nanobelt nanocomposite are summarized. Applications of polymer/nanobelt nanocomposite are reviewed for Li-ion battery, supercapacitor, sensor, membrane, and biomedical arenas.     

Emulsion polymer derived nanocomposite: a review on design and tailored attributes

ABSTRACT

Recently, fabrication of polymeric nanocomposite via emulsion polymerization process has become a research spotlight. This review highlights the capability of emulsion polymerization technique to produce polymeric nanocomposite with tailored nanostructures, advanced properties, and high performance. Initially, overview on emulsion polymerization is presented. Afterward, advances in nanocomposites through the use of nanoparticles in emulsion polymerization have been elaborated. Main focus is given on the influence of graphene, carbon nanotube, carbon black, nanoclay, and inorganic nanoparticles on the essential features of emulsion polymerized nanocomposite. These materials have wide-ranging applications in coatings, adhesives, foaming/anti-foaming agents, packaging, paper/textiles, construction, and drug delivery fields.     

Eco-friendly electronics,based on nanocomposites of biopolyester reinforced with carbon nanotubes: a review

ABSTRACT

Fabrication of electronic materials from nanocomposite of biopolyesters reinforced with carbon nanotubes can be regarded as the effective alternative for conventional nanocomposites consisting of non-biodegradable polymers. Commercial availability of biopolyester-based nanocomposites is limited because of their high cost compared to other polymers, but the factor of their compostable nature is worthless for environmental protection. Such nanocomposites have potential applications in biodegradable sensors, EMI materials, etc. In this review, the current progress of biopolyester/CNTs nanocomposites in the field of biodegradable electronics is reviewed and also the impact of CNTs dispersion on electrical, thermal and mechanical properties of eco composites is stipulated.     

An efficient and noise resistive selective image encryption scheme for gray images based on chaotic maps and DNA complementary rules

A novel image encryption algorithm in streaming mode is proposed which exhaustively employs an entire set of DNA complementary rules alongwith one dimensional chaotic maps. The proposed algorithm is highly efficient due to encrypting the subset of digital image which contains 92.125 % of information. DNA addition operation is carried out on this MSB part. The core idea of the proposed scheme is to scramble the whole image by means of piecewise linear chaotic map (PWLCM) followed by decomposition of image into most significant bits (MSB) and least significant bits (LSB). The logistic sequence is XORed with the decoded MSB and LSB parts separately and finally these two parts are combined to get the ciphered image. The parameters for PWLCM, logistic map and selection of different DNA rules for encoding and decoding of both parts of an image are derived from 128-bit MD5 hash of the plain image. Simulated experimental results in terms of quantitative and qualitative ways prove the encryption quality. Efficiency and robustness against different noises make the proposed cipher a good candidate for real time applications.     

Carbon nano onion as versatile contender in polymer compositing and advance application

This review focuses on an inimitable multilayer fullerene material commonly referred as carbon nano onion (CNO). Among carbon nanomaterials, CNO is the least studied form. CNO has unique 0-D structure, small diameter of <10 nm, high electrical conductivity, fine dispersibility, and other superior structural and physical features. Different preparation and functionalization routes have been used for this unique nanocarbon structure. The article summarizes essential available categories of polymer/CNO composite such as polyaniline/CNO, polypyrrole/CNO, polythiophene/CNO, poly(?-caprolactone)/CNO, polystyrene/CNO, poly(diallyldimethyl-ammonium chloride)/CNO, and polyenediyne/CNO. Moreover, significant technical application of CNO-based materials has been discussed in supercapacitor, solar cell, Li-ion battery, dielectric, and biomedical materials.     

Correction on link relative based approach to CUSUM chart

Link relative-based approach was used in an article (see reference 1) to enhance the performance of the cumulative sum (CUSUM) control chart. This technique involves the use of firstly, the link relative variable to convert the process observations in a relative to the mean form and secondly, optimal constants to define a new variable which is used as the plotting statistic of the link relative CUSUM chart. In this article, it is proven through simulation study that the optimal constants with fixed values, as reported in the aforementioned article, give different results. Instead, if the regression technique is used, then the same results will be obtained.