Properties of ligno‐cellulosic bilayered vegetable fabric from ridge gourd

The two layers of bilayered vegetable fabric from ridge gourd were analyzed by FTIR, chemical, X‐ray, and thermogravimetric methods before and after alkali treatment. The morphology of the fabrics in the two layers, before and after alkali treatment, was also studied using SEM technique. The FTIR and chemical analyses indicated lowering of lignin and hemicellulose content by alkali treatment in the fabric of both layers. Further, the X‐ray diffraction revealed increase in crystallinity of the fabric by alkali treatment. The thermal stability of the fabric was also found to increase by alkali treatment. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 102: 2338–2342, 2006     

Preprocessing of Low-Quality Handwritten Documents Using Markov Random Fields

This paper presents a statistical approach to the preprocessing of degraded handwritten forms including the steps of binarization and form line removal. The degraded image is modeled by a Markov Random Field (MRF) where the hidden-layer prior probability is learned from a training set of high-quality binarized images and the observation probability density is learned on-the-fly from the gray-level histogram of the input image. We have modified the MRF model to drop the preprinted ruling lines from the image. We use the patch-based topology of the MRF and Belief Propagation (BP) for efficiency in processing. To further improve the processing speed, we prune unlikely solutions from the search space while solving the MRF. Experimental results show higher accuracy on two data sets of degraded handwritten images than previously used methods.     

重复雷击和操作冲击时单相GIB的金属微粒运动形态(英文)

Transient over voltages due to lightning and switching surges cause steep build-up of voltage on transmission lines and other electrical apparatus,like circuit breakers,transformers,insulators etc.Therefore it is necessary for the GIS also to withstand such voltages without breakdown of Insulation.The system has to be tested under these conditions.Usually the GIS system operates on power frequency.Lightning Impulse Voltage of 1050 kV and Switching Impulse Voltage of 750 kV superimposed on Power frequency voltages of 75 kV,100 kV and 132 kV are applied to Single Phase Gas Insulated Busduct and the maximum movement of Aluminum,Copper and Silver particles is determined.The movement patterns are also determined with and without Monte Carlo Simulation for movement of particle in axial and radial directions.The results show that there is a sudden jump in the movement at the application of impulse on sine wave.This is because of high magnitude voltage of 1050 kV during 1.2/50 μs.Similar movement patterns of reduced maximum movement is observed for Switching Impulse superimposed on sine wave.The results are presented and analyzed.     

RILEM recommendation MDT. D.1—Indirect determination of the surface strength of unweathered hydraulic cement mortar by the drill energy method

RILEM RecommendationsRILEM TC 177-MDT: ‘Masonry Durability and on-site Testing’

RILEM recommendation MDT. D.1—Indirect determination of the surface strength of unweathered hydraulic cement mortar by the drill energy method     

Enhanced magneto-optical effects in magnetoplasmonic crystals

Plasmonics allows light to be localized on length scales much shorter than its wavelength, which makes it possible to integrate photonics and electronics on the nanoscale. Magneto-optical materials are appealing for applications in plasmonics because they open up the possibility of using external magnetic fields in plasmonic devices. Here, we fabricate a new magneto-optical material, a magnetoplasmonic crystal, that consists of a nanostructured noble-metal film on top of a ferromagnetic dielectric, and we demonstrate an enhanced Kerr effect with this material. Such magnetoplasmonic crystals could have applications in telecommunications, magnetic field sensing and all-optical magnetic data storage.     

Creating hypo-/nonallergenic wheat products using processing methods: Fact or fiction?

Wheat allergy is a potentiallylife-threatening disease that affects millions of people around the world. Food processing has been shown to influence the allergenicity of wheat and other major foods. However, a comprehensive review evaluating whether or not food processing can be used to develop hypo-/nonallergenic wheat products is unavailable. There were three objectives for this study: (1) to critically evaluate the evidence on the effect of fermentation, thermal processing, and enzyme or acid hydrolysis on wheat allergenicity so as to identify the potential for and challenges of using these methods to produce hypo-/nonallergenic wheat products; (2) to identify the molecular effects of food processing needed to create such products; and (3) to map the concept questions for future research and development to produce hypo-/nonallergenic wheat products. We performed literature research using PubMed and Google Scholar databases with various combinations of keywords to generate the data to accomplish these objectives. We found that: (1) food processing significantly modulates wheat allergenicity; while some methods can reduce or even abolish the allergenicity, others can create mega allergens; and (2) fermentation and enzymatic hydrolysis hold the most potential to create novel hypo-/nonallergenic wheat products; however, preclinical validation and human clinical trials are currently lacking. We also identify five specific research concepts to advance the research to enable the creation of hypo-/nonallergenic wheat products for application in food, medical, and cosmetic industries.     

An architecture for handwritten text recognition systems

This paper presents an end-to-end system for reading handwritten page images. Five functional modules included in the system are introduced in this paper: (i) pre-processing, which concerns introducing an image representation for easy manipulation of large page images and image handling procedures using the image representation; (ii) line separation, concerning text line detection and extracting images of lines of text from a page image; (iii) word segmentation, which concerns locating word gaps and isolating words from a line of text image obtained efficiently and in an intelligent manner; (iv) word recognition, concerning handwritten word recognition algorithms; and (v) linguistic post-pro- cessing, which concerns the use of linguistic constraints to intelligently parse and recognize text. Key ideas employed in each functional module, which have been developed for dealing with the diversity of handwriting in its various aspects with a goal of system reliability and robustness, are described in this paper. Preliminary experiments show promising results in terms of speed and accuracy. Received October 30, 1998 / Revised January 15, 1999     

The influence of thermal barrier coating on an LHR engine fueled by soybean biodiesel blended with various additive spectrums: Performance,combustion, and emission analysis

The novelty of this research work deals with green synthesized nanoadditives (5% of graphene, carbon nanotubes, and carbon black), oxygenated additives (5% of n-butanol, n-heptane, and n-pentanol), and then the test fuels are prepared by blending of 20% of soybean biodiesel and 70%, 80%, and 100% of premium diesel. The experimental outcomes revealed that the Nickel Chromium Aluminum (NiCrAl-120 micron), partially stabilized zirconia, and titanium dioxide ceramic composites at about 400 microns achieve the thermal barrier coat of low heat rejection (LHR) engine parts by the air-plasma spray method. Compared with Blend B, green synthesized carbon black (5%), premium diesel (70%), and n-pentanol (5%) mixed soybean biodiesel (20%) fuel (Blend E) tested on the LHR engine achieved 4.90% higher brake thermal efficiency and 25.31% lower brake-specific fuel consumption at peak load owing to the presence of an oxygenated agent (n-pentanol) in the fuel blend, which minimizes carbon deposition. The carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon, NO_x, and smoke emissions were reduced by 25.58%, 29.41%, 5.06%, and 7.75% when compared to Blend B at peak load. Then, the in-cylinder pressure and heat release rate were found to be 4.52% and 8.87% higher for Blend E at peak load compared to Blend B. This was because the mix of oxygenated additive and carbon black bio-based nanofuels made the combustion process go faster. These fuel blends were tested on LHR diesel engines at various load conditions.