Search results for "Reliability and Quality"
showing 10 items of 386 documents
The effectiveness of Opuntia ficus-indica mucilage edible coating on postharvest maintenance of ‘Dottato’ fig (Ficus carica L.) fruit
2017
Abstract Breba figs are highly perishable and their shelf-life is very short. In this study, breba figs (cv. ‘Dottato’) were treated with a mucilage solution of Opuntia ficus-indica cladodes, sealed in plastic bags, and stored at 4 °C for 14 days. The effect of the edible coating on the shelf-life and qualitative attributes of the fruit were evaluated by colors, content of total soluble solids, titratable acidity, total phenol, total carotenoids. Results showed that coating improves the quality of breba fig during storage. The edible coating was effective in maintaining fruit fresh weight, visual score values, fruit firmness and total carotenoid content. Coated fruit showed a significantly …
Effect of refrigerated storage on microbiological, chemical and sensory characteristics of a ewes’ raw milk stretched cheese
2017
This study aimed to describe the effects of refrigerated storage up to 180 days on microbiological, chemical, physical, and sensory characteristics of a PDO ewes’ raw milk stretched cheese. To this aim, a total of 224 cheeses were manufactured in four consecutive production weeks, and series of 32 of them were examined before packaging and after 15, 30, 60, 90, 120, and 180 d of storage at 4 ± 2 °C in the dark, respectively. Lactic acid bacteria cocci displayed the highest levels (7.8 Log CFU*g−1) during early storage and decreased progressively over time (7.4 Log CFU*g−1), while the opposite trend was observed for lactic acid bacteria rods (from 6.5 to 7.3 Log CFU*g−1). TMC and enterocci s…
Surface, mechanical and barrier properties of bio-based composite films based on chitosan and whey protein
2014
Mono-component and composite bilayer and blend films composed of chitosan and whey protein were made. Colour, microstructure, water contact angles, swelling, water vapour sorption, barrier properties (oxygen, water vapour), water vapour diffusion coefficients and mechanical properties were determined. The influence of water vapour on barrier properties was studied in relation to the surface and structural properties. Mono-component and bilayer films were transparent with a homogeneous surface. Contrarily, blend films were translucent. Bilayer films had significantly lower water vapour permeability in comparison to mono-component and blend films. In all bilayer films, the air side (chitosan)…
Mechanical and barrier properties of extruded film made from sodium and calcium caseinates
2014
Abstract Over the past few years, much interest has been placed into the investigation of increased barrier and mechanical properties of protein films via a multitude of approaches. Generally, these techniques involve modifications of interactions among protein molecules, such as ionic crosslinking using divalent ions. To evaluate the crosslinking effect of Ca 2+ cations, films were made from calcium caseinate (CaCAS) and/or sodium caseinate (NaCAS). The production of caseinate thin films was carried out in two steps: first thermoplastic pellets were made using a co-rotating twin-screw extruder, then they were transformed into thin films (60 μm) using a classical film blowing machine. Tensi…
Attendibilità dei modelli per la valutazione dei moduli elastici delle murature suggeriti dalle norme tecniche
2012
In this paper the results of an experimental investigation aimed to the assessment of Young moduli, rigidity moduli and other mechanical properties for different types of masonry are shown. The mechanical characteristics predicted by models proposed by some technical codes were compared against experimental data. This study was motivated by the suggestion of the Masonry Standards Joint Committee's (MSJC) code that, while proposing the use of such models, acknowledges the lack of testing in support of their validation. The experimental investigation has included compressive tests on components (blocks and mortar), diagonal compressive tests and ordinary compressive tests (orthogonally to bed…
Measurement uncertainty impact on simplified load flow analysis in MV smart grids
2018
This work is focused on the measurement uncertainty impact on load flow analysis in medium voltage (MV) distribution networks. In more detail, the paper presents the uncertainty evaluation of a simplified load flow algorithm, which is based on the load power measurements at each secondary substation and one voltage measurement at the slack bus (i.e. the voltage at the MV bus bars of the primary substation). To reduce the costs of the monitoring system, the load flow algorithm makes use of LV load power measurements for all the substations except those of MV users, where MV transducers are usually already installed. The uncertainties on the algorithm input quantities (load powers and slack b…
On the use of adaptive spatial weight matrices from disease mapping multivariate analyses
2020
Conditional autoregressive distributions are commonly used to model spatial dependence between nearby geographic units in disease mapping studies. These distributions induce spatial dependence by means of a spatial weights matrix that quantifies the strength of dependence between any two neighboring spatial units. The most common procedure for defining that spatial weights matrix is using an adjacency criterion. In that case, all pairs of spatial units with adjacent borders are given the same weight (typically 1) and the remaining non-adjacent units are assigned a weight of 0. However, assuming all spatial neighbors in a model to be equally influential could be possibly a too rigid or inapp…
Probabilistic Flood Hazard Mapping Using Bivariate Analysis Based on Copulas
2017
This study presents a methodology to extract probabilistic flood hazard maps in an area subject to flood risk, taking into account uncertainties in the definition of design hydrographs. Particularly, the authors present a new method to produce probabilistic inundation and flood hazard maps in which the hydrological input (i.e., synthetic flood design event) to a 2D hydraulic model has been obtained by using a bivariate statistical analysis (copulas) to generate flood peak discharges and volumes. This study also aims to quantify the contribution of boundary conditions’ uncertainty in order to evaluate the effect of this uncertainty source on probabilistic flood hazard mapping. Different comb…
Experimental determination of the kurtosis of RF noise in microwave low-noise devices
2000
Abstract The degree of the Gaussian nature of the white noise present in microwave low-noise devices is experimentally investigated. The chosen experimental technique consists of simultaneously digitizing four versions of the noise which are amplified by four parallel independent amplifiers. The four independent signals are then used to compute the second, and, to a good approximation, the fourth moment of the noise. The ratio of the fourth moment to the square of the second moment is the kurtosis of the noise. Gaussian processes are characterized by a kurtosis equal to 3. A deviation from this value gives an indication about the degree of non-Gaussian nature of the noise. By using this tec…
Skewness and kurtosis of 1/f noise in semiconductor devices
2000
An experimental investigation of the third and fourth moments of the 1/f noise of two different electronic devices is reported. The skewness and the kurtosis of the noise voltage data are estimated. Although the devices under investigation have similar noise power spectral density, the time waveforms are shown to have slightly different statistical properties. In both cases, a small deviation from Gaussian distribution is observed.