oxalate soluble pectin (osp) is related to fruit firmness with respect to the chelation of calcium ions with carboxyl groups of adjacent polyuronide chains. this study was carried out to explore the effect of time of fruit harvest, foliar spray with cacl2 during growing season on osp, polygalacturonase activity (pga), fruit firmness and the effects on fruit shelf life, quality and internal ...

Softening is often considered to be the main cause of first-time slides in OC clay, but so far the mechanics of softening has not been satisfactorily explained. Bearing on laboratory data and field observations about landslides in tectonized highly plastic clay shales of Italian Apennines, the paper describes a process of soil weakening that could explain some failures of natural slopes.

Cell wall changes were examined in fruit of a melting flesh peach (Prunus persica L.) allowed to ripen on the tree. Three phases to softening were noted, the first of which began prior to the completion of flesh colour change and an increase in ethylene evolution. Softening in young mature fruit, prior to ripening, was associated with a depolymerization of matrix glycans both loosely and tightl...

The charge-density-wave transition in TiSe (2), which results in a commensurate (2x2x2) superlattice at temperatures below approximately 200 K, presumably involves softening of a zone-boundary phonon mode. For the first time, this phonon-softening behavior has been examined over a wide temperature range by synchrotron x-ray thermal diffuse scattering.

Suppression of softening in the load-deflection diagram of concrete-filled tubular columns and spiral columns is proposed to serve as a design criterion helping to avoid the size effect and explosive brittle character of collapse. To this end, the recently developed ‘‘tube-squash’’ tests, in which a short concrete-filled steel tube is squashed to about a half of its original length and allowed ...

In order to investigate the physiological role of ethylene in the initiation and subsequent progression of softening, pear fruit were treated with propylene, an analogue of ethylene or 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP), a gaseous inhibitor of ethylene action at the preclimacteric or ripening stages. The propylene treatment at the pre-ripe stage stimulated ethylene production and flesh softening whil...

Passive mechanical properties of strips of rabbit detrusor smooth muscle were examined and found by cyclic loading in a calcium-free solution to display viscoelastic softening and strain-induced stress softening (strain softening). Strain softening, or the Mullins effect, is a loss of stiffness attributed to the breakage of cross-links, and appeared irreversible in detrusor even after the retur...

Strain-iocalimtion instabilities due to strain-softening which result from distributed damage such (IS cracking in heterogeneous brittle materials are analyzed. Attention is restricted to the stability problem of equilibrium states. This problem is not equivalent to bifurcation of the equilibrium path. which may occur before stability of Lquilibrium is lost. The continuum is local but is enhunc...

AIMS Previous studies using isolated strips of human detrusor muscle identified adjustable preload tension, a novel mechanism that acutely regulates detrusor wall tension. The purpose of this investigation was to develop a method to identify a correlate measure of adjustable preload tension during urodynamics. METHODS Patients reporting urgency most or all of the time based on ICIq-OAB survey...