Mango pulp is very perishable and so has a short shelf life, which both marketers and consumers would like to be longer. Manually sliced mango was treated by coating opuntia mucilage-rosemary oil (Mu + RO), 2 g rosemary oil microencapsul (ROM), and 2 g (ROM) plus (Mu + RO); the treated mango pieces were placed in plastic trays, and overwrapped with PVDC film and then stored at 6°C. Changes in t...

We have developed a technique for fabricating microfluidic devices from gelatin using a natural crosslinking process. Gelatin, crosslinked with the naturally occurring enzyme transglutaminase is molded to produce microchannels suitable for adherent cell culture and analysis. The autofluorescence of the material was shown to be minimal and within the range of typical background, ensuring utility...

We present a full-polymer respiratory monitoring device suited for application in environments with strong magnetic fields (e.g., during an MRI measurement). The sensor is based on the well-known evanescent field method and consists of a 1 mm plastic optical fiber with a bent region where the cladding is removed and the fiber is coated with poly-dimethylacrylamide (PDMAA). The combination of ma...

The paper describes a novel method of drilling into hard non-conductive materials by localized microwave energy (US patent 6,114,676). The Microwave Drill implementation may utilize a conventional 2.45GHz magnetron, to form a portable and relatively simple drilling tool. The drilling head consists of a coaxial guide and a near-field concentrator. The latter focuses the microwave radiation into ...

In this paper, a thermal infrared spectrometer based on the ‘THz Torch’ concept is reported and used to characterize both paper and plastic banknotes. The spectrometer consists of a thermal infrared emitter with near-ideal blackbody radiation characteristics and a low-noise pyroelectric detector. A filter bank with 16 narrow band-pass optical coating filters is selected to define a coarse set o...

Due to their low cost, flexibility, and convenience for long distance data transfer, plastic scintillating fibers (PSFs) have been increasingly used in building detectors or sensors for detecting various radiations and imaging. In this work, the possibility of using PSF coupled with charge-coupled devices (CCD) to build area detectors for X-ray imaging is studied using a Monte Carlo simulation....

Abstract: There is an ongoing drive to transform rigid, glass-based flat-panel devices (e.g., displays, solar cells, organic LEDs) into flexible devices on plastic substrates in order to improve flexibility, reduce weight, and reduce cost. The high cost, brittleness and slow coating process (<0.01 m/s) of the standard transparent conducting material, indium tin oxide (ITO), is limiting realizat...

Application of terahertz (THz) electromagnetic waves offers several opportunities for quality inspection in various industries. The THz waves penetrate many kinds of materials such as pharmaceutical coating, paper, plastic, ceramic, cardboard, wood, clothing, etc. We investigated possibilities of applying a THz imaging system in transmission geometry using the organic DSTMS crystals as a THz ge...

High-rate squeezing process of bulk metallic glasses from a cylinder into an intact sheet achieved by impact loading is investigated. Such a large deformation is caused by plastic flow, accompanied with geometrical confinement, shear banding/slipping, thermo softening, melting and joining. Temperature rise during the high-rate squeezing process makes a main effect. The inherent mechanisms are i...

PURPOSE We aim to fabricate a thermoplastic poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) Lab-on-a-Chip device to perform continuous- flow polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) for rapid molecular detection of foodborne pathogen bacteria. METHODS A miniaturized plastic device was fabricated by utilizing PMMA substrates mediated by poly(dimethylsiloxane) interfacial coating, enabling bonding under mild conditio...