Wood shrinks during drying with the departure of bond water. Along the fibre direction, the magnitude of this shrinkage is mainly governed by the orientation of cellulose microfibrils (MF) in the cell wall. However, tension wood has an unexpectedly high longitudinal shrinkage considering the fact that MFs are oriented nearly parallel to the cell direction. This effect is thought to be due to th...

BACKGROUND During the bread-making process, industrial baker's yeast, mostly Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is exposed to baking-associated stresses, such as air-drying and freeze-thaw stress. These baking-associated stresses exert severe injury to yeast cells, mainly due to the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), leading to cell death and reduced fermentation ability. Thus, there is a grea...

The propagation of fractures during the drying of a colloidal silica suspension confined in a vertical microtube is investigated. During the drying process, the particle concentration increases until gel formation. In the gelled region, the tensile stresses increase and lead to the formation of two vertical perpendicular cracks propagating in the drying direction, dividing the tube into four eq...

Upon drying, colloidal suspensions undergo a phase transformation from a "liquid" to a "gel" state. With further solvent evaporation, tensile stresses develop in the gel, which ultimately leads to fractures. These generally manifest themselves in regular cracking patterns which reflect the physical conditions of the drying process. Here we show experimentally and theoretically how, in the case ...

Turkish hazel (Corylus colurna) lumber with a nominal thickness of 5 cm from the Kastamonu region, Turkey, was dried through conventional kiln drying using two different programs, a nonprotective drying schedule and a protective drying schedule. The goal of the study was to obtain a kiln schedule that would maintain wood quality and also save drying time until a final moisture content of 8 ± 2%...

We investigated crack propagation in the drying process of a thin layer of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) paste experimentally. Cracks are induced by uniform desiccation from the top surface of a layer at the approximately same water content for various drying conditions. We found that the crack speed is a nonlinear increasing function of the drying rate at the cracking time although the tensile str...

Probiotics are ‘live microorganisms which, when administrated in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host’ (FAO/WHO, 2001). This requirement, i.e. that the probiotic bacteria must be in viable form at the time of consumption, poses a number of technical challenges from food processing perspectives. Environmental stresses encountered during food processing include acid exposure duri...