The effect of thermal treatment on spruce is examined by analyzing the fracture and hygroscopic properties. Specimens were heated at temperatures within the range 120-200 °C for 1 h. Fracture energy was measured using a single-edge notched bending test and the strain-softening index was estimated by dividing the fracture energy by the maximum load. Adsorption properties were estimated using ads...

To investigate the role of ethylene in peach fruit softening during ripening, stony hard peach fruit, in which ethylene production is suppressed during ripening, were treated with various concentrations of ethylene. There was no noticeable decrease in flesh firmness without ethylene treatment, while applied ethylene, in the range 0.1-100 microl l(-1), resulted in fruit softening. Furthermore, t...

The aged-rejuvenation-glue-liquid (ARGL) shear band model has been proposed for metallic glasses (Acta Mater. 54 (2006) 4293), based on small-scale molecular dynamics simulations up to 20,000 atoms and thermomechanical analysis. The model predicts the existence of a critical lengthscale 10 nm, above which melting could occur in shear-alienated glass. Large-scale molecular dynamics simulations w...

sNN = 200 GeV within Landau’s hydrodynamical model. From the measured data on the widths of the pion rapidity spectra, we extract the sound velocity c2s in the early stage of the reactions. It is found that the sound velocity has a local minimum (indicating a softest point in the equation of state, EoS) at Ebeam = 30A GeV. This softening of the EoS is compatible with the assumption of the forma...

We study the photonic band structure of cubic crystals of point dipoles. It is shown that in contrast to earlier claims these systems cannot have an omnidirectional photonic band gap. For sufficiently large plasma frequencies, however, they exhibit softening of photonic bands, leading to (anti)ferroelectric ordering of the dipoles and the possibility to open and tune directional band gaps by ex...

Softening is a characteristic of fruit ripening caused by oxidative action. The oxidized degree of membrane lipids and proteins in relation to production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) of postharvest banana fruit during softening were investigated. Firmness as an indictor of softening of banana fruit was also measured. Banana fruit firmness decreased markedly after 4 days of storage, which in...

The role of polygalacturonase (PG) in the development, ripening, and softening of fruit from two strawberry cultivars with different flesh firmness and softening characteristics was compared. Changes in PG activity and gene expression during development, ripening and softening were measured. The PG genes from each cultivar were cloned and analyzed, and were classified with other PG genes using ...

Scale-up of mixing operations continues to present a concern to the pharmaceutical development process. There liable scaling of a process requires an understanding of the effects that processing parameters may illicit on intermediateand finished-product properties. V-blenders, tote blenders, and double-cone blenders are examples of batch blenders that vary in geometric design .For these systems...