SMOS-NEXT: A New Concept for Soil Moisture Retrieval from Passive Interferometric Observations

This book is a collection of 19 articles which reflect the courses given at the Collège de France/Summer school “Reconstruction d'images − Applications astrophysiques“ held in Nice and Fréjus, France, from June 18 to 22, 2012. The articles presented in this volume address emerging concepts and methods that are useful in the complex process of improving our knowledge of the celestial objects, including Earth

Influence of thermal history on the structure and properties of silicate glasses

We studied a set of float glass samples prepared with different fictive temperature by previous annealing around the glass transition temperature. We compared the results to previous measurements on a series of amorphous silica samples, also prepared with different fictive temperature. We showed that the modifications on the structure at a local scale are very small, the changes of physical properties are moderate but the changes on density fluctuations at a nanometer scale are rather large: 12 and 20% in float glass and silica, for relative changes of fictive temperature equal to 13 and 25% respectively. Local order and mechanical properties of silica vary in the opposite way compared to float glass (anomalous behavior) but the density fluctuations in both glasses increase with temperature and fictive temperature

Coresidence with an Older Mother: The Adult Child\u27s Perspective

We estimate models of coresidence between adult children and their elderly unmarried mothers, using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The models include controls for women’s wages, along with other variables representing competing demands on their time. Among married couples we explicitly represent the “competition” for residential space between a child’s mother and mother-in-law. The information necessary to identify the observations of interest— respondents with a living, unmarried older mother— is missing in most cases. We address this problem using a multiple imputation strategy. The results indicate that wages, income, and parental health are related to parent-child coresidence; among married couples, wives’ mothers are more likely to coreside than are husbands’ mothers, other things being equal

Exploring non-edible parts of pineapples as fat replacers in cake formulations

Non-edible parts of many fruits, such as peel and seeds, are sources of compounds with important nutritional properties. They are also rich in fibres, which gives them the potential to be used as functional ingredients since fibres may be fat replacers in many food formulations. If these parts of fruits are properly transformed into edible forms, there will be potential reuse and recovery of food waste. In the case of pineapple, approximately 70% of the total weight of the fruit is not consumed, being rinds, core, and crown usually discarded. This work aimed to transform pineapples' non-edible parts (rinds and crowns) into powders by freeze-drying with posterior micronization. The objective was to use the powders as fat replacers in a traditional cupcake recipe and assess the texture profile of the baked cakes. Pineapples (Ananas comosus L.) rinds and crowns were removed, cut into small pieces, and freeze-dried. The dried samples were ground in a hammer mill to obtain powders/flours. They were characterized in terms of water activity, water and oil absorption capacity (WAC and OAC), proteins, and total dietary fibre content (on a dry basis, d.b.). These powders were used in a cupcake recipe (control), replacing the fat (butter) with the powders in different proportions: 25, 50, and 75%. Relevant textural parameters such as hardness, cohesiveness, chewiness, and springiness were assessed in the baked cupcakes. Water activity values of rind and crown powders were 0.36±0.02 and 0.49±0.03, respectively. Regarding functional properties, crown flours presented a considerably higher OAC (6.11±0.39 g oil/g d.b.) than the rind (2.45±0.47 g oil/g d.b.); WAC of both flours was similar, averaging 2.30±0.34 g water/g d.b. Protein content was significantly higher in the crown (8.14±0.89 g/100 g d.b.) than in the rind flours (4.43±0.38 g/100 g d.b.). Dietary fibres were mainly insoluble; the crown had 18% and the skin 37%.The texture of cupcakes with 25% of both types of flour was similar to the control. However, as the proportions of the flours increased, texture differed mainly in crown-based recipes, becoming the cakes harder with springiness and adhesiveness decay. These findings suggest that incorporating pineapple waste parts in a traditional cake recipe may serve as healthier ingredients with improved functional properties.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Recent Advances in SMAP RFI Processing

The measurements made by the Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission are affected by the presence of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) in the protected 1400-1427 MHz band. In SMAP data processing, the main protection against RFI is a sophisticated RFI detection algorithm which flags sub-samples in time and frequency that are contaminated by RFI and removes them before estimating the brightness temperature. This contribution presents two additional approaches that have been developed to address the RFI concern in SMAP. The first consists in locating sources of RFI; once located, it becomes possible to report RFI sources to spectrum management authorities, which can lead to less RFI being experienced by SMAP in the future. The second is a new RFI detection method that is based on detecting outliers in the spatial distribution of measured antenna temperatures