Climacteric Nature of the Carambola (A verrhoa carambola L.) Fruit.

The carambola (Averrhoa carambola L.) is determined to be a non-climacteric type fruit. The characteristic upsurge of carbon dioxide exhibited by climacteric fruits during the ripening process was not evident in carambola fruits of differing maturity. The ethrel treated fruit showed no sudden sharp increase in carbon-dioxide nor an ethylene peak

Biochemical Changes, Use of Polyethylene Bags, and Chilling Injury of Carambola (Averrhoa carambola L.) Stored at Various Temperatures

The effects of storage temperature and the use of polyethylene film on chilling injury and biochemical changes in carambola (Averrhoa carambola L.) fruits were studied. The pH, total soluble solid changes were not significantly different in ripe and unripe fruits stored at 5°, 10°, 15° and 20°C. No starch was detected in either ripe or unripe fruits, and no significant changes occurred in the total sugar content. Unripe fruits pacted in sealed perforated and nonperforated polyethylene bags stored at 20° C those in perforated bags or the control after 1 and 3 weeks in storage. Chilling injury of unripe carambola fruits, less than 25% full yellow in colour, occurred after 5 weeks in storage. The degree of injury was slight but became more severe as storage time lengthened. The ribs of the fruits turned black and dark brown patches appeared on the surface of the skin. Unripe fruits having less than 25% yellow colour on the skin surface suffered chilling injury after 5 weeks storage at 5° C. The severity increased with storage time. The physiological disorder appeared as dark green brown patches on the skin, shrivelled and darkened ribs, and failure of the fruits to turn yellow when transferred to 20° C. INTRODUCTION An important chemical composition of a fruit that determines its sweetness at maturity is the amount of sugar present. Chan and Heu (1975) identified the major sugars in carambola as fructose, glucose, and sucrose. Pratt lFood Technology Division, MARDI, Serdang, Selangor. 39 et al. (1977) foun

The role of cross-listing, foreign ownership and state ownership in dividend policy in an emerging market

AbstractIn this paper, we investigate if dividend policy is influenced by ownership type. Within the dividend literature, dividends have a signaling role regarding agency costs, such that dividends may diminish insider conflicts (reduce free cash flow) or may be used to extract cash from firms (tunneling effect) – which could be predominant in emerging markets. We expect firms with foreign ownership and those that are listed in overseas markets to have different dividend policies and practices than those that are not, and firms with more state ownership and less individual ownership to be more likely to pay cash dividends and less likely to pay stock dividends. Using firms from an emerging economy (China), we examine whether these effects exist in corporate dividend policy and practice. We find that both foreign ownership and cross-listing have significant negative effects on cash dividends, consistent with the signaling effect and the notion of reduced tunneling activities for firms with the ability to raise capital from outside of China. Consistent with the tunneling effect, we find that firms with higher state ownership tend to pay higher cash dividends and lower stock dividends, while the opposite is true for public (individual) ownership. Further analysis shows that foreign ownership mediates the effect of state ownership on dividend policy. Our results have significant implications for researchers, investors, policy makers and regulators in emerging markets

Spillover Effects of Emotional Labor in Customer Service Encounters toward Coworker Harming: A Resource Depletion Perspective

This research examines how the implications of emotional labor can transfer from customer encounters to coworker interactions using temporally lagged data from a sample of frontline service employees. The results show that surface acting in customer service encounters is positively, and deep acting is negatively, related to ego depletion. Employees’ ego depletion, in turn, is positively associated with their interpersonally harmful behavior toward coworkers. Hence, ego depletion appears as a mediating variable that translates the implications of distinct emotional labor strategies into coworker harming. Moreover, emotion regulation self-efficacy moderates the role of surface acting. The positive indirect relationship between surface acting and coworker harming, via ego depletion, is buffered among employees with higher emotion regulation self-efficacy. These findings shed new light on the complex and far-reaching consequences of emotional labor. We demonstrate the relevance of emotional labor to third parties not directly involved in customer service encounters and highlight important mediators and boundary conditions of these indirect relations

Class D amplifier power stage with PWM feedback loop

This paper presents a Second-Order Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) feedback loop to improve Power Supply Rejection (PSR) of any open-loop PWM Class-D amplifiers (CDAs). PSR of the audio amplifier has always been a key parameter in mobile phone applications. In contrast to Class AB amplifiers, the poor PSR performance has always been the major drawback for CDAs with half-bridge connected power stage. The proposed PWM feedback loop is fabricated using GLOBALFOUNDRIES' (GF’s) 0.18 µm CMOS process technology. The measured PSR is more than 80 dB and the measured Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) is less than 0.04% with a 1 kHz input sinusoidal test tone

Can Collaborative Knowledge Building Promote Both Scientific Processes and Science Achievement?

This study investigated the role of collective knowledge building in promoting scientific inquiry and achievements among Hong Kong high-school chemistry students. The participants included 34 Grade 10 (15-16 years old) students who engaged in collective inquiry and progressive discourse, using Knowledge Forum@, a computer-supported learning environment. A comparison class of 35 students also participated in the study. The instructional design, premised on knowledge-building principles including epistemic agency, improvable ideas and community knowledge, consisted of several components: developing a collaborative classroom culture, engaging in problem-centered inquiry, deepening the knowledge-building discourse, and aligning assessment with collective learning. Quantitative findings show that the students in the knowledge-building classroom outperformed the comparison students in scientific understanding with sustained effects in public examination. Analyses of knowledge-building dynamics indicate that the students showed deeper engagement and inquiry over time. Students’ collaboration and inquiry on Knowledge Forum significantly predicted their scientific understanding, over and above the effects of their prior science achievement. Qualitative analyses suggest how student’s knowledge-creation discourse, involving explanatory inquiry, constructive use of information and theory revision,can scaffold scientific understanding

Wearable and flexible thin film thermoelectric module for multi-scale energy harvesting

Developing a thermoelectric generator(TEG) with shape conformable geometry for sustaining low-thermal impedance and large temperature gradient (ΔT) is fundamental for wearable and multi-scale energy harvesting applications. Here we demonstrate a flexible architectural design, with efficient thin film thermoelectric generator as a solution for this problem. This approach not only decreases the thermal impedance but also multiplies the temperature gradient, thereby increasing the power conversion efficiency (PCE) as comparable to bulk TEG. Intact thin films of Tin telluride (p-type) and Lead Telluride (n-type) are deposited on flexible substrate through physical vapor deposition and a thermoelectric module possessing a maximum output power density of 8.4 mW/cm2 is fabricated. We have demonstrated the performance of p-SnTe/n-PbTe based TEG as a flexible wearable power source for electronic gadgets, as a thermal touch sensor for real-time switching and temperature monitoring for exoskeleton applications

Design and Development of Path Planning Techniques for a Tennis Ball Retriever Robot

During a tennis solo training, players usually train using an automatic ball launcher machine. After some time, they are required to collect all the balls scattered all around the court themselves to refill the launcher machine. This is a physically challenging procedure, which is generally loathed by keen tennis players and may cause unwelcome injuries. This study aims to design of an autonomous tennis ball retriever that will discard all the unnecessary energy and time wasting in traditional ball picking up method. This robot will sweep all the balls using a suitable path planning technique. After this, a few path planning methods such as Coverage Path Planning (CPP) U-Turn, CPP ISS, and Probabilistic Roadmap Method (PRM) were integrated into the tennis ball retriever robot for comparison. After comparison between all the experiment done, CPP U-Turn is proven the best path planning method among the three tested algorithms to be integrated into a tennis ball retriever robot

Supersymmetric solutions of PT-/non-PT-symmetric and non-Hermitian Screened Coulomb potential via Hamiltonian hierarchy inspired variational method

The supersymmetric solutions of PT-symmetric and Hermitian/non-Hermitian forms of quantum systems are obtained by solving the Schrodinger equation for the Exponential-Cosine Screened Coulomb potential. The Hamiltonian hierarchy inspired variational method is used to obtain the approximate energy eigenvalues and corresponding wave functions.Comment: 13 page