The effect of grain size on the colour characteristics of durum semolinas

Pastas made of durum flour are becoming more prevalent also in our country , no eggs are needed for their preparation. The colour of the pasta produced this way is determined essentially by the colour of the durum semolina. Also in industrial practices instrumental colour analysis is applied for the colour qualification of durum semolina. In our work we examined how the grain size influences the colour characteristics and ash content of durum wheat grindings. The correspondence between the ash content and the colour characteristics was also analysed. Durum semolina from 12 different production units were used for our measurements. The semolina were produced from the yields of 2007 and 2008. The grindings were separated into different grainsize fractions by screening. The L*. a* . b* colour coordinates defined in the CIELab colour space were applied for the colour characterization. The measurements were carried out using a Hunter Miniscan colour analyser. The data was analysed applying variance analysis and regression analysis. On the basis of the obtained results we can establish that the grain size significantly influences (p<0.05) the L* lightness the a* redness and the b* yellowness coordinate as well as the variation of the YI yellowness index. When the grain size increases, the L* lightness coordinate decreases. The difference is the biggest between the means of the 0-160 nm and the 160 (im -250 nm fractions though even in the other cases the difference is at least 1 unit. Hence the bigger grains are darker. The a* redness coordinate, the b* yellowness coordinate and the YI yellowness index increases when the grain size increases. On the average the a* coordinate increases by 0.4 unit the b'coordinate by 3-4 units while the YI yellowness index by 5 units. Thus the colour of bigger grains is slightly redder and significantly yellower. The ash content decreases with the increase of the grain size. The mean ash content varied between 0.7-1.1%. The ash content of the whole grinding is equal to that of the 315 nm -500 nm fraction. The difference between the ash content of the subsequent grain size fractions is 0.1% on the average. Also the results have shown that there's a significant linear correlation between the ash content and each colour characteristic. (p<0.01)

Climate or rural development policy?

Being heavily energy dependent, it is not much of a surprise that Europe pays special attention to reducing the use of fossil fuels. Each one of the ten new member states is characterized by relatively low per capita energy consumption and relatively low energy efficiency, and the share of renewables in their energy mix tends to be low, too. The paper examines the problem when policy measures create a decrease in environmental capital instead of an increase. In this case it hardly seems justified to talk about environmental protection. The authors describe a case of a Hungarian rapeseed oil mill which would not be of too much interest on its own but given that almost all similar plants went bankrupt, there are some important lessons to learn from its survival. The enterprise the authors examined aimed at establishing a micro-regional network. They completed a brown-field development to establish a small plant on the premises of a former large agricultural cooperative. By partnering with the former employees and suppliers of the sometime cooperative, they enjoyed some benefits which all the other green-field businesses focusing on fuel production could not. The project improved food security, energy security and population retention as well

Three-dimensional vestibular eye and head reflexes of the chameleon: characteristics of gain and phase and effects of eye position on orientation of ocular rotation axes during stimulation in yaw direction

We investigated gaze-stabilizing reflexes in the chameleon using the three-dimensional search-coil technique. Animals were rotated sinusoidally around an earth-vertical axis under head-fixed and head-free conditions, in the dark and in the light. Gain, phase and the influence of eye position on vestibulo-ocular reflex rotation axes were studied. During head-restrained stimulation in the dark, vestibulo-ocular reflex gaze gains were low (0.1-0.3) and phase lead decreased with increasing frequencies (from 100° at 0.04Hz to <30° at 1Hz). Gaze gains were larger during stimulation in the light (0.1-0.8) with a smaller phase lead (<30°) and were close to unity during the head-free conditions (around 0.6 in the dark, around 0.8 in the light) with small phase leads. These results confirm earlier findings that chameleons have a low vestibulo-ocular reflex gain during head-fixed conditions and stimulation in the dark and higher gains during head-free stimulation in the light. Vestibulo-ocular reflex eye rotation axes were roughly aligned with the head's rotation axis and did not systematically tilt when the animals were looking eccentrically, up- or downward (as predicted by Listing's Law). Therefore, vestibulo-ocular reflex responses in the chameleon follow a strategy, which optimally stabilizes the entire retinal images, a result previously found in non-human primate

Spontaneous emission of radiation by metallic electrons in the presence of electromagnetic fields of surface plasmon oscillations

The spontaneous emission of radiation of metallic electrons embedded in a high-intensity enhanced surface plasmon field is considered analytically. The electrons are described by exact dressed quantum states which contain the interaction with the plasmon field non-perturbatively. Considerable deviations from the pertubative behaviour have been found in the intensity dependence of the emitted fundamental and the second harmonic signals, even at moderate incoming laser intensities. The theoretical predictions deduced from the formalism are in good qualitative agreement with the experimental results.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figure