The influence of storing high moisture-content rough rice on milling quality

The objective of this research was to determine the influence on drying characteristics of storing high-moisture content (MC) rough rice under various conditions and durations before drying. Two cultivars of rice, \u27Bengal\u27, a medium-grain cultivar, and \u27Cypress\u27, a long-grain cultivar, were used. The MC of \u27Bengal\u27 was 24.8%1 and that of \u27Cypress\u27 was 20.4% at harvest. Immediately after harvest, drying runs were performed with samples of both cultivars under two drying air conditions: one at 51.7°C (125°F) and 25% relative humidity (RH), and the other at 60°C (140°F) and 17% RH. Storage treatments using the high MC rice were also initiated immediately after harvest. Both cultivars of rough rice were stored for one month (i.e., 27 d) and three months (i.e., 76 d) in either a walkin freezer at –9°C (15°F), a household refrigerator at 3.5°C (38.3°F) or a walk-in cooler at 4°C (38.5°F). After one month and three months of storage, all samples were dried under the same two drying air conditions as at harvest. The head rice yield (HRY) was determined for all the dried samples. There were no differences in the HRYs of samples that were stored for one or three months and then dried and in those HRYs of samples dried immediately after harvest; this finding was consistent across the three storage temperatures for both cultivars. The trends in HRY reduction were similar to previously reported drying trials using these drying air conditions. This research indicates that it is possible to store rough rice at high MCs for up to three months under storage temperatures varying from –9°C to 4°C without affecting HRY

The effect of a cardiovascular risk factor education program on health behaviors of selected school age children

This study, using a quasi-experimental design, was conducted to explore the effect of a cardiovascular risk factor education program on the health behaviors of a group of fifth grade children. The following hypothesis was tested: There will be a statistically significant improvement in self-reported health behaviors of school age children who receive a cardiovascular risk factor education program as compared to the self-reported health behaviors of those school age children who do not receive a cardiovascular risk factor education program. One hundred and nineteen subjects, 63 in the experimental group and 56 in the control group, were tested using the researcher\u27s designed health behavior questionnaire, My Health Behaviors , before and after participation in the health education program. The program provided for the experimental group consisted of eight 45 minute sessions. The introductory and summary sessions were primarily concerned with administration of the pretest and post-test and sessions two through seven were informative sessions about high fat, high cholesterol diet, smoking and sedentary lifestyle. The program provided for the control group consisted of four 45 minute sessions; session one was concerned with introductory material and administration of the pre-test, sessions two and three were informative sessions related to general nutrition and foods high in salt and sugar, and session four was devoted to review of content as well as administration of the post—test. Data were statistically analyzed using the paired-sample student\u27s t-test. Results of the analysis revealed a significant difference between the two sample groups at p\u3c0.01 level. The hypothesis was accepted

Smoking Behaviors and Abstinence in Low-Income Pregnant Women

Background: Despite efforts to educate individuals about the hazards of smoking, pregnant women continue to smoke. In the literature, there is less evidence about successful abstinence strategies for low-income women. The purpose of this pilot study was to assess smoking behaviors and factors that support smoking abstinence in low-income pregnant women. Methods: Using a longitudinal design, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from pregnant women at a low-income community prenatal clinic. Based on the Transtheoretical model, all subjects received information about the harmful effects of smoking and secondhand exposure, while current smokers were given a “quit kit” and contacted up to one year post-delivery to evaluate smoking behaviors. Results: All subjects (N = 135) ranged in age from 18 to 41; 75% were not married; 78% had household incomes \u3c $30,000; and the majority were African American (40%). Fifty-five (40.7%) never smoked while 77(57%) had a smoking history, of these 18(23%) were spontaneous quitters. Data indicated that 36% reported smoking during pregnancy, with the majority in pre-contemplation. After one year, 18% of current smokers quit. Conclusions: Without a specific plan, the majority were unable to successfully abstain. Rate of abstinence may have been further influenced because subjects began smoking at an early age and were unsuccessful at previous quit attempts. Providers must continue to educate pregnant women but also evaluate strategies that require few provider visits, are cost effective, focus on relapse prevention, and can successfully influence smoking abstinence in low-income pregnant women

Gyrokinetic Studies of Microinstabilities in the RFP

An analytic equilibrium, the Toroidal Bessel Function Model, is used in conjunction with the gyrokinetic code GYRO to investigate the nature of microinstabilities in a reversed field pinch (RFP) plasma. The effect of the normalized electron plasma pressure ({\beta}) on the characteristics of the microinstabilities is studied. A transition between an ion temperature gradient (ITG) driven mode and a microtearing mode as the dominant instability is found to occur at a {\beta} value of approximately 4.5%. Suppression of the ITG mode occurs as in the tokamak, through coupling to shear Alfven waves, with a critical {\beta} for stability higher than its tokamak equivalent due to a shorter parallel connection length. There is a steep dependence of the microtearing growth rate on temperature gradient suggesting high profile stiffness. There is evidence for a collisionless microtearing mode. The properties of this mode are investigated, and it is found that curvature drift plays an important role in the instability.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Physics of Plasma

Making Laplacians commute

In this paper, we construct multimodal spectral geometry by finding a pair of closest commuting operators (CCO) to a given pair of Laplacians. The CCOs are jointly diagonalizable and hence have the same eigenbasis. Our construction naturally extends classical data analysis tools based on spectral geometry, such as diffusion maps and spectral clustering. We provide several synthetic and real examples of applications in dimensionality reduction, shape analysis, and clustering, demonstrating that our method better captures the inherent structure of multi-modal data