Real-time monitoring of apples (Malus domestica var. Gala) during hot-air drying using NIR spectroscopy

Among commercial fruits, apple shows a growing trend to its worldwide consumption, where dried apple plays a major part in food industry as raw material to produce snacks, integral breakfast foods, chips, etc., which have become popular in the diet of modern consumers in parallel with the human consumption of organic products. Despite apple tissue exhibits extensive and non-homogeneous discoloration during drying, it is nowadays often dried by conventional methods which, however, are usually uncontrolled and then prone to product quality deterioration. However, because no all conventional drying treatments are allowed by the European Organic Regulation (i.e. EC No. 834/2007 and EC No. 889/2008), drying of organic apples should be carefully optimized to obtain comparable results to conventional methods. Therefore, the main objective of the proposed study was to investigate the feasibility of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy as smart drying technology to proactively and non-destructively detect and monitor quality change in organic apple wedges during hot-air drying

Mantenimento della qualità organolettica in alcuni ortofrutticoli tipici della regione Lazio minimamente processati

The research has the aim of enhancing the storability of some lightly processed foods typical of Lazio Region. The vegetables involved in this research are: artichoke, fennel, zucchini squash and chicory. Results shown reveal the importance of using first quality raw material, low temperature (5°C) through the entire process, and chlorinated water (100 ppm). In addition to this, a packaging using a low permeability plastic film, controlled atmosphere and a storage temperature of 4°C are crucial to slow down tissue browning, to reduce water loss and to maintain the organoleptic quality requested by the consumer.L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore http://www.soihs.it

Feasibility of computer vision as Process Analytical Technology tool for the drying of organic apple slices

Quality of a product and sustainability of its production depend on the cumulative impacts of each processing step in the food chain and their interplay. Various research studies evidenced that many drying systems operate inefficiently in terms of drying time, energy demand (e.g. fossil fuels), raw material utilisation and resulting product quality. Moreover, not all conventional drying processes are allowed in the organic sector (Reg. EC 834/2007; Reg. EC 889/2008). In recent years, non-invasive monitoring and control systems have shown a great potential for improvement of the quality of the resulting products. Thus, there is a need for smart processes which allow for simultaneous multi factorial control to guarantee high-value end products, enhance energy and resource efficiency by using innovative and reliable microcontrollers, sensors and embracing various R&D areas (e.g. computer vision, deep learning, etc.). The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of computer vision (CV) as a tool in development of smart drying technologies to non-destructively forecast changes in moisture content of apple slices during drying. Usage of computer vision (CV) as Process Analytical Technology in drying of apple slices was tested. Samples were subjected to various anti-browning treatments at sub- and atmospheric pressures, and dried at 60°C up to a moisture content on dry basis (MCdb) of 0.18 g/g. CV-based prediction models of changes in moisture content on wet basis (MCwb) were developed and promising results were obtained (R2P > 0.99, RMSEP = 0.011÷0.058 and BIASP < 0.06 in absolute value), regardless of the anti-browning treatment. The proposed methodology lays the foundations for a scale-up smart-drying system based on CV and automation

Acoustic-counterflow microfluidics by surface acoustic waves

In this letter, we demonstrate an unexpected surface-acoustic-wave (SAW)-driven pumping effect in hydrophobic polydimethilsiloxane (PDMS)-lithium niobate (LiNbO3) microchannels. Atomization within the fluidic channel followed by SAW-assisted coalescence leads to liquid counterflow with respect to the SAW propagation direction. This physical mechanism is contrasted with the acoustic-streaming process driving isolated drop displacement on piezoelectric substrates. This principle is shown not to be readily applicable to the present microchannel case. The proposed device geometry can be exploited to integrate micropumps into complex microfluidic chips, improving the portability of micro-total-analysis systems

Surface-acoustic-wave counterflow micropumps for on-chip liquid motion control in two-dimensional microchannel arrays.

Fully controlled liquid injection and flow in hydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) two-dimensional microchannel arrays based on on-chip integrated, low-voltage-driven micropumps are demonstrated. Our architecture exploits the surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) induced counterflow mechanism and the effect of nebulization anisotropies at crossing areas owing to lateral propagating SAWs. We show that by selectively exciting single or multiple SAWs, fluids can be drawn from their reservoirs and moved towards selected positions of a microchannel grid. Splitting of the main liquid flow is also demonstrated by exploiting multiple SAW beams. As a demonstrator, we show simultaneous filling of two orthogonal microchannels. The present results show that SAW micropumps are good candidates for truly integrated on-chip fluidic networks allowing liquid control in arbitrarily shaped two-dimensional microchannel arrays

From gridmap-file to VOMS: managing authorization in a Grid environment

Grids are potentially composed of several thousands of users from different institutions sharing their computing resources (or using resources provided by third parties). Controlling access to these resources is a difficult problem, as it depends on the policies of the organizations the users belong to and of the resource owners. Moreover, a simple authorization implementation, based on a direct user registration on the resources, is not applicable to a large scale environment. In this paper, we describe the solution to this problem developed in the framework of the European DataGrid [M. Draoli, G. Mascari, R. Piccinelli, Project Presentation, DataGrid-11-NOT-0103-_1] and DataTAG [http://www.datatag.org/] projects: the Virtual Organization Membership Service (VOMS) [R. Alfieri, et al., Managing Dynamic User Communities in a Grid of Autonomous Resources, TUBT005, in: Proceedings of the CHEP 2003, 2003]. VOMS allows a fine grained control of the use of the resources both to the users' organizations and to the resource owners

Effect of Substrates and Thermal Treatments on Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition-Grown Sb2Te3 Thin Films

Antimony telluride (Sb2Te3) thin films were obtained by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The films were grown on crystalline Si(100) and Al2O3(0001) and amorphous SiO2 and alpha-Al2O3 substrates. Their structural properties were compared with those of the Sb2Te3/Si(111) heterostructure. In addition to the effect of the substrate, the influence of pre- and post-growth thermal annealing is also presented. The quality of the films is discussed by comparing their morphological properties, such as roughness and granularity, and ascertaining their crystallinity and their in-plane and out-of-plane orientation