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2019

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Are Our Ideas About Octopus Life Too Anthropomorphic To Help?, Kenneth J. Aitken Jan 2019

Are Our Ideas About Octopus Life Too Anthropomorphic To Help?, Kenneth J. Aitken

Animal Sentience

Our understanding of the evolution and ontogeny of the octopus and its behavioral repertoire in its natural habitat remains rudimentary at best. There are many parallels, but also just as many differences from our models of human biology and ontogeny, making anthropocentric generalizations of limited use in explanation.

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Cephalopod Molluscs, Causal Models, And Curious Minds, Andrew W. Corcoran Jan 2019

Cephalopod Molluscs, Causal Models, And Curious Minds, Andrew W. Corcoran

Animal Sentience

Mather (2019) presents a compelling case in favour of octopus mind. Surveying an impressive array of empirical literature, she identifies the creature’s playful, inquisitive behaviour as emblematic of a distinctively mental form of agency. I offer an alternative perspective in which curiosity and play are construed as constitutive processes in the emergence of the (predictive) mind.

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Keeping Hold Of Nurse, Andrew Packard Jan 2019

Keeping Hold Of Nurse, Andrew Packard

Animal Sentience

Mather draws from a lifetime devoted to studying individual octopuses in the wild and in aquaria to combine a natural history account of their actions with an argument from design adopted from second-, often third-hand sources. The 'distributed' [decentralised] nervous system said to contrast with that of vertebrates – a premise largely accepted by Mather’s commentators so far – does not reflect the original literature on motor control, nor the facts of comparative anatomy, functional morphology and morphogenesis. Ontogeny is absent. With the help of some old or little-known illustrations from my own participant-observer experimental investigations, I will try here …

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Octopus Sentience: Three Criteria, Alix Noël-Guéry Jan 2019

Octopus Sentience: Three Criteria, Alix Noël-Guéry

Animal Sentience

The first question to ask is whether octopuses are sentient, so that, if so, they can be protected. Three consensual criteria to evaluate animal sentience can be applied to the octopus. Octopuses meet all three of them.

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Roles Of Lin28 Proteins In Cholangiocarcinoma, Nattapong Puthdee Jan 2019

Roles Of Lin28 Proteins In Cholangiocarcinoma, Nattapong Puthdee

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

LIN28 is an RNA-binding protein, a known as regulator of microRNAs biogenesis and play a role in multiple cellular functions such as stem cell maintenance, cell metabolism and implicated in oncogenesis. In cancer study, LIN28 protein is frequently expressed and associated with tumor aggressiveness and poor disease outcome. Previous studies have shown that paralog-LIN28B was upregulated in during CCA development. However, the role of LIN28B in cholangiocarcinogenesis remains largely unknown. The present study, we found LIN28B is overexpressed in CCA patients' tissues. Overexpression of LIN28B in cholangiocytes-MMNK-1 cells showed that LIN28B enhanced cell proliferation, clonogenic potential, and promoted epithelial-to mesenchymal …

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Assessment Of Hearing Loss Among Workers In A Power Plant In Thailand, Pensri Watchalayann, Laksana Laokiat Jan 2019

Assessment Of Hearing Loss Among Workers In A Power Plant In Thailand, Pensri Watchalayann, Laksana Laokiat

Applied Environmental Research

Noise exposure in the working environment is a major cause of hearing impairment for workers; an audiogram hearing threshold level above 20 dB is considered irregular. In this study, audiometric data were analyzed with the objective of assessing hearing loss among power plant workers based on their age, noise exposure level, years of working, and work characteristics. A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess hearing level data for 672 workers reserved by the Health Care Unit of the power plant. The most recent audiometric data presented during 2013-2015 were used in the statistical analysis at 5 % level of significance. …

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Flight: Reducing The Environmental Impact Of Air Travel While Incorporating Nature Within Architecture, Justin Brown Jan 2019

Flight: Reducing The Environmental Impact Of Air Travel While Incorporating Nature Within Architecture, Justin Brown

Architecture Theses

How can an airport be designed to be sustainable, highly efficient, economical and a destination for people to travel to? Often an airport is the first thing people see when traveling to a new place, and all too often the airport is overlooked in terms of serving as a destination. How could sustainable architecture help create an airport seen in the eyes of its users as a destination place? How could the airport serve as a gateway to a new destination and connect the surrounding area to the rest of the world? How could a sustainable airport facility create a …

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Synthesis And Design Of Thiophene Materials: Effects Of Ring Fusion And Metal Coordination, Kristine Louise Konkol Jan 2019

Synthesis And Design Of Thiophene Materials: Effects Of Ring Fusion And Metal Coordination, Kristine Louise Konkol

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Conjugated organic materials comprise a field of materials chemistry focused on the development of semiconducting organic plastics, popular applications of which are plastic solar cells and display technologies. One of the reasons these materials have gained so much attention is that their optical and electronic properties can be tuned through engineering at the molecular level. Thiophene, an aromatic heterocycle, is a popular building block in the synthesis of many conjugated materials, prized for both the ease in which it can be synthetically functionalized and its ability to form highly conductive and low band gap materials. The Rasmussen group has previously …

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Traffic Monitoring System Using In-Pavement Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors, Mu'ath Al-Tarawneh Jan 2019

Traffic Monitoring System Using In-Pavement Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors, Mu'ath Al-Tarawneh

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Recently, adding more lanes becomes less and less feasible, which is no longer an applicable solution for the traffic congestion problem due to the increment of vehicles. Using the existing infrastructure more efficiently with better traffic control and management is the realistic solution. An effective traffic management requires the use of monitoring technologies to extract traffic parameters that describe the characteristics of vehicles and their movement on the road. A three-dimension glass fiber-reinforced polymer packaged fiber Bragg grating sensor (3D GFRP-FBG) is introduced for the traffic monitoring system. The proposed sensor network was installed for validation at the Cold Weather …

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Exploring Chemically Treated Fiber Reinforced Pervious Concrete Through Image Based Micromechanical Modeling, Lutfur Akand Jan 2019

Exploring Chemically Treated Fiber Reinforced Pervious Concrete Through Image Based Micromechanical Modeling, Lutfur Akand

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Pervious concrete has been widely used in parking lots and airport fields. However, past experience has shown durability and strength of the pervious concrete remains a challenge for adopting them in wider applications, as the binding material proportion is low and the use of fine aggregates is nearly zero. The position, size and shape distribution of voids in the pervious concrete microstructure control the overall behavior of the material. In this research, the influence of the distribution of voids on the strength, stiffness, and permeability of pervious concrete microstructure is studied by 2D image analysis and finite element modeling through …

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Epoxidized Sucrose Soyate And Derivatives As Bioderived Crosslinkers In Various Thermosets, Samantha Danielle Silbert Jan 2019

Epoxidized Sucrose Soyate And Derivatives As Bioderived Crosslinkers In Various Thermosets, Samantha Danielle Silbert

Coatings and Polymeric Materials

Throughout the world, alternatives to petrochemically-derived materials are being sought. Aside from petrochemical feedstocks with precarious futures, materials that are derived from renewable resources such as crops are attractive. Epoxidized sucrose soyate is a material made from soybean oil and sucrose. Its rigid sucrose core, flexible aliphatic chains, and many modifiable epoxy sites make it an attractive candidate to replace petrochemically derived materials in a multitude of thermosets. This dissertation encompasses studies of ESS and its derivatives for the development of thermosets in a variety of processes. Namely, ESS-derived polycarbamates for use in ambient-curing polyurethane coatings produced via carbamate-dialdehyde crosslinking, …

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Adytrack: A Model For Structural Analysis Of Railroad Trackbed Using Random Finite Element Method, Asif Arshid Jan 2019

Adytrack: A Model For Structural Analysis Of Railroad Trackbed Using Random Finite Element Method, Asif Arshid

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Railroads are playing pivotal role to the economic growth of United States and trackbeds ensure their safe and smooth operations. However, reliable trackbed performance prediction has always been challenging due to many reasons, for instance materials characterization, deteriorations of materials and geometries due to railways operation and environmental changes etc. All these factors exhibit varying levels of intrinsic variabilities and uncertainties. These variations and uncertainties are completely ignored in most of the state-of-the-practice problems due to lack of availability of robust models that can characterize variations in materials, geometries, and/or loadings. In this study, a Random Finite Element based three-dimensional …

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Newspapers As A Form Of Settler Colonialism: An Examination Of The Dakota Access Pipeline Protest And American Indian Representation In Indigenous, State, And National News, Kay Marie Beckermann Jan 2019

Newspapers As A Form Of Settler Colonialism: An Examination Of The Dakota Access Pipeline Protest And American Indian Representation In Indigenous, State, And National News, Kay Marie Beckermann

Communication

Settler colonial history underlies much of contemporary industry, including the extraction and transportation of crude oil. It presents itself in a variety of contexts; however, this disquisition applies a traditional Marxist perspective to examine how settler colonialism is present in news media representation of American Indian activists during the Dakota Access Pipeline protest. Rather than focus on the benefit of using colonized labor for financial gain, this disquisition pushes Marxism into settler colonialism in which the goal is to eliminate the Indigenous and continue to widen the gap between social classes. This research is important for two reasons. First, the …

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Incorporating Sliding Window-Based Aggregation For Evaluating Topographic Variables In Geographic Information Systems, Rahul Gomes Jan 2019

Incorporating Sliding Window-Based Aggregation For Evaluating Topographic Variables In Geographic Information Systems, Rahul Gomes

Computer Science

The resolution of spatial data has increased over the past decade making them more accurate in depicting landform features. From using a 60m resolution Landsat imagery to resolution close to a meter provided by data from Unmanned Aerial Systems, the number of pixels per area has increased drastically. Topographic features derived from high resolution remote sensing is relevant to measuring agricultural yield. However, conventional algorithms in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) used for processing digital elevation models (DEM) have severe limitations. Typically, 3-by-3 window sizes are used for evaluating the slope, aspect and curvature. Since this window size is very small …

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Exploring Frameworks For Rapid Visualization Of Viral Proteins Common For A Given Host, Rajesh Subramaniam Jan 2019

Exploring Frameworks For Rapid Visualization Of Viral Proteins Common For A Given Host, Rajesh Subramaniam

Computer Science

Viruses are unique organisms that lack the protein machinery necessary for its propagation (like polymerase) yet possess other proteins that facilitate its propagation (like host cell anchoring proteins). This study explores seven different frameworks to assist rapid visualization of proteins that are common to viruses residing in a given host. The proposed frameworks rely only on protein sequence information. It was found that the sequence similarity-based framework with an associated profile hidden Markov model was a better tool to assist visualization of proteins common to a given host than other proposed frameworks based only on amino acid composition or other …

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Using Cyberlearning Environment To Improve Student’S Learning And Engagement In Introductory Computer Programming Courses, Mourya Reddy Narasareddy Gari Jan 2019

Using Cyberlearning Environment To Improve Student’S Learning And Engagement In Introductory Computer Programming Courses, Mourya Reddy Narasareddy Gari

Computer Science

All Computer Science majors are required to take introductory programming (CS1) as a fundamental course which has a high dropout rate. Researchers report that CS1 students lack motivation and need constant resource support. Motivated by these factors, we developed a cyberlearning environment embedded with learning engagement strategies such as Collaborative Learning, Social Interaction and Gamification. The purpose of research is to investigate the impact the cyberlearning environment had on student acquisition of programming concepts. I conducted a series of studies to empirically validate these learning engagement strategies in the context of student learning outcomes. The results of my dissertation have …

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A Smartphone-Based Pointing Technique In Cross-Device Interaction, Juechen Yang Jan 2019

A Smartphone-Based Pointing Technique In Cross-Device Interaction, Juechen Yang

Computer Science

In this paper, the author develops a novel cross-device cursor position estimation system for transferring a mobile device’s four-direction 2D movement to a cursor’s four-direction movement on a large display device; this is achieved through the use of sound-source localization and machine-learning algorithms. This system is implemented in two steps. First, the system starts the cursor’s position initialization by taking advantage of the theory of soundsource localization. Second, the system transfers the mobile device’s movement to the cursor’s movement by means of a machine-learning model. This newly developed system improves usability of cross-device applications by offering intuitive 2D move gesture …

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Multi Feature Cbir Model For Trademark Image Distinctiveness, Pratima Soni Jan 2019

Multi Feature Cbir Model For Trademark Image Distinctiveness, Pratima Soni

Computer Science

A Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system can help in detecting trademark infringement. This paper describes an improvement and extension of previous work for the existing Universal Model for a CBIR system, which only uses texture along with color to produce a reliable and capable system. To enhance the security and efficiency of the CBIR based Universal Model, the extension is a Multi Feature CBIR Model that can utilize many parameters including color, texture, and shape with the facility of choosing a suitable and flexible set of features. The supported selection techniques give priority to individual features and help increase the …

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Evaluating Sliding Window Multi-Scalar Analysis Importance On Land Use Classification From Satellite Remote Sensing Data, Dawit Mekonnen Beshah Jan 2019

Evaluating Sliding Window Multi-Scalar Analysis Importance On Land Use Classification From Satellite Remote Sensing Data, Dawit Mekonnen Beshah

Computer Science

Implications of artificial intelligence around the intersection of agricultural technology and satellite remote sensing are only beginning to emerge. One of the application areas in the agriculture sector that can leverage machine learning most immediately is land use classification of remotely sensed data. This research shows that window-based aggregates can help accomplish this task by creating extra layers of information in addition to the original satellite image. Sliding window-based aggregation allows creating these processed data layers efficiently. The results show that adding the processed layers to predictive machine learning models can boost classification accuracy.

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Design Of A Game For Cybersecurity Awareness, Jagjot Bhardwaj Jan 2019

Design Of A Game For Cybersecurity Awareness, Jagjot Bhardwaj

Computer Science

The primary objective of this paper is to use the Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy educational objectives in creating a game called Cyber Air-Strike for learning basic concepts of cybersecurity. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy is used to design the course material as it makes the learning process easy and effective. This taxonomy divides the course material into increasing levels of complexity starting from basic to advanced. A comprehensive literature was reviewed to understand the research domain and identify the gap in previous research. Cyber Air-Strike aims to target amateur computer users. They will acquire knowledge about the basic concepts of cybersecurity, the most …

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The Impacts Of Cost-Reducing Technology In The Gold And Oil Industries, Mark Alan Simonson Jan 2019

The Impacts Of Cost-Reducing Technology In The Gold And Oil Industries, Mark Alan Simonson

Agribusiness and Applied Economics

This thesis explores the question of what drives the development of cost-reducing technology. It will also explore this question in the gold and oil industries. It will integrate Paul Romer’s idea that investment in technology is an endogenous factor in the econometric testing. This matters because while a time lag may exist between investment in a commodity and one’s return on such investment, the role of changes in price and elasticity aid in driving such investment.

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Treatment Of Industrial Wastewater Derived Organic Pollutants Using Electrochemical Methods Through Optimization Of Operation Parameters., Swati Sharma Jan 2019

Treatment Of Industrial Wastewater Derived Organic Pollutants Using Electrochemical Methods Through Optimization Of Operation Parameters., Swati Sharma

Agribusiness and Biosystems Engineering

Industrial operations produce a notable amount of wastewaters with high concentration of chemical oxygen demand (COD), mostly consisting of organic carbon compounds. The treatment performance of electrochemical methods for organic removal and the effects of process parameters are the subject of this research. Three research tasks were performed. The first task was the removal of organic pollutants from three different industrial wastewaters using two different electrochemical methods; combined electrocoagulation + electrooxidation (EC+EO) and b) electrochemical peroxidation (ECP). Using only EC process was found to be significantly successful in removing suspended and colloidal pollutants and could remove more than 90% COD …

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Advanced Evapotranspiration Measurement For Crop Water Management In The Red River Valley, Ali Rashid Niaghi Jan 2019

Advanced Evapotranspiration Measurement For Crop Water Management In The Red River Valley, Ali Rashid Niaghi

Agribusiness and Biosystems Engineering

As the main component of terrestrial energy and water balance, evapotranspiration (ET) moves a large amount of water and energy in the form of latent heat flux from bare soil and vegetated surfaces into the atmosphere. Despite the development of many methods and equations through past decades, accurate ET estimation is still a challenging task, especially for the Red River Valley of the North (RRV) that has limited updated information on ET either for landscape or agricultural water management. The overall objective of first study was to evaluate the ASCE-EWRI reference ET (ETo) method by developing an accurate crop coefficient …

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Reflection: The Las Vegas Strip - Introducing Big Data Into Project Planning For User Informed Design, Evan Lecy Jan 2019

Reflection: The Las Vegas Strip - Introducing Big Data Into Project Planning For User Informed Design, Evan Lecy

Landscape Architecture Theses

Every world class city has a landmark, in Vegas it is “The Strip." Yet, this important gateway to Las Vegas venues is little more than a 10 lane downtown street controlled by stop lights. Reminiscent of 1970’s streets in downtown Atlanta, LA or Dallas. Many public review platforms such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, we8there, Foursquare, Google places, etc. have collected an increasing amount of feedback in the form of unstructured user reviews. These reviews are self-posted, volunteer created text about user experiences with products and services which differs from surveys asking targeted questions. Studies show that the Hospitality industries adoption of …

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Combined Trajectory, Propulsion, And Battery Mass Optimization For Solar-Regenerative High-Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aircraft, Nathaniel S. Gates, Kevin R. Moore, Andrew Ning, John D. Hedengren Jan 2019

Combined Trajectory, Propulsion, And Battery Mass Optimization For Solar-Regenerative High-Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aircraft, Nathaniel S. Gates, Kevin R. Moore, Andrew Ning, John D. Hedengren

Faculty Publications

Combined optimization of propulsion system design, flight trajectory planning and battery mass optimization for solar-regenerative high-altitude long endurance (SRHALE) aircraft through a sequential iterative approach yields an increase of 20.2% in the end-of-day energy available on the winter solstice at 35 deg N latitude, resulting in an increase in flight time of 2.36 hours. The optimized flight path is obtained by using nonlinear model predictive control to solve flight and energy system dynamics over a 24 hour period with a 15 second time resolution. The optimization objective is to maximize the total energy in the system while flying a station-keeping …

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Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube Films Dip-Coating By Colloidal Nanocrystals Bilayer Films, Amal Altayyar Jan 2019

Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube Films Dip-Coating By Colloidal Nanocrystals Bilayer Films, Amal Altayyar

Materials and Nanotechnology

A wrinkling approach was used to study the mechanics of hybrid nanotube/nanocrystal coatings adhering to soft polymer (PDMS) substrates. We focused on three thicknesses: 10 nm, 30 nm, and 40 nm. The approach we used is the Strain-Induced Elastic Buckling Instability for Mechanical Measurements (SIEBIFMM) technique, which allows measurement of the SWCNT film mechanics by the buckling wavelength and the film thickness by inducing a compressive stress in the films at different strains; 2%, 4%, 6%, 8%, 10%, and 12%. In this thesis, dip-coating method with colloidal nanocrystals was used to enhance the rigidity of the carbon nanotube films by …

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Non-Thermal Plasma Synthesis Of Luminescent Silicon Nanocrystals From Cylclohexasilane, Todd Andrew Pringle Jan 2019

Non-Thermal Plasma Synthesis Of Luminescent Silicon Nanocrystals From Cylclohexasilane, Todd Andrew Pringle

Materials and Nanotechnology

In this report we establish cyclohexasilane (CHS) as a reliable precursor for non-thermal plasma synthesis of high quality photoluminescent silicon nanocrystals (SiNCs). We demonstrate that this synthesis approach can produce high quality, size tunable silicon quantum dots with quantum yields exceeding 60% as synthesized (subsequent work in our group has measured over 70% quantum yield after density gradient ultracentrifugation size purification).After a brief background on non-thermal plasma synthesis, the characterization methods used in this study, and an overview of CHS, we report at length on our development of the apparatus used, and our exploration of the controllable processing parameters of …

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Causes Of Dull Brown Color In Durum And Traditional Semolina Pasta, Patricia Alejandra Cabas Lühmann Jan 2019

Causes Of Dull Brown Color In Durum And Traditional Semolina Pasta, Patricia Alejandra Cabas Lühmann

Plant Sciences

Bleaching of durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. ssp. durum [Desf.] Husn.) was evaluated by determining the effect of grain moisture content, temperature, and wet/dry cycles with bulk water and with high relative humidity on the hydration of durum wheat grain and their effect on some physical grain quality parameters. Low initial grain moisture, high temperature, and wet/dry cycles increased water gain. Scanning electron microscopy and light microscopy showed that the germ and ventral surface of grain were important for water absorption. A single exposure to moisture (bulk water or high relative humidity) seems to be enough to cause a decline …

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Using Organic Amendments To Stabilize Sand-Based Athletic Fields During Turfgrass Establishment Period, Thomas Drietz Jan 2019

Using Organic Amendments To Stabilize Sand-Based Athletic Fields During Turfgrass Establishment Period, Thomas Drietz

Plant Sciences

Athletic field rootzones are often sand-based for improved drainage. Sand-based rootzones may have stability issues if turfgrass is not fully established. Our objective was to use organic amendments to improve the stability of sand-based fields during the turfgrass establishment period and avoid overuse of inorganic materials, which have negative effects. We tested coconut coir, peat and wheat straw at 1% organic material, peat at 2% organic material, and an inorganic stabilizing fiber, StaLok, in the top 10 cm of the rootzone. Surface hardness, volumetric water content, traction, penetration resistance and visual quality were measured 2 to 4 months after construction …

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Vacuum Steam Pasteurization Of Hard Red Spring Wheat, Jane Mae Snelling Jan 2019

Vacuum Steam Pasteurization Of Hard Red Spring Wheat, Jane Mae Snelling

Plant Sciences

Vacuum steam pasteurization (VSP) is a promising technology for pasteurization of low moisture foods. Recent outbreaks traced to wheat flour, a low moisture food, have created demand in the milling industry for a process that reduces pathogens in wheat while maintaining its functional properties. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of VSP on Hard Red Spring (HRS) wheat. First, HRS wheat samples were pasteurized at 65, 70, 75, and 85°C for 4 and 8 minutes. Significant changes in dough and baked product functionality were observed in treatments ≥70°C suggesting gluten denaturation occurred. After determining that 65°C …

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