admission. This proportion could already be greater in some parts of the country and may increase if referrals of cases of self-poisoning increase faster than the facilities for their assessment and management. The provision of social work and psychiatric expertise in casualty departments may be one means of preventing unnecessary medical admissions without risk to the patients. Dr Blake's and Dr Bramble's figures do not demonstrate, however, that any advantage would attach to medical teams taking over assessment from psychiatrists except that, by implication, assessments would be completed sooner by staff working on the ward full time. What the figures actually suggest is that if assessment of overdoses were left to house doctors there would be an increase in admissions to psychiatric units (by 19°U), outpatients (by 5O°'), and referrals to social services (by 140o). So for house doctors to assess overdoses would provide no economy for the psychiatric or social services. The study does not tell us what the consequences would have been for the six patients who the psychiatrists would have admitted but to whom the house doctors would have offered outpatient appointments. E J SALTER

Vitamin D deficiency.

Impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita Le cause e le responsabilita dei cambiamenti climatici sono state trattate sul numero di ottobre della rivista Cda. Approfondiamo l’argomento presentando il documento: “Cambiamenti climatici 2007: impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita” votato ad aprile 2007 dal secondo gruppo di lavoro del Comitato Intergovernativo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Si tratta del secondo di tre documenti che compongono il quarto rapporto sui cambiamenti climatici.

/pdf/climate-change-2007-impacts-adaptation-and-vulnerability-31xc1cf4d3.pdf

Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

Renewable technologies are considered as clean sources of energy and optimal use of these resources minimize environmental impacts, produce minimum secondary wastes and are sustainable based on current and future economic and social societal needs. Sun is the source of all energies. The primary forms of solar energy are heat and light. Sunlight and heat are transformed and absorbed by the environment in a multitude of ways. Some of these transformations result in renewable energy flows such as biomass and wind energy. Renewable energy technologies provide an excellent opportunity for mitigation of greenhouse gas emission and reducing global warming through substituting conventional energy sources. In this article a review has been done on scope of CO2 mitigation through solar cooker, water heater, dryer, biofuel, improved cookstoves and by hydrogen.

https://www.beren.sakarya.edu.tr/sites/beren.sakarya.edu.tr/file/1380752545-07-RenewEn.pdf.pdf

Role of renewable energy sources in environmental protection: A review

The science and technology of ultracapacitors are reviewed for a number of electrode materials, including carbon, mixed metal oxides, and conducting polymers. More work has been done using microporous carbons than with the other materials and most of the commercially available devices use carbon electrodes and an organic electrolytes. The energy density of these devices is 3¯5 Wh/kg with a power density of 300¯500 W/kg for high efficiency (90¯95%) charge/discharges. Projections of future developments using carbon indicate that energy densities of 10 Wh/kg or higher are likely with power densities of 1¯2 kW/kg. A key problem in the fabrication of these advanced devices is the bonding of the thin electrodes to a current collector such the contact resistance is less than 0.1 cm2. Special attention is given in the paper to comparing the power density characteristics of ultracapacitors and batteries. The comparisons should be made at the same charge/discharge efficiency.

Ultracapacitors: Why, How, and Where is the Technology

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) constitute a class of flexible nonlinear models designed to mimic biological neural systems. In this entry, we introduce ANN using familiar econometric terminology and provide an overview of ANN modeling approach and its implementation methods. † Correspondence: Chung-Ming Kuan, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Road, Sec. 2, Taipei 115, Taiwan; ckuan@econ.sinica.edu.tw. †† I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the editor, Professor Steven Durlauf, for his patience and constructive comments on early drafts of this entry. I also thank Shih-Hsun Hsu and Yu-Lieh Huang for very helpful suggestions. The remaining errors are all mine.

Artificial neural networks

Abstract This comprehensive study examined the effects of two infrared drying modes: intermediate-wave infrared drying (IWD) and catalytic infrared drying (CID), on drying kinetics and various quality parameters of pineapple rings at 60–80 °C. Hot-air drying (HAD) was the control drying operation. CID showed the highest drying rates and coefficients of moisture diffusivity (3.05 × 10−8 m2/s to 5.12 × 10−8 m2/s), resulting in drying times (1.88–3.15 h) that were about half that of HAD (3.57–7.25 h) and 10–34% less than that of IWD (2.08–4.75 h). Compared to IWD, CID exhibited minor color changes and a stronger flavor profile and enzyme inactivation potential. However, it resulted in a hardened product surface, thus reducing the rehydration ability. Overall, CID exhibited higher bioactive retention rates, especially at 60 °C (56–87%), followed by IWD at 70 °C (50–80%) and 80 °C (35–90%). Based on the results of this study, CID produces superior quality dried pineapples in a significantly shorter drying time, which is of potential industrial interest.

Comparative study of intermediate-wave and catalytic infrared drying on the kinetics and physicochemical properties of pineapple rings

Intensification of heat and mass transfer in drying of food products

Due to the fast pace of life around the globe and the increasing demand for high-quality convenience foods by consumers, instant foods have attracted widespread attention. By adjusting the process ...

Innovative applications of freeze-drying to produce compound formula instant foods: A review

Abstract The effects of microwave heating patterns were investigated for the case of batch fluidized bed drying by solving numerically a coupled heat and mass transfer model. Three patterns, uniform, sinusoidal and rectangular waves, were examined with the average electric field strength kept constant at 1000 V / m . Properties of apple were used to represent porous materials. The results show that the magnitude and distribution of the moisture, temperature and pressure within a particle can be significantly affected. More importantly, the drying time and microwave energy consumption change with the pattern of how microwave heating is applied. Particularly, intermittent heating with a rectangular wave pattern has the most microwave energy consumption but the shortest drying time. For a particle size of 5 mm , airflow rate of 2 m / s and temperature of 60°C, the bed area factor fA of 100, the drying time is, respectively, 1600, 2000, 2400 s for rectangular, sinusoidal, and constant microwave heating. The values of microwave energy consumed for the three cases are, respectively, 2145, 1980, and 1560 kJ / kg water evaporated.

Theoretical Study of Microwave Heating Patterns on Batch Fluidized Bed Drying of Porous Material

Pressure drop measurements and results of an extensive flow visualization study to examine the particle-free air gap formation around horizontal, rigidly-mounted circular cylinders in a two dimensional vibrated bed, are presented. Effects of particle size and surface stickiness as well as other key operating parameters viz. aeration rate and vibrational frequency were examined for single as well as multiple cylinder configurations in staggered and in-line arrangements.



On presente des mesures de pertes de charge et les resultats d'une vaste etude de visualisation d'ecoulement, pour examiner la formation d'un espace d'air, libre de particules, autour de cylindres circulaires horizontaux, montes d'une maniere rigide dans un lit vibre a deux dimensions, On a examine les effets des dimensions des particules et d'une surface collante ainsi que d'autres parametres-cles du fonctionnement tels que la vitesse d'aeration et la frequence vibrationnelle, pour des configurations a un ou plusieurs cylindres alignes ou echelonnes.

Arun S. Mujumdar

Papers

Comparative study of intermediate-wave and catalytic infrared drying on the kinetics and physicochemical properties of pineapple rings

Intensification of heat and mass transfer in drying of food products

Innovative applications of freeze-drying to produce compound formula instant foods: A review

Theoretical Study of Microwave Heating Patterns on Batch Fluidized Bed Drying of Porous Material

Flow patterns for cylinders immersed in an aerated vibrated bed