Product Improvement Research Articles

Effect of sodium bicarbonate on the physicochemical properties of fermented rice flour and quality characteristics of fermented semi-dried rice noodles.

Considering the effect that fermentation can improve the quality of rice noodles, and given that fermented rice noodles usually have a significantly acidic taste that is not generally acceptable to consumers, this study aimed to neutralize or eliminate the acidic taste of fermented rice noodles by adding sodium bicarbonate, and improve the quality of fermented rice noodles. The physicochemical properties of fermented rice flour and quality characteristics of fermented semi-dried rice noodles were investigated in this study in relation to the addition of sodium bicarbonate (0∼0.5%, w/w). With the increase of sodium bicarbonate addition, the pH value was increased, and lipid and protein content were decreased in rice flour. Meanwhile, thermal properties and farinograph properties showed that the pasting temperature, dough water absorption, dough development time and dough stability time of rice flour increased with the addition of sodium bicarbonate. Pasting properties and rheological properties results showed that a small amount of sodium bicarbonate (0∼0.1%) could increase the pasting viscosity, storage modulus (G'), and loss modulus (G″) of rice flour. Additionally, the hardness and chewiness of semi-dried rice noodles increased with the addition of sodium bicarbonate from 0 to 0.1%. With the addition of a small amount of sodium bicarbonate (0∼0.1%), x-ray diffraction showed that it could increase the crystallinity of semi-dried rice noodles. Low-field nuclear magnetic resonance showed that A21 increased, and A22 and A23 decreased in semi-dried rice noodles. Scanning electron microscope showed that it could enhance the starch-protein interaction and starch-protein formed an ordered and stable network structure. Finally, the principal component analysis showed that the chewiness, texture and eating quality of semi-dried rice noodles were the best with the addition of sodium bicarbonate at 0.1%. This study provides practical value for the application of alkali treatment in rice products and provides a reference for the improvement of related rice noodles products.

Evaluation of Precipitation Estimates from Remote Sensing and Artificial Neural Network Based Products (PERSIANN) Family in an Arid Region

Accurate and continuous rainfall monitoring is essential for effective water resources management, especially in arid and semi-arid regions such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Significant spatio-temporal precipitation variation in the UAE necessitates the use of the latest techniques to measure rainfall intensity accurately. This study investigates the consistency and applicability of four satellite precipitation products, namely PERSIANN, PERSIANN-CCS, PERSIANN-CDR, and PDIR-Now, over the UAE. Daily time series data from 2011 to 2020 were analyzed using various statistical measures and climate indices to develop the belief in the products and for their inter-comparison. The analysis revealed that the average probability of detection (POD) for PDIR and CDR was the highest, with values ranging from 0.7–0.9 and 0.6–0.9, respectively. Similarly, CDR has a better Heidke Skill Score (HSS) with an average value of 0.26. CDR outperformed its counterparts with an average correlation coefficient value of 0.70 vs. 0.65, 0.40, and 0.34 for PDIR, CCS, and PERSIANN, respectively. Precipitation indices analysis revealed that all the products overestimated the number of consecutive wet days by 15–20%, while underestimating consecutive dry days by 5–10%. The quantitative estimations indicate that all the products were matching with the gauge values during the wet months (January–April), while they showed significant overestimation during the dry months. CDR and PDIR were in close agreement with the gauge data in terms of maximum daily rainfall with an error of less than 10% for both products. As compared to others, PERSIANN-CDR provided better estimates, particularly in terms of capturing extreme rainfall events and spatial distribution of rainfall. This study provides the first comprehensive evaluation of four PERSIANN family products based on recent daily rainfall data of UAE. The findings can provide future insights into the applicability and improvement of PERSIANN products in arid and semi-arid regions.

Nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến lòng trung thành của khách hàng mua sắm tại cửa hàng thời trang trực tuyến

Nowadays, the trend of online shopping is common in all industries, especially fashion products. Customer loyalty is always an element that every business wants to build and maintain. Especially in the fashion market where products are constantly being innovated, loyal customers make it easier for businesses to grow. The study was conducted to identify and measure the factors affecting customer loyalty to online fashion stores in the form of providing products directly from businesses to customers (D2C), thereby suggesting implications to improve customer loyalty. Using the method of exploratory factors analysis, and multivariate regression, from 205 valid questionnaires, the results show that there are 6 factors Ease of use, Personalization, Responsiveness, Product Quality, Product Improvement, and Website Design have an impact on Customer Satisfaction. Three factors in order including Satisfaction, Trust, and Switching costs have a direct impact on customer loyalty.

Shelf-life extension of leavened bakery products by using bio-protective cultures and type-III sourdough

Physicochemical and microbiological alteration of processed foods limits their shelf-life. To extend the shelf-life of two different types of bakery products, we evaluated the effectiveness of a type-III sourdough (tIII-SD) combined with a mixture of probiotics (Lactobacillus acidophilus, L. casei, Bifidobacterium spp, Bacillus coagulans) that were used as bioprotective-cultures (BCs). This innovative (I) dough was used to produce fresh base-pizza (BP) and focaccia (FO) that were inspected by a multi-omics approach aimful at monitoring features at different time-points of the shelf-life. Differences in physicochemical, protein, microbiological and volatile profiles were also investigated after 10-days of extended shelf-life. The addition of BCs and tIII-SD left unchanged the proximate composition. This, together with the absence of detected microbial contaminations, indicated the suitability of both I-BP and I-FO despite the shelf-life extension. Both I-samples accounted for a more stable and heterogeneous microbiota during the storage phase and showed lower scores of Alternaria infectoria and A. alternata. In I-samples, volatilomics showed an increased relative concentration of volatile carboxylic acids. Therefore, without resorting to chemical preservatives, the addition of BCs and tIII-SD led to specific microbiological and metabolite improvements in both BP and FO products, whose shelf-life was extended by 10-days under MAP.

A Data-Driven Model to Construct the Influential Factors of Online Product Satisfaction

Online shopping is becoming more prevalent, with consumers turning to e-commerce platforms to search for information about the goods and services they need. Users will usually check other consumer reviews on the platform as a reference while shopping. Online retailers can collect and analyze these online reviews to monitor consumer opinions about product quality, logistics services, packaging and other attributes to provide an accurate basis for product improvement and service optimization. This paper applies the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm to extract the critical factors that affect consumer satisfaction. More than 30,000 reviews of seven kinds of 3C (computer, communication, and consumer electronic) product categories obtained by crawler technology are analyzed. Then, the DEMATEL-ANP (DANP) method is applied to the extracted framework to build a cause-and-effect diagram of 3C product satisfaction model. The innovative LDA-DANP hybrid model clarifies the causal influence of the evaluation dimensions for 3C products sold online. The results show that brand value is the most important dimension affecting consumer online product satisfaction. Appearance design, logistics awareness service and product performance also have a positive influence on perceived service and brand value. Finally, some management implications and practical suggestions are proposed.

Residents’ Preferences for Rural Housing Disaster Insurance Attributes in Central and Western Tibet

Understanding the heterogeneous preferences of individuals for disaster insurance attributes is critical for product improvement and policy design. In an era of global environmental change, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a hotspot of natural hazards. Improving the capability of rural housing disaster insurance to foster local residents’ disaster resilience is of great significance but remains under addressed. We used a discrete choice experiment approach to provide the first estimates of rural residents’ preferences for rural housing disaster insurance attributes in central and western Tibet. We estimated residents’ preferences and willingness-to-pay for the sum insured, subsidy rate, insured object, and perils covered. The potential impacts of increasing the sum insured, expanding the insured object, and lowering subsidy rates were evaluated. Our results suggest that residents prefer products with a high sum insured, high subsidy rate, and a complete list of insured objects. Residents who have experienced specific hazards tend to prefer the corresponding perils covered. Females and residents who have a closer social network are more likely to purchase insurance. Product improvement and policy simulation results suggest that, while lowering the subsidy rate, increasing the sum insured and expanding the insured object could promote participation and improve residents’ welfare. Our results could improve the understanding of the preferences of households in remote regions and support policy implementations.

Terahertz Barcodes Enabled by All‐Silicon Metasurfaces for Process Control and Monitoring Applications

AbstractProcess control and monitoring (PCM) is crucial for the quality control and yield improvement of semiconductor products. Terahertz inspection of semiconductor devices has been of interest since the progress of terahertz spectroscopic techniques. However, due to the diffraction limit, high‐resolution measurement of geometric sizes and multiple parameter monitoring are challenging for terahertz PCM techniques. In this article, XX present terahertz all‐dielectric metasurfaces as the interface on a silicon substrate for monitoring material properties and fabrication errors in the silicon deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) process. It is shown that four different metasurfaces can encode multiple information simultaneously, including the carrier density of silicon substrates, etching depth and linewidth error, forming a terahertz barcode for PCM. By correlating the measured reflection spectra of the barcode with those in the simulation database, the three parameters are retrieved with a mean square error (MSE) of ≈0.5. The results indicate that this proposed technique using emerging artificial photonic materials as PCM structures paves a pathway toward high‐efficiency semiconductor quality control and other sensing applications.

F-LEMMA: Fast Learning-Based Energy Management for Multi-/Many-Core Processors

Over the last two decades, as microprocessors have evolved to achieve higher computational performance, their power density has also increased at an accelerated rate. Improving energy efficiency and reducing power consumption are therefore critically important to modern computing systems. One effective technique for improving energy efficiency is dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS). With the emergence of integrated voltage regulators (IVRs), the speed of DVFS can reach microsecond ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) timescales. However, a practical and effective strategy to guide fast DVFS remains a challenge. In this article, we propose F-LEMMA: a fast, learning-based, hierarchical DVFS framework consisting of a global power allocator in the kernel space, a reinforcement learning-based power management scheme at the architecture level, and a swift controller at the digital circuit level. This hierarchical approach leverages computation at the system and architecture levels with the short response time of the swift controller to achieve effective and rapid <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -level power management supported by the IVR. Our experimental results demonstrate that F-LEMMA can achieve significant energy savings (35.2%) across a broad range of workloads. Conservatively compared with existing state-of-the-art DVFS-based power management schemes that can only operate at millisecond timescales, F-LEMMA can provide notable (up to 11%) energy-delay product (EDP) improvements across benchmarks. Compared with state-of-the-art nonlearning-based power management, our method has a universally positive effect on evaluated benchmarks, proving its adaptability.

Pengembangan Media Interaktif pada Materi Menulis Teks Puisi Siswa Kelas X SMA Al-Washliyah Pasar Senen Medan

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The purpose of this study was to find out how the development of interactive media, the feasibility of interactive media in writing poetry text materials to increase the motivation of the students of class X of SMA Al-Washliyah Pasar Senen Medan. This research is a type of research and development using Borg and Gall development model. The steps taken in this development research are: research and collection, planning, draft or product development, initial field trials, revising test results, field trials, final product improvements. The population and the research sample were 23 students. The results showed that the product development was declared feasible based on the results showed that that material expert I gets the “Eligible” score criteria with a percentage (80%) and the material expert II gets the “Enough Eligible” criteria (64%), the results of the media expert assessment I gets the value criteria “Very Eligible” with a percentage (86%) and media expert II gets the criteria for “Eligible” with a percentage (80%). Field implementation test with 23 students of class X SMA Al-Washliyah Pasar Senen Medan gets the criteria of “Very Eligible” with a percentage (90%) and the terachers gets the criteria of “Very Eligible” with a percentage (94%).&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

A Flexible and High-Performance Lattice-Based Post-Quantum Crypto Secure Coprocessor

Progress of quantum computing technology seriously threaten the industrial information security based on traditional public-key cryptosystem. Thus, the cryptosystem with anti-quantum attack characteristics is gradually becoming a significant research in the security field. In this article, a flexible and high-performance secure coprocessor is designed for security in industrial processes, which can execute the post-quantum cryptographic algorithm Saber efficiently. Custom instruction set and arithmetic accelerators are proposed to effectively optimize the flexibility of system architecture, and improve the performance of calculation. The hardware implementation results show that the maximum operating frequency of the coprocessor can reach 345 MHz. Compared with related state-of-the-art works, it achieves the highest operating frequency on the same Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA platform, performing the encryption and decryption operations within 13.5 and 15.4 <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">μ</i> s, respectively. Meanwhile, this article achieves 1.7/3.1/5.9× area-time product improvements in look-up table flip-flop block memory storage with good flexibility.

PEMBERDAYAAN SDM PETANI DAN AKSELERASI TEKNOLOGI INOVATIF MEWUJUDKAN KECUKUPAN DAN PERTAHANAN PANGAN BERDAYASAING PASCA PANDEMI COVID19

Food is the most basic needs of human life. The quality and adequacy are an important role in determining the quality, the level of intelligence of human resources. The increase rice production program, in sufficient quantities and at reasonable prices remains the top priority objectives and national agricultural development. With qualitative description methods, this paper aims to review and present various levels of technology application, the level of technical efficiency, and profitability of rice farming in the various agro-ecosystems. Agriculture as nationally and regionally, still important role and occupy a strategic place and remains a major priority development policy program is contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Therefore, providing the necessary strategy and information technology as needed, the existence of adequate operational policies, support the functioning of the various institutions (research, extension, marketing), as well as government policy support a more focused and aligned to accelerate the achievement of specific technological innovation. acceleration of the application of technological innovation, improvement of national rice products and productivity, can be pursued through: increasing productivity/optimizing the potential of agricultural resources; increasing planted area and land management; support for production facilities and capital; guarantee of grain prices, selling prices and marketing of grain and rice that provide production incentives; decrease in rice consumption; improvement of management, technical, data and information; and increasing the role and capacity of related institutions. Adequate operational policy tools are needed, the functioning of various supporting institutions (research, counseling, marketing), as well as government policy support that is more focused and impartial to accelerate the achievement of location-specific technological innovations. It is necessary to evaluate agricultural development policies from the aspect of food institutions, so that strategies and efforts to accurately formulate policies in support of increasing national rice production in the future.

Plasticity Improvement in a Co-Rich Co40Fe25Cr20Ni15 High-Entropy Alloy via Al Alloying.

The mechanical properties of high-entropy alloys (HEAs) can be regulated by altering the stacking fault energy (SFE) through compositional modulation. The Co-rich HEAs, exhibiting deformation twinning and even strain-induced martensitic transformation at room temperature, suffer from insufficient ductility at high strength. In this work, we developed Co-rich (Co40Fe25Cr20Ni15)100-xAlx (x = 0 and 5 at.%) HEAs and investigated their tensile behaviors at room temperature. The addition of Al resulted in a massive improvement in the strength-ductility product, even at similar grain sizes, and also altered the fracture mode from quasi-cleavage to ductile dimple fracture. Interestingly, both alloys were deformed by mechanical twinning, which was also verified by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The MD simulations revealed the SFE increased upon Al addition; however, the slip energy barrier was reduced, which favored the mobility of dislocations and twinning propensity to prolong strain hardening. The present findings provide further insights into the regulation of mechanical properties of HEAs by Al-alloying.

Evaluation and Design of Reusable Takeaway Containers Based on the AHP–FCE Model

As a strong and effective alternative to disposable food boxes that cause serious pollution consequences, reusable takeaway containers are promising in terms of environmental protection. However, at present, in the service process of leasing, using, distribution, and recycling, reusable takeaway containers have many problems, such as incomplete cleaning, resulting in unhygienic conditions, repeated use of materials that are not safe enough, food spillage, leakage or theft of customer phone and address information due to exposed takeaway order labels, and wrong containers taken by customers. In addition, there is a lack of objective and comprehensive evaluation methods and systems to guide their design and improvement. In order to solve the current problems of reusable takeaway containers and explore a quantitative approach for evaluation of design solutions from the perspective of users, this paper analyzed user behaviors and needs through user interviews, questionnaires, user journey maps (UJM), and other methods. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) were used to construct an evaluation model for the design of reusable takeaway containers, and it was calculated as a function of the survey dataset. The comprehensive index weight model was established, and the design indicators were sorted to obtain the priority of design elements. Three design schemes were proposed and calculated by combining questionnaire data and the FCE method to obtain the optimal Scheme B. The results showed that the combination of UJM and AHP–FCE method framework was suitable for scheme evaluation and design development, which could provide effective and detailed user evaluation for designers and guide the direction of product improvement.

A Study On The Key Factors That Lead To Customer Satisfaction In Automobile Industry: A Case Of Perodua

The Perusahaan Otomobil Kedua Sendirian Berhad (Perodua) is Malaysia's largest car Manufacturer. Perodua was established in 1992 with its headquarters' office located in Rawang, Selangor and currently it has over 200 outlets in Malaysia. Perodua's mission is to provide Malaysians with total mobility through practical and high-value goods and services offered with the utmost care. In the very competitive auto market, manufacturers seek out features for their new models that will help them stand out from their competitors. In 2019, Perodua had recorded the highest market share which is 40% for Malaysian vehicle market. The objective of this research is to analyze the factors that leads customers to feel satisfied with their purchasing from Perodua. A questionnaire would be carried out using a google form to a total of 100 respondents for a data collection. This research finding find out that vehicles' appearances, standing charges and resale value related with customer satisfaction while safety features did not significantly relate with customer satisfaction. The other aim of this research would be to recognize the current degree of consumer loyalty, to distinguish the connection between factors and ultimately to give suggestions/recommendations on the products improvement.

Research on the Influence Mechanism of Vibrating Short Video on Young People's Consumption Behavior

With the continuous upgrading of IT and the growth of social media, short video has become one of the important ways for the public to get information in their daily life, and it also promotes the change of traditional marketing. With the increasing improvement and perfection of short video platform products and functions, the value of short video traffic has been continuously upgraded and fission, and it has gradually changed from pure entertainment at the beginning to potential cash flow such as planting grass and bringing goods. High-quality short video content has brought more business opportunities and dividends, and the short video industry has gradually been seen and paid attention by more enterprises, becoming the key area of enterprise marketing investment. As a new network marketing model, short video is developing vigorously, which has a great influence on the consumption behavior of young consumers. This paper discusses the consumption characteristics of young people, analyzes the influence mechanism of short vibrato videos on young people's consumption behavior, and puts forward some countermeasures to guide young people to establish a correct consumption view.

The Addition of Red Dragon Fruit and Lemon Peels for the Improvement of Fermented Beverage Products

Coconut water is part of the coconut fruit, that has bioactive compounds that are thought to own high inhibitor activity to the presence of tannin compounds. However, this compound is antinutritional because it can interfere with macromolecule out there within the body. Considering chance of tannins, these parts are often reduced by fermentation techniques using lactic acid bacteria. This analysis aims to review the addition of dragon fruit and lemon peels in fermentation coconut water using lactic acid bacteria in order to reduce tannin levels and its potential capability as antioxidants. Coconut water fermented drink was prepared by fermentation technique using lactic acid bacteria with the addition of variations in mass of dragon fruit peel and lemon peel consisting of 5 treatments. The optimum conditions for fermentation of coconut water were determined from the decrease in tannin levels, total acid, and the highest total lactic acid bacteria. The optimum conditions for fermentation of coconut water were then tested using an HPLC instrument. Finally, the antioxidantactivity was tested using the FRAP (Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power) method. The results showed that the addition of dragon fruit and lemon peels in fermented coconut water can reduce tannin levels, can increase total acid levels and the number of lactic acid bacteria formed in coconut water fermented drinks. The best proportion was obtained in the treatment of rasio of mass 1:2 resulted in the highest decrease in tannin content of 83.94 mg/100 g followed by a total acid value of 1.13% and the number of lactic acid bacteria was 8.4 × 107 CFU/mL. The HPLC chromatogram showed that fermented coconut water using lactic acid bacteria contained organic acid compounds such as lactic acid, acetic acid, and ascorbic acid. The highest antioxidant activity test was 82.37 mmgAAE/g. This study confirmed that the addition of dragon fruit and lemon peels affected the degradation of tannins and increased antioxidant activity during coconut water fermentation using lactic acid bacteria.

Sustainability in the Mediterranean tourist ports: The role of certifications

This study investigates the sustainability practices of tourist ports, a little explored research area despite the environmental and social impacts of these infrastructures. Our research evaluates the diffusion of quality, environmental and social certifications among 225 Mediterranean tourist ports. We analyse the ports websites for an explicit graphic or textual reference to any certifications obtained. Our results show a limited adoption of certifications, with about half of the sample ports indicating possession of at least one certification. The port managers’ commitment towards certifications is limited, and focused on the most common ones – although not industry-specific – such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. The small size and limited entrepreneurial approach of the companies managing tourist ports are identified as contributing causes. A greater commitment to obtaining and communicating certifications is desirable, considering the increasing competition in the sector – which requires continuous innovation and improvement of processes and products – and the growing demand for quality and sustainability by nautical tourists.

Product reliability improvement method based on root cause analysis

Based on the brief introduction of root cause analysis method (RCA), combined with the analysis and improvement process of the sealing performance failure problem of a certain box structure, the important role and broad prospect of the application of RCA in the product reliability problems analysis and improvement are described in detail.

Altering autotrophic carbon metabolism of Nitzschia closterium to mixotrophic mode for high-value product improvement

An adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE) strategy was designed to evolve autotrophic Nitzschia closterium to mixotrophic growth for high productivity of essential amino acid (EAA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and fucoxanthin. The N. closterium growth was limited under glucose initially, but a red light emitting diode was innovatively applied to modify carbon metabolism and obtain mixotrophic strain of N. closterium GM. The N. closterium GM biomass concentration was improved by 65.07% comparing with wild type, but exhibited weak photosynthesis and strong glucose metabolism. At carbon metabolism levels, ALE promoted NADPH oxidase activity and induced protein degradation to lipid biosynthesis by elevating acetyl-CoA and pyruvate contents. It also improved carbon flux to TCA cycle, and elevated contents of glucose-6-phosphate, fructose-6-phosphate, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate for providing sufficient ATP and NADPH. Productivities of EPA, EAA and fucoxanthin were increased by 41.0%, 18.8% and 20.4%, respectively. This ALE strategy was promising in microalgal production of high-value products.

Metabolomics investigation on the volatile and non-volatile composition in enzymatic hydrolysates of Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas)

To investigate the differences of volatile and non-volatile metabolites between oyster enzymatic hydrolysates and boiling concentrates, molecular sensory analysis and untargeted metabolomics were employed. “Grassy,” “fruity,” “oily/fatty,” “fishy,” and “metallic” were identified as sensory attributes used to evaluate different processed oyster homogenates. Sixty-nine and 42 volatiles were identified by gas chromatography–ion mobility spectrometry and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, respectively. Pentanal, 1-penten-3-ol, hexanal, (E)-2-pentenal, heptanal, (E)-2-hexenal, 4-octanone, (E)-4-heptenal, 3-octanone, octanal, nonanal, 1-octen-3-ol, benzaldehyde, (E)-2-nonenal, and (E, Z)-2,6-nonadienal were detected as the key odorants (OAV > 1) after enzymatic hydrolysis. Hexanal, (E)-4-heptenal, and (E)-2-pentenal were significantly associated with off-odor, and 177 differential metabolites were classified. Aspartate, glutamine, alanine, and arginine were the key precursors affecting the flavor profile. Linking sensory descriptors to volatile and nonvolatile components of different processed oyster homogenates will provide information for the process and quality improvement of oyster products.