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The purpose of this paper is the physico-chemical, microbiological, colorimetric, sensorial characterization of choris, a traditional smoked pork sausage produced in the state of Goa (India), including its storage stability (0–180 days) at room temperature, aiming at the geographical indication certification and entrepreneurship prospects.

A total of 48 samples of “choris” were collected from 24 villages of Goa and were analyzed at different intervals (0–180 days) for physico-chemical, proximate, microbiological, colorimetric and sensory attributes during the storage at room temperature.

The mean pH of 4.45 and water activity (a_w) of 0.78 were recorded. The pH, tyrosine value, fat percentage and free fatty acid content registered a significant increase, whereas moisture content, a_w and moisture–protein ratio reduced as storage progresses. The colorimetric values lightness (L*), hue angle (H*) and redness index values reduced significantly during storage. The mean total viable count, yeast and mold, and lactic acid bacteria count were found to proliferate significantly as storage advanced. Nevertheless, the hedonic scores not reaching an unacceptable level (= 4) at the end of the storage period.

In accordance with the various parameters adopted during the study, choris could be characterized as “naturally fermented dry smoked” sausages, which were shelf-stable at room temperature for 180 days. The product characterization of choris is essential to guarantee the genuineness, safety and consumer's acceptability. This study will also rebound in an augmented uniformity of the product, which will favor the geographical indication certification and the entrepreneurship prospects of this traditional product.

The purpose of this study is to optimize processing parameters to get the smallest average surface roughness (Ra) and delamination damage (F_d) values during drilling via abrasive water jet (AWJ) of the glass fiber-reinforced polymer composite material produced at [0°/90°]_s fiber orientation angles.

Drilling experiments were done via AWJ with three-axis computer numerical control (CNC) control system. Machine processing parameters such as water pressure of 3,600, 4,300, 4,800 and 5,300 bar; stand-off distance of 1, 2, 3 and 4 mm; traverse rate of 750, 1,500, 2,000 and 3,000 mm/min; and hole diameters of 8, 10, 12 and 14 mm have been selected. The effects of processing parameters in drilling experiments were investigated in conformity with the Taguchi L₁₆ orthogonal array and the data obtained were analyzed using Minitab 17 software. The signal/noise (S/N) ratio was taken as a basis for evaluating the test results. Optimum processing conditions were determined by calculating the S/N ratio for both Ra and F_d in conformity with the “smaller is better” approximation. The effects of processing parameters on Ra and F_d were statistically investigated using analysis of variance, S/N ratio and Taguchi-based gray relational analysis. Ra and F_d were predicted by evaluating with the ANN model and were predicted with the least amount of error.

It has been determined that the most effective parameter for Ra and F_d is the water pressure and then the stand-off distance.

The novel approach is to reduce cost and the time spent by using Taguchi optimization as a result of AWJ drilling the material in this fiber orientation [0°/90°]_s.

The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesise research evidence and propose a theoretical model suggesting that school-based yoga programs may be an effective way to promote social-emotional learning (SEL) and positive student outcomes.

This paper is a literature review focusing on: the current state of research on school-based yoga interventions; a preliminary theoretical model outlining the potential mechanisms and effects of school-based yoga; similarities, differences and possibilities for integrating school-based SEL, yoga and meditation; practical implications for researching and implementing yoga in schools.

Research suggests that providing yoga within the school curriculum may be an effective way to help students develop self-regulation, mind-body awareness and physical fitness, which may, in turn, foster additional SEL competencies and positive student outcomes such as improved behaviours, mental state, health and performance.

Given that research on school-based yoga is in its infancy, most existing studies are preliminary and are of low to moderate methodological quality. It will be important for future research to employ more rigorous study designs.

It is possible, pending additional high-quality research, that yoga could become a well-accepted component of school curricula. It will be particularly important for future research to examine possibilities around integrating school-based yoga and meditation with SEL programs at the individual, group and school-wide levels.

This paper is the first to describe a theoretical model specifically focused on school-based yoga interventions, as well as a discussion of the similarities and differences between school-based yoga, SEL and meditation.

Pattern recognition systems often have to handle problem of large volume of training data sets including duplicate and similar training samples. This problem leads to large memory requirement for saving and processing data, and the time complexity for training algorithms. The purpose of the paper is to reduce the volume of training part of a data set – in order to increase the system speed, without any significant decrease in system accuracy.

A new technique for data set size reduction – using a version of modified frequency diagram approach – is presented. In order to reduce processing time, the proposed method compares the samples of a class to other samples in the same class, instead of comparing samples from different classes. It only removes patterns that are similar to the generated class template in each class. To achieve this aim, no feature extraction operation was carried out, in order to produce more precise assessment on the proposed data size reduction technique.

The results from the experiments, and according to one of the biggest handwritten numeral standard optical character recognition (OCR) data sets, Hoda, show a 14.88 percent decrease in data set volume without significant decrease in performance.

The proposed technique is effective for size reduction for all pictorial databases such as OCR data sets.

State-of-the-art algorithms currently used for data set size reduction usually remove samples near to class's centers, or support vector (SV) samples between different classes. However, the samples near to a class center have valuable information about class characteristics, and they are necessary to build a system model. Also, SV s are important samples to evaluate the system efficiency. The proposed technique, unlike the other available methods, keeps both outlier samples, as well as the samples close to the class centers.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a text extraction tool for scanned documents that would extract text and build the keywords corpus and key phrases corpus for the document without manual intervention.

For text extraction from scanned documents, a Web-based optical character recognition (OCR) tool was developed. OCR is a well-established technology, so to develop the OCR, Microsoft Office document imaging tools were used. To account for the commonly encountered problem of skew being introduced, a method to detect and correct the skew introduced in the scanned documents was developed and integrated with the tool. The OCR tool was customized to build keywords and key phrases corpus for every document.

The developed tool was evaluated using a 100 document corpus to test the various properties of OCR. The tool had above 99 per cent word read accuracy for text only image documents. The customization of the OCR was tested with samples of Microfiches, sample of Journal pages from back volumes and samples from newspaper clips and the results are discussed in the summary. The tool was found to be useful for text extraction and processing.

The scanned documents are converted to keywords and key phrases corpus. The tool could be used to build metadata for scanned documents without manual intervention.

The tool is used to convert unstructured data (in the form of image documents) to structured data (the document is converted into keywords, and key phrases database). In addition, the image document is converted to editable and searchable document.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction between magnetotactic bacteria and Fe₃O₄–water nanofluid (NF) in a wavy enclosure in the presence of 2D natural convection flow.

Uniform magnetic field (MF), Brownian and thermophoresis effects are also contemplated. The dimensionless, time-dependent equations are governed by stream function, vorticity, energy, nanoparticle concentration and number of bacteria. Radial basis function-based finite difference method for the space derivatives and the second-order backward differentiation formula for the time derivatives are performed. Numerical outputs in view of isolines as well as average Nusselt number, average Sherwood number and flux density of microorganisms are presented.

Convective mass transfer rises if any of Lewis number, Peclet number, Rayleigh number, bioconvection Rayleigh number and Brownian motion parameter increases, and the flux density of microorganisms is an increasing function of Rayleigh number, bioconvection Rayleigh number, Peclet number, Brownian and thermophoresis parameters. The rise in buoyancy ratio parameter between 0.1 and 1 and the rise in Hartmann number between 0 and 50 reduce all outputs average Nusselt, average Sherwood numbers and flux density of microorganisms.

This study implies the importance of the presence of magnetotactic bacteria and magnetite nanoparticles inside a host fluid in view of heat transfer and fluid flow. The limitation is to check the efficiency on numerical aspect. Experimental observations would be more effective.

In practical point of view, in a heat transfer and fluid flow system involving magnetite nanoparticles, the inclusion of magnetotactic bacteria and MF effect provide control over fluid flow and heat transfer.

This is a scientific study. However, this idea may be extended to sustainable energy or biofuel studies, too. This means that a better world may create better social environment between people.

The presence of magnetotactic bacteria inside a Fe₃O₄–water NF under the effect of a MF is a good controller on fluid flow and heat transfer. Since the magnetotactic bacteria is fed by nanoparticles Fe₃O₄ which has strong magnetic property, varying nanoparticle concentration and Brownian and thermophoresis effects are first considered.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of a 15-week dietary intake of cactus flour on metabolic parameters, body weight and dietary intake of rats.

Male Wistar rats were divided into four experimental groups (n = 8-10): control or westernized diets added or not of cactus flour. The following parameters were evaluated during the period of dietary manipulation: body weight, food intake, glycemic and lipid profile (oral glucose tolerance test, metabolic parameters, hepatic and muscular glycogen dosage), visceral and body fat (relative weight to body weight). Data were analyzed using Graphpad Prism®5, p = 0.05.

Animals fed on a Western-style diet together with flour cactus presented lower weight gain (335.7 ± 20.0, p = 0.05) over the evaluated period, even when the volume of food intake was not different among the groups. The addition of cactus flour to a Western-style diet appears to lower glucose levels at 30 and 60 min (p = 0.05), as shown in the glucose tolerance curve. There was a downward trend does fat stores, cholesterol levels and triglycerides. Therefore, it was concluded that this addition cactus flour is effective even when the diet is hyperlipidic, demonstrating its ability to attenuate risk parameters for the occurrence of metabolic syndromes such as sub fraction high cholesterol levels and glucose tolerance.

The addition of functional foods to diets may work to improve the harmful effects of this type of diet. Opuntia ficus indica has high nutritional value and has hypoglycemic and hypolipemic properties besides being antioxidant.

This study aims to investigate the levels of some anti‐nutritional factors and minerals and the effect of boiling or roasting on selected commonly consumed Caribbean tuber crops.

Three commonly consumed tuber crops in the Caribbean namely: Yellow yam (Dioscorea cayenensis), Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sp.) and Sweet potato (Ipomea batatas) were harvested from farmers’ field in the Parish of Manchester, Jamaica and assessed in their boiled, raw and roasted forms for levels of some anti‐nutritional factors and minerals.

Zinc and iron levels were highest in raw Yellow yam, while the highest levels of calcium were observed in Sweet potato. The phytic acid to zinc molar ratio was higher than 15 in all the tuber crops in their raw and roasted forms. Boiling reduced this ratio to below 15 for Yellow yam and Cocoyam but still remained above 15 for Sweet potato. Cyanoglucoside level was highest in raw Sweet potato followed by Yellow yam and Cocoyam. Boiling or roasting reduced the levels of cyanoglucosides. Roasting greatly lowered the level of trypsin inhibitor activity compared to boiling. The highest level of trypsin inhibitor activity was recorded in the raw tubers, and slight reductions were observed upon processing.

Trypsin inhibitor was more stable to heat treatment compared to similar tubers grown in Africa. It may be beneficial to isolate and characterize trypsin inhibitor in these Caribbean tuber crops for utilization in nutraceutics.

This study shows that the two traditional processing methods were effective in lowering the levels of anti‐nutritional factors.

This paper analyses and assesses the effect of firm-specific determinants (FSDs) on supply-chain performance (SCP) and export performance (EP). It examines SCP’s influence on EP and its mediating effect on the relationship between FSD and EP.

This paper develops a theoretical framework based on the resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic-capability theory to understand SCP’s role in the FSD-EP link while empirically validating using the Indian automobile industry segments (IAIS) data. The sample frame comprises all listed firms in IAIS between the financial year 2010-11 and 2021–22, with continuous data availability throughout the considered timeline. The paper employs factor analysis for dimension reduction, a panel-data-fixed-effect model to analyze the relationships, bootstrap to test the mediation effect and focus-group discussion for validating the results obtained through statistical analyses.

FSD directly influences SCP’s efficiency aspect and EP. Distribution efficiency and inventory efficiency characteristics of SCP directly impact EP and completely mediate the relationship between FSD and EP.

This study provides significant insights into how firms can increase EP by focusing on firm-specific and SCP-related factors. To improve EP, firms should concentrate on enhancing distribution and inventory efficiencies. Firms must focus on critical firm-level factors like age, size and raw-material import capability to increase their ability to solve SC-specific barriers and improve SCP, resulting in enhanced exports.

This study investigates the impacts of FSD on SCP and EP and examines the mediating effect of SCP on the relationship between FSD and EP. Such a mediating role of SCP has rarely been probed in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is the production of fire retardant and smoke suppressant rigid polyurethane foam (RPUF) with lower toxicity by using several fire-retardant combinations.

Fire-retardant additives with cooling effect, barrier ash formation effect, gas-phase inhibition effect and smoke suppressant effect combined to produce an optimum outcome on RPUF. The additive amount and burning time correlation were studied to find out the minimum amount of fire-retardant to obtain fire-retardant polyurethane foam.

Zinc borate powder was coated with 1.5 wt % of stearic acid and hydroxy stearic acid. Polyammonium diborates (PABs) were synthesized and used as a fire-retardant and smoke suppressant for rigid PU foam. Fire-retardant rigid polyurethane foams (FR-RPUF) composites formed by using several combinations of zinc borate, aluminum trihydroxide, trischloroisopropyl phosphate (TCPP), PABs, zinc borate coated with stearic acid and hydroxy stearic acid. Produced FR-RPUF were horizontal burning grade, and burning time was in the range of 1–10 s.

There were limitations during the mixing of fire-retardant powders with polyol due to the high viscosity of the mixture.

FR-RPUF foam with lower toxicity can be produced industrially with these fire-retardant combinations.

FR-RPUF could be produced by using non-toxic additives. During a fire, these additives do not evolve toxic gases. The TCPP content of RPUF foam was reduced, and fire-retardant PU with lower toxicity was produced.

Coated zinc borate and the combinations of the fire-retardants were successful in producing non-toxic fire-retardant and smoke suppressant PU foam.