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The inhibition efficiency of N‐cetyl‐N,N,N‐trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), a cationic surfactant, in controlling the corrosion of carbon steel in an aqueous solution containing 60ppm Cl^–, in the absence and presence of Zn²⁺ and also calcium gluconate (CG), had been evaluated by the weight‐loss method. Weight‐loss studies revealed that the behaviour of CTAB changed when its concentration is ≥ 150ppm. Organisation of assembly of CTAB molecules is expected to take place at this critical concentration. The protective film has been analysed using FTIR spectra. In the presence of CTAB, the protective film consists of Fe²⁺‐CTAB complex. In the presence of CTAB and Zn²⁺, the protective film consists of Fe²⁺‐CTAB complex and Zn(OH)₂. In the presence of CTAB and calcium gluconate, the protective film consists of Fe²⁺‐CTAB complex, Fe²⁺‐gluconate complex and Ca(OH)₂.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze geographic heterogeneity of consumer preferences for intrinsic quality attributes of rice in South and Southeast Asia and the drivers of demand for these attributes, with a particular focus on rice fragrance and the role of gender.

Stated-preference surveys were conducted with 4,231 urban and rural consumers in 37 cities across seven countries (Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) during 2013–2014 and analyzed through a rank-ordered logistic regression with incomplete ranking choice data.

Preferences for rice attributes are found to be significantly heterogeneous among consumers in South and Southeast Asia. Urban Thai consumers tend to prioritize appearance and cooking characteristics over taste and nutritional benefits, relative to all other surveyed consumers. In contrast with South Asian consumers, Southeast Asian consumers have largely adopted Thai preferences for rice texture and fragrance, a trend that was earlier coined “Jasminization.” We find that demand for rice fragrance is mainly driven by women, educated consumers, large families, families spending a lower share of their food expenditures on rice, and consumers in Southeast Asia (particularly the Philippines and Cambodia).

Little is known about geographic heterogeneity, drivers, and the role of gender in demand for rice fragrance. This paper fills these knowledge gaps. Our findings suggest that the more women are empowered in grocery decision-making, the more demand for aromatic rice is expected to rise. These insights can assist market-driven and gender-responsive rice breeding programs in simultaneously enhancing rice farmers' livelihoods and gender equity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine rice attributes that are valued by the urban consumers of Cambodia and identifies the factors that influence consumers’ decisions on a set of rice attributes.

The study uses incomplete ranking choice data, gathered from a stated preference survey conducted from 350 consumers of two cities in Cambodia, to model consumers’ alternative choices of rice traits in a setting of a random utility framework. Empirically, a rank-ordered logistic regression is fitted to identify the factors influencing consumers’ perception on a set of rice attributes.

The results suggest that the probability of choosing rice that is soft is highest for consumers in Cambodia. The second and third most preferred rice attributes are taste and aroma, respectively. The results also indicate that rice consumption is significantly affected by location, economic class of consumers, family size and educational attainment.

The research was carried out using consumers in two urban cities in Cambodia as a case study; therefore, the findings might not represent all consumers’ preferences for rice traits in the country.

The present study contributes to the overall rice grain preference literature examining consumers’ perceptions on rice traits and the factors influencing their decision in choosing rice traits. The results originating from this study will help to guide rice breeders in developing new varieties with traits that will be acceptable to consumers and other value chain actors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare consumer perceptions of unpolished pigmented rice and milled white rice between unfamiliar and typical consumers.

This study first employed focus groups to explore attitudes and habits relating to rice consumption among British subjects. A sensory descriptive analysis method, flash profiling (FP), was then applied on consumer panels in the UK and Thailand to gain perceived sensory quality of unfamiliar and typical rice samples. The sensory profiles generated by British and Thai panellists were analysed by generalised procrustean analysis (GPA) and compared based on perceived attributes, dominant characteristics and repeatability.

Focus group results suggested that consumer familiarity with rice might influence preferred rice textural quality. The prominent textures of stickiness and bittiness of unpolished pigmented rice were negatively associated with perceived quality in the UK participants. The sensory profiles generated by GPA consisted of similarity with darkness of colour and sweet/earthy type odours that are key dominant characteristics of the Thai pigmented rice.

The research has provided sensory information of the unpolished pigmented rice as compared with milled white rice. The information gives insights on product development directions for export and further research on rice processing and cooking instructions.

This study is the first to apply sensory evaluation in a cross-cultural comparison of pigmented rice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the rice consumption by rice grain types under the rising income scenario in Bangladesh. Generally, with an increase in income, households tend to consume more food items that are high-value, enriched foods and protein, such as meat and fish, by substituting for cereals. However, consumers also substitute when it comes to grain quality. For example, cereals, such as rice, are available in a range of qualities from the ordinary type (coarse-grain) to the premium type (fine grain). The authors postulate that as household incomes increase, households may consume more premium-type rice (or fine-grain rice), while overall consuming less rice or fewer carbohydrates.

Using the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2000, 2005, and 2010, and applying multivariate probit and seemingly unrelated regression estimation procedures, this study quantifies the impact of income, household demographics, and urbanization on rice consumption by rice grain types (coarse-grain, medium-grain, and fine-grain types).

The results show that urban, wealthy households and, households headed by educated heads and spouses, are more likely to consume fine-grain rice than their counterparts.

After yield, grain type is the second most important factor for farmers when considering the adoption of a new variety. The price of rice and other cereals is highly associated with the grain type. This study concludes that plant breeding programs of major cereals, such as rice and wheat, should take into account the consumer grain-type preferences when developing new varieties.

Weaknesses in the grades and standards system in low-income countries across Sub-Saharan Africa undermine the transparency of agricultural markets. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ghana and Mozambique rice is predominately sold in open bags and if rice price does not reflect its quality, then inefficiencies may lead to consumer welfare losses. Importantly, it is possible that impoverished communities are priced out of the market due to inflated and inefficient prices. The objective of this study is to examine determinates of rice price by estimating the impact of selected rice quality attributes on rice prices in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana and Mozambique.

We collected 363 rice samples from open air markets in Bukavu (DRC), Nampula (Mozambique) and across Ghana in 2019. Each rice sample was analyzed in a food science lab for the quality attributes: percentage of chalk and brokens, chalk impact, length and length-to-width ratio. We used multiple regression analysis to estimate if and to what extent quality attributes were the drivers of price.

Findings suggest that there are irregularities in the Ghanaian market for broken rice and that regardless of quality, imported rice is priced higher than domestic rice. In the DRC and Mozambique, our results indicate price is driven by length and length-to-width ratio in the former and length-to-width ratio in the latter.

Rice samples were purchased from market vendors and thus consumer preferences for attributes were not revealed.

These results provide valuable insight to policymakers regarding the need for proper labeling and regulation of open bag rice sales in an effort to increase consumer welfare and improve food security.

In this study, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/poly[acrylic acid (AAc)-co-acrylamide (AM)] composite hydrogel was prepared by radical copolymerization in the presence of Fe³⁺ freezing-thawing method. The swelling behavior of the hydrogel was investigated. The novel synthesized hydrogel was used as an adsorbent for the removal of dyes from aqueous solutions. In this paper, methylene blue and maxilon blue 5G were selected as representative cationic dyes. In addition, adsorption isotherm models were used to describe the dye adsorption process.

The prepared composite hydrogel was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, field emission scanning electron microscopy and UV–visible.

The prepared hydrogel exhibited excellent adsorption ability for both dyes. Various experimental conditions affecting the dye adsorption were explored to achieve maximum removal of both dyes. In addition, adsorption isotherm models were used to describe the dye adsorption process.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, synthesis of PVA/poly(AAc-co-AM) composite hydrogel in the presence of Fe³⁺ and investigation of the removal of methylene blue and maxilon blue 5G dyes is done for the first time successfully.

This work highlights the optimization of the consumed amount of sewing thread required to make up a pair of jeans using three different metaheuristic methods; particular swarm optimization (PSO), ant colony optimization (ACO) and genetic algorithm (GA) techniques. Indeed, using metaheuristic optimization techniques enable industrialists to reach the lowest sewing thread quantities in terms of bobbins per garments. Besides, the compared results of this research can obviously prove the impact of each input parameter on the optimization of the sewing thread consumption per pair of jeans.

To assess objectively the sewing thread consumption, the optimized sewing conditions such as thread composition, needle size and fabric composition are investigated and discussed. Hence, a Taguchi design was elaborated to evaluate and optimize objectively the linear model consumption. Thanks to its principal characteristics and popularity, denim fabric is selected to analyze objectively the effects of studied input parameters. In addition, having workers with same skills and qualifications to repeat each time the same sewing process will involve having the same sewing thread consumption values. This can occur in some levels such as end of sewing, the number of machine failures, the kind of failure and its complexity, the competency of the mechanic and his way to repair failure, the loss of thread caused by threading and its frequency. Seam repetition due to operator lack of skill will obviously affect clothing appearance and hence quality decision. Interesting findings and significant relationship between input parameters and the amount of sewing thread consumption are established.

According to the comparative results obtained using metaheuristic methods, the PSO and ACO technique gives the lowest values of the consumption within the best combination of input parameters. The results show the accuracy of the applied metaheuristic methods to optimize the consumed amount needed to sew a pair of jeans with a notable superiority of both PSO and ACO methods compared to experimental ones. However, compared to GA method, ACO and PSO algorithms remained the most accurate techniques allowing industrials to minimize the consumed thread used to sew jeans. They can also widely optimize and predict the consumed thread in the investigated experimental design of interest. Consequently, compared to experimental results and regarding the low error values obtained, it may be concluded that the metaheuristic methods can optimize and evaluate both studied input and output parameters accurately.

This study is most useful for denim industrial applications, which makes it possible to anticipate, calculate and minimize the high consumption of sewing threads. This paper has not only practical implications for clothing appearance and quality but also for reduction in thread wastage occurring during shop floor conditions like machine running, thread breakage, repairs, etc. (Kawabata and Niwa, 1991). Unless the used sewing machine is equipped within a thread trimmer improvement in garment seam appearance cannot be achieved. By comparing and analyzing the operating activities of the regular lock stitch 301 machine with and without a thread trimmer, a difference in time processing can be grasped (Magazine JUKI Corporation, 2008). Time consumed in trimming by a lockstitch machine without a thread trimmer equals 3.1 s compared to 2.6 s by a thread trimming one. Hence, the reduction rate in the time processing equals 16.30%. This paper aimed to implement the optimal consumption (thread waste outstanding number of trials). Unless highly skilled workers are selected and well-motivated, the previous recommended changes will not be applied. The saved cost of the sewing thread reduction can be used to buy a better quality of fabric and/or thread. However, these factors are not always the same as they can vary according to customer's requirements because thread consumption is never a standard for sewn product categories such as trousers, shirts and footwear (Khedher and Jaouachi, 2015).

Until now, there is no work dealing with the investigation of the metaheuristic optimization of the consumed thread per pair of jeans to minimize accurately the amount of sewing thread as well as the sewing thread wastage. Even though these techniques of optimization are currently in full development due to some advantages such as generality and possible application to a large class of combinatorial and constrained assignment problems, efficiency for many problems in providing good quality approximate solutions for a large number of classical optimization problems and large-scale real applications, etc., are not applied yet to decrease sewing thread consumption. Some recent published works used statistical techniques (Taguchi, factorial, etc.), to evaluate approximate consumptions; conversely, other geometrical and mathematical approaches, considering some assumptions, used stitch geometry and remained insufficient to give the industrialists an implemented application generating the exact value of the consumed amount of sewing thread. Generally, in the clothing field 10–15% of sewing thread wastage should be added to the experimental approximate consumption value. Moreover, all investigations are focused on the approximative evaluations and theoretical modeling of sewing thread consumption as function of some input parameters. Practically, the obtained results are successfully applied and the ACO method gives the most accurate results. On the other hand, in the point of view of industrialists the applied metaheuristic methods (based on algorithms) used to decrease the amount of consumed thread remained an easy and fruitful solution that can allow them to control the number of sewing thread bobbin per garments.

The purpose of this paper is to study the inhibition effect of Tween‐40 on the corrosion of cold rolled steel (CRS) in 1.0‐8.0 M HCl over the temperature range of 20‐50°C. It also aims to make an attempt to correlate both thermodynamic parameters and kinetic parameters with the inhibition effect.

The inhibition efficiencies of Tween‐40 are investigated by weight loss and potentiodynamic polarization methods.

Tween‐40 acts as a good inhibitor in 1.0 M HCl, and inhibition efficiency increases with the inhibitor concentration, while it decreases with HCl concentration and temperature. The adsorption of inhibitor on the CRS surface obeys the Langmuir adsorption isotherm equation. The inhibition effect is satisfactorily explained by both thermodynamic and kinetic parameters. Polarization curves show that Tween‐40 is a mixed‐type inhibitor in hydrochloric acid.

The experimental data have been treated with adsorption theory and kinetic equations successfully. Both the thermodynamic and kinetic parameters can be obtained, and used in explaining the inhibition effect satisfactorily.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the bursting strength, bursting distension, air permeability and wale wise wicking rate properties of recycled polyester (r-PET) and virgin polyester (v-PET) raw materials from which single jersey knitted fabric samples are manufactured. Meanwhile, numerical optimization method was used in predetermined parameters to determine the optimum r-PET and v-PET blend ratio and yarn manufacturing technology. In the optimization analysis, the average values of the important yarn and fabric properties inspected were taken as a target according to the 50 percent proportion of r-PET and v-PET fiber for both compact and ring yarn manufacturing technology.

To encourage the use of value-added textile products produced from recycling PET bottle with the focus of social responsibility is a condition that should be evaluated within the scope of waste management. The recycling of PET bottles and finding new opportunities for the uses in different field are crucial for both contributing environmental economy and conserving natural energy resources. The most important alternative ways is to use the r-PET fiber from recycling PET bottle in textile industry. In this study, 19.7 tex r-PET/cotton and v-PET/cotton-blended compact and ring spun yarns were produced at different blending ratios at the same production parameters.

Results showed that blend type, blend ratio and yarn manufacturing technology have statistical significance effect on bursting strength and air permeability. Besides, it was found that blend type has no significance on wale wise wicking rate unlike other parameters. Optimization analysis indicated that single jersey knitted fabric with v-PET/CO 58.62/41.38 percent compact yarn had higher desirability with the value of 0.72.

At the present time, r-PET fiber is blended in small amount (approximately 5–15 percent blend ratio) with both cotton and polyester together. In addition, it is possible using different fiber blend types instead of cotton and polyester according to the usage area. The most important question is to determine the amount of r-PET proportion. In other words, both optimum yarn/fabric quality parameters should be ensured and at the same time life cycle of the apparels should not be short when the optimum r-PET proportion is taken into consideration.