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Analyses the effects of temperature on the behaviour of ultrasonic sensors applied to object recognition. Describes the measurement system employed, the environmental considerations of ultrasonic sensors and looks at the most commonly used parameters to analyse the echo form in the recognition process. Evaluates the performance of the parametric model of the ultrasonic echo signal with a comparative study of different ultrasonic transducers.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a shiitake mushroom extract as a potential natural taste enhancer in low-sodium beef burgers by means of sensorial and physico-chemical assays because nowadays there is a trend in the market for the development of clean-label products.

Ten formulations of beef burgers were developed, varying in the percentage reduction in NaCl (0-75 per cent) and mushroom water extracts (obtained from a 5, 12.5, or 20 per cent mushroom homogenate). Sensory characterisation was performed by time-intensity (TI) and acceptance tests. In addition, physico-chemical analyses (pH, yield, shrinkage, shear force, and colour) were conducted.

Extracts obtained from 5, 12.5, or 20 per cent mushroom homogenate (E1, E2, and E3, respectively) did not enhance the salty taste in formulations with a 0 or 75 per cent reduction in NaCl. In formulations with a 50 per cent reduction in NaCl, all the extracts enhanced salinity perception, with E3 being the most effective. E3 also increased acceptance of colour, aroma, texture, flavour, and overall perception, although it caused changes in some physico-chemical characteristics (pH, yield, shrinkage, shear force, and colour).

The shiitake mushroom extract is a natural ingredient with a potential to serve as a taste enhancer in meat and other food products, for the purpose of reducing sodium content without compromising sensory acceptability. Therefore, this extract will enable the development of healthier products (owing to a reduction in sodium) with preserved sensory quality and will meet consumers’ requirements for the minimal use of chemical additives in food.

Excessive sodium intake is associated with several diseases. Accordingly, several measures, including microparticulate salt, have been adopted to reduce the salt contents of food products. However, no studies have reported the effectiveness of microparticulate salt in semisolid and liquid products. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the application of microparticulate salt to reduce sodium contents in semisolid products.

The optimal salt content to be added in butter was defined by the just-about-right-scale test. Butter samples were prepared using microparticulate salt to achieve 25, 50 and 75 per cent reductions in conventional salt concentrations. Multiple comparison tests were performed to evaluate sample taste.

The ideal concentration of conventional salt to be added to butter was 2.16 per cent. Discriminative tests showed that samples with 25 and 75 per cent salt reduction showed significant differences (p ⩽ 0.05) compared with butter prepared at the ideal salt content, whereas the sample with 50 per cent salt reduction had no significant difference (p > 0.05). Thus, microparticulate salt showed higher salting power than conventional salt. These results indicated the effectiveness of microparticulate salt in the preparation of semisolid products with sodium reduction.

More detailed studies about the reduced-sodium butter shelf life are necessary to verify the microparticulate salt application in the product preparation. Moreover, microparticulate salt application in semisolid and liquid products elaboration must be more investigated to better elucidate its practicability of reducing sodium content in these kinds of products. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

Microparticulate salt has been successfully applied to reduce sodium in solid products, being added to the finished product surface. However, there are no studies that report its effectiveness in semisolid and liquid products, such as the butter, in which the salt is added during the product preparation. Thus, this research provides new scientific information to the food industry and research fields, to expand the knowledge of reduced-sodium products development using microparticulate salt with sensory quality.

No studies have evaluated the application of microparticulate salt for semisolid product preparation. Therefore, the findings will support the development of healthy products.

Colleges of education must do more than expose prospective educators to “best” practices for teaching and leading linguistically, culturally, and ethnically diverse students. Educators need to develop attitudes, knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to become competent in catering to diverse student populations in schools. In this chapter, we seek to extend this conversation using a critical pedagogical lens. We draw specifically on Paulo Freire’s concept of radical love to interrogate our ways of teaching, leading, and opening up spaces for dialogue toward educating pre-service teachers and leaders who are critically conscious. Additionally, we use Paulo Freire’s concept of radical love to explore the similarities and disjunctures in our pedagogy and positionalities as international scholars of color.

This paper aims to analyze the performance of artificial neural networks with filling methods in predicting the minimum fluidization velocity of different biomass types for bioenergy applications.

An extensive literature review was performed to create an efficient database for training purposes. The database consisted of experimental values of the minimum fluidization velocity, physical properties of the biomass particles (density, size and sphericity) and characteristics of the fluidization (monocomponent experiments or binary mixture). The neural models developed were divided into eight different cases, in which the main difference between them was the filling method type (K-nearest neighbors [KNN] or linear interpolation) and the number of input neurons. The results of the neural models were compared to the classical correlations proposed by the literature and empirical equations derived from multiple regression analysis.

The performance of a given filling method depended on the characteristics and size of the database. The KNN method was superior for lower available data for training and specific fluidization experiments, like monocomponent or binary mixture. The linear interpolation method was superior for a wider and larger database, including monocomponent and binary mixture. The performance of the neural model was comparable with the predictions of the most well-known correlations from the literature.

Techniques of machine learning, such as filling methods, were used to improve the performance of the neural models. Besides the typical comparisons with conventional correlations, comparisons with three main equations derived from multiple regression analysis were reported and discussed.

In 1948, South Africa's Apartheid legislation imposed modernist spatial planning on its populations and created worlds Black people struggled to connect with. Crime, poverty and unemployment have emerged as legacies of Apartheid that continue to impact the lives of Black people living in the townships. In 1994, the new democratic government identified community engagement (CE) as a critical process that could help restore the values of Black people and the places they live in.

This chapter explores a CE process as storytelling to trace the spatiality of agency. As a researcher-architect living in a township, I examined the voluntary community organisation (VCO), Studiolight's CE process, and an exhibition entitled Who we are Macassar, which was conducted between 2016 and 2018 in the community of Macassar, a township in the Western Cape of South Africa. The VCO worked with local youth to produce story maps and a street photography project that reauthors (retells and rewrites) the stories of life in Macassar to critically engage the spatial legacies of Apartheid. Brazilian theorist Paulo Freire's writings on how neglected population groups can self-organise to create knowledge that can restore social narratives is useful to make sense of the CE process. I highlight the spaces of the CE process and use Freire's concepts of critical action, praxis and co-creation to structure the study. I then reflect on the nomadic and sporadic spatiality that emerges in Macassar to discuss how architects can think about forging places with a sense of community identity and belonging.

Many countries the world over continue to grapple with issues of thermal discomfort both within and without – a condition that has arisen due to incessant urbanization, climate change, among others. The current study focussed on assessing the level of thermal stress both in and outdoors towards finding measures to reduce overheating in spaces within the Savannah climatic region of Ghana through a four-stage approach.

A four-stage approach has been used for the study; thus, a thermal comfort analysis based on physiologically equivalent temperature (PET), overheating assessment, a subjective thermal responses/evaluation of residents and a simulation effort to improve comfort.

There was an indication of “moderate cold stress to slight cold stress” on the coolest day (28th December). On the warmest day (12th April), however, the indoor environment had exceedance and severity of overheating of at least 56% and 38-degree hours. The acceptable comfort range and comfort temperatures of occupants of buildings in the study area have been determined to be 25.5–33 °C by the thermal sensation survey. Meanwhile, the simulation showed that a 200% increase in thermal mass, exterior wall insulation and roof extension and insulation has the potential to generate a reduction of 18% in overheated hours.

The paper unearths the flagrant disregard for thermal comfort in an attempt of “copying blindly” architecture from Southern Ghana by the affluent within the Savannah Region. Again, data provided prove that indeed human activities have worsened the plight of inhabitants through materials as well as construction methods.

This paper aims to enhance the understanding of what is being taught – and how – to future built environment (BE) professionals in higher education (HE) BE curricular in the context of disaster risk reduction (DRR).

Reflecting on the results of an extensive survey carried out among 21 BE educators representing 14 countries, the pedagogies used to educate tomorrow’s BE professionals about DRR-related subjects are explored.

The vast majority of HE training for the future BE professionals focuses on hazards as a “problem” posed by nature – something that can be “solved” through a technical solution. Little reflection is required as to the social implications of DRR “solutions”, and knowledge too often remains analytical and distant from any sort of lived experience. Whilst many DRR-related subjects introduce the ideas of human-centric DRR, there is still a disconnection between technical engineering subjects and broader social science subjects. This is a missed opportunity for students acquiring technical knowledge to reflect on and engage with a wider societal context.

The paper draws on the liberative pedagogies of Paulo Freire, bell hooks and others to engage BE educators in collectively drawing on philosophies and practices that emphasise holistic ways of knowing and learning and encourage the broader consideration of non-technical ideas. This kind of DRR pedagogy is required if the society is to collectively strive for a BE that enhances equity and well-being, while avoiding the creation of risk through development and redevelopment.

Many studies only take into account the ply stacking sequence as the design variable to determine the optimal ply drop-off location; however, it is necessary to optimize other parameters that have a direct influence on the ply drop-off site such as which plies should be dropped and in which longitudinal direction. That way, the purpose of this study is to find the most significant design variables relative to the drop-off location considering the transversal and longitudinal positions, seeking to achieve the optimal combination of ply drop-off locations that provides excellent performance for the laminate plate.

This study aims to determine the optimal drop-off location in a laminate plate using the finite element method and an approach statistical with design of experiments (DOE).

The optimization strategy using DOE revealed to be satisfactory for analyzing laminate structures with ply drop-offs, demonstrating that not all design factors influence the response variability. The failure criterion response variable revealed a poor fit, with an adjusted coefficient of determination lower than 60%, thus demonstrating that the response did not vary with the ply drop-off location. Already the strain and natural frequency response variables presented high significance. Finally, the optimization strategy revealed that the optimal drop-off location that minimizes the strain and maximizes the natural frequency is the ply drop-off located of the end plate.

It was also noted that many researchers prefer evolutionary algorithms for optimizing composite structures with ply drop-offs, being scarce to the literature studies involving optimization strategies using response surface methodology. In addition, many studies only take into account the ply stacking sequence as the design variable to determine the optimal ply drop-off location; however, in this study, the authors investigated other important parameters that have direct influence on the ply drop-off site such as which plies should be dropped and in which longitudinal direction.

The pulse‐echo method used for the measurement of distances is based on the determination of the fly‐time, employed by the wave (a pulse or a short train) to travel from the sensor to the object and back. It is easy to measure with accuracy the precise moment of the emission, but determining the precise moment of the arrival of the echo is somewhat more complex.