Adaptation of the Australian core food groups to enable planning of vegan and lactovegetarian diets

This work demonstrates how the Australian core food groups system can be modified to enable the planning of vegan and lactovegetarian diets as well as omnivorous diets. In the modified version the cereals, vegetables and fruits groups remain the same as in the core food groups system, while the meat group is replaced with legumes, soya products, nuts and seeds. The milk group becomes milk or fortified soya milk, to allow for both lactovegetarian and vegan diets. The core food groups standard of 70% of the recommended dietary intake was adopted as a target for determining recommendations on the minimum number of serves from each food group. As found in the development of the core food groups system, zinc was the most limiting nutrient. Vitamin B 12 and calcium were other limiting nutrients in the vegan and lactovegetarian guides. The number of serves from each group required to meet 70% of the applicable recommended dietary intake has been calculated for children from four years old, adult men and women and pregnant and lactating women. It was found that the number of serves from each food group required in the vegan and lactovegetarian planning guides was in most cases similar to the number of serves of corresponding core food groups specified for a particular population group. This suggests that the vegan and lactovegetarian planning guides could be incorporated into a modified core food groups planning guide. Such a guide would cater for the general omnivorous population as well as for those seeking to avoid meat and/or dairy products. (Aust J Nutr Diet 1999:56:22-30) Key words: vegan, vegetarian, food guide, food groups, dietary planning.

Bio-inspired multifunctional metallic foams through the fusion of different biological solutions

Nature is a school for scientists and engineers. Inherent multiscale structures of biological materials exhibit multifunctional integration. In nature, the lotus, the water strider, and the flying bird evolved different and optimized biological solutions to survive. In this contribution, inspired by the optimized solutions from the lotus leaf with superhydrophobic self-cleaning, the water strider leg with durable and robust superhydrophobicity, and the lightweight bird bone with hollow structures, multifunctional metallic foams with multiscale structures are fabricated, demonstrating low adhesive superhydrophobic self-cleaning, striking loading capacity, and superior repellency towards different corrosive solutions. This approach provides an effective avenue to the development of water strider robots and other aquatic smart devices floating on water. Furthermore, the resultant multifunctional metallic foam can be used to construct an oil/water separation apparatus, exhibiting a high separation efficiency and long-term repeatability. The presented approach should provide a promising solution for the design and construction of other multifunctional metallic foams in a large scale for practical applications in the petro-chemical field. Optimized biological solutions continue to inspire and to provide design idea for the construction of multiscale structures with multifunctional integration. Inspired by the optimized biological solutions from the lotus leaf with superhydrophobic self-cleaning, the water strider leg with durable and robust superhydrophobicity, and the lightweight bird bone with hollow structures, multifunctional metallic foams with multiscale structures are fabricated, demonstrating low adhesive superhydrophobic self-cleaning, striking loading capacity, stable corrosion resistance, and oil/water separation.

Decision fusion for reliable flood mapping using remote sensing images

Flood extent mapping is a basic tool for flood damage assessment, which can be done by digital classification techniques using satellite imageries, including the data recorded by radar and optical sensors. However, converting the data into the information we need is not a straightforward task. One of the great challenges involved in the data interpretation is to separate the permanent water bodies and flooding regions, including both the fully inundated areas and the wet areas where trees and houses are partly covered with water. This paper adopts the decision fusion technique to combine the mapping results from radar data and the NDVI data derived from optical data. An improved capacity in terms of identifying the permanent or semi-permanent water bodies from flood inundated areas has been achieved. Computer software tools Multispec and Matlab were used.

Multiphase porous media model for Intermittent Microwave Convective Drying (IMCD) of food

Intermittent microwave convective (IMCD) drying is an advanced drying technology that improves both energy efficiency and food quality during the drying of food materials. Despite numerous experimental studies available for IMCD, there is no complete multiphase porous media model available to describe the process. A multiphase porous media model considering liquid water, gases and the solid matrix inside the food during drying can provide in depth understanding of IMCD. In this article, firstly a multiphase porous media model was developed for IMCD. Then the model is validated against experimental data by comparing moisture content and temperature distributions after each heating and tempering periods. The profile of vapour pressures and evaporation during IMCD are presented and discussed. The relative contribution of water and vapour fluxes due to gas pressure and diffusion demonstrated that the fluxes due are relatively higher in IMCD compared to convection drying and this makes the IMCD faster.

Energy efficient change detection over a MAC using physical layer fusion

We propose a simple and energy efficient distributed change detection scheme for sensor networks based on Page's parametric CUSUM algorithm. The sensor observations are IID over time and across the sensors conditioned on the change variable. Each sensor runs CUSUM and transmits only when the CUSUM is above some threshold. The transmissions from the sensors are fused at the physical layer. The channel is modeled as a multiple access channel (MAC) corrupted with IID noise. The fusion center which is the global decision maker, performs another CUSUM to detect the change. We provide the analysis and simulation results for our scheme and compare the performance with an existing scheme which ensures energy efficiency via optimal power selection.

Decentralized sequential change detection using physical layer fusion

We study the problem of decentralized sequential change detection with conditionally independent observations. The sensors form a star topology with a central node called fusion center as the hub. The sensors transmit a simple function of their observations in an analog fashion over a wireless Gaussian multiple access channel and operate under either a power constraint or an energy constraint. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed techniques have lower detection delays when compared with existing schemes. Moreover we demonstrate that the energy-constrained formulation enables better use of the total available energy than a power-constrained formulation.

Phase-Field Simulation of Fusion Interface Events during Solidification of Dissimilar Welds: Effect of Composition Inhomogeneity

We investigate the events near the fusion interfaces of dissimilar welds using a phase-field model developed for single-phase solidification of binary alloys. The parameters used here correspond to the dissimilar welding of a Ni/Cu couple. The events at the Ni and the Cu interface are very different, which illustrate the importance of the phase diagram through the slope of the liquidus curves. In the Ni side, where the liquidus temperature decreases with increasing alloying, solutal melting of the base metal takes place; the resolidification, with continuously increasing solid composition, is very sluggish until the interface encounters a homogeneous melt composition. The growth difficulty of the base metal increases with increasing initial melt composition, which is equivalent to a steeper slope of the liquidus curve. In the Cu side, the initial conditions result in a deeply undercooled melt and contributions from both constrained and unconstrained modes of growth are observed. The simulations bring out the possibility of nucleation of a concentrated solid phase from the melt, and a secondary melting of the substrate due to the associated recalescence event. The results for the Ni and Cu interfaces can be used to understand more complex dissimilar weld interfaces involving multiphase solidification.

Sticking and erosion at carbon-containing plasma-facing materials in fusion reactors

Controlled nuclear fusion is one of the most promising sources of energy for the future. Before this goal can be achieved, one must be able to control the enormous energy densities which are present in the core plasma in a fusion reactor. In order to be able to predict the evolution and thereby the lifetime of different plasma facing materials under reactor-relevant conditions, the interaction of atoms and molecules with plasma first wall surfaces have to be studied in detail. In this thesis, the fundamental sticking and erosion processes of carbon-based materials, the nature of hydrocarbon species released from plasma-facing surfaces, and the evolution of the components under cumulative bombardment by atoms and molecules have been investigated by means of molecular dynamics simulations using both analytic potentials and a semi-empirical tight-binding method. The sticking cross-section of CH3 radicals at unsaturated carbon sites at diamond (111) surfaces is observed to decrease with increasing angle of incidence, a dependence which can be described by a simple geometrical model. The simulations furthermore show the sticking cross-section of CH3 radicals to be strongly dependent on the local neighborhood of the unsaturated carbon site. The erosion of amorphous hydrogenated carbon surfaces by helium, neon, and argon ions in combination with hydrogen at energies ranging from 2 to 10 eV is studied using both non-cumulative and cumulative bombardment simulations. The results show no significant differences between sputtering yields obtained from bombardment simulations with different noble gas ions. The final simulation cells from the 5 and 10 eV ion bombardment simulations, however, show marked differences in surface morphology. In further simulations the behavior of amorphous hydrogenated carbon surfaces under bombardment with D^+, D^+2, and D^+3 ions in the energy range from 2 to 30 eV has been investigated. The total chemical sputtering yields indicate that molecular projectiles lead to larger sputtering yields than atomic projectiles. Finally, the effect of hydrogen ion bombardment of both crystalline and amorphous tungsten carbide surfaces is studied. Prolonged bombardment is found to lead to the formation of an amorphous tungsten carbide layer, regardless of the initial structure of the sample. In agreement with experiment, preferential sputtering of carbon is observed in both the cumulative and non-cumulative simulations

Introduction: Food literacy for contemporary food and eating

This chapter provides an introduction to the term “food literacy”. Its use in the literature, policy and practice, implies that the term is an attempt to encapsulate the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed for everyday eating. This chapter will first review the use of the term in policy and practice, then go on to review what is known about contemporary food and eating and its influence on the emergence of this term and conclude with an overview of the key ideas to be explored in this book.

An overview of the use of the term food literacy

This chapter examines the history and breadth of use of the term “food literacy” in scholarly literature. It reviews and compares various popularly used definitions from diverse paradigms. Other terms such as “cooking”, “food skills” and “food wellbeing” used to describe the everyday knowledge, skills and behaviours used to meet food needs are also examined.

A definition of food literacy and its components

This chapter defines food literacy and its components using the empirical data collected in two studies undertaken in 2010 and 2011 as part of the author’s PhD thesis. The first was a Delphi study of Australian food experts and the second was a study of young adults across a spectrum of disadvantage. Defining food literacy and identifying its components was an iterative process. At different times throughout the research, each study informed the other. This chapter will describe the components of food literacy, the data used to identify them and how they combined to produce a definition of food literacy.

Relating food literacy to nutrition and health

This chapter describes the evolution of a model to propose the relationship between food literacy and nutrition. This model can also be used as a framework for program planning, implementation and evaluation. Practitioners and policy makers invest in food literacy with outcome expectations beyond diet quality. For this reason, a second model was developed to conceptualise the role of food literacy with respect to food security, body weight and chronic disease risk. This second model is useful in positioning food literacy within multi-strategic public health nutrition and chronic disease plans.