The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between fluorescence emissions of corn kernels inoculated with Aspergillus flavus and aflatoxin contamination levels within the kernels. Aflatoxin contamination in corn has been a long-standing problem plaguing the grain industry with potentially devastating consequences to corn growers. In this study, aflatoxin-contaminated corn kerne...

Walnut (Juglans regia L.) is a tree with significant economic value and usage for human health and various food industries. However, fresh walnut kernels are a less widespread product than the dried kernels. This study aimed to determine the fresh walnut kernel properties including, fatty acid composition, proximate composition, total phenolics (TPs), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), acidic, p...

In this study, different methods for shell splitting and the effect of freezing prior to drying on shell splitting percentage of pistachio were investigated. A completely randomized design was used to investigate the effects of different freezing temperatures (0, -6, -12 and -18°C), different drying temperatures (80, 90 and 100°C) and different cultivars (Akbari and Kalehghouchi) on shell split...

Many classification algorithms were originally designed for fixed-size vectors. Recent applications in text and speech processing and computational biology require however the analysis of variable-length sequences and more generally weighted automata. An approach widely used in statistical learning techniques such as Support Vector Machines (SVMs) is that of kernel methods, due to their computa...

Given a digraph D = (V, A), a quasi-kernel of D is an independent set Q C_ V such that for every vertex v not contained in Q, either there exists a vertex u E Q such that v dominates u, or there exists a vertex w such that v dominates w and w dominates some vertex u E Q. A sink in a digraph D = (V, A) is a vertex v E V that dominates no vertex of D. In this thesis we prove that if D is a semico...

Pistachio fruit components, including hulls (mesocarps and epicarps), seed coats (testas), and kernels (seeds), all contribute to variable aflatoxin content in pistachios. Fresh pistachio kernels were individually inoculated with Aspergillus flavus and incubated 7 or 10 days. Hulled, shelled kernels were either left intact or wounded prior to inoculation. Wounded kernels, with or without the se...

The physiological processes that control relative starch, protein, and oil concentration of maize (Zea mays L.) kernels are not well defined. In this study, associations between metabolic characteristics of developing kernels and specific storage product accumulation in mature kernels were identified. In a field experiment, kernels of maize genotypes with widely divergent chemical composition w...

We investigated weight loss caused by Liposcelis entomophila (Enderlein) feeding in damaged (cracked) and intact kernels of 'Jagger' variety of hard red winter wheat over a 90-d period at 30 +/- 1 degrees C and 75 +/- 5% relative humidity. L. entomophila caused 8.5% weight loss in damaged wheat kernels, which was significantly greater than the weight loss found in intact wheat kernels (0.2%). W...

A protocol was developed to measure the glass transition temperature (Tg) of brown rice kernels using dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA). In order to accommodate the sample requirements of the dynamic mechanical thermal analyzer and prevent moisture loss during experiments, kernels were first wrapped with a thin layer of parafilm and then a thin layer of aluminum foil. The wrapped kerne...