An empirical rate equation was developed to predict head rice yield reduction for rough rice exposed to moisture adsorptive conditions. Time of exposure, initial moisture content, and relative humidity were significant to the reductions in head rice yield caused by moisture adsorption. An equation used to predict the number of kernels which fissured upon exposure to various environments was mod...

The study diagnosed engineering properties on varying moisture content of sunflower seed and kernel from 7.6 to 25% (wet basis). On increasing moisture, dimensional values increased for both seed and kernel. Bulk density, true density and porosity were found higher for kernel as compared to seed at each moisture content. On increasing the moisture content from 7.6 to 25%, true density, porosity...

A 12-week laboratory study was conducted to assess the minimum initial moisture content of compost bulking (envelope) materials necessary to sustain desired heat production and completion of carcass decomposition during emergency composting of swine carcasses. During full-scale field testing of a semi-enclosed emergency composting procedure, first developed and used by the Canadian Food Inspect...

Water sorption isotherms and effective moisture diffusivities were determined at 20 8C for sponge cakes at high water activity as a function of their initial porosity, in the range 86 and 52% (0 g/g dry basis fat content), and of their fat content, ranging between 0 and 0.30 g/g dry basis (67% initial porosity). The equilibrium moisture values were not affected by food structure and decreased w...

In most studies, moisture sorption into amorphous foods is expressed as a change in the bulk moisture content, which does not provide detail on how a moisture front moves into the food. This study was targeted towards characterization of the moisture behavior in amorphous saccharide materials of different molecular weight (MW), glass transition temperature (Tg) and moisture content. Various sug...

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity Mission (SMOS) acquires surface soil moisture data of global coverage every three days. Product validation for a range of climate and environmental conditions across continents is a crucial step. For this purpose, a soil moisture and soil temperature sensor network was established in the Skjern River Catchment, Denmark. The objectives of this article are to ...

By using a coupled land surface-atmosphere model with initial conditions of varying resolution and ensembles of systematically changed soil moisture, convective-scale simulations of a typical frontal rainstorm in the Yangtze River Basin are collected to investigate: (1) effects of different datasets on the simulated frontal mesoscale convective systems (MCSs); (2) possible linkages between soil...

Spatial distributed information of isochronal surface soil moisture is very important to compensate the inaccuracy of initial conditions and the uncertainty of parameters in hydrological models at the landscape scale. In this paper the conceptual procedure to derive spatial distributed surface soil moisture values from synthetic aperture radar data by using ancillary optical remote sensing data...

[1] Climate model prediction skill is currently limited in response to poor land surface soil moisture state initialization. However, initial soil moisture state prediction skill can potentially be enhanced by the assimilation of remotely sensed near-surface soil moisture data in off-line simulation. This study is one of the first to evaluate such potential using actual remote sensing data toge...