Introduction: The mineralogical and Textural characteristics of rock materials have an important influence on physico-mechanical properties. The effects of some Textural characteristics like grain size (Brace, 1961), grain shape (Cox and Budhu, 2008), grain surface (Diepenbroek et al., 1992), grain size distribution (Gurkan Ozgurel and Vipulanandan, 2005), and grains interlocking (Hoek, 1965) on physico-mechanical behavior of rock materials has always been emphasized. On the other hand, it has been found that Textural properties are originally controlled by the mineralogy and chemistry of rock materials (Locat et al., 1984).....

Background: Ultrasound imaging has become one of the most widely utilized adjunct tools in breast cancer screening due to its advantages. The computer-aided detection of breast ultrasound is rapid development via significant features extracted from images. Objectives: The main aim was to identify features of breast ultrasound image that can facilitate reasonable classification of ultrasound images between malignant and benign lesions. Patients and Methods: This research was a retrospective study in which 85 cases (35 malignant [positive group] and 50 benign [negative group] with diagnostic reports) with ultrasound images were collected. The B-mode ultrasound images have manually selected regions of interest (ROI) for estimated features of an image. Then, a fractal dimensional (FD) image was generated from the original ROI by using the box-counting method. Both FD and ROI images were extracted features, including mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis. These extracted features were tested as significant by t-test, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and Kappa coefficient. Results: The statistical analysis revealed that the mean texture of images performed the best in differentiating benign versus malignant tumors. As determined by the ROC analysis, the appropriate qualitative values for the mean and the LR model were 0. 85 and 0. 5, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predicted value (PPV), negative predicted value (NPV), and Kappa for the mean was 0. 77, 0. 84, 0. 81, 0. 77, 0. 84, and 0. 61, respectively. Conclusion: The presented method was efficient in classifying malignant and benign tumors using image textures. Future studies on breast ultrasound texture analysis could focus on investigations of edge detection, texture estimation, classification models, and image features.

The Jajarm karst bauxite deposit is located about 175 km southwest of Bojnourd. The deposit has been developed as a stratiform horizon along the contact of Triassic dolomites and the Jurassic shales and sandstone. In this study, the Textural elements of the Jajarm bauxites are classified into matrix and separated textures based on morphological and genetic criteria. Pelitomorphic and microgranular textures are the most abundant matrix Textural elements and ooids, pisoids, pelletsand secondary occurrences are the main separated Textural elements. Textural analyses indicated both allochthonous and autochtonous origins for the Jajarm bauxites. Detailed petrographic studies allowed the recognition of two types of ooids and pisoids based on morphological features and laminations. Type A is characterized by thin, regular and continuous lamination, whereas type B has thick, irregular and discontinuous lamination. Ooids and pisoids are mainly composed of alternating kaolinite-hemetite and diaspore-geothite laminae in which Al2O3 concentration increases towards the outer laminae. Fine-scale alternation of these laminae in the ooids and pisoids implies the climatic fluctuations of wet and dry seasons. Secondary Textural elements are mainly observed as veins enriched in SiO2 and Al2O3.

Purpose: The flourishing of political parties and currents is one of the signs of the degree of development in societies. In contemporary Iran and since the formation of the constitutional movement, political currents have gone through many ups and downs and it can be said that political currents in Iran after the Islamic Revolution have not yet reached the stage of institutionalization and stability. A characteristic feature of political currents in Iran is the divergence and division among political currents in recent decades, and this can be one of the reasons for the instability and cross-sectional and seasonal activity of political parties in Iran. Therefore, the necessity of leading research seeks to answer the question of how factors and divergence among political currents in Iran after the victory of the Islamic Revolution can be analyzed? And what are the scenarios for the advancement of political currents in Iran?Method: To answer this question, the method of causal-layer analysis, which is one of the qualitative methods in futures research, has been used.Findings: The research findings indicate that this divergence is due to a wide range of reasons from the level of causal systems (from the institutionalization of power to the formation of parties as elitist initiatives), worldview and discourse (from charismatic political authority to culture). Subsidiary-follower politics to myth-metaphor (Iranian individualism to belief in a strong state-weak society) can be analyzed.Conclusions: Three scenarios for the future of Iranian political currents can be considered: integration of currents as the security valve of the political system, the collapse of political currents in the traditional form, integration and consolidation in new social movements (virtualized parties).

Introduction: Fruits and their products in the dried form are good sources of vitamins, energy and minerals. However, during the process of drying or dehydration there are changes in quality parameters in dried products. Texture is one of the most important quality attributes of fruits during drying, reflecting their mechanical and microstructural properties. Apple is perishable fruit. Drying of apple is very important because of High losses are experienced during the seasonal glut. A novel process in food industry is the simultaneous infrared dry blanching and dehydration operation (SIRDBD) with intermittent heating method (radiation at constant temperature) exerted on fruits and vegetables that is known to enhance the quality of the final product. In the food industry, end-products must achieve a compromise between several properties, including sensory, sanitary and technological properties. Prediction of changes in texture during drying could be helpful in a better process control and improvement in overall acceptability of a dried snack food. The change of the elastic or viscoelastic texture of the fresh apples to rigid, fragile and brittle in the apple chips were evaluated by instrumental and sensory methods. Many attempts have been made to describe the viscoelastic behavior of dehydrated fruits and vegetables. Maxwell’ s or compression models are limited to homogeneous, isotropic materials. In contrast, texture profile analysis (TPA) is more suitable for heterogeneous biological materials and shows a good correlation with organoleptic evaluation. Typical TPA parameters are including hardness, adhesiveness, springiness, cohesiveness, gumminess, chewiness and resilience. In this research, for the first time, Textural analysis of dried apple slices by infrared heating at different temperatures and different moisture levels was performed. Finally, the optimum texture and overall acceptance of the product are described according to the instrumental analysis. Materials and methods: Apples (Golden Delicious variety) were purchased from a local market and kept in 0° C± 1° C and relative humidity ranging from 90% to 95%. Before every thermal processing, the apple specimens were picked up from the cold storage and then they were put into use after reaching the ambient temperature. The samples were skinned manually and then cut into slices with different thicknesses of 5mm, 9mm and 13mm, all 20mm in diameter. The sliced apples were immediately subjected to simultaneous blanching and infrared drying. The texture of dehydrated apple slices using infrared radiation at three surface temperatures of 70, 75 and 80 ° C were studied. The product in three thicknesses was dried to achieve a moisture level of 15, 20 and 25% wet weight basis. Then, texture profile analysis (TPA) was carried out to 50% compression strain using texture analyzer. The sensory evaluation of dried slices was also considered for desire texture (Good mouth feels texture, lack of hard tissue, no shrinkage) and overall acceptance (The final acceptability of the product in terms of total sensory properties including color, texture, flavor and aroma) by 10 professional panelists. For statistical analysis, a completely randomized design (CRD) was used in a factorial form (3 3 ) and Duncan test with 95% confidence level. Result & Discussion: The results showed that drying to studied moisture levels reduced the hardness and adhesiveness and increased springiness, cohesiveness, gumminess, chewiness and resilience in comparison with raw apple tissue. Hardness of samples dried at higher temperature was higher due to rapid removal of moisture which might have caused collapse of capillary voids inside the product. Due to shrinkage samples became denser and thus a larger fracture force was to be expected. As water content increases (i. e., higher RH) water plasticizes the cell walls and the material and product becomes softer and more pliable, thus hardness decreases. The increase of hardness could be because the rapid mass transfer that damaged the membrane and cell structure of the fruits during drying. Another important factor responsible for the increase of hardness of finish-dried samples is the low final moisture content when compared with other samples. High temperature drying method enables samples to reach low moisture content at relatively short duration and therefore the product with harder texture was obtained. The maximum value of adhesiveness was observed for fresh apples, which could be attributed to the high moisture and sugar content. Adhesiveness decreased with moisture loss, indicating the availability of free water on the sample surface. A significant decrease in springiness following hightemperature drying could be attributed to the glass transition phenomenon and changes from elastic to plastic behavior. In the period of softening, cohesiveness increased with moisture loss. Hardening caused a decrease in cohesiveness depending on the drying temperature. Gumminess is the energy required to disintegrate a semisolid food to a state of readiness for swallowing. High values of gumminess revealed “ firm” and “ crisp” with a cell rupture mode of tissue failure and lowest values of gumminess could be classified as “ soft” . At the end of drying and with apple hardening, chewiness increased to values equal or above initial chewiness, indicating that a larger amount of energy is needed to masticate dried apples. Resilience had increasing with moisture loss. By increasing the thickness of the slices, the cohesiveness and springiness decreased and hence chewiness significantly decreased. The overall acceptance and desire texture in dried samples was observed at lower water evaporation rate conditions (lower temperatures, lower thickness and higher moisture content). In these conditions, the hardness of apple slices tissue was equal to 695. 177 ± 7. 685 grams. During drying of the apple, Textural behavior was varied from the viscoelastic (higher initial hardness, with cohesiveness, springiness and lower resilience) to elastic and then to plastic or glassy.

In this research, effect of the chickpea flour and maize combination in different concentrations 20, 40, 60 and 80% (w/w) and addition of 3% (w/w) hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose gum, on the staling properties of gluten-free bread was investigated. Moisture content of bread was determined during the 1st, 3rd and 6th days according to a standard method. Gluten-free bread texture also evaluated during the days 1 and 2 using a texture analyzer and the peak temperature and enthalpy of the samples also evaluated in 1st, 3rd and 6th days using the differential scanning calorimeter. Considering the acquired data an increase the percentage of chickpea flour increased moisture content of the gluten-free bread leading to less firmness, and too with increasing in percentage of chickpea flour reduced enthalpy and peak temperature of the gluten free bread leading to staling later. Altogether, according to the result obtained from staling tests using 20% and 80% of maize flour and chickpea respectively in a gluten- free formulation had the most effect in retarding the staling.

The Boein-Miandasht Complex, in the central part of the Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone, is composed of metamorphic rocks, and granitoid intrusions, gabbro and gabbro-diorite. The mineralogy of diorite includes plagioclase, amphibole, biotite, quartz, apatite, zircon, and titanite. Intergranular and spherulitic (radial and fibrous) textures along with aplitic texture are seen in these rocks. Spherulites are visible as a radial set or a concentric radial branch. The dimensions of the spherulites are on average up to 0.2 mm with different shapes such as fan, plume and spherical in morphology. Spherulite texture is attributed to unstable and unbalanced conditions and rapid cooling during magma crystallization. During the exhumation of the region and the melting along with the deformation and the occurrence of fracturing associated with the mixing of mafic magma with felsic magma, the spherulite texture was created in these hypabyssal rocks.

Introduction The artichoke is part of the foods from the vegetable group that provide important nutrients like vitamin A and C, potassium and fiber which used as a food and medicine. In the pharmaceutical sector, dried extracts are used in the preparation of pills and capsules. Dried extracts can be prepared from the dehydration of a concentrated extractive solution from herbal materials (leaves, roots, seeds, etc. ), resulting in a dried powder. The spray drying is widely used in the preparation of dried powders from extracts of medicinal plants, fruit pulps. One of the newly developed spray drying techniques is an ultrasonic vacuum method, which strengths of spray drying by incorporation of ultrasonic atomizer and vacuum chamber. Nowadays, image processing has been applied to food images, as acquired by different microscopic systems, to obtain numerical data about the morphology and microstructure of the analyzed foods. For this purpose, microscopy and image processing techniques could be considered as proper tools to evaluate qualitatively and quantitatively the food microstructure, making possible to carry out numerical correlations between microstructure data, as obtained from the images, and the Textural properties of food powders. The Textural characteristics of the obtained dried powders are determined by means of a perfect detection by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) pictures, and analyzed with a statistical approach for image texture studies, which calls the gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) technique. The object of this study was to illustrate the application of image processing to the study of texture properties from extract powder using GLCM texture analysis and some vacuum spray dryer conditions effect on the texture features of mass particles and single particle SEM images. Materials and Methods After preparing water extract solution from artichoke leaves, extracts were dried under four conditions of vacuum spray drying (according to Table 1). To study the texture of the obtained dried extract powders, different representative features are extracted from the GLCM matrix. The angular second moment (ASM), which is defined as a measure of the homogeneity of the image, the contrast parameter (CT), which represents the amount of local variations given by differences in the gray values in the image. The correlation value (CR), which is a measure of gray tone linear dependencies in the image depending on the direction of the measure (different θ s). The inverse difference moment value (IDM), which, similar to ASM, quantifies the homogeneity of the image, however, using a different equation, the entropy parameter (ET), which is a measure that is inversely related to the order given by the gray tones in the image. Rangefilt and stdfilt calculates the local range and local standard deviation of an image respectively. Entropyfilt calculates the local entropy of a grayscale image also. Parameters (ASM, CT, CR and IDM were analyzed in four directions (0º , 45º , 90º , and 135º ). Results and Discussion The results of analysis of variance showed that, the difference between the Textural features of a single particle and mass particles in four different conditions vacuum spray dryer was significant statistically. Texture analysis was demonstrated that larger ASM, CR, and IDM values indicate less roughness, whereas larger CT and ET values indicate more roughness. At lower inlet temperature and higher vacuum pressure, water diffusion in the material to be slower and allowing the deformation process in the particles to be more pronounced. Consequently, it was possible to observe that generated smaller particles are rougher and less spherical. When the concentration is increased, due to the constant concentration of the additive, the ratio of excipient (lactose) to extraction decreased, as a result were formed a greater number of particles with rougher surfaces. According to these conditions, the values of CT, ET, rangefilt and stdfilt were larger while ASM, CR, and IDM values were smaller. By analyzing the effect of the angle on the oriented Textural characteristics, the contrast and correlation parameter were maximum at the angles of 45 and 135 degrees and 0 and 90 degrees respectively. Conclusions Image processing could be auxiliary tools for understanding and characterizing complex systems such as food and biological materials. In this study imaging-based technique was developed to evaluate the texture properties of artichoke leaf extract powder at different conditions of vacuum spray drying. The use of higher temperatures and lower vacuum pressures contributed to faster evaporation rate and production of smoother and larger particles, thereby increasing ASM, CR, and IDM values and reducing CT, ET, Rangefilt and stdfilt. Furthermore, the contrast and entropy parameters showed inverse trends in comparison with correlation, energy and homogeneity. Decrease of solution concentration resulted in the more presence of lactose in the composition of extract/excipient improves the Textural properties of powders. The direction parameter had also affected on GLCM Textural features. Two oriented Textural characteristics (contrast and correlation) also showed significant differences with respect to the nature of particle texture in different directions of measurement. The obtained data extracted from image analysis may provide valuable information to understand the role of structure with respect to product functionality.