Effect of chitosan on Bacillus cereus inhibition and quality of cooked rice during storage

Improper cooling of cooked rice at an inappropriate temperature or leaving cooked rice at room temperature can cause food poisoning attributed to Bacillus cereus. Natural food preservative of either squid or crab polymer chitosan solution was added to examine their antibacterial properties against Bacillus cereus in cooked rice during storage at 37 and 4 °C. Both types of chitosan could retard the growth of B. cereus and total aerobic counts in cooked rice stored at 37 °C up to 1 day. In addition, the effect of chitosans on the physical and textural properties of cooked rice during storage was studied. Both chitosans slightly increased the moisture content of cooked rice. However, chitosans had no effect on the whiteness and hardness of cooked rice during storage (P > 0.05). Therefore, both chitosans have a potential to be used as food preservative for cooked rice with no negative effects on rice quality.     

A self‐scalable load injection service

Load testing of applications is an important and costly activity for software provider companies. Classical solutions are very difficult to set up statically, and their cost is prohibitive in terms of both human and hardware resources. Virtualized cloud computing platforms provide new opportunities for stressing an application's scalability, by providing a large range of flexible and less expensive (pay‐per‐use model) computation units. On the basis of these advantages, load testing solutions could be provided on demand in the cloud. This paper describes a Benchmark‐as‐a‐Service solution that automatically scales the load injection platform and facilitates its setup according to load profiles. Our approach is based on: (i) virtualization of the benchmarking platform to create self‐scaling injectors; (ii) online calibration to characterize the injector's capacity and impact on the benched application; and (iii) a provisioning solution to appropriately scale the load injection platform ahead of time. We also report experiments on a benchmark illustrating the benefits of this system in terms of cost and resource reductions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Suitability,efficiency and microbiological safety of novel physical technologies for the processing of ready‐to‐eat meals,meats and pumpable products

Consumer studies and market reports show an increase in consumption of ready‐to‐eat (RTE) foods. Although conventional processing technologies can in most cases produce safe products, they can also lead to the degradation of nutritional compounds and negatively affect quality characteristics. Consumers strongly prefer food that is minimally processed with the maximum amount of health‐promoting substances. Novel processing technologies as pre‐ or post‐treatment decontamination methods or as substitutes of conventional technologies have the potential to produce foods that are safe, rich in nutrient content and with superior organoleptic properties. Combining novel with conventional processes can eliminate potential drawbacks of novel technologies. This review examines available scientific information and critically evaluates the suitability and efficiency of various novel thermal and nonthermal technologies in terms of microbial safety, quality as well as nutrient content on the production of RTE meals, meats and pumpable products.     

“Size effect” in the fatigue behavior of Friction Stir Welded plates

Comparative fatigue tests were carried out on Friction Stir Welded specimens of a 2195-T8 aluminum–lithium alloy that differed significantly in width. The width of the larger specimens was over thirteen times greater than that of the small specimens. Fatigue results showed a clear “size effect”, i.e. fatigue life of large specimens was about 40% of the corresponding value of small specimens. The Equivalent Initial Flaw Size methodology was adopted to correlate the two sets of results. Fatigue crack initiation life was disregarded with respect to crack propagation life, and fatigue life was evaluated only as propagation of a small pre-existing defect. Following this methodology, test results of small specimens were used to evaluate the initial equivalent flaw contained in each specimen. It was assumed that this data followed a normal distribution. The equivalent initial flaw in larger specimens was evaluated by simple geometrical considerations. A very good assessment of mean fatigue life and scatter in the fatigue results of large specimens was obtained by simulating the propagation of these defects. Calculations were carried out by taking also welding residual stresses into account, but the results demonstrated that this effect was not significant.     

Effective Location Based Services with Dynamic Data Management in Mobile Environments

With the proliferation of mobile computing technologies, location based services have been identified as one of the most promising target application. We classify mobile information service domains based on feature characteristics of the information sources and different patterns of mobile information access. By carefully examining the service requirements, we identify the dynamic data management problem that must be addressed for effective location based services in mobile environments. We then devise a general architecture and cost model for servicing both location independent and location dependent data. Based on the architecture and cost model, we propose a set of dynamic data management strategies that employs judicious caching, proactive server pushing and neighborhood replication to reduce service cost and improve response time under changing user mobility and access patterns. Detail behavior analysis helps us in precisely capturing when and how to apply these strategies. Simulation results suggest that different strategies are effective for different types of data in response to different patterns of movement and information access. Shiow-yang Wu is an associate professor of the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan, R.O.C. He received the BS and MS degrees in computer engineering from National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROC, and the PhD degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1984, 1986, and 1995, respectively. His research interests include data/knowledge bases, mobile computing, distributed processing, intelligence information systems, and electronic commerce. Kun-Ta Wu was born in Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1976. He received the B.S. degree in computer science from Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1999 and the M.S. degree in computer science and information engineering from National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 2001. Currently, he is an Assistant Researcher in the Domestic Division at Science and Technology Information Center, National Science Council, R.O.C., as a member of Information Gathering and Analysis Group of National Information and Communication Security Taskforce. His research interests include mobile computing, wireless network and information security.     

销售企业客户服务体系建设的几点建议

在阐述客户服务意义的基础上，提出对中国石化成品油销售企业客户服务体系建设的建议，即建立以客户为尊的服务理念；建设特色企业文化；完善员工服务体系；注重细节，提高服务质量；整合现有客户体系资源，拓展服务功能。     

住宅设计的分析与研究

总结了住宅设计的发展,概括了住宅各个功能区的特点。通过设计的实例说明了各不同功能区的设计,成果可供进一步的研究参考。     

基于服务器端会话追踪的Web查询服务的研究

在探讨了Web查询服务的典型模型后,论文阐述了服务器端会话追踪机制的实现方式,设计了基于服务器端会话追踪的Web查询服务的典型解决方案。该设计方案可以较为安全地保存和维护客户的上下文信息,可靠地跟踪用户查询所处的状态,有效地实现有状态的Web查询服务。     

宽带综合IP网的MPLS技术及其应用

多协议标记交换（MPLS）技术是综合利用网络第二层交换技术的有效性和第三层IP路由的灵活性等优点而产生的多层交换技术。通过在传统的IP包里加入标记，使路由转发依赖于标记，大大地提高IP包的转发速度，同时可使传统IP网络具有服务质量（QoS）能力。现主要分析MPLS体系结构，指出MPLS的一些应用。