Ultrastructural and developmental toxicity of potato and tomato leaf extracts to beet armyworm,Spodoptera exigua (lepidoptera: noctuidae)

Beet Armyworm, Spodoptera exigua is a herbivorous moth and a serious pest of many economically important plants, which are used as food sources. Because of rigorous standards of food quality, usage of synthetic insecticides in crop protection, against pests, is limited. Solanaceae plant extracts may be a relatively cheap source of efficient natural insecticides that can limit usage of synthetic substances. Their biological activity is not fully known. In particular, ultrastructural studies, using transmission electron microscopy, are not usual. In the present article we describe the effects of sublethal concentrations of tomato and potato leaf extracts against S. exigua. Acute lethal effects were not observed. Both extracts exerted similar effects within midgut and fat body cells. Midgut cells were not significantly altered while fat body cells showed prominent swelling of nuclear envelope and endoplasmic reticulum, vacuolization of mitochondria and fusion of fat droplets. These changes were much more intensive within groups exposed to potato than tomato extracts at highest concentration at least. Light microscopy was used to observe and document developmental alterations of S. exigua exposed to potato and tomato leaf extracts. Potato leaf extracts significantly decreased hatching success and caused morphological malformations of imagoes. Among them, malformations of wings were the most prominent. Interestingly, these effects were not observed within populations exposed to tomato extracts at highest concentration at least.     

Development of a long‐life vacuum‐packaged ready‐to‐eat meat product based on a traditional Portuguese seasoned meat

Carne do alguidar is a Portuguese traditional pork fried meat, usually manufactured for self‐consumption purposes. This study developed a ready‐to‐eat (RTE) meat product, to meet today's consumers’ convenience, manufactured at the industrial scale evaluating its quality and shelf life, assessing the effect of vacuum packaging and the use of an antioxidant (50 ppm BHT) to enhance oxidative stability. Physicochemical and microbiological parameters were assessed, and a sensory analysis was performed. Interestingly, no significant differences were recorded between control (non‐BHT) and antioxidant (BHT) samples. Microbiological counts remained at low levels throughout the storage period, ensuring the product's required microbiological quality. At later storage stages, higher values of thiobarbituric acid‐reactive substances arose and off flavours and aromas were perceived. Still, overall appreciation was not affected until 12 months of storage and a significant depreciation was perceived only after 15 months. Fibrousness and rising of off flavours were negatively correlated with overall appreciation.     

2011 CAV award announcement

The 2011 CAV (Computer-Aided Verification) Award was presented on July 17, 2011 at the 23rd annual CAV conference in Snowbird, Utah to Thomas Ball and Sriram Rajamani of Microsoft Research for their contributions to software model checking, specifically the development of the SLAM/SDV software model checker, which successfully demonstrated computer-aided verification techniques on real programs.     

Carbon nanotubes play an important role in the spatial arrangement of calcium deposits in hydrogels for bone regeneration

Age related bone diseases such as osteoporosis are considered among the main causes of reduced bone mechanical stability and bone fractures. In order to restore both biological and mechanical function of diseased/fractured bones, novel bioactive scaffolds that mimic the bone structure are constantly under development in tissue engineering applications. Among the possible candidates, chitosan-based thermosensitive hydrogel scaffolds represent ideal systems due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, enhanced antibacterial properties, promotion of osteoblast formation and ease of injection, which makes them suitable for less invasive surgical procedures. As a main drawback, these chitosan systems present poor mechanical performance that could not support load-bearing applications. In order to produce more mechanically-competent biomaterials, the combined addition of hydroxyapatite and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is proposed in this study. Specifically, the aim of this work is to develop thermosensitive chitosan hydrogels containing stabilised single-walled and multi-walled CNTs, where their effect on the mechanical/physiochemical properties, calcium deposition patterns and ability to provide a platform for the controlled release of protein drugs was investigated. It was found that the addition of CNTs had a significant effect on the sol–gel transition time and significantly increased the resistance to compression for the hydrogels. Moreover, in vitro calcification studies revealed that CNTs played a major role in the spatial arrangements of newly formed calcium deposits in the composite materials studied, suggesting that they may have a role in the way the repair of fragile and/or fractured bones occurs in vivo.     

Which App? A recommender system of applications in markets: Implementation of the service for monitoring users’ interaction

Users face the information overload problem when downloading applications in markets. This is mainly due to (i) the increasing unmanageable number of applications and (ii) the lack of an accurate and fine-grained categorization of the applications in the markets. To address this issue, we present an integrated solution which recommends to the users applications by considering a big amount of information: that is, according to their previously consumed applications, use pattern, tags used to annotate resources and history of ratings. We focus this paper on the service for monitoring users’ interaction.     

Spectroscopic evaluation of the colour play effect of thermochromic liquid crystal printing inks

Colour changes of a thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) ink printed on a black substrate are clearly observed by the naked eye, and therefore it is reasonable to expect that every approach recommended for colour measurements of samples with solid colour would be appropriate. In addition, the published spectroscopic analyses of TLC inks do not provide any guidance or limitations for the measurement geometry. On the other hand, our study demonstrates that spectroscopic measurements of such samples are not so straightforward. When using the most simple and commonly used measurement equipment with a directional illumination and viewing approach, the temperature-dependent spectral features resolve in a narrow spectral region that gives only a small part of the colour play effect. Detection of the entire effect requires the use of integrating spheres, which spatially integrate the radiant flux reflected on a sample in any direction; better results are obtained by spheres of larger diameter. The comparision of spectroscopic and colorimetric results obtained when different measurement geometries are applied on the same sample may demonstrate certain properties of the liquid crystal material inside microcapsules and help in understanding some details of the optical properties of the ink layer.     

Innovative method of Transthoracic Lung Cancer Biopsy of Parietal Lung Tumors under US Guidance after CT Pre-biopsy Planning as an Alternative to CT- Guided Biopsy

The authors compared their earlier results of the tumor biopsies performed under computer tomography （CT） guidance against the results of their recently modified-combined method of visualization and measurement of lung tumor parameters by CT imaging followed by US guided biopsy. In 238 （6.36%） of 3,745 patients in CT examination, the lung tumor was located peripherally, and obtaining histopathological confirmation was crucial to start the proper treatment. The patients were divided into two groups, the division was based on the biopsy method. Within the first group in I 18 patients, parietal lung tumor was confirmed and CT guided biopsy was performed. Within the second group, parietal lung tumor was confirmed in 120 patients and combined method of CT pre- biopsy planning and US guided biopsy were used. Pre-biopsy planning was performed using CT, measurements such as depth and distance of the tumor were made, obtained data were then saved on CT image and patient＇s skin was marked. Then obtained results were analyzed using test for two proportions. The analysis of the results confirmed the higher efficacy of the combined method taking into account the number of complications （p 〈 0.01） and diagnostic histopathological results （P 〈 0.001）. Suggested innovative method, involving both CT pre-biopsy planning and US guided biopsy, allows to analyze simultaneously static CT and dynamic US images and it is considered to be an easy and effective method comparing to relying on static in nature CT images only. Our method is related to a lower complication risk rate.     

Check Your Biosignals Here: A new dataset for off-the-person ECG biometrics

The Check Your Biosignals Here initiative (CYBHi) was developed as a way of creating a dataset and consistently repeatable acquisition framework, to further extend research in electrocardiographic (ECG) biometrics. In particular, our work targets the novel trend towards off-the-person data acquisition, which opens a broad new set of challenges and opportunities both for research and industry. While datasets with ECG signals collected using medical grade equipment at the chest can be easily found, for off-the-person ECG data the solution is generally for each team to collect their own corpus at considerable expense of resources. In this paper we describe the context, experimental considerations, methods, and preliminary findings of two public datasets created by our team, one for short-term and another for long-term assessment, with ECG data collected at the hand palms and fingers.     

A process for the production of a diacylglycerol‐based milk fat analogue

We propose a novel process for the production of a DAG‐rich acylglycerol mixture derived from milk fat. This product has potentially interesting nutritional properties, derived from both its high content of DAG and of short‐chain fatty acids (FAs). The proposed process consists of three steps: lipase‐catalysed partial ethanolysis of milk fat, extraction of the by‐product fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs) using supercritical carbon dioxide (SC‐CO₂) and isomerization of DAG to increase the proportion of 1,3‐DAG. The experimental investigation of the process steps was done using milk fat and trilaurin. Several lipases were tested for maximizing the percentage of DAG in the acylglycerol mixture produced by ethanolysis. The selectivity of the chosen lipase was such that the produced AG mixture was enriched in short‐chain FAs in relation to the original milk fat. FAEEs were completely extracted from the ethanolysis mixture by SC‐CO₂. In the final process step, we explored the reaction conditions for facilitating acyl migration in the DAG mixture, so that the equilibrium proportion of 1,3‐DAG (～64%) was attained. Our results set the basis for the development of a simple process for the production of a DAG‐rich milk fat analogue.