Quality enhancement of the abundant under‐valued crustacean,lobster krill (Munida spp.), during its chilled storage

Lobster krill (Munida genus) represents an under‐valued crustacean frequently caught on European fishing banks. In this work, its sensory, microbiological and biochemical qualities were evaluated during chilled storage. Additionally, the effects of a prestorage antimelanosic treatment consisting of soaking in sodium metabisulphite (SMB) solutions at two different concentrations (0.25% and 0.75%) were also studied. SMB prestorage treatment provided lobster specimens that still exhibited acceptable sensory quality after 10 days of storage, while control specimens were unacceptable at that time. SMB treatment also resulted in a significant (P < 0.05) inhibition of microbial growth, mainly of Enterobacteriaceae, psychrotrophes and proteolytic bacteria. Low lipid oxidation levels were observed for all batches; however, a significantly higher (P < 0.05) retention of polyunsaturated fatty acids was found in SMB‐treated lobster, especially in the 0.75% SMB batch. The results presented here open the way to the potential commercialisation of currently under‐utilised lobster krill as a chilled product.     

Effect of biodegradable film (lyophilised alga Fucus spiralis and sorbic acid) on quality properties of refrigerated megrim (Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis)

The effect of replacing the on‐board currently employed polyethylene film by a novel type of environmentally friendly packaging was studied. For it, a polylactic acid (PLA) biodegradable film including lyophilised alga Fucus spiralis and sorbic acid was applied during megrim (Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis) refrigeration and its effect on fish quality loss was evaluated. Thus, sensory assessment showed that samples wrapped up with PLA film including 8% alga and 1% sorbic acid were still acceptable on day 11, while control fish specimens (kept under polyethylene film) were rejected at that time. Under such biodegradable film condition, a preservative effect was also implied according to chemical indices assessment related to microbial activity (trimethylamine–N) and lipid oxidation development (peroxide and fluorescent compounds formation); additionally, lower mean numbers for different microbiological groups (aerobes, Enterobacteriaceae and psychrotrophs) were detected. This result provides a promising replacement strategy to enhance refrigerated fish quality and reduce the waste material content.     

Prediction of Generation of High- and Low-Angle Grain Boundaries (HAGB and LAGB) During Severe Plastic Deformation

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - It is well known that a balance between the generation of low-angle and high-angle grain boundaries (LABG and HAGB) is achieved in materials undergoing...     

Editorial: Security and Privacy Protection for Mobile Applications and Platforms

Mobile Networks and Applications -     

Binary monkey algorithm for approximate packing non-congruent circles in a rectangular container

A Packing problem consists in the best arrangement of several objects inside a bounded area named as the container. This arrangement must fulfill with technological constraints, for example, objects should not be overlapping. Some packing models for circular objects are typically formulated as non-convex optimization problems; where the continuous variables are the coordinates of the objects, so they are limited to not finding optimal solutions. Due to the combinatorial nature in the arrangement of such objects, heuristic methods are being used extensively which combine methods of global search and methods of local exhaustive search of local minima or their approximations. In this paper, we will address the packing problem for non-congruent (different size) circles with the binary version of the monkey algorithm which incorporates a cooperation process and a greedy strategy. We use a rectangular grid for covering the container. Every node in the grid represent potential positions for a circle. In this sense, binary monkey algorithm for the knapsack problem, can be used to solve de 0–1 approximate packing problem for non-congruet circles. The binary monkey problem uses two additional processes of the original monkey algorithm, these two processes are a greedy process and a cooperation processes.