Bacterial spores in spices and dried herbs: The risks for processed food

Production and world consumption of spices are constantly increasing. Although the antimicrobial properties of some spices are well documented, their use in the agri-food industry is also responsible for microbial contamination and spoilage. Bacterial spores introduced by spices can withstand different preparation processes, particularly thermal treatments, leading to food alterations during storage. This review brings together data from the literature about the prevalence and concentrations of spore-forming bacteria in all commercially available spices. The sporeformers found in spices belong mainly to the genera Bacillus and Clostridium. Such contaminations are very common and sometimes reach high levels, as in pepper and turmeric. Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus cereus are the most frequently detected species. Studying the harvesting, processing, and storage procedures for spices provides elements to explain why high prevalence and concentrations are observed. Spices are mostly produced in developing countries on small farms using traditional production methods. Spices become contaminated by bacterial spores in two main ways: by contact with soil during harvesting or drying, as for pepper, or by cross-contamination during the water-cooking step, as for turmeric. From these observations, we propose some recommendations. Different methods that can be used to eliminate bacterial spores from spices are presented indicating their efficiency and the limitations of their use.     

Feasibility of non-destructive evaluation for apple crispness based on portable acoustic signal

In this paper, apple crispness was evaluated by sensory evaluation and compared with non-destructive measurements of portable acoustic signal to discuss the feasibility of non-destructive evaluation for apple crispness based on portable acoustic signal. Acoustic eigenvalues from the acoustic signal were processed by time domain and Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT), followed by analysing the correlations with apple crispness that had been evaluated via sensory evaluation. Multiple linear regression (MLR) and artificial neural network (ANN) were applied to predict apple crispness. The results proved that crispness correlates significantly (P < 0.01) with four acoustic eigenvalues, including waveform index, sound intensity, energy of low frequency and energy of high frequency. The average relative error of apple crispness predicted by ANN was 1.42 ± 1.9%, remarkably lower (P < 0.01) that of MLR (6.79 ± 5.64%), implying that the model predicted by ANN is more accurate than that of MLR.     

Effect of microwave power irradiation on TiO2 nano-structures and binder free paste screen printed dye sensitized solar cells

Titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanostructures (nanorods and nanoparticles) were prepared using a low-cost microwave irradiation method from a polyol medium of glycerol. Titanium glycerolate and TiO₂ powders were obtained in the glycerol medium for the first time with four different power densities (240?W, 480?W, 720?W, 960?W) of irradiation using a domestic microwave oven of 2.45?GHz, to understand the impact of power on morphology tuning. The structural and morphological features of the titanium glycerolate and TiO₂ powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and Raman spectra analysis. The TiO₂ was successfully used in the fabrication of photovoltaic devices and as a proof-of-concept binder free paste was prepared and successfully employed for photo-anode using screen printing on the fluorine-doped tin oxide substrate.     

Stream-Based Data Sampling Mechanism for Process Object

Process object is the instance of process. Vertexes and edges are in the graph of process object. There are different types of the object itself and the associations between object. For the large-scale data, there are many changes reflected. Recently, how to find appropriate real-time data for process object becomes a hot research topic. Data sampling is a kind of finding c hanges o f p rocess o bjects. There i s r equirements f or s ampling to be adaptive to underlying distribution of data stream. In this paper, we have proposed a adaptive data sampling mechanism to find a ppropriate d ata t o m odeling. F irst o f all, we use concept drift to make the partition of the life cycle of process object. Then, entity community detection is proposed to find changes. Finally, we propose stream-based real-time optimization of data sampling. Contributions of this paper are concept drift, community detection, and stream-based real-time computing. Experiments show the effectiveness and feasibility of our proposed adaptive data sampling mechanism for process object.     

Energy issues in microwave food processing: A review of developments and the enabling potentials of solid-state power delivery

The enormous magnitude and variety of microwave applications in household, commercial and industrial food processing creates a strong motivation for improving the energy efficiency and hence, sustainability of the process. This review critically assesses key energy issues associated with microwave food processing, focusing on previous energy performance studies, energy performance metrics, standards and regulations. Factors affecting energy-efficiency are categorised into source, load and source-load matching factors. This highlights the need for highly-flexible and controllable power sources capable of receiving real-time feedback on load properties, and effecting rapid control actions to minimise reflections, heating non-uniformities and other imperfections that lead to energy losses. A case is made for the use of solid-state amplifiers as alternatives to conventional power sources, magnetrons. By a full-scale techno-economic analysis, including energy aspects, it is shown that the use of solid-state amplifiers as replacements to magnetrons is promising, not only from an energy and overall technical perspective, but also in terms of economics.     

Controllable Image‐Based Transfer of Flow Phenomena

Modelling flow phenomena and their related weathering effects is often cumbersome due their dependence on the environment, materials and geometric properties of objects in the scene. Example‐based modelling provides many advantages for reproducing real textures, but little effort has been devoted to reproducing and transferring complex phenomena. In order to produce realistic flow effects, it is possible to take advantage of the widespread availability of flow images on the Internet, which can be used to gather key information about the flow. In this paper, we present a technique that allows the transfer of flow phenomena between photographs, adapting the flow to the target image and giving the user flexibility and control through specifically tailored parameters. This is done through two types of control curves: a fitted theoretical curve to control the mass of deposited material, and an extended colour map for properly adapting to the target appearance. In addition, our method filters and warps the input flow in order to account for the geometric details of the target surface. This leads to a fast and intuitive approach to easily transfer phenomena between images, providing a set of simple and intuitive parameters to control the process.     

Preparative Protein Crystallization

Preparative protein crystallization can possibly replace one or more chromatographic steps in downstream processing. The development of such crystallization processes is demanding: first, promising principal crystallization conditions must be identified; second, details about the process must be defined; and third, the crystals have to be separated from the mother liquor without putting harm of their crystalline integrity. State‐of‐the‐art about these three steps is developing fast by (i) employing new screening methods which are based on fundamental understanding of the interaction of the protein molecules, (ii) application of existing concepts of technical bulk crystallization of small molecules to preparative protein crystallization, and (iii) making available specific gentle separation machinery.     

Computational personality recognition from Facebook text: psycholinguistic features,words and facets

ABSTRACT

Advances in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning fields have led to the development of automated methods for the recognition of personality traits from text available from social media and similar sources. Systems of this kind exploit the close relation between lexical knowledge and personality models – such as the well-known Big Five model – to provide information about the author of an input text in a non-intrusive fashion, and at a low cost. Although now a well-established research topic in the field, the computational recognition of personality traits from text still leaves a number of research questions worth further exploration. In particular, this paper attempts to shed light on three main issues: (i) whether we may develop psycholinguistics-motivated models of personality recognition when such knowledge sources are not available for the target language under consideration; (ii) whether the use of psycholinguistic knowledge may be still superior to contemporary word vector representations; and (iii) whether we may infer certain personality facets from a corpus that does not explicitly convey this information. In this paper these issues are dealt with in a series of individual experiments of personality recognition from Facebook text, whose initial results should aid the future development of more robust systems of this kind.     

Dietary oxidised lipids,health consequences and novel food technologies that thwart food lipid oxidation: an update

Processed foods are popular and their consumption is expected to grow globally. Food processing and manufacturing promote lipid oxidation in foods rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids and cholesterol. This review focuses on how various food manufacturing/processing techniques promote lipid oxidation in grains, meats and meat products, dairy and fats/oils. This review also considers emerging evidence from animal and human studies that suggest a link between dietary oxidised lipid consumption and chronic disease risk. An update on novel food technologies that limit food lipid oxidation is discussed so as to inform both food scientists and dietitians/nutritionists to direct future efforts in not only continuing to bring these novel technologies to the market place but also conduct clinical trials to establish their role in human health.