Molecular Detection of Mycotoxigenic Fungi in Foods: The Case for Using PCR-DGGE

Among the toxin-producing microbes, those that produce mycotoxins are especially problematic due to their broad distribution in the environments and in foods. Several species of Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Fusarium are sources of potent mycotoxins such as aflatoxins, ochratoxins, patulin, deoxynivalenol, and fumonisins. It is, therefore, vital that mycotoxigenic fungi contaminants in food are rapidly and accurately identified for ensuring the safety of consumers. Most of the current methods are based on PCR using gene-specific or species-specific primers. However, contaminating microbes often compose a complex community and PCR-DGGE may provide a better approach than traditional single-gene and/or single-species based methods. It provides “fingerprints” for each microbial flora and has been widely used to analyze environmental and food-associated microbial communities. This review shows the advantages and disadvantages of different molecular methods for the detection of mycotoxigenic fungi including PCR-DGGE as a potent and applicable method that could overcome the difficulties associated with other methods.     

Strategies to Modulate Specialized Metabolism in Mediterranean Crops: From Molecular Aspects to Field

Plant specialized metabolites (SMs) play an important role in the interaction with the environment and are part of the plant defense response. These natural products are volatile, semi-volatile and non-volatile compounds produced from common building blocks deriving from primary metabolic pathways and rapidly evolved to allow a better adaptation of plants to environmental cues. Specialized metabolites include terpenes, flavonoids, alkaloids, glucosinolates, tannins, resins, etc. that can be used as phytochemicals, food additives, flavoring agents and pharmaceutical compounds. This review will be focused on Mediterranean crop plants as a source of SMs, with a special attention on the strategies that can be used to modulate their production, including abiotic stresses, interaction with beneficial soil microorganisms and novel genetic approaches.     

Experimental and theoretical approaches for electrical,magnetic, micromechanical,and structural characterization of BSCCO ceramic superconductors

This study investigates how the preparation and re-pelletization of BSCCO ceramic superconductors affects their structural, magnetic, electrical, and mechanical properties. Samples were prepared using conventional methods including the dry solid state (SS) reaction and wet ammonium nitrate (AN) precipitation, with three variations prepared for each technique. The fabricated samples were then characterized with X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy. The density, resistance vs. temperature characteristics, AC susceptibility vs. temperature characteristics, and magnetic hysteresis properties were measured. In addition, Vicker's microhardness was measured and revealed that all six samples exhibit the reverse indentation size effect (RISE). Microhardness modeling was also conducted. Calculations with Meyer's law, the Hays and Kendall model, and the proportional sample resistance model indicate that the samples are far from the plateau region, whereas the indentation-induced cracking model was consistent with the experimental results. The elastic modulus, Young's modulus, yield strength, and brittleness index were also calculated for each sample.     

Coupling in situ experiments and modeling – Opportunities for data fusion,machine learning,and discovery of emergent behavior

This paper reviews recent studies, that not only includes both experiments and modeling components, but celebrates a close coupling between these techniques, in order to provide insights into the plasticity and failure of polycrystalline metals. Examples are provided of studies across multiple-scales, including, but not limited to, density functional theory combined with atom probe tomography, molecular dynamics combined with in situ transmission electron miscopy, discrete dislocation dynamics combined with nanopillars experiments, crystal plasticity combined with digital image correlation, and crystal plasticity combined with in situ high energy X-ray diffraction. The close synergy between in situ experiments and modeling provides new opportunities for model calibration, verification, and validation, by providing direct means of comparison, thus removing aspects of epistemic uncertainty in the approach. Further, data fusion between in situ experimental and model-based data, along with data driven approaches, provides a paradigm shift for determining the emergent behavior of deformation and failure, which is the foundation that underpins the mechanical behavior of polycrystalline materials.     

Cost-based holistic twig joins

An evaluation of XML queries such as XQuery or XPath expressions represents a challenging task due to its complexity. Many algorithms have been introduced to cope with this problem. Some of them, called binary joins, evaluate separated parts of a query and subsequently merge intermediate results, while the others, called holistic twig joins, evaluate a query as a whole. Moreover, these algorithms also differ in what index data structure they use to handle XML data. There exist cost-based approaches utilizing binary joins and various index data structures; however, they share a limitation. The limitation is that they cannot perform a join between query nodes not having a direct XPath relationship. Such a join can be advantageous especially if their joint selectivity is high. Since holistic joins work with all query nodes they overcome this limitation. In this article, we introduce such a holistic twig join called CostTwigJoin. To the best of our knowledge, CostTwigJoin is the first holistic join capable of combining various index data structures during an evaluation of an XML query. Usage of the holistic join has yet another advantage for cost-based approaches: an optimizer does not have to resolve the order of binary joins; therefore, the search space is reduced. In this article, we perform thorough experiments on hundreds of queries to evaluate our approach and demonstrate its advantages.     

Stability of perovskite materials and devices

Due to the excellent optoelectronic properties, organic–inorganic perovskites have drawn much attention and have been applied in different electronics with remarkable performance. However, the poor stability creates a massive barrier for the commercialization of perovskite electronic devices. In this review, we discuss intrinsic and extrinsic factors causing instabilities of perovskites and perovskite devices such as solar cells, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), light emitting diodes (LEDs), ionizing radiation detectors, transistors, memristors and sensors. We further review the stabilization approaches, including composition engineering, adoption of lower dimensional compositions, quantum dots, interface engineering, defects engineering and so on.     

智能化剪力墙设计软件的研究

论述了智能化剪力墙软件发展的必要性,并对剪力墙设计的内容、难题和涉及的相关规范以及设计过程及特点进行剖析、研究,提出了实现智能化剪力墙设计软件中要解决的关键问题及解决方法。     

土木工程学科教研网站的研究与设计

分析了高校计算机辅助教学中从课件—网络课程—学科网站—综合教学平台的发展趋势,提出了当前建立学科教学研究网站在土木工程领域的必要性及其应用形式,具体讨论了土木工程学科教研网站建设的栏目内容和可行的实施方式。     

交通混沌研究综述与展望

文章说明了交通混沌研究的意义,简单介绍了混沌理论的基本概念、混沌的基本特征以及判别混沌的主要方法,综述了交通混沌研究的现状、水平、趋势和不足,提出了今后交通混沌研究的重点和难点问题。