Poly(vinyl pyrrolidone)—C70 complexes in aqueous solutions

Aqueous solutions of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone)-fullerene complexes (PVP-C₇₀) have been studied using static and dynamic light scattering methods. Two diffusive processes were detected. The slow diffusion was interpreted as dynamics of large intermolecular PVP-C₇₀ complexes while the fast diffusion was associated with the presence of individual PVP molecules in solution. It was also shown that the molecular weights and dimensions of PVP-C₇₀ complexes are smaller than for PVP-C₆₀ by a factor of 2.5-3. In aqueous solutions of PVP-C₇₀ complex the depolarization and dissymmetry of scattered light were observed in contrast to PVP-C₆₀ solutions. It reveals the existence of anisotropic structures in PVP-C₇₀ solutions. Intermolecular interactions within PVP-C₇₀ complexes are weak and a hydrodynamic field can destroy complexes.     

Semi-automated user agents in distributed change management

Flexible integration of distributed design and manufacturing activities is one of the key issues in applying just-in-time principles along the logistics chain. The potential of AI based approaches in this field is clear, but the inherent asynchrony, concurrency, and inconsistency of distributed operations has reduced enthusiasm so far.This paper discusses coordination in the context of geographically distributed manufacturing of one-of-a-kind products. Cooperation of partners is based on semi-automated user agents which operate as an integrative layer between more dedicated tools and systems. The management of order changes in elevator manufacture is used as a case example.The work reported here is part of the DIMUN project (DIMUN, 1989) in the RACE program.     

Class separation of mutagenic polycyclic organic material in grilled and smoked foods

Zusammenfassung Es wird über ein Verfahren zur Abtrennung der in gegrillten und geräucherten Lebensmitteln enthaltenen mutagenen polycyclischen organischen Stoffe in einzelne Klassen berichtet. Das Verfahren umfaßt eine erste Extraktion mit Aceton, das Abscheiden von Fett und Proteinen durch Ausfällung bei –55 °C und eine Säure-Base-Extraktion. Die weitere Fraktionierung erfolgte durch Gelfiltration und Silicagel-Chromatographie. Bei vier Proben von gegrillten Würsten waren 80 bis 90% der extrahierten Mutagenität (TA98 + S9) in den basischen Fraktionen enthalten. Die in der Flamme gegrillten Würste hatten eine höhere Mutagenität als die auf Holzkohle gegrillten. Bei den geräucherten Fischen war die Mutagenität gering und verteilte sich gleichmäßig auf die basischen und die neutralen/sauren Fraktionen. Einige Proben zeigten schwache Direktmutagenität in den neutralen/sauren Fraktionen. Die Anwesenheit von Nitrit in den gegrillten Würsten hatte keinen erheblichen Einfluß auf die Mutagenität. Die Gaschromatographie, Selektive Ionregistrierung-Technik, wurde erfolgreich zur Identifizierung mehrerer PAH-Verbindungen eingesetzt, und mit ihr konnten mehrere Nitro-PAH und oxydierte Verbindungen vorläufig identifiziert werden. Der Nachweis der Mutagene in den basischen Fraktionen gestaltete sich jedoch wegen Peak-Schweifbildung und mit-eluierenden Materials kompliziert.Summary A method for class separation of mutagenic polycyclic organic material in grilled and smoked foods is described. The procedure involves an initial extraction with acetone, removal of fat and proteins by precipitation at –55 °C, and an acid-base extraction. Further fractionation was carried out by gel filtration and silica gel chromatography. In four samples of grilled sausages, 80%–90% of the extracted mutagenicity (TA98 + S9) was contained in the basic fractions. Flame-grilled sausages showed higher mutagenicity than charcoal-grilled ones. In a smoked fish sample, the mutagenicity was low and evenly distributed between the basic and the neutral/acidic fractions. A few samples showed a weak direct-acting mutagenicity in the neutral/acidic fractions. The presence of nitrite in grilled sausages did not influence the mutagenicity markedly. Gas chromatography-selected ion monitoring was used to successfully identify a number of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and tentatively identify several nitro-PAHs and oxygenated compounds. However, the identification of mutagens in the basic fractions was complicated by peak tailing and the presence of co-eluting material.

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Abtrennung mutagenen polycyclischen organischen Materials in gegrillten und geräucherten Lebensmitteln

     

Method for characterization of triacylglycerols and fat-soluble vitamins in edible oils and fats by supercritical fluid chromatography

This study demonstrates the usefulness of capillary supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) for the characterization of triacylglycerols of edible oils and fats. Triacylglycerols were separated according to the acyl carbon number and the degree of unsaturation on a 25% cyanopropyl/25% phenyl/50% methylpolysiloxane stationary phase. Valuable information concerning the triacylglycerol composition of berry oils was obtained, despite the overlapping of certain triacylglycerol peaks. Simultaneous analysis of fat-soluble vitamins and triacylglycerols is not practical by capillary SFC with flame-ionization detection because of the low concentration of naturally-occurring fat-soluble vitamins in edible oils. Therefore, higher loading of the sample, which led to overloading of triacylglycerols, was required to get reasonable peaks for fat-soluble vitamins. The method was applied to the characterization of triacylglycerols and tocopherols in sea buckthorn pulp and seed oil, and cloudberry seed oil without any sample purification prior to SFC. In addition, the stationary phase proved useful for separating the more complex mixtures of triacylglycerols found in milk fat and in fish oil.     

The movement patterns and the experiential components of virtual environments

Human movement in virtual environments (VEs) is a largely unstudied area, and there are no well-established methods of measuring it in VEs. Consequently, it is unclear how movement affects the experiential side of VEs. We introduce a novel method of measuring and modelling human movement. A specific information entropy-based modelling method enabled us to identify different movement patterns and analyse the experiential components related to them. The data was collected by registering the movement patterns of 68 participants who were in a virtual house doing a search task. The experiential side of the VE was measured with the Experimental Virtual Environment Questionnaire (EVEQ). Four movement patterns were identified. In addition, fluent movement in VEs was related to a high sense of presence. Moreover, the participants who moved fluently in the environment assessed their skills high. The results show how movement is related the way in which people experience the VE. The movement analysis method introduced here is applicable to other related research areas as well.     

Using results of eye movement signal analysis in the neural network recognition of otoneurological patients

We extracted a collection of eye movement signals employed for almost two decades in clinical otoneurological tests at a balance laboratory. During those years we designed and programmed signal analysis methods to analyse their features in detail and to compute medically important attributes. In the present study, using such attributes and their results computed we classified test cases into groups of healthy subjects and patients with multilayer perceptron neural networks. Classification succeeded in total accuracies from 60% to 90% depending on the type of eye movements, which were saccades, nystagmus, sinusoidal movements and vestibulo-ocular reflex stimulated in two different ways; these are the chief eye movement tests applied in otoneurology.     

Bridging the physical and virtual worlds by local connectivity-based physical selection

The prevalent visions of ambient intelligence emphasise natural interaction between user and functions and services embedded in the environment or available through mobile devices. In these scenarios the physical and virtual worlds seamlessly gear into each other, making crossing the border between these worlds natural or even invisible to the user. The bottleneck in reaching these scenarios appear in the natural mapping between the physical objects and their virtual counterparts. The emergence of local connectivity in mobile devices opens possibilities for implementing novel user interface paradigms to enhance this mapping. We present physical selection paradigm for implementing an intuitive human technology interaction for mobile devices. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the paradigm we implemented two experimental set-ups using commercially available smart phones with IrDA connectivity. The experiments involved selecting a website by physically pointing at its symbol and making a phone call by pointing at an icon representing the person to be called. In tentative user experiments the physical selection method was more time-efficient and it was perceived more positively by the users than a conventional method.

Volatile monocarbonyl compounds of carrot roots at various stages of maturity

Summary Volatile carbonyl compounds of carrot varietyFeonia Hunderup S-64 at various stages of maturity were analysed as their 2,4-DNPH's by a combined TLC-GLC-MS method. Twenty-three different carbonyl compounds were identified, of which undecanal, buten-2-al, methylbutenal, pentan-2-one, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one and 5-methylfurfural have not previously been found in carrot. During maturation the content of acetaldehyde and acetone increased significantly, while that of methylbutenal decreased.

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Die leichtflüchtigen Monocarbonylverbindungen der Karotten in verschiedenen Stufen der Reife

Zusammenfassung Die leichtflüchtigen Carbonylverbindungen der Karotten Varietät Feonia Hunderup S-64 wurden in verschiedenen Stufen der Reife als 2,4-DNPH mit der kombinierten DC-GC-MS-Methode analysiert. Dreiundzwanzig verschiedene Carbonylverbindungen wurden nachgewiesen. Von diesen sind Undecanal, 2-Butenal, Methylbutenal, 2-Pentanon, 6-Methyl-5-hepten-2-on und 5-Methylfurfural noch nicht in Karotten aufgefunden worden. Während des Reifens nahm der Gehalt an Acetaldehyd und Aceton bedeutend zu. Der Gehalt an Methylbutenal verminderte sich.

     

Detection of bubbles as concentric circular arrangements

The paper proposes a method for the detection of bubble-like transparent objects in a liquid. The detection problem is non-trivial since bubble appearance varies considerably due to different lighting conditions causing contrast reversal and multiple interreflections. We formulate the problem as the detection of concentric circular arrangements (CCA). The CCAs are recovered in a hypothesize-optimize-verify framework. The hypothesis generation is based on sampling from the partially linked components of the non-maximum suppressed responses of oriented ridge filters, and is followed by the CCA parameter estimation. Parameter optimization is carried out by minimizing a novel cost-function. The performance was tested on gas dispersion images of pulp suspension and oil dispersion images. The mean error of gas/oil volume estimation was used as a performance criterion due to the fact that the main goal of the applications driving the research was the bubble volume estimation. The method achieved 28 and 13 % of gas and oil volume estimation errors correspondingly outperforming the OpenCV Circular Hough Transform in both cases and the WaldBoost detector in gas volume estimation.     

Effects of latitude and weather conditions on sugars,fruit acids and ascorbic acid in currant (Ribes sp.) cultivars

BACKGROUND: Sugars, acids and vitamin C are essential components influencing the sensory and nutritional properties of currants (Ribes sp.). In this study the effects of growth latitude and weather conditions on these components in red, white and green currant cultivars were systematically investigated for the first time. RESULTS: Red Dutch (a red Ribes rubrum cultivar) contained more malic acid but fewer sugars and had a lower sugar/acid ratio than Vertti (a green Ribes nigrum cultivar) and White Dutch (a white R. rubrum cultivar). Fructose (27–56 g L^?1 juice) and glucose (21–54 g L^?1) were the major sugars in all currant samples, but sucrose (7–20 g L^?1) was present only in Vertti. Vertti contained the most ascorbic acid. Sugars, malic acid and the sugar/acid ratio in Red Dutch were 11–28% higher in southern Finland than in northern Finland. The corresponding values in Vertti were 6–16% lower in the south than in the north, but no differences were found in White Dutch. As the relative humidity decreased, the amounts of citric acid and total acid increased in all cultivars, while the amount of sugars increased in Vertti but decreased in White Dutch and Red Dutch. In Red Dutch, high temperature and radiation levels increased the sugar content. CONCLUSION: The influence of latitude and weather conditions on qualitative parameters of currants varies with the cultivar. This study provides important guidance for currant cultivation and for further physiological and enzymological studies. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry