Inulin-based emulsion-filled gel as a fat replacer in prebiotic- and PUFA-enriched dry fermented sausages

In order to produce fermented sausages with prebiotic fibre and improved fatty acid composition, 16% of pork back fat was replaced with inulin gelled suspension (I) and inulin linseed oil gelled emulsion (IO). Physico-chemical analysis, fatty acid profiles, lipid oxidation, microbiological, textural, colour and sensory analysis were carried out. The fat content was lower in I (31.38%) and IO (35.36%) modified sausages compared to control (44.37%) (P < 0.05). IO sausages had lower SFA and MUFA and higher PUFA content with an improved n-6/n-3 ratio (2.23) (P < 0.05) and α-linolenic acid increment (5.74 g per 100 g). Reformulation led to decrease in springiness, chewiness and hardness and increase in adhesiveness of the sausages. Modified sausages had lower L* and higher a* values, while b* values of I sausages did not differ compared to control sausages. Modified sausages were acceptable regarding all sensory attributes. Lipid oxidation parameters showed higher susceptibility to oxidation and lipolysis in IO sausages.     

Analysis of medications change in Parkinson’s disease progression data

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects people worldwide. Careful management of patient’s condition is crucial to ensure the patient’s independence and quality of life. This is achieved by personalized treatment based on individual patient’s symptoms and medical history. The aim of this study is to determine patient groups with similar disease progression patterns coupled with patterns of medications change that lead to the improvement or decline of patients’ quality of life symptoms. To this end, this paper proposes a new methodology for clustering of short time series of patients’ symptoms and prescribed medications data, and time sequence data analysis using skip-grams to monitor disease progression. The results demonstrate that motor and autonomic symptoms are the most informative for evaluating the quality of life of Parkinson’s disease patients. We show that Parkinson’s disease patients can be divided into clusters ordered in accordance with the severity of their symptoms. By following the evolution of symptoms for each patient separately, we were able to determine patterns of medications change which can lead to the improvement or worsening of the patients’ quality of life.     

Alizarin Red S as an electrochemical indicator for saccharide recognition

In addition to the well-established spectroscopic Alizarin Red S (ARS) assay for the determination of binding constants between arylboronic acids and different saccharides, we report the use of ARS as a reporter in an electrochemical set-up. The electrochemical properties of ARS, the binding to phenyl boronic acid (PBA) and the competition with fructose in phosphate buffer at pH 7.4 were investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV). By choosing a negative scan direction (starting at +0.2 V), a quasi-reversible process was detected at E⁰′ = −0.59V with ΔE_p = 0.1V. An irreversible oxidation peak at +0.42 V could also be detected. These peaks are characterised both as a 2-proton-2-electron transfer and corresponds to the oxidation and reduction of the anthraquinone or the ortho-quinone moiety. After addition of phenylboronic acid a new oxidation peaks occurred at −0.42 V which correlates with the ARS–PBA interaction. The peak current increased with increasing phenylboronic acid concentration according to the release of BA and formation of the ARS–PBA ester. After addition of fructose the peak current decreases again, in proportion to the fructose concentration, enabling the use of ARS as an electrochemical reporter for fructose detection up to 50 mM. Also the interaction with other cis-diol containing compounds such as sorbitol, mannitol, glucose and mannose was investigated and a dependence based on already published binding constants to phenylboronic acid could be shown.     

Variable neighbourhood simulated annealing algorithm for capacitated vehicle routing problems

This article presents the variable neighbourhood simulated annealing (VNSA) algorithm, a variant of the variable neighbourhood search (VNS) combined with simulated annealing (SA), for efficiently solving capacitated vehicle routing problems (CVRPs). In the new algorithm, the deterministic ‘Move or not’ criterion of the original VNS algorithm regarding the incumbent replacement is replaced by an SA probability, and the neighbourhood shifting of the original VNS (from near to far by k← k+1) is replaced by a neighbourhood shaking procedure following a specified rule. The geographical neighbourhood structure is introduced in constructing the neighbourhood structures for the CVRP of the string model. The proposed algorithm is tested against 39 well-known benchmark CVRP instances of different scales (small/middle, large, very large). The results show that the VNSA algorithm outperforms most existing algorithms in terms of computational effectiveness and efficiency, showing good performance in solving large and very large CVRPs.     

Semantic Mediation for Standard-Based B2B Interoperability

The authors discuss a semantic-mediation architecture to advance traditional approaches for standards-based business-to-business (B2B) interoperability. The architecture is supported by the Athena Knowledge Representation and Semantics Mediation tool suite. Initial experimentations with the architecture and the toolset offer discussions of key architectural and functional aspects and suggest directions for future tools enhancements.     

Substituted imino and amino derivatives of 4-hydroxycoumarins as novel antioxidant,antibacterial and antifungal agents: Synthesis and in vitro assessments

A series of imino and amino derivatives of 4-hydroxycoumarins were synthesised and evaluated for antioxidant potential, through different in vitro models such as (DPPH) free radical-scavenging activity, linoleic acid emulsion model system, reducing power assay and phosphomolybdenum method. Also, antimicrobial activity of obtained coumarins was evaluated against 13 bacteria and eight fungi. All prepared compounds possessed good antioxidant activity and among them a p-nitrophenol derivative with IC₅₀ at 25.9 μM possessed radical-scavenging activity which was comparable to BHT. Observed data for antibacterial activity indicated strong activity of all tested amino derivatives, while imines showed better antifungal properties.     

COMPARISON AND VALIDATION OF OHM AND SCEM MEASUREMENTS FOR A FULL-SCALE COAL-FIRED POWER PLANT

Mercury emission measurements were performed at a 250 MW coal-fired power plant using the Ontario Hydro method (OHM) and semi-continuous emission monitors (SCEM). Flue gas sampling was performed at the inlet of the air preheater and at the outlet of the electrostatic precipitator. The results indicated that there is some agreement between the OHM and SCEM measurements on the total mercury species. However, the SCEM results were not always in good agreement with the OHM measurements on the elemental mercury species. These discrepancies in elemental mercury concentrations are probably the result of the differences in the location of the SCEM and OHM probes, the temperature difference between the SCEM sampling probe and the flue gas, and the nonuniformities in mercury concentration over the flue gas duct cross section. The other factor that contributed to the deviation between the SCEM and OHM measurement results is the sampling method: the SCEM measurements were performed at a single point while the OHM probe was traversed over multiple points over the duct cross section and the results were averaged. The effect of the SCEM sampling probe temperature was investigated by designing a sampling probe that could be heated to the sampled flue gas temperatures. This resulted in improvements in the accuracy of the elemental mercury measurements by the SCEM system.     

Analysis of the strain and hardness in self-cured and light-cured self-adhesive resin based cement

The study showed an application of the 3?D Digital Image Correlation Method (3?D-DIC) for detection of von Mises strain in samples of the self-etch, self-adhesive resin based cement (RBC). The aim was to determine and compare strain in the self-cured and light-cured Maxcem Elite, furthermore to investigate the hardness of these two cement-types. The experiment was carried out using two groups of Maxcem Elite (Kerr, Orange, CA, USA) samples; each tested group includes five (ø5?×?2?mm sized) samples, for both self-curing and light-curing mode. All samples were prepared by filling teflon ring-type molds. In addition, Vickers micro-hardness was measured for all samples. Maxcem Elite showed similar maximum strain values from 10% to 12% for both groups. Besides the maximum strain value, the 3?D-DIC method also enabled monitoring the change of strain field even after the recommended polymerization time. This method has shown that the polymerization shrinkage continues even after 10?min which disagreed with manufacturer’s suggestion. Group II showed maximum strain values of 12% in the peripheral zone after 10?min, in the last Stage (Stage 60). Statistically significant difference was not found in the overall strain between self- and light-cured Maxcem Elite neither peripherally (p?=?0.118) nor centrally (p?=?0.879). However, statistical significance was found in strain regarding central and peripheral zone in both, self-cured (p?=?0.020) and light-cured (p?=?0.002) Maxcem Elite. The mean von Mises strain values in the periphery of the samples (Section 0) were significantly higher compared to strain values in the center of the samples (for Section 1 and 2). The last stage (Stage 60) of the light-cured Maxcem Elite polymerization showed significantly higher values of von Mises strain compared to initial stage (Stage 0). Higher values of micro-hardness were noticed on the surfaces directly exposed to LED lamp after performing measurements of micro-hardness on light-cured samples.