Peeling dynamics of fluid membranes bridged by molecular bonds: moving or breaking

Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms. At the scale of cell–cell contacts, adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development, homeostasis and disease. It is physically supported by transient and laterally mobile molecular bonds embedded in fluid membranes. Thus, unlike specific adhesion at solid–solid or solid–fluid interfaces, peeling at fluid–fluid interfaces can proceed by breaking bonds, by moving bonds or by a combination of both. How the additional degree of freedom provided by bond mobility changes the mechanics of peeling is not understood. To address this, we develop a theoretical model coupling diffusion, reactions and mechanics. Mobility and reaction rates determine distinct peeling regimes. In a diffusion-dominated Stefan-like regime, bond motion establishes self-stabilizing dynamics that increase the effective fracture energy. In a reaction-dominated regime, peeling proceeds by travelling fronts where marginal diffusion and unbinding control peeling speed. In a mixed reaction–diffusion regime, strengthening by bond motion competes with weakening by bond breaking in a force-dependent manner, defining the strength of the adhesion patch. In turn, patch strength depends on molecular properties such as bond stiffness, force sensitivity or crowding. We thus establish the physical rules enabling tunable cohesion in cellular tissues and in engineered biomimetic systems.     

A decentralized kinematic control architecture for collaborative and cooperative multi-arm systems

In this paper a two-layer decentralized framework for kinematic control of cooperative and collaborative multi-robot systems is developed. The motion of the system is specified at the workpiece level, by adopting a task-oriented formulation for cooperative tasks. The first layer computes the motion of the single arms in the system. In detail, the control unit of each robot computes the end-effector motion references in a decentralized fashion on the basis of the knowledge of the assigned cooperative task and the motion references computed by its neighbors. Then, in the second layer, each control unit computes the reference joint motion of the corresponding manipulator from the end-effector reference motion. The approach is, then, tested in simulation on a work-cell composed by several manipulators, and experimentally on a dual-arm kinematically redundant work-cell composed by industrial manipulators.     

A Real-Time Visual Inspection System for Railway Maintenance: Automatic Hexagonal-Headed Bolts Detection

Rail inspection is a very important task in railway maintenance, and it is periodically needed for preventing dangerous situations. Inspection is operated manually by trained human operator walking along the track searching for visual anomalies. This monitoring is unacceptable for slowness and lack of objectivity, as the results are related to the ability of the observer to recognize critical situations. The correspondence presents a patent-pending real-time Visual Inspection System for Railway (VISyR) maintenance, and describes how presence/absence of the fastening bolts that fix the rails to the sleepers is automatically detected. VISyR acquires images from a digital line-scan camera. Data are simultaneously preprocessed according to two discrete wavelet transforms, and then provided to two multilayer perceptron neural classifiers (MLPNCs). The "cross validation" of these MLPNCs avoids (practically-at-all) false positives, and reveals the presence/absence of the fastening bolts with an accuracy of 99.6% in detecting visible bolts and of 95% in detecting missing bolts. A field-programmable gate array-based architecture performs these tasks in 8.09 mus, allowing an on-the-fly analysis of a video sequence acquired at 200 km/h     

Experimentelle Untersuchung des Abwälzverhaltens von Beveloidverzahnungen mit lokal angepassten Verzahnungsdaten entlang der Zahnbreite

Forschung im Ingenieurwesen - Zur Übertragung von Drehmoment und Drehzahl in beliebiger Achsanordnung eignen sich bei kleinem Achswinkel bis 30° Beveloidverzahnungen. Besonders...     

Effect of different ventilation regimens on ewes' milk and Canestrato Pugliese cheese quality in summer

The influence of three different ventilation regimens on air pollution in sheep houses and on the quality of ewe milk and of Canestrato Pugliese cheese was investigated during the summer season. The experimental treatments were low ventilation regimen (VR=35 m3/h per ewe) split in 30-min ventilation cycles (LOV-30); moderate ventilation regimen (VR=70 m3/h per ewe) split in 30-min ventilation cycles (MOV-30); moderate ventilation regimen (VR=70 m3/h per ewe) split in 60-min ventilation cycles (MOV-60). The LOV-30 milk had higher microbial load and bulk milk somatic cell count (BMSCC) and resulted in a weaker casein matrix in the curd compared with the MOV-30 and MOV-60 treatments. At 45 d of ripening, the LOV-30 cheeses had a lower casein content and higher non-casein nitrogen (NCN) and water-soluble nitrogen (WSN) contents than the MOV-30 and MOV-60 cheeses. Urea-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (urea-PAGE) of the pH 4.6-soluble N extract showed that the MOV-60 cheeses had fewer bands derived from casein (CN) hydrolysis than the LOV-30 or MOV-30 cheeses, despite its having exhibited the highest plasmin (PL) activity levels. Our results suggest that the ventilation regimen is critical in dairy sheep housing for optimizing the hygienic quality of ewe milk and the proteolytic processes occurring in Canestrato Pugliese cheese during ripening.     

How meaty? Detection and quantification of adulterants,foreign proteins and food additives in meat products

The worldwide consumption of meat is increasing, especially in developing countries. Many studies have correlated a diet characterised by high intake of processed red meats with a risk of colorectal cancer, stroke, coronary heart diseases and diabetes. Moreover, the quality and safety of meat products may be compromised by several admitted and not admitted procedures (i.e. addition of food additives and/or foreign proteins). For these reasons, the topic ‘meat products’ quality and safety’ has gained much in importance during last few years. In this review, the recent advances in the field of analytical methods for the evaluation of meat adulteration due to the addition of foreign proteins and food additives are reported, compared and critically evaluated. Moreover, the most representative monitoring practices, developed worldwide, related to meats adulteration are described and discussed.     

Digestive protection of probiotic Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus in Ricotta cheese by monoglyceride structured emulsions

This research aimed at studying the potential use of monoglyceride (MG) structured emulsions (MSEs) as delivery and protective systems for probiotic bacteria in Ricotta cheese. To this purpose, a low-fat commercial Ricotta cheese was added with MSEs formulated with milk, as water phase, and sunflower oil (MSE-SO) or anhydrous milk fat (MSE-AMF), as lipid phase. A commercial whole milk Ricotta cheese (W-RC) was considered as reference. A probiotic Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus strain was inoculated as free cells in W-RC or embedded into the MSEs and added to the low-fat Ricotta at the same reference fat content. After physico-chemical characterisation, L. rhamnosus viability and sample destructuring behaviour upon in vitro digestion were evaluated. At the end of in vitro digestion, both W-RC and sample containing MSE-SO were unable to protect cells. By contrast, sample with AMF ensured a sufficient probiotic viability, even after 14 days of storage at 4 °C. This result was attributed to system composition and structure. During the gastric phase, the presence of caseins and MG-AMF mixed structures induced the formation of clots, entrapping and protecting cells against the acidic pH of the stomach, as confirmed by confocal micrographs and particle size. During the intestinal phase, cell viability was guaranteed by the formation of mixed micelles promoted by MG. It was demonstrated that microbial cells located near MG structures where they found protection.     

Effect of information about animal welfare, expressed in terms of rearing conditions, on lamb acceptability

The present study was aimed to assess the effect of information about the farming system and welfare of artificially (AR) and ewe-reared lambs (ER) on meat acceptability. An 84-consumer panel was asked to give three types of evaluation for both products: tasting without information (perceived liking); information without tasting (expected liking); tasting with information (actual liking). For both products, the expected liking was significantly different from the perceived liking (P<0.001), thus indicating that a disconfirmation occurred. The consumers found ER meat worse than expected (negative disconfirmation) and AR meat better than expected (positive disconfirmation). No significant difference between perceived and actual liking was observed for ER lamb (P>0.05), whereas, for the meat produced by AR lambs actual liking was lower than perceived liking (P<0.001). However, consumers did not completely assimilate their liking in the direction of expectations, as indicated by the fact that expectancy for AR lamb was significantly lower than actual acceptability (P<0.001). Mean scores of perceived liking were higher for the meat produced by AR animals as compared to ER lambs (P<0.05). Conversely, expected and actual liking scores were higher for meat from ER lambs than for meat from AR animals (P<0.001 and P<0.05, respectively). These results show that information about animal welfare, expressed in terms of rearing conditions, can be a major determinant of animal-based food acceptability, thus providing a potential tool for meat differentiation.