Inhibition of microbial growth in ready‐to‐eat food stored at ambient temperature by modified atmosphere packaging

This study was undertaken to develop a modified atmosphere package to control microbial growth in ready‐to‐eat (RTE) products stored at ambient temperature. Ethanol and/or limonene associated with modified atmosphere (CO₂ : O₂ : N₂ = 30% : 5% : 65%) was used to inhibit the growth of total air‐borne microorganisms and Escherichia coli in RTE products stored at 25°C. The results indicated that 0.05% ethanol vapour in the headspace was effective to inhibit the growth of air‐borne microorganisms and E. coli at 25°C for 72 h in a model study, and the effectiveness was related to ethanol content. Both 73 ppm limonene and 0.05% ethanol vapour enhanced the bacteriostatic effect of modified atmosphere in RTE sushi roll products, and no off‐flavour was detected using this formulated gas; however, no significant inhibitory effect was observed for RTE cold noodle products. This study concludes that combinations of carbon dioxide, ethanol or limonene vapours are effective to inhibit microbial growth in RTE food at ambient temperature, and the outcome may be due to the hurdle effect. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mining predecessor–successor rules from DAG data

Data mining extracts implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from databases. Many approaches have been proposed to extract information, and one of the most important ones is finding association rules. Although a large amount of research has been devoted to this subject, none of it finds association rules from directed acyclic graph (DAG) data. Without such a mining method, the hidden knowledge, if any, cannot be discovered from the databases storing DAG data such as family genealogy profiles, product structures, XML documents, task precedence relations, and course structures. In this article, we define a new kind of association rule in DAG databases called the predecessor–successor rule, where a node x is a predecessor of another node y if we can find a path in DAG where x appears before y. The predecessor–successor rules enable us to observe how the characteristics of the predecessors influence the successors. An approach containing four stages is proposed to discover the predecessor–successor rules. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 21: 621–637, 2006.     

A new Pd-oxide-Al/sub 0.3/Ga/sub 0.7/As MOS hydrogen sensor

A new and interesting Pd-oxide-Al/sub 0.3/Ga/sub 0.7/As MOS hydrogen sensor has been fabricated and studied. The steady-state and transient responses with different hydrogen concentrations has been measured at various temperatures. Based on the large Schottky barrier height and presence of oxide layer, the studied device exhibits a high hydrogen detection sensitivity and wide temperature operating regime. The studied device exhibits the low-leakage current and obvious current changes when exposed to hydrogen-contained gas. Even at room temperature, a very high hydrogen detection sensitivity of 155.9 is obtained when a 9090 ppm H/sub 2//air gas is introduced. Furthermore, when exposed to hydrogen-contained gas at 95/spl deg/C, both the forward and reverse currents are substantially increased with increased hydrogen concentration. In other words, the studied device can be used as a hydrogen sensor under the applied bidirectional bias. Under the applied voltage of 0.35 V and 9090 ppm H/sub 2//air hydrogen ambient, a fast adsorption response time about 10 s is found. The transient and steady-state characteristics of hydrogen adsorption are also investigated.     

Clinical study in epidural injection with lappaconitine compound for post-operative analgesia

In this study, the effect and side-effect of epidural injection with lappaconitine compound for post-operative analgesia was observed. One hundred and twenty patients were randomly divided into 4 groups. Lappaconitine compound (LB) consisted of 12 mg of lappaconitine and 22.5 mg of bupivacaine, was given to group A (the group of observation), and lappaconitine 12 mg, bupivacaine 22.5 mg and morphine 2 mg to group B, C and D respectively for control. All were given by epidural injection with single blind method during post-operative pain of incision operation. Result showed that the initiating of analgesia was quicker in group A and C than that in group B and D, and the efficacy was group D > A > C > B. There was significant difference between group A and B in the above two parameters, P < 0.01 and P < 0.05. The analgisia maintenence time of single injection was D > A > B > C, that of group D was significantly longer than that of group A (P < 0.01). It indicated that the epidural injection with LB was more rapid and potent than that with lappaconitine alone in post-operative analgesia, and the former had no side-effect, it was safer than morphine.     

Evaluating the impact of CASE: an empirical comparison of retrospective and cross-sectional survey approaches

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate two methods of assessing the productivity and quality impact of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) and Fourth Generation Language (4GL) technologies: (1) by the retrospective method; and (2) the cross-sectional method. Both methods involve the use of questionnaire surveys. Developers' perceptions depend on the context in which they are expressed and this includes expectations about the effectiveness of a given software product. Consequently, it is generally not reliable to base inferences about the relative merits of CASE and 4GLs on a cross-sectional comparison of two separate samples of users. The retrospective method that requires each respondent to directly compare different products is shown to be more reliable. However, there may be scope to employ cross-sectional comparisons of the findings from different samples where both sets of respondents use the same reference point for their judgements, and where numerical rather than verbal rating scales are used to measure perceptions.     

Handling multimedia information with VLSI

Identifies the basic technological components of multimedia communications. Among these technologies, multimedia processing and transmission already benefit heavily from VLSI advances. in fact, these two technologies could not have matured without special-purpose VLSI chips. We have examined basic processing required in these technologies and some VLSI architectures. The focus has been on standard-compliant VLSI chips, because the eventual goal of communications is to allow everyone to reach others without constraints. There are still a number of evolving standards, which means that we might witness yet another wave of VLSI chips for multimedia communications     

L－B膜修饰电极循环伏安行为模拟──（Ⅰ）电荷转移速度常数对循环伏安性能的影响

本文用计算机数字模拟方法研究了电活性分子多层Ｚ型Ｌ－Ｂ膜修饰电极的循环伏安行为。计算了电极与修饰Ｌ－Ｂ膜分子第一层之间的电荷转移速度常数Ｋ_ｏ，Ｌ－Ｂ膜分子层间的电荷转移速度常数ｋ_ｉ；对峰电位差△Ｅ_ｐ及阳极峰面积Ｑ的影响，以及在不同条件下各层分子的氧化态分数随扫描时间的变化。为研究和设计电活性分子修饰电极的实际体系提供了大量数据和信息。     

新型实用布线算法──L─M算法

本文提出新型布线算法，集李氏迷宫法与线搜索法的长处为一体，以饱和带法进行动态排序，以线搜索法确定借孔位置，然后用李氏法进行单层布线，获得最佳路径，从而达到线型好，布通率高的效果。