Recovery of anthocyanins from eggplant peel

Tartaric and malic acid solutions were tested to extract anthocyanins from eggplant peel by a discontinuous process to obtain a natural red colorant. Extraction optimization was carried out, using different solvents, acid concentration, temperature, time of extraction and solvent-to-solid ratio as independent variables. Tartaric acid was more efficient than malic acid in both extraction yield and rate. Comparative tests were carried out using acidified ethanol as solvent. Delphinidin-3-rutinoside was extracted and identified as the major anthocyanin in eggplant peel. Concentration of different extracts from eggplant peel was carried out using EXA-31, a methacrylic food grade resin, the best performing resin to obtain highly concentrated extracts.     

Plutonium recycling in hydride fueled PWR cores

The classic approach to the recycling of Pu in PWR is to use mixed U-oxide Pu-oxide (MOX) fuel. The mono-recycling of plutonium in PWR transmutes less than 30% of the loaded plutonium, providing only a limited reduction in the long-term radiotoxicity and in the inventory of TRU to be stored in the repository. The primary objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of plutonium recycling in PWR in the form of plutonium hydride, PuH₂, mixed with uranium and zirconium hydride, ZrH_1.6, referred to as PUZH, that is loaded uniformly in each fuel rod. The assessment is performed by comparing the performance of the PUZH fueled core to that of the MOX fueled core. Performance characteristics examined are transmutation effectiveness, proliferation resistance of the discharged fuel and fuel cycle economics. The PUZH loaded core is found superior to the MOX fueled core in terms of the transmutation effectiveness and proliferation resistance. For the reference cycle duration and reference fuel rod diameter and pitch, the percentage of the plutonium loaded that is transmuted in one recycle is 53% for PUZH versus 29% for MOX fuel. That is, the net amount of plutonium transmuted in the first recycle is 55% higher in cores using PUZH than in cores using MOX fuel. Relative to the discharged MOX, the discharged PUZH fuel has smaller fissile plutonium fraction - 45% versus 60%, 15% smaller minor actinides (MA) inventory and more than double spontaneous fission neutron source intensity and decay heat per gram of discharged TRU. Relative to the MOX fuel assembly, the radioactivity of the PUZH fuel assembly is 26% smaller and the decay heat and the neutron yield are only 3% larger. The net effect is that the handling of the discharged PUZH fuel assembly will be comparable in difficulty to that of the discharged MOX assembly while the proliferation resistance of the TRU of the discharged PUZH fuel is enhanced.     

Mechanical behaviour of surface layer fibreglass-reinforced flexible pavements

The work presented in this paper aims at providing a better understanding of the mechanical response of surface layer fibreglass-reinforced flexible pavements. The surface reinforcement technique consists of installing a fibreglass grid in between the levelling layer (placed on the base course to seal and level the pre-existing distresses) and the wearing course (or overlay). Flexural fracture tests were performed on two-layered reinforced asphalt specimens composed of both levelling and wearing courses to simulate a real overlay structure. Three fibreglass grids characterised by different mechanical and/or geometrical properties were employed. Strain localisation and damage distribution were investigated using an in-house digital image correlation system capable of achieving highly accurate 2D full-field strain maps of the specimens during loading. Finally, an analytical model was developed on purpose to reproduce the mechanical response of the asphalt mixture-interlayer system.     

Pulsed laser deposition of organic and biological materials

We report on the deposition of soft matter thin films by Matrix Assisted Pulsed Laser Evaporation (MAPLE). In particular, thin layers of biological material (Bovine Serum Albumin) and polymers (polyfluorene) for medical and optoelectronic applications, were realized by laser irradiating a frozen solution containing a low amount of material diluted in a laser absorbing volatile solvent. The depositions were carried out varying different parameters as solvent–solute concentration, solvent nature, laser fluencies, etc. The optical, morphological, structural and spectroscopical properties were detected by means of different analyses as FTIR, photoluminescence, AFM and SDS.     

Quantitation of lysinoalanine in dairy products by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry with selective ion monitoring

The unnatural amino acid lysinoalanine (LAL) has been identified in milk and cheese products by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC/ESI/MS) with selective ion monitoring (SIM) of the 9-fluorenyl-methylchloro-formate (FMOC) derivative. LAL is not present in raw milk or derived from Mozzarella cheese; however, high amounts of LAL are found in calcium caseinate and milk powder. As expected, milk fortified with caseinate or whey protein powder produces cheese with higher LAL content. Our analytical procedure is based on the simultaneous detection of specific ion masses of the FMOC–LAL derivative and the N-ε-methyl-lysine internal standard. A linear relationship was observed within the 0.2–20 ppm concentration range, in addition to a high correlation coefficient and ∼3% relative standard deviation.     

On the power of structural decompositions of graph-based representations of constraint problems

The Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) is a central issue of research in Artificial Intelligence. Due to its intractability, many efforts have been made in order to identify tractable classes of CSP instances, and in fact deep and useful results have already been achieved. In particular, this paper focuses on structural decomposition methods, which are essentially meant to look for near-acyclicity properties of the graphs or hypergraphs that encode the structure of the constraints interactions. In general, constraint scopes comprise an arbitrary number of variables, and thus this structure may be naturally encoded via hypergraphs. However, in many practical applications, decomposition methods are applied over suitable graph representations of the (possibly non-binary) CSP instances at hand. Despite the great interest in such binary approaches, a formal analysis of their power, in terms of their ability of identifying islands of tractability, was missing in the literature.The aim of this paper is precisely to fill this gap, by studying the relationships among binary structural methods, and by providing a clear picture of the tractable fragments of CSP that can be specified with respect to each of these decomposition approaches, when they are applied to binary representations of non-binary CSP instances. In particular, various long-standing questions about primal, dual and incidence graph encodings are answered. The picture is then completed by comparing methods on binary encodings with methods specifically conceived for non-binary constraints.     

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.     

Foam-like scaffolds for bone tissue engineering based on a novel couple of silicate-phosphate specular glasses: synthesis and properties

Glass–ceramic scaffolds mimicking the structure of cancellous bone were produced via sponge replication technique by using a polyurethane foam as template and glass powder below 30 μm as inorganic phase. Specifically, a SiO₂-based glass of complex composition and its corresponding P₂O₅-based “specular” glass were used as materials for scaffolding. The polymeric sponge was thermally removed and the glass powders were sintered to obtain a replica of the template structure. The scaffolds were investigated and compared from a structural, morphological and mechanical viewpoint by assessing their crystalline phases, volumetric shrinkage, pores content and interconnection, mechanical strength. In addition, the scaffolds were soaked in acellular simulated body fluid to investigate their in vitro behaviour. The produced scaffolds have a great potential for bone reconstructive surgery because their features, such as shape, strength, bioactivity and bioresorption, can be easily tailored according to the end use.     

Nitro derivatives of PEEK‐WC

Nitrated poly(oxa‐p‐phenylene‐3,3‐phthalido‐p‐phenylene‐oxa‐p‐phenylene‐ oxy‐phenylene) (PEEK‐WC) with various average degrees of substitution was obtained by reaction with several nitrating agents. By working under controlled reaction conditions, little degradation of the parent polymer is observed. The nitro derivatives of PEEK‐WC show a high thermal stability, and are able to form membranes by means of phase inversion technique. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 80: 1037–1045, 2001     

The role of antioxidants in the mediterranean diet

Traditional Mediterranean diets, as opposed to North European and American diets, include a significantly large amount of plant foods; this notable difference between the two eating styles, despite the similarities among other classic risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) such as high plasma cholesterol levels, has been associated with a lower risk of developing the CHD and certain cancers. The involvement of excessive free radical production and the great number of epidemiologic studies linking antioxidant intake with a reduced incidence of the above-mentioned diseases indicate that dietary antioxidants likely play a protective role. Because diets in the Mediterranean are (or better yet, were) characterized by abundant plant foods (fruits, vegetables, breads, nuts, seeds; wine and olive oil), this article includes a review of the potential activities of dietary antioxidants, which are plentiful in Mediterranean diets, and wine as related to human disease.