Immunochemical detection of ovalbumin in dairy-based foods

Commercially available antibodies were used for the detection and quantitation of ovalbumin in ice cream and cheese. Electrophoretic separation of protein components, followed by blotting and immunochemical recognition of ovalbumin allowed the detection of the addition of 50 g kg^-1 egg white to processed cheese and allowed detection of egg in ice cream. For quantitative purposes a competitive ELISA method was set up. Calibration curves for ovalbumin in various products were obtained. A marked matrix effect was evident in ice cream, cheese and yoghurt. Different types of cheese gave nearly identical matrix effects. Analytical application of the method should therefore be possible, at least within a given class of products. A study on the influence of thermal treatments on the ELISA response showed that melting of cheese at various temperatures modifies only slightly the ELISA response for ovalbumin.     

Design,manufacturing, and performance verification of a Roberts linkage for inertial isolation

There are a number of experimental apparati aimed at the measurement of small forces, whose performance is strictly related to the availability of an isolated inertial frame. This means that one component of the apparatus has to be set in free-fall condition along selected degrees of freedom. Such a free-fall condition can be achieved thanks to dedicated mechanisms acting as inertial isolation systems. The present work discusses the optimal design, realization, and testing of an inertial isolation system implemented as a 3-D Roberts linkage. The first part of the work describes the design phase: the optimal calculation of the linkage design parameters is performed through the application of a Nelder–Mead optimization scheme. In order to apply the optimization scheme, the calculation of the linkage kinematics is firstly performed through a variational approach, then the sampled surface describing the linkage trajectory is approximated by a set of Zernike polynomials, which allows to effectively define and calculate the target function for the optimization itself. The second part of the work describes the detailed design and realization of a linkage prototype, and its chararacterization by means of a coordinate measuring machine. The characterization of the device is carried out by exploiting a coordinate measuring machine, which is unusually employed for both driving the linkage moveable part along its two DoF trajectory, and for measuring the resulting error about the nominal trajectory.     

Functional Properties of Plasticized Bio-Based Poly(Lactic Acid)_Poly(Hydroxybutyrate) (PLA_PHB) Films for Active Food Packaging

Fully bio-based and biodegradable active films based on poly(lactic acid) (PLA) blended with poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) and incorporating lactic acid oligomers (OLA) as plasticizers and carvacrol as active agent were extruded and fully characterized in their functional properties for antimicrobial active packaging. PLA_PHB films showed good barrier to water vapor, while the resistance to oxygen diffusion decreased with the addition of OLA and carvacrol. Their overall migration in aqueous food simulant was determined and no significant changes were observed by the addition of carvacrol and OLA to the PLA_PHB formulations. However, the effect of both additives in fatty food simulant can be considered a positive feature for the potential protection of foodstuff with high fat content. Moreover, the antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of the proposed formulations increased by the presence of carvacrol, with enhanced activity against Staphylococcus aureus if compared to Escherichia coli at short and long incubation times. These results underlined the specific antimicrobial properties of these bio-films suggesting their applicability in active food packaging.     

Fuzzy motion control strategy for cooperation of multiple automated vehicles with passengers comfort

This paper considers motion control for a cooperative system of automated passenger vehicles. It develops a cooperative scheme based on a decentralized planning algorithm which considers the vehicles in an initial open chain configuration. In this scheme the trajectories are intersections-free, and each trajectory is planned independently of the others. To ensure the stabilization of each vehicle in the planned trajectory, a fuzzy closed loop motion control is presented, where, based on the properties of the Fuzzy maps, the Lyapunov’s stability of the motion errors is demonstrated for all the vehicles. Based on the ISO 2631-1 standard, the saturation property of the Fuzzy maps guarantees low values of longitudinal and lateral accelerations, to ensure comfort of the human body during the motion. The validity of this control algorithm is supported by simulation experiments.     

Spoilage microbiota associated to the storage of raw meat in different conditions

The spoilage of raw meat is mainly due to undesired microbial development in meat during storage. The type of bacteria and their loads depend on the initial meat contamination and on the specific storage conditions that can influence the development of different spoilage-related microbial populations thus affecting the type and rate of the spoilage process. This review focuses on the composition of raw meat spoilage microbiota and the influence of storage conditions such as temperature, packaging atmosphere and use of different preservatives on the bacterial diversity developing in raw meat. In addition, the most recent tools used for the detection and identification of meat microbiota are also reviewed.     

High-gain,high-CMRR class AB operational transconductance amplifier based on the flipped voltage follower

A novel class AB operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) topology is proposed, based on a class AB flipped voltage follower. The OTA has class AB behavior, with current boosting both for the load and the compensation capacitors. It has a high gain of (g_mr₀)⁴ , obtained using a two-stage structure with cascoded stages, and is a two-stage Miller-compensated amplifier employing multipath to remove the positive zero. It has close to rail-to-rail output swing (limited by cascoding) and very low common-mode gain thanks to a replica technique (allowing the use of low-power common-mode feedback [CMFB] loops). Ninety-two decibels of gain and 176 dB of common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR) without CMFB are achieved using a 40-nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process. The OTA is used to design a low-power sample-and-hold amplifier (SHA) operating at 5 MSps, a typical application for CMOS OTAs, which has been chosen to verify the proposed circuit's performance and to show that the OTA is robust in Monte Carlo simulations under process variations and mismatches in an actual application.     

Optical Tissue Clearing to Study the Intra-Pulmonary Biodistribution of Intravenously Delivered Mesenchymal Stromal Cells and Their Interactions with Host Lung Cells

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) injected intravenously are trapped in the capillaries of the lungs and die within the first 24 h. Studying the biodistribution and fate of labelled therapeutic cells in the 3D pulmonary context is important to understand their function in this organ and gain insights into their mechanisms of action. Optical tissue clearing enables volumetric cell tracking at single-cell resolution. Thus, we compared three optical tissue-clearing protocols (Clear, Unobstructed Brain/Body Imaging Cocktails and Computational analysis (CUBIC), modified stabilised 3D imaging of solvent-cleared organs (s-DISCO) and ethyl cinnamate (ECi)) to evaluate their potential to track the biodistribution of human umbilical cord MSCs expressing the tdTomato fluorescence reporter and investigate how they interact with host cells in the mouse lung. The results showed that although CUBIC clearing is the only method that enables direct imaging of fluorescently labelled MSCs, combining s-DISCO or ECi with immunofluorescence or dye labelling allows the interaction of MSCs with endothelial and immune cells to be studied. Overall, this comparative study offers guidance on selecting an optical tissue-clearing method for cell tracking applications.     

Film Blowing of Biodegradable Polymer Nanocomposites for Agricultural Applications

Films for agricultural applications, such as greenhouses films or mulching films are generally made of polyolefins such as linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) or low-density polyethylene. However, the use of biodegradable and/or compostable polymers is increasing, which enjoy the additional advantage that they can be left on the site since a fine life would be gradually assimilated to the underlying soil. Nevertheless, biodegradable polymeric films often do not have suitable mechanical performances. In this work, biodegradable polymer-based nanocomposite films are prepared by film blowing and compared with traditional LLDPE based nanocomposites. In particular, a biodegradable polymer blend and two different inorganic nanofillers (an organo-modified clay and a calcium carbonate with a hydrophobic coating) are used for the preparation of the nanocomposites. A detailed investigation of obtained materials is performed through rheological, mechanical, and optical characterizations. Adding nanofillers led to an increase of rigidity and tear strength of blown films without negatively affecting their ductility.