Confocal scanning laser microscopy and quantitative image analysis: application to cream cheese microstructure investigation

The naked eye observation of cream cheese confocal scanning laser microscopy images only provides qualitative information about its microstructure. Because those products are dense dairy gels, confocal scanning laser microscopy images of 2 different cream cheeses may appear close. Quantitative image analysis is then necessary to compensate for human eye deficiency (e.g., lack of precision, subjectivity). Two kinds of quantitative image analysis were performed in this study: high-order statistical methods and grayscale mathematical morphology. They were applied to study the microstructure of 3 different cream cheeses (same manufacturing process, same dry matter content, but different fat and protein contents). Advantages and drawbacks of both methods are reviewed. The way they may be used to describe cream cheese microstructure is also presented.     

Structural,physical, and optical characterization of (Nd3+/Eu3+)-doped zinc-rich silica–borate glasses

In this study, zinc–silica–borate glass structures doped with rare earth (RE) oxides Eu₂O₃ and Nd₂O₃ were synthesized with classical melting–quenching technique. 60ZnO–10SiO₂–(30 – x)B₂O₃:xRE (x?=?0, 0.5, 1, 1.5 mol%) composition was chosen as the structure. The doping effect of two different rare earth oxides (individually) at different ratios was investigated according to the structural, physical, and optical properties of the glass structure. Structural properties of the synthesized glasses were determined with Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) device, and densities (ρ) and molar volumes (V_m) of the glasses were measured with Archimedes method, and optical properties were determined with UV–Visible (UV–Vis-NIR) device. FTIR results show that BO₃ units increased in all RE-doped glasses. While densities of the synthesized glasses varied between 3.755 and 3.941 g cm^??3, indirect bandgaps varied between 3.219 and 3.645 eV. The glass with the highest transmittance was the 1% Eu₂O₃-doped glass with a transmittance of 84%. While band edges shifted slightly toward short wavelengths in glasses doped with Nd₂O₃, they shifted to longer wavelengths in glasses doped with Eu₂O₃.

     

A hybrid CDAC-threshold configuring SAR ADC in 28nm FDSOI CMOS

In this paper, a 9-bit 1.3 GS/s single channel SAR ADC is presented. In conventional SAR ADCs, the capacitive DAC size grows exponentially with respect to converter resolution. This results in both signal bandwidth and conversion speed reduction. The proposed architecture implements binary search through a redundant capacitive DAC for the 5 first MSBs and through programmable comparator thresholds for the remaining 4 LSBs. The DAC capacitance at the front-end remains small enough to achieve high sampling rate with increased input bandwidth. Two asynchronously clocked alternate comparators are used additionally to improve conversion speed. The ADC is designed and simulated in 28 nm FD-SOI CMOS. It consumes 4.1 mW from a 1 V supply, while achieving a SNDR of 52.1 dB and a Figure-of-Merit of 11.4 fJ/conversion-step.     

Voice service interworking for PSTN and IP networks

This article presents an overview of the main technical problems to be addressed for the provision of interoperable services between IP telephony and the PSTN. The pivotal element of the solution resides in an interworking function. This function is typically implemented in a gateway whose requirements and behavior are here analyzed in terms of signaling and control protocols (control plane) as well as user data transfer (user plane). The presentation is structured around these two planes. The control plane defines the set of signaling protocols to be used in each networking context and the translation between them. Detailed scenarios illustrate the signal translation in the gateway allowing for the establishment of a hybrid phone call. The user plane is responsible for adapting the user data to the properties of each network channel and determines the quality of service of the voice call in terms of delay and speech quality     

Analysis of nonblocking ATM switches with multiple input queues

An analytical model for the performance analysis of a multiple input queued asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switch is presented. The interconnection network of the ATM switch is internally nonblocking and each input port maintains a separate queue of cells for each output port. The switch uses parallel iterative matching (PIM) to find the maximal matching between the input and output ports of the switch. A closed-form solution for the maximum throughput of the switch under saturated conditions is derived. It is found that the maximum throughput of the switch exceeds 99% with just four iterations of the PIM algorithm. Using the tagged input queue approach, an analytical model for evaluating the switch performance under an independent identically distributed Bernoulli traffic with the cell destinations uniformly distributed over all output ports is developed. The switch throughput, mean cell delay, and cell loss probability are computed from the analytical model. The accuracy of the analytical model is verified using simulation     

Embedding Pyramids into 3D Meshes

The pyramid architecture is a powerful topology in the area of computer vision. On the other hand, the 3D mesh architecture possesses rich topological features which make it suitable for building scalable parallel processor systems. The usefulness of these two architectures has led us to consider the problem of embedding pyramids into 3D meshes, for which we present two solutions. The first solution, termednatural embedding,maps a pyramid into a 3D mesh such that each level of the pyramid is mapped to a single level of the 3D mesh. The second solution, termedmultiple embedding,allows simultaneous embedding of multiple pyramids into a single 3D mesh. The quality of both solutions is evaluated using dilation and expansion measures. Using the multiple embedding, we are able to obtain an average dilation of 1.26 and a near-optimal expansion of 1.12.     

Changes in membrane fatty acids and murein composition of Bacillus cereus and Salmonella Typhi induced by gamma irradiation treatment

This present study was carried out to evaluate the effects of gamma irradiation on the fatty acids (FA) and mureins composition of two different radiotolerant bacteria. Bacillus cereus LSPQ 2872 and Salmonella Typhi ATCC 19430 were used for this study. The bacterial strains were treated with a sublethal radiation dose of 1 kGy to cause a cellular damage. Gas chromatography (GC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis were performed to demonstrate respectively the modification of the FA composition and the changes in muropeptide profile. Results obtained show, for both bacteria, that this treatment had a significant effect (P ≤ 0.05) on the FA content with an increase of unsaturated FA percentage. Substantial changes were also noticed for the relative percentage and the number of the muropeptides. This study represents one of the few to demonstrate the modifications on bacterial membrane as a cellular response to survive the ionising radiation stress.     

Enhancement of fermentative hydrogen production by Thermotoga maritima through hyperthermophilic anaerobic co-digestion of fruit-vegetable and fish wastes

In this work, different proportions of model fruit and vegetable wastes (MFVW) and acid hydrolyzed fish wastes (AHFW) were used for hydrogen production in a minimum culture medium based on seawater. Experiments were performed in pH-controlled Stirred Tank Reactor (STR) with or without the addition of nitrogen and sulfur sources. The total H₂ production and the maximum hydrogen productivity of T. maritima in the culture medium, containing MFVW and AHFW (45 mmol L^?1 carbohydrates) at a C/N ratio of 12, were 132 mmol L^?1 and 15 mmol h^?1 L^?1, respectively. However, tripling the concentration of carbohydrates to reach a C/N ratio of 22, has increased two times the maximum H₂ productivity (28 mmol h^?1 L^?1) due to the improvement in nutrient balance. The cumulative H₂ production was 285 mmol L^?1, yielding a potential energy generation of 0.1210³ MJ ton^?1 wastes, which could be an interesting alternative for energy recovery.     

Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Fire Protection Lobby on Stair Pressurization System in a High-Rise Building

In this study, the stair pressurization system in a 40-storey high office building in Istanbul is investigated through field tests, in order to understand the effect of the presence of a non-pressurized vestibule (fire protection lobby, FPL) before entering the stair at each floor. The building without FPL is simulated by keeping only one of the two doors (of the stair and FPL) open at each floor. This method gave an opportunity to fix other parameters affecting the stair pressurization system and check solely the effect of FPL. Two different cases are taken into account, where the first one (all doors closed) analyses the condition that all stair doors are kept closed and the second one (critical doors are open) is conducted when the stairwell is opened to the floor on a given level (fire floor) and the stair termination door at the discharge floor is kept open. For both cases, the availability of the FPL is investigated by using the aforementioned arrangement. Under the conditions with approximately the same pressurized air flow rate at all doors closed condition, it is found that the availability of FPL increases the pressure difference between the stairwell and the corridor by a factor of approximately 2.2. This is also justified by using empirical formulations available in literature, where this ratio is calculated as 2.0. The results of this study showed that the FPL arrangement improves the effectiveness of pressurization system in a very high-rise building, despite some tolerable drawbacks.