Biofortified,selenium enriched,fruit and cladode from three Opuntia Cactus pear cultivars grown on agricultural drainage sediment for use in nutraceutical foods

Three different cultivars of drought, salt and boron (B) tolerant Opuntia ficus indica (Cactus pear) were grown in poor-quality agricultural drainage sediment high in salt, B and selenium (Se) that originated from the Westside San Joaquin Valley. Nutritional contents were then measured in these Cactus pear fruit (purple, red, or orange-coloured), and vegetative cladodes (modified stem-like leaves) compared to the same cultivars grown adjacent on a low saline sandy loam soil. After harvesting fruit and cladodes, the mineral nutrients, chemical speciation of Se, total phenolics, vitamin C and antioxidant status were analyzed. The results demonstrated positive nutritional changes in both cladodes and fruit within the Cactus pear cultivars when grown on agricultural drainage sediment compared to those grown on normal soil. Under these conditions Cactus pear plants contained nutraceutical qualities and represent a useful anticarcinogenic Se-enriched chemotherapeutic food crop for providing advanced dietary seleno-pharmacology in order to help fight human diseases.     

Optimisation of vacuum frying of gold kiwifruit slices: application of response surface methodology

Response surface methodology was used to investigate the effects of the level of maltodextrin (MD), frying temperature and time on the moisture, colour and texture properties of the vacuum‐fried gold kiwifruit slices and to determine the optimised conditions for vacuum frying. The moisture content of vacuum‐fried gold kiwifruit slices decreased with increasing frying temperature and frying time. The colour change of the product increased with increasing frying temperature. The browning index of the product increased with increasing frying temperature and frying time. The breaking force of the product gave higher values when processed at middle range of frying temperature and MD level. When processing vacuum‐fried gold kiwifruit slices, there was a need to use frying temperatures of 72.0–76.3 °C, frying times of 35.0–65.0 min and an MD level of 40% to achieve products with acceptable moisture, colour and texture properties.     

Using the direct and indirect control to stabilize some classes of uncertain systems. I. continuous systems

Consideration was given to some classes of uncertain systems where the elements of the matrix of the controlled plant are arbitrary functionals about which only the variation boundaries are known. The direct and indirect (dynamic) controls that are robust to the plant elements are constructed using the quadratic Lyapunov functions.     

Hydrofluoroethers as heat-transfer fluids for OLEDs: Operational range, stability, and efficiency improvement

In this work we introduce a simple yet very efficient method of heat dissipation by immersing OLED device into hydrofluoroether (HFE) fluids. It is shown that due to highly fluorous nature of this class of fluids, HFE do not damage organic semiconductors which are comprised in the OLED stack and therefore can be used as encapsulation media. HFE also have high thermal conductivity, low viscosity and can efficiently dissipate the heat by means of natural convection with laminar flow. By employing HFE we were able to significantly improve the OLED operating dynamic range. Lifetimes of OLEDs operating in HFE at high currents can be improved by about a factor of 8. Furthermore, HFE fluid significantly improves the light outcoupling by a factor of 70% due to higher than air refractive index (n = 1.3).     

Programmable Macroporous Photonic Crystals Enabled by Swelling‐Induced All‐Room‐Temperature Shape Memory Effects

This study reports unconventional, all‐room‐temperature shape memory (SM) effects using templated macroporous shape memory polymer (SMP) photonic crystals comprising a glassy copolymer with high‐glass transition temperature. “Cold” programming of permanent periodic structures into temporary disordered configurations can be achieved by slowly evaporating various swelling solvents (e.g., ethanol) imbibed in the interconnecting macropores. The deformed macropores can be instantaneously recovered to the permanent geometry by exposing it to vapors and liquids of swelling solvents. By contrast, nonswelling solvents (e.g., hexane) cannot trigger “cold” programming and SM recovery. Extensive experimental and theoretical investigations reveal that the dynamics of swelling‐induced plasticizing effects caused by fast diffusion of solvent molecules into the walls of macropores with nanoscopic thickness dominate both “cold” programming and recovery processes. Importantly, the striking color changes associated with the reversible SM transitions enable novel chromogenic sensors for selectively detecting trace amounts of swelling analytes mixed in nonswelling solvents. Using ethanol–hexane solutions as proof‐of‐concept mixtures, the ethanol detection limit of 150 ppm has been demonstrated. Besides reusable sensors, which can find important applications in environmental monitoring and petroleum process/product control, the programmable SMP photonic crystals possessing high mechanical strengths and all‐room‐temperature processability can provide vast opportunities in developing reconfigurable/rewritable nanooptical devices.     

Transparent,dip-coated silver nanowire electrodes for small molecule organic solar cells

Percolation networks from silver nanowires can be used as a transparent electrode and promising alternative to the commonly used ITO. Here, the deposition of such a nanowire based network by dip coating, a versatile and scalable method, is described and characterized in detail. After identifying appropriate processing parameters, nanowire grids with conductivity and transmittance values rivaling ITO have been achieved. As a main issue, the roughness of the film was addressed and the influence on the device in terms of shunt paths was investigated. Using this network as anode, small molecule organic solar cells with varying stack structure were fabricated and yield efficiencies comparable to cells on ITO.     

Expanding a multilingual media monitoring and information extraction tool to a new language: Swahili

The Europe Media Monitor (EMM) family of applications is a set of multilingual tools that gather, cluster and classify news in currently fifty languages and that extract named entities and quotations (reported speech) from twenty languages. In this paper, we describe the recent effort of adding the African Bantu language Swahili to EMM. EMM is designed in an entirely modular way, allowing plugging in a new language by providing the language-specific resources for that language. We thus describe the type of language-specific resources needed, the effort involved, and ways of boot-strapping the generation of these resources in order to keep the effort of adding a new language to a minimum. The text analysis applications pursued in our efforts include clustering, classification, recognition and disambiguation of named entities (persons, organisations and locations), recognition and normalisation of date expressions, as well as the identification of reported speech quotations by and about people.     

Avatars Versus Agents: A Meta-Analysis Quantifying the Effect of Agency on Social Influence

Existing research has investigated whether virtual representations perceived to be controlled by humans (i.e., avatars) or those perceived to be controlled by computer algorithms (i.e., agents) are more influential. A meta-analysis (N = 32) examined the model of social influence in virtual environments (Blascovich, 2002) and investigated whether agents and avatars in virtual environments elicit different levels of social influence. Results indicated that perceived avatars produced stronger responses than perceived agents. Level of immersion (desktop vs. fully immersive), dependent variable type (subjective vs. objective), task type (competitive vs. cooperative vs. neutral), and actual control of the representation (human vs. computer) were examined as moderators. An interaction effect revealed that studies conducted on a desktop that used objective measures showed a stronger effect for agency than those that were conducted on a desktop but used subjective measures. Competitive and cooperative tasks showed greater agency effects than neutral tasks. Studies in which both conditions were actually human controlled showed greater agency effects than studies in which both conditions were actually computer controlled. We discuss theoretical and design implications for human–computer interaction and computer-mediated communication.