Effect of γ‐irradiation on the biophysical and morphological properties of corn

The effects of γ‐irradiation on the biophysical and morphological properties of corn plants were investigated. The irradiation doses were 0, 1, 1.5, 2.5, 5, and 10 krad. Corn grains exposed to 1.5 and 2.5 krad showed highly significant changes in all growth parameters. Fluorescence and light absorption spectra of chlorophyll attributed to different doses treatments of corn grains clearly confirmed the superiority of 1.5 krad irradiation dose in stimulating corn plants. Furthermore, the frequency dependence of the relative permittivity and the electric conductivity of the treated samples have been performed and discussed. The obtained results give another support via the biophysical properties for the 1.5 krad irradiation dose to be the most favorable one to improve the plant growth characteristics.     

Bromate in Drinking Water A problem in Switzerland?

Ozonation of bromide-containing waters causes the formation of bromate which is considered to be potentially carcinogenic. An investigation in Switzerland on water works using ozone (85) has shown that the new drinking water standard of 10?µg/L for bromate is generally not exceeded. This is mainly due to the relatively small bromide concentrations which are typically below 25?µg/L. There is a characteristic relationship between bromate formation and the ozone exposure in a particular water type. This can be used to estimate the integral ozone exposure from the bromate formation which allows the assessment of the efficiency of the disinfection. This new concept is illustrated by means of two examples.     

Polyphenol extraction from Origanum dictamnus using low-transition temperature mixtures composed of glycerol and organic salts: Effect of organic anion carbon chain length

Novel low-transition temperature mixtures (LTTMs), composed of glycerol and sodium acetate, sodium propionate, and sodium butyrate, were synthesized with the aim to investigate the organic anion chain length effect on the performance of polyphenol extraction from the medicinal plant Origanum dictamnus. The LTTMs used as hydrogen bond donor:hydrogen bond acceptor molar ratio of 6:1 and after establishing optimal conditions of water content and liquid-to-solid ratio by response surface methodology, kinetics was performed to identify the highest efficient system. The results drawn indicated that the longer the anion chain length, the higher the requirement for water content to achieve optimal total polyphenol yield. Extractions with LTTMs comprising of sodium propionate and sodium butyrate gave virtually equal yields in total polyphenols, yet extraction with the former solvent was significantly less energy-demanding, with the activation energy being 8.77?kJ?mol^?1. Liquid chromatography-diode array-mass spectrometry analyses revealed that the extract obtained with glycerol/sodium propionate at 70?°C also displayed a richer polyphenolic profile, while the antioxidant activity of the extract was not negatively affected up to this temperature. This novel green solvent is therefore proposed as a highly efficient means of recovering bioactive polyphenols from plant material.     

Adaptive discrete-time sliding-mode control of nonlinear systems described by Wiener models

In this paper, we propose an adaptive control scheme that can be applied to nonlinear systems with unknown parameters. The considered class of nonlinear systems is described by the block-oriented models, specifically, the Wiener models. These models consist of dynamic linear blocks in series with static nonlinear blocks. The proposed adaptive control method is based on the inverse of the nonlinear function block and on the discrete-time sliding-mode controller. The parameters adaptation are performed using a new recursive parametric estimation algorithm. This algorithm is developed using the adjustable model method and the least squares technique. A recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm is used to estimate the inverse nonlinear function. A time-varying gain is proposed, in the discrete-time sliding mode controller, to reduce the chattering problem. The stability of the closed-loop nonlinear system, with the proposed adaptive control scheme, has been proved. An application to a pH neutralisation process has been carried out and the simulation results clearly show the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive control scheme.     

Relationships Between Textural Modifications,Lipid and Protein Oxidation and Sensory Attributes of Refrigerated Turkey Meat Sausage Treated with Bacteriocin BacTN635

In this study, bacteriocin “BacTN635” was used to maintain quality and extend shelf life of refrigerated turkey meat sausage. Connections between lipid and protein oxidations and instrumentally textural changes using Bayesian networks during storage of turkey meat sausage were also studied. BacTN635 slowed down metmyoglobin and carbonyl group accumulation and delayed the disappearance of sulphydryl proteins (P < 0.05) in turkey meat sausage. This bacteriocin led to a decrease in primary and secondary lipid oxidation (P < 0.05) and enhanced texture characteristics of sausage by reducing hardness (P < 0.05) and controlling the elasticity lose during refrigeration. We have also investigated the correlations between protein and lipid oxidation and instrumentally measured the parameters of turkey meat sausage treated by BacTN635. The developed model, based on Bayesian network techniques, can automatically learn emerging models in data to explain protein and lipid oxidation and texture modification relationships. Equally, sensorial parameters were used for constructing regression models to predict overall acceptability. In conclusion, BacTN635 could be a promising tool for extending the safety and quality of refrigerated turkey meat sausage. This bacteriocin could be a strong candidate for future applications in a wide range of meat products.     

Optimal business process deployment cost in cloud resources

Cloud computing is the fastest emerging technology that proposes several resources under various pricing strategies that are specified based on temporal constraints. The main aim of cloud computing is to enhance the performance level and minimize operating costs. Thus, organizations looking towards optimizing their spending on IT infrastructure find such pricing strategies very attractive, especially, to deploy their business process models. However, discovering the optimal deployment cost of a business process in cloud resources proposed under various pricing strategies becomes a highly challenging problem. So, the objective of the present paper is to present an approach that assists business process designers in finding an optimal assignment or scheduling based on the variety of pricing strategies. We use linear programming models with an objective function under a set of constraints. Besides, we propose an extension of the famous cloud simulator provided in the market, CloudSim, to simulate the cloud resources consumed to deploy a business process model. The experimental results show the feasibility, effectiveness, and performance of our approach.

     

Primary repair of colorectal injuries in childhood

A retrospective survey of 44 children with colorectal perforating injuries secondary to shrapnel and high velocity bullets is presented. Seven patients had the injury limited to the colon or rectum. All patients were operated upon within 7 hr from the their colonic wounds and 20 underwent a colostomy. Five of the patients repaired primarily had their injuries to the left side of the colon or rectum. None of the patients undergoing primary repair suffered from an anastomotic leak. The mortality rate after primary repair was 16.6% and after colostomy 10%. The mortality was significantly different in the group of patients who had additional injuries where a colostomy procedure was associated with a lower mortality rate (11% versus 21%). Shock on admission and during operation affected survival adversely in all patients. The average hospital stay of survivors was 24 days with "primary repair" and 36 days with "colostomy."     

Determinants of e-consumer productivity in product retrieval on a commercial website: An experimental approach

This article investigates what determines e-consumer productivity, in the specific case of product retrieval, on a commercial website. With a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design on 292 participants, an online experiment reveals that productivity in product retrieval (measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and time) relates to website design (e.g., abstraction level of labels, animation), user characteristics (e.g., Internet experience, product category familiarity, cognitive absorption), and situational characteristics (e.g., task nature). The results also confirm interactive effects among the type of strategy used, the nature of the task, and the website design. These findings have notable implications for both research and practice.     

Fault-tolerant scheduling on parallel systems with non-memoryless failure distributions

As large parallel systems increase in size and complexity, failures are inevitable and exhibit complex space and time dynamics. Most often, in real systems, failure rates are increasing or decreasing over time. Considering non-memoryless failure distributions, we study a bi-objective scheduling problem of optimizing application makespan and reliability. In particular, we determine whether one can optimize both makespan and reliability simultaneously, or whether one metric must be degraded in order to improve the other. We also devise scheduling algorithms for achieving (approximately) optimal makespan or reliability. When failure rates decrease, we prove that makespan and reliability are opposing metrics. In contrast, when failure rates increase, we prove that one can optimize both makespan and reliability simultaneously. Moreover, we show that the largest processing time (LPT) list scheduling algorithm achieves good performance when processors are of uniform speed. The implications of our findings are the accelerated completion and improved reliability of parallel jobs executed across large distributed systems. Finally, we conduct simulations to investigate the impact of failures on the performance, which is done using an actual application of biological sequence comparison.