Isolation of a spotted fever group rickettsia from the Pacific Coast tick, Ixodes pacificus, in Oregon

A rickettsia of the spotted fever group was isolated on three occasions from Ixodes pacificus in western Oregon. These isolations, and additional evidence furnished by complement fixation tests on guinea pigs inoculated with other Oregon ticks of this species, indicate that the association of this rickettsia with the Pacific Coast tick may be widespread. This is the first isolation of a spotted fever group rickettsia from I. pacificus. Because the Oregon isolates are mildly virulent for guinea pigs they resemble the Western U and Rickettsia montana strains of rickettsiae. However, preliminary evidence from cross-immunofluorescence tests of mouse antisera suggests the Tillamook and Grants Pass strains are antigenically different from all known spotted fever group agents.     

LINEARIZATION OF EMPIRICAL RHEOLOGICAL DATA FOR USE IN COMPOSITION CONTROL OF MULTICOMPONENT FOODSTUFFS

Abstract An empirical measure of viscosity, which is often far from being a linear function of composition, was used together with refractive index to build up a function which bears a linear relationship to the composition of tomato paste-water-sucrose mixtures. The new function can be used directly for rapid composition control by linear vector-vector transformation.     

Fatty acid composition of the fat in selected food items with emphasis on trans components1

The fat in 220 samples from 35 food types has been analyzed for component fatty acids by gas liquid chromatography on a 15-m capillary column coated with SP-2340. The methodology permitted the determination of trans-octadecenoic fatty acids in the food samples. For food types in which the majority of samples containedtrans fatty acids, the range (weight percent of methyl esters) of this class of acids arranged by fat content of the food types was: high fat levels (>70% fat) — animal and dairy fats, 0.3–6.6%, stick margarines, 15.9–31.0%, tub margarines, 6.8–17.6%, and vegetable shortenings, 8.7–35.4%; moderately high fat levels (40–70% fat) —diet margarines, 11.3–13.3%; moderate fat levels (10–40% fat) — breading mixes and fried crusts, 8.1–32.7%, cakes, candies and frostings, 3.2–33.2%, cream substitutes, 0.4–11.5%, cookies, 2.5–34.2%, crackers, 1.9–29.0%, pastries and pastry crusts, 0.6–31.2%, corn and mixed grain snack chips, 0.4–30.4%; low fat levels (<10% fat) - breads and rolls, 0.2–23.6%, pretzels, 10.8–29.2%, and puddings, 28.4-35.1%. The majority of samples in the following food types did not containtrans fatty acids, except in cases where the label indicated partial hydrogenation of the oil: mayonnaises and salad dressings, salad and cooking oils and potato chips. For samples in these three food types which containedtrans fatty acids, the range was 0.2-23.2%. None of the peanut butters or pizza crusts analyzed containedtrans fatty acids.     

Application of iterative suboptimal strategies for improving adaptation transients in adaptive systems

Some solutions which involve iterative optimization techniques are given to improve adaptation transients in adaptive systems. Two suboptimal controllers are developed and applied to an equivalent discrete-time system valid for describing the behaviour of a recent adaptive control scheme when one of the (time-varying) parameters entering the adaptation algorithm varies within a closed domain admissible from a convergence point of view. The resulting suboptimal control strategies are translated into corrections of this parameter in order to recompute the adaptation algorithm over a finite horizon. Some numerical simulations illustrate the usefulness of the proposed scheme.