Correction to: Heat Treatment of Alloy 718 Made by Additive Manufacturing for Oil and Gas Applications

JOM - In the last paragraph of the section “SOLIDIFICATION AND THERMODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS”, the authors would like to change the sentence “Although the solvus temperature for...     

Compositional and functional properties of milk and dairy products derived from cows fed pasture or concentrate-based diets

Worldwide milk production is predominantly founded on indoor, high-concentrate feeding systems, whereas pasture-based feeding systems are most common in New Zealand and Ireland but have received greater attention recently in countries utilizing conventional systems. Consumer interest in ‘pasture-fed’ dairy products has also increased, arising from environmental, ethical, and nutritional concerns. A substantial body of research exists describing the effect of different feeding strategies on the composition of milk, with several recent studies focusing on the comparison of pasture- and concentrate-based feeding regimes. Significant variation is typically observed in the gross composition of milk produced from different supplemental feeds, but various changes in the discrete composition of macromolecular components in milk have also been associated with dietary influence, particularly in relation to the fatty acid profile. Changes in milk composition have also been shown to have implications for milk and dairy product processability, functionality and sensory properties. Methods to determine the traceability of dairy products or verify marketing claims such as ‘pasture-fed’ have also been established, based on compositional variation due to diet. This review explores the effects of feed types on milk composition and quality, along with the ultimate effect of diet-induced changes on milk and dairy product functionality, with particular emphasis placed on pasture- and concentrate-based feeding systems.     

Chitosan flocculation associated with biofilms of C. saccharolyticus and C. owensensis enhances biomass retention in a CSTR

Cell immobilization and co-culture techniques have gained attention due to its potential to obtain high volumetric hydrogen productivities (Q_H2). Chitosan retained biomass in the fermentation of co-cultures of Caldicellulosiruptor saccharolyticus and C. owensensis efficiently, up to a maximum dilution rate (D) of 0.9 h^?1. Without chitosan, wash out of the co-culture occurred earlier, accompanied with approximately 50% drop in Q_H2 (D > 0.4 h^?1). However, butyl rubber did not show as much potential as carrier material; it did neither improve Q_H2 nor biomass retention in continuous culture. The population dynamics revealed that C. owensensis was the dominant species (95%) in the presence of chitosan, whereas C. saccharolyticus was the predominant (99%) during cultivation without chitosan. In contrast, the co-culture with rubber as carrier maintained the relative population ratios around 1:1. This study highlighted chitosan as an effective potential carrier for immobilization, thereby paving the way for cost – effective hydrogen production.     

Gestational Diabetes Mellitus and Maternal Immune Dysregulation: What We Know So Far

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is an obstetric complication that affects approximately 5–10% of all pregnancies worldwide. GDM is defined as any degree of glucose intolerance with onset or first recognition during pregnancy, and is characterized by exaggerated insulin resistance, a condition which is already pronounced in healthy pregnancies. Maternal hyperglycaemia ensues, instigating a ‘glucose stress’ response and concurrent systemic inflammation. Previous findings have proposed that both placental and visceral adipose tissue play a part in instigating and mediating this low-grade inflammatory response which involves altered infiltration, differentiation and activation of maternal innate and adaptive immune cells. The resulting maternal immune dysregulation is responsible for exacerbation of the condition and a further reduction in maternal insulin sensitivity. GDM pathology results in maternal and foetal adverse outcomes such as increased susceptibility to diabetes mellitus development and foetal neurological conditions. A clearer understanding of how these pathways originate and evolve will improve therapeutic targeting. In this review, we will explore the existing findings describing maternal immunological adaption in GDM in an attempt to highlight our current understanding of GDM-mediated immune dysregulation and identify areas where further research is required.     

Empirical Study of Wavelet Domain Image Joint Statistics and Proposition of an Efficient Correlation Map

This paper presents an empirical study of joint wavelet statistics for textures and other imagery to find an efficient correlation neighborhood. Since there is an established realization that modeling wavelet and other x-let coefficient relationships is crucial to any successful transform domain algorithm (such as Hidden Markov Trees), new works have been devoted to examine these dependencies from different aspects and propose an appropriate model. Because the time and computation complexity involved both in analyzing non-linear dependencies and in solving dependent models may restrict us to consider only a very small subset of contributing neighbors we focus our attention on linear dependencies (correlations) while having a squint on non-linear relations too. In this process, we study a collection of 5000 real images to corroborate our statistical analysis of the joint coefficient behavior and try to find an efficient and at the same time frugal relation map through different statistical means. The statistical observations are then certified by a coefficient significance measure and the competitiveness of the map is substantiated by plugging it into two dependent denoising frameworks.     

Modeling oil migration in two-layer chocolate–almond confectionery products

Migration of oil from high oil content fillings into the surrounding chocolate coatings results in product quality changes of filled confections. The objective of this study was to evaluate the mass transfer of liquid oil in two-layer model confectionery samples prepared from four almond products and dark chocolate. Experimental data were acquired using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The spatial and temporal experimental data of the liquid oil signal of the almond product and chocolate were modeled using a Fickian diffusion model. Solutions to the diffusion model were derived using both Laplace transform analytical solution and a finite difference numerical solution. For both methods, the boundary condition between the two layers incorporated a partition coefficient. MatLab’s nlinfit routine coupled with the diffusion equation solution provided estimates of the diffusion coefficients, D_a (almond products) and D_c (chocolate), and the partition coefficient. The diffusion coefficient values for the chocolate region ranged between 3 × 10⁻¹¹ m²/s and 6 × 10⁻¹¹ m²/s; the diffusion coefficient values for the almond products were an order of magnitude greater than that of chocolate.     

The potential of biodetoxification activity as a probiotic property of Lactobacillus reuteri

Previous work on the metabolism of Lactobacillus reuteri ATCC 55730 anticipated a variability in the use of organic electron acceptors as a means to relieve metabolic redox problems. Therefore, investigations focusing on this unique metabolism of L. reuteri may reveal a basis for new probiotic properties. For instance, L. reuteri may use reactive aldehydes and ketones as electron acceptors to balance their redox metabolism, which opens the possibility to exploit this bacterium for in vivo bioreduction of deleterious compounds in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT). Herein we demonstrate that L. reuteri ATCC 55730 cultures on glucose are able to use furfural (1 g/L), and hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) (0.5 g/L), as electron acceptors. The former enhances the growth rate by about 25% and biomass yield by 15%, whereas the latter is inhibitory. Furfural is stoichiometrically reduced to furfuryl alcohol by the culture. The conversion of furfural had no effect on the flux distribution between the simultaneously operating phosphoketolase and Embden-Meyerhof pathways, but initiated a flux to acetate production. In addition to furfural and HMF, cellular extracts showed potential to reoxidize NADH and/or NADPH with acrolein, crotonaldehyde, and diacetyl, indicating that conversion reactions take place intracellularly, however, utilization mechanisms for the latter compounds may not be present in this strain. The strain did not reduce other GIT-related reactive compounds, including acrylamide, glyoxal, and furan.     

Log-Normal Melt Pulsation in Close-Coupled Gas Atomization

High speed photography coupled with sophisticated image analysis has been used to study low-frequency pulsation during close-coupled gas atomization. At high gas pressure the instantaneous melt delivery is described by two superimposed log-normal distributions, one with a high standard deviation but little melt at the atomizer tip, the second with low standard deviation but more melt at the atomizer tip. At low gas pressures the distribution is better described by a single log-normal distribution.     

Development of poly(lactic acid) nanostructured membranes for the controlled delivery of progesterone to livestock animals

Solution blow spinning (SBS) is a novel technology feasible to produce nanostructured polymeric membranes loaded with active agents. In the present study, nanofibrous mats of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) loaded with progesterone (P4) were produced by SBS at different P4 concentrations. The spun membranes were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The in vitro releasing of P4 was evaluated using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Interactions between progesterone and PLA were confirmed by rheological measurements of the PLA/P4 solutions and in the spun mats by microscopy (SEM), thermal (DSC) and spectral (FTIR) analyses. SEM micrographs provided evidences of a smooth and homogeneous structure for nanostructured membranes without progesterone crystals on fiber surface. FTIR spectroscopy indicated miscibility and interaction between the ester of PLA and the ketone groups of the P4 in the nanofibers. X-ray analysis indicated that the size of PLA crystallites increased with progesterone content. Finally, by in vitro release experiments it was possible to observe that the progesterone releasing follows nearly first-order kinetics, probably due to the diffusion of hormone into PLA nanofibers.