Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris in fruit juices and its control by nisin

Summary The acid-tolerant and heat-resistant bacterium Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris is a spoilage problem in pasteurized and heat-treated fruit juices. In this study it was shown to grow in orange juice, grapefruit juice and apple juice to produce detectable taint at levels of about 10⁴–10⁵ c.f.u. ml⁻¹. Decimal reduction times were determined at 80 °, 90 ° and 95 °C in each juice and confirmed the heat-resistant nature of the spores under normal juice pasteurization conditions. They also confirmed that heat sensitivity increased with decreasing pH but that this effect was less pronounced at higher temperatures. The organism was, however, sensitive to the bacteriocin food preservative nisin. The presence of nisin during heating decreased the D value by up to 40% and the MIC for nisin against spores at 25 °C was only 5 International Units (IU) ml⁻¹. The results indicate that use of nisin is a potentially useful way of controlling this organism in fruit juices and fruit juice-containing products.     

In-depth analysis and evaluation of diffusive glioma models

Glioma is one of the most aggressive types of brain tumor. Several mathematical models have been developed during the past two decades, toward simulating the mechanisms that govern the development of glioma. The most common models use the diffusion-reaction equation (DRE) for simulating the spatiotemporal variation of tumor cell concentration. Nevertheless, despite the applications presented, there has been little work on studying the details of the mathematical solution and implementation of the 3-D diffusion model and presenting a qualitative analysis of the algorithmic results. This paper presents a complete mathematical framework on the solution of the DRE using different numerical schemes. This framework takes into account all characteristics of the latest models, such as brain tissue heterogeneity, anisotropic tumor cell migration, chemotherapy, and resection modeling. The different numerical schemes presented have been evaluated based upon the degree to which the DRE exact solution is approximated. Experiments have been conducted both on real datasets and a test case for which there is a known algebraic expression of the solution. Thus, it is possible to calculate the accuracy of the different models.     

Performance evaluation of a C-RAN supporting a mixture of random and quasi-random traffic

Wireless Networks - In this paper we consider a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) where the remote radio heads (RRHs) are separated from the baseband signal processing servers, named baseband...     

Engset multi‐rate state‐dependent loss models with QoS guarantee

We consider a single link loss system of quasi‐random input, described by the Engset multirate loss model (EnMLM). Blocked calls may once reattempt to be connected to the system requiring less bandwidth; then the system is described by the single retry model for finite sources (f‐SRM). The EnMLM and the f‐SRM are extended with the single threshold finite source model (f‐STM), where calls may attempt to be connected to the system with less bandwidth requirements, according to the link occupancy, before blocking occurs. We focus on CBP equalization in the EnMLM, f‐SRM and f‐STM, under the bandwidth reservation (BR) policy. For this analysis, we apply two approximate methods, the Roberts' method and the method of reverse transition rates (RTR), which lead to a recursive CBP calculation. We evaluate the accuracy of the above models under the BR policy by comparing the analytical with simulation CBP results, based on the relative approximation errors (RAE). The results are highly satisfactory because they show that the proposed models (formulas) lead to small RAE. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Benefits of the use of impairment constraint routing in optical networks

In transparent optical networks, the optical signal accumulates the effects of all physical impairments present along the path it traverses. The conventional selection of signal paths based on e.g. shortest path routing without considering the signal quality and its association with the physical impairments does not always provide the optimum solution in terms of network performance such as blocking and resource utilization. This paper proposes an impairment constraint based routing algorithm to achieve an optimal combination of physical and networking performance taking into account all physical linear impairments including noise, chromatic and polarization mode dispersion, crosstalk and filter concatenation effects in an integrated approach. The performance of a typical metropolitan area network is examined and the improvement achieved when using the proposed approach compared to the conventional shortest path routing is demonstrated.     

On a Non-homogeneous Singular Linear Discrete Time System with a Singular Matrix Pencil

In this article, we study the initial value problem of a non-homogeneous singular linear discrete time system whose coefficients are either non-square constant matrices or square with an identically zero matrix pencil. By taking into consideration that the relevant pencil is singular, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of solutions. More analytically we study the conditions under which the system has unique, infinite and no solutions. Furthermore, we provide a formula for the case of the unique solution. Finally we provide some numerical examples based on a singular discrete time real dynamical system to justify our theory.     

Image-based gating of intravascular ultrasound pullback sequences

Intravascularultrasound (IVUS) sequences recorded in vivo are subject to a wide array of motion artifacts as the majority of these studies are performed within the coronary arteries of a beating heart. To eliminate these artifacts, an electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is typically used to gate (collect) those frames recorded at the points in time associated with a particular fraction of the cardiac cycle. However, this technique may be suboptimal for a number of reasons, among which is the difficulty of determining the optimal fraction at which to gate. This value is generally nonobvious. To circumvent this problem, we introduce a frame-gating method for IVUS pullbacks that mimics ECG (i.e., in the sense that it selects only one frame per cardiac cycle), but will automatically choose the fraction of the cycle that renders the most stable gated frame set. Stability here is gauged by measuring interframe similarity. Our method operates exclusively on the imagery data and does not require ECG or any form of image segmentation or other high-level image analysis. To validate our algorithm, we compare its behavior versus true ECG gating.     

A near-optimal multiuser detector for DS-CDMA systems using semidefinite programming relaxation

A multiuser detector for direct-sequence code-division multiple-access systems based on semidefinite programming (SDP) is proposed. It is shown that maximum likelihood (ML) detection can be carried out by "relaxing" the associated integer programming problem to a dual SDP problem, which leads to a detector of polynomial complexity. Computer simulations that demonstrate that the proposed detector offers near-optimal performance with considerably reduced computational complexity compared with that of existing primal-SDP-relaxation based detectors are presented.     

Analysis and design of punctured rate-1/2 turbo codes exhibiting low error floors

The objective of this paper is two-fold. Initially, we present an analytic technique to rapidly evaluate an approximation to the union bound on the bit error probability of turbo codes. This technique exploits the most significant terms of the union bound, which can be calculated straightforwardly by considering the properties of the constituent convolutional encoders. Subsequently, we use the bound approximation to demonstrate that specific punctured rate-1/2 turbo codes can achieve a lower error floor than that of their rate-1/3 parent codes. In particular, we propose pseudo-random puncturing as a means of improving the bandwidth efficiency of a turbo code and simultaneously lowering its error floor.