Linear correlation between pH value of stimulated beef and electrical current intensity

The aim of the present study was to determine mathematical relationships between pH changes in beef 24 h post-slaughter and changes in the intensity of electrical current flowing through bull and heifer carcasses during high-voltage electrical stimulation. The electrical stimulation was applied 40 min postmortem for 120 s. The pH values of m. longissimus thoracis et lumborum were analyzed in the function of electrical current intensity changes and its change during electrical stimulation. Mathematical linear correlations of the y = ax ± b type were demonstrated between pH values at 2, 6, and 24 h postmortem and the initial (I_i) and ultimate (I_u) electrical current intensity values, the difference between them and the initial pH values determined before electrical stimulation. High multiple correlation coefficients (R² = 0.416, α ≤ 0.001) between I_u and pH values 24 h post-slaughter enabled concluding that there is a possibility to predict a pH value of stimulated carcass with high accuracy, and thus also beef quality, based merely on the ultimate electrical current intensity values.     

Iron(II) Sulfate(VI) from Titania Production as a Raw Material for Preparation of Hydrogen Sulfide Sorbents

A hybrid sorbent material for removal of hydrogen sulfide from air was developed. The material is based on activated carbon and iron compounds obtained from waste iron(II) sulfate(VI) heptahydrate. The iron salt is deposited on the carbonaceous support and subjected to oxidation (Fe²⁺ to Fe³⁺) using atmospheric oxygen under alkaline conditions. An effect of H₂O₂ addition to the process on the composition of the resultant material was also examined. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses confirmed easy conversion of waste FeSO₄·7H₂O to iron oxides Fe₃O₄ and FeOOH. The activated carbon supporting iron oxides revealed a higher efficiency in H₂S elimination from air compared to the commercial activated carbon, without any modification.     

A self-adaptive synthetic over-sampling technique for imbalanced classification

Traditionally, in supervised machine learning, (a significant) part of the available data (usually 50%-80%) is used for training and the rest—for validation. In many problems, however, the data are highly imbalanced in regard to different classes or does not have good coverage of the feasible data space which, in turn, creates problems in validation and usage phase. In this paper, we propose a technique for synthesizing feasible and likely data to help balance the classes as well as to boost the performance in terms of confusion matrix as well as overall. The idea, in a nutshell, is to synthesize data samples in close vicinity to the actual data samples specifically for the less represented (minority) classes. This has also implications to the so-called fairness of machine learning. In this paper, we propose a specific method for synthesizing data in a way to balance the classes and boost the performance, especially of the minority classes. It is generic and can be applied to different base algorithms, for example, support vector machines, k-nearest neighbour classifiers deep neural, rule-based classifiers, decision trees, and so forth. The results demonstrated that (a) a significantly more balanced (and fair) classification results can be achieved and (b) that the overall performance as well as the performance per class measured by confusion matrix can be boosted. In addition, this approach can be very valuable for the cases when the number of actual available labelled data is small which itself is one of the problems of the contemporary machine learning.     

A generalization of the octonion Fourier transform to 3-D octonion-valued signals: properties and possible applications to 3-D LTI partial differential systems

Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing - The paper is devoted to the development of the octonion Fourier transform (OFT) theory initiated in 2011 in articles by Hahn and Snopek. It is also...     

Related Oscillations of Plasmons in Two Similar Nanocylinders from Silver

Journal of Communications Technology and Electronics - Abstract—The two-dimensional diffraction problem of a plane polarized TM-wave on two identical solid silver nanocylinders is considered....     

Chlorination of Quartz-Leucoxene Concentrate of Yarega Field

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B - The process of obtaining titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4) from the quartz-leucoxene concentrate (QLC) from the Yaregskoe oil-titanium field was studied....     

Multimodal sensing and active continuous closed‐loop feedback for achieving reliable manipulation in the outdoor physical world

The use of field robots can greatly decrease the amount of time, effort, and associated risk compared to if human workers were to carryout certain tasks such as disaster response. However, transportability and reliability remain two main issues for most current robot systems. To address the issue of transportability, we have developed a lightweight modularizable platform named AeroArm. To address the issue of reliability, we utilize a multimodal sensing approach, combining the use of multiple sensors and sensor types, and the use of different detection algorithms, as well as active continuous closed‐loop feedback to accurately estimate the state of the robot with respect to the environment. We used Challenge 2 of the 2017 Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition as an example outdoor manipulation task, demonstrating the capabilities of our robot system and approach in achieving reliable performance in the fields, and ranked fifth place internationally in the competition.     

Supramolecular complexes: Determination of stability constants on the basis of various experimental methods

Stability constants and formation enthalpies of supramolecular complexes of crown ethers and their cyclic and acyclic analogues are determined on the basis of experimental data obtained by different physicochemical methods in the terms of a general approach developed and implemented in the ChemEqui software package. The established regularities of variation of stability of complexes are discussed as dependent on the ligand structure, nature of the cation, solvent, and anion. The applicability of the suggested method of determining complexation selectivity is shown for multicomponent equilibria in solutions.

     

Quality enhancement of the abundant under‐valued crustacean,lobster krill (Munida spp.), during its chilled storage

Lobster krill (Munida genus) represents an under‐valued crustacean frequently caught on European fishing banks. In this work, its sensory, microbiological and biochemical qualities were evaluated during chilled storage. Additionally, the effects of a prestorage antimelanosic treatment consisting of soaking in sodium metabisulphite (SMB) solutions at two different concentrations (0.25% and 0.75%) were also studied. SMB prestorage treatment provided lobster specimens that still exhibited acceptable sensory quality after 10 days of storage, while control specimens were unacceptable at that time. SMB treatment also resulted in a significant (P < 0.05) inhibition of microbial growth, mainly of Enterobacteriaceae, psychrotrophes and proteolytic bacteria. Low lipid oxidation levels were observed for all batches; however, a significantly higher (P < 0.05) retention of polyunsaturated fatty acids was found in SMB‐treated lobster, especially in the 0.75% SMB batch. The results presented here open the way to the potential commercialisation of currently under‐utilised lobster krill as a chilled product.