Effect of heating temperature and sodium chloride concentration on ultrastructure and texture of gels made from giant squid (Dosidicus gigas) with addition of starch,l-carrageenan and egg white

This paper seeks to compare the ultrastructure of gels made from frozen muscle of giant squid (Dosidicus gigas) at various temperatures with a number of different rheological parameters, with reference to a variety of added ingredients (non-muscle proteins and hydrocolloids) and to NaCl concentration. Interesting data on gel rheological properties were found where formulae containedl-carrageenan, starch and egg white, with a low salt concentration (1.5%). This seems to be because carrageenan forms an independent network which supports the principal structure formed by the fish protein; starch is incorporated into the network and retains water; and egg white forms a supplementary network which helps to improve rheological properties.     

Rheological Properties of Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice (FCOJ) as a Function of Concentration and Subzero Temperatures

Data on flow properties of Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice (FCOJ) produced from oranges cv. Pera-Rio (65.04 °Brix, 8.8% w/w pulp content, 2.5% w/w pectin, 3.84% citric acid, 1.293 g cm^?3) from ?18 to 0°C were fitted with appropriate predictive models. The power law model was found to be the most appropriate to fit the flow curves obtained for FCOJ between 46.56 and 65.04 °Brix. In higher concentrations, thixotropy was observed and showed more temperature dependence. A single equation combining Arrhenius and exponential relationships was applied to describe the temperature effect and shear rate on the quantity of breakdown of FCOJ.     

Proteolytic and lipolytic changes during the ripening of León raw cow's milk cheese, a Spanish traditional variety

Proteolytic and lipolytic changes were studied throughout ripening of five batches of León cow's milk cheese, a traditional variety made in the north of Spain. Total soluble nitrogen, non-protein nitrogen, oligopeptides nitrogen, amino nitrogen and ammonia nitrogen fractions increased slightly during the ripening process. The final values of these nitrogen fractions indicate that this cheese undergoes a very slight proteolysis as much in extent as in depth. This weak protein degradation is corroborated when the caseins and their degradation products were quantified by electrophoresis. β-Casein stayed practically intact throughout the ripening process and only 10% of α_s-casein became degraded. The content of total free amino acids increased progressively but in a slightly increased way during ripening, reaching final average values of 592 mg (100 g)⁻¹ of total solids. The most abundant free amino acid at the end of ripening was lysine, followed by leucine, glutamic acid, tryptophan, valine and phenylalanine. The acidity index of the fat values increased during ripening by a factor of 4.39. The final values of this parameter are in the range of those observed in other cow's milk cheeses ripened by bacteria. The content in total free fatty acids underwent an increase throughout ripening reaching final average values of 6669 ppm. The most abundant free fatty acid at the end of ripening was oleic acid followed by butyric and palmitic acids. The high content of short-chain fatty acids is outstanding, specially that of butyric acid.     

A novel humid electronic nose combined with an electronic tongue for assessing deterioration of wine

We report herein the use of a combined system for the analysis of the spoilage of wine when in contact with air. The system consists of a potentiometric electronic tongue and a humid electronic nose. The potentiometric electronic tongue was built with thick-film serigraphic techniques using commercially available resistances and conductors for hybrid electronic circuits; i.e. Ag, Au, Cu, Ru, AgCl, and C. The humid electronic nose was designed in order to detect vapours that emanate from the wine and are apprehended by a moist environment. The humid nose was constructed using a piece of thin cloth sewn, damped with distilled water, forming five hollows of the right size to introduce the electrodes. In this particular case four electrodes were used for the humid electronic nose: a glass electrode, aluminium (Al), graphite and platinum (Pt) wires and an Ag-AgCl reference electrode. The humid electronic nose together with the potentiometric electronic tongue were used for the evaluation of the evolution in the course of time of wine samples. Additionally to the analysis performed by the tongue and nose, the spoilage of the wines was followed via a simple determination of the titratable (total) acidity.     

Quantitative analysis of sperm rheotaxis using a microfluidic device

Quite puzzling issue in biology is how sperm cells are selected naturally where human sperm has to maintain a correct swimming behavior during the various stages of reproduction process. In nature, sperm has to compete a long journey from cervix to oocyte to stand a chance for fertilization. Although various guidance mechanisms such as chemical and thermal gradients are proposed previously, these mechanisms may only be relevant as sperm reaches very close to the oocyte. Rheotaxis, a phenomenon where sperm cells swim against the flow direction, is possibly the long-range sperm guidance mechanism for successful fertilization. A little is known quantitatively about how flow shear effects may help guide human sperm cells over long distances. Here, we have developed microfluidic devices to quantitatively investigate sperm rheotaxis at various physiological flow conditions. We observed that at certain flow rates sperm actively orient and swim against the flow. Sperm that exhibit positive rheotaxis show better motility and velocity than the control (no-flow condition), however, rheotaxis does not select sperm based on hyaluronic acid (HA) binding potential and morphology. Morphology and HA binding potential may not be a significant factor in sperm transport in natural sperm selection.     

New techniques for simulating high performance MPI applications on large storage networks

In this work, we propose new techniques to analyze the behavior, the performance, and specially the scalability of High Performance Computing (in short, HPC) applications on different computing architectures. Our final objective is to test applications using a wide range of architectures (real or merely designed) and scaling it to any number of nodes or components. This paper presents a new simulation framework, called SIMCAN, for HPC architectures. The main characteristic of the proposed simulation framework is the ability to be configured for simulating a wide range of possible architectures that involve any number of components. SIMCAN is developed to simulate complete HPC architectures, but putting special emphasis on the storage and network subsystems. The SIMCAN framework can handle complete components (nodes, racks, switches, routers, etc.), but also key elements of the storage and network subsystems (disks, caches, sockets, file systems, schedulers, etc.). We also propose several methods to implement the behavior of HPC applications. Each method has its own advantages and drawbacks. In order to evaluate the possibilities and the accuracy of the SIMCAN framework, we have tested it by executing a HPC application called BIPS3D on a hardware-based computing cluster and on a modeled environment that represent the real cluster. We also checked the scalability of the application using this kind of architecture by simulating the same application with an increased number of computing nodes.     

A traffic analysis attack to compute social network measures

The development of digital media, the increasing use of social networks, the easier access to modern technological devices, is perturbing thousands of people in their public and private lives. People love posting their personal news without consider the risks involved. Privacy has never been more important. Privacy enhancing technologies research have attracted considerable international attention after the recent news against users personal data protection in social media websites like Facebook. It has been demonstrated that even when using an anonymous communication system, it is possible to reveal user’s identities through intersection attacks or traffic analysis attacks. Combining a traffic analysis attack with Analysis Social Networks (SNA) techniques, an adversary can be able to obtain important data from the whole network, topological network structure, subset of social data, revealing communities and its interactions. The aim of this work is to demonstrate how intersection attacks can disclose structural properties and significant details from an anonymous social network composed of a university community.

     

A comparison of learning methods over raw data: forecasting cab services market share in New York City

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The cab services, present in most of the cities, are one of the most used offerings for passenger transportation. Nowadays their business model is being...     

Sorption of phthalate esters and PCBs in a marine ecosystem

Dialkyl phthalate esters (DPEs) are widely used industrial chemicals with octanol-seawater partition coefficients ranging between 10(1.80) for dimethyl phthalate to 10(10.0) for diiso-decyl phthalate, indicating a propensity to sorb strongly to particulate matter in aquatic environments. Sorption plays a key role in controlling the long-term fate of DPEs in aquatic systems and exposure to organisms in aquatic food-webs. However, field observations of the sorption of many commercial DPEs do not exist. To characterize the sorptive nature of DPEs in a real-world aquatic ecosystem, we measured concentrations of DPEs congeners, commercial DPE mixtures, and 10 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in water, suspended sediments, and bottom sediments of a marine inlet. Sorption coefficients of spiked and native DPEs and PCBs between suspended sediments and water indicate that the apparent sorptive nature of DPEs and PCBs is substantially greater than expected from K(ow)-based sorption models. Particulate and dissolved organic matter showed similar (i.e., not statistically different) sorption affinities for native analytes. The apparent fraction of the total aqueous concentration of DPEs that is freely dissolved and absorbable via the respiratory tract of aquatic organisms varied from virtually 100% for DMP to 0.0003% for C10. The observed decline in concentration of most DPEs between suspended and bottom sediments, compared to an increase in the concentration of high Kow PCBs, suggests that the rate of desorption and degradation of DPEs exceeds that of organic carbon mineralization and contributes to the previously observed lack of biomagnification of DPEs in the aquatic food-web of this system.     

Electrochemical removal of cadmium using a batch undivided reactor with a rotating cylinder electrode

The performance of an undivided electrochemical batch reactor with a rotating cylinder electrode under potentiostatic control is examined for the removal of cadmium from a sodium sulfate solution containing 500 ppm Cd(II) at pH ? 7. The effect of hydrogen evolution as a side cathodic reaction on the figures of merit of the reactor is analysed. The best results were obtained for a cathode potential of ?0.9 V against the saturated calomel electrode. With an angular velocity of 1500 rpm the space time yield and the normalized space velocity were 0.66 mol m^?3 s^?1 and 3.9 h^?1 respectively, while the fractional conversion was 67.3% with a current efficiency of 66.7%. The surface morphology of the deposits as a function of the applied potential is also reported. © 2001 Society of Chemical Industry