Improvement of Chemlali olive oil oxidative stability by blending with Chétoui and Rekhami cultivars

In order to improve the quality of Chemlali olive oil, characterised by a very low stability (2.09 h), blending with two different monovarietal oils in various proportions: Chétoui and Rekhami (known by their higher stability 7.79 and 13.99 h, respectively) was carried out. Results showed that blended oils had an improved oil composition compared to that of Chemlali. In fact, the highest percentage of Chétoui and Rekhami olive oils (90% of blending) can reduce the acidity up to 68.79% and 79.61%, respectively. At 50% blending, oleic acid increased from 53% to 59.54%, while palmitic acid decreased from 20.97% to 14.89% with Chétoui olive oil. At the lowest percentage (10–20%), chlorophylls in Chemlali olive oil underwent significant increase (from 0.18 to 0.47 and 0.65 mg kg⁻¹, respectively). The amount of carotenoids was higher when Chemlali was blended by 20–40% with Chétoui olive oil (from 2.23 to 4.13 and 4.33 mg kg⁻¹). Blending can be used in industrial applications to provide oils with improved composition related to stability, nutrition and functionality and endowed with the characteristics requested by consumers' preferences.     

Security on VANETs: Privacy, misbehaving nodes, false information and secure data aggregation

This article is a position paper on the current security issues in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). VANETs face many interesting research challenges in multiple areas, from privacy and anonymity to the detection and eviction of misbehaving nodes and many others in between. Multiple solutions have been proposed to address those issues. This paper surveys the most relevant while discussing its benefits and drawbacks. The paper explores the newest trends in privacy, anonymity, misbehaving nodes, the dissemination of false information and secure data aggregation, giving a perspective on how we foresee the future of this research area.First, the paper discusses the use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) (and certificates revocation), location privacy, anonymity and group signatures for VANETs. Then, it compares several proposals to identify and evict misbehaving and faulty nodes. Finally, the paper explores the differences between syntactic and semantic aggregation techniques, cluster and non-cluster based with fixed and dynamic based areas, while presenting secure as well as probabilistic aggregation schemes.     

T-Cell Receptor Repertoire Sequencing and Its Applications: Focus on Infectious Diseases and Cancer

The immune system is a dynamic feature of each individual and a footprint of our unique internal and external exposures. Indeed, the type and level of exposure to physical and biological agents shape the development and behavior of this complex and diffuse system. Many pathological conditions depend on how our immune system responds or does not respond to a pathogen or a disease or on how the regulation of immunity is altered by the disease itself. T-cells are important players in adaptive immunity and, together with B-cells, define specificity and monitor the internal and external signals that our organism perceives through its specific receptors, TCRs and BCRs, respectively. Today, high-throughput sequencing (HTS) applied to the TCR repertoire has opened a window of opportunity to disclose T-cell repertoire development and behavior down to the clonal level. Although TCR repertoire sequencing is easily accessible today, it is important to deeply understand the available technologies for choosing the best fit for the specific experimental needs and questions. Here, we provide an updated overview of TCR repertoire sequencing strategies, providers and applications to infectious diseases and cancer to guide researchers’ choice through the multitude of available options. The possibility of extending the TCR repertoire to HLA characterization will be of pivotal importance in the near future to understand how specific HLA genes shape T-cell responses in different pathological contexts and will add a level of comprehension that was unthinkable just a few years ago.     

Tribo‐electrochemical study of stainless steel surfaces during chemical–mechanical polishing

Chemical–mechanical polishing combines the synergistic effect of chemical etching and mechanical abrasion to achieve surface planarisation. These effects are discussed in this paper based on a tribocorrosion study of stainless steel (SS) immersed in two different acidic polishing slurries containing iron oxide nanoparticles. The effect of slurry chemistry and contact area on depassivation–repassivation phenomena are investigated and discussed. In case of the point‐contact geometry it was found that high friction and wear caused by formation of third body particles in the contact contributed to slow repassivation time of the SS, and wear accelerated corrosion was the dominant mechanism under these conditions. An increase in the contact area caused a removal of oxides from a larger surface area, leading to much slower repassivation rates and the appearance of a tarnish layer on the SS immersed in a slurry with high acid content. Surface chemistry investigations revealed an enrichment of chromium oxide. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Close-to-Reality Sliding-Corrosion Test-Rig for Oilfield Application

Sliding-corrosion phenomena play a crucial role in reducing the lifetime of tubings in the oil production industry. The aim of the present work is to develop and apply a close-to-reality test rig to describe the tribological performance of low-alloyed Carbon-steel (C-steel) under sliding-corrosion conditions in O₂-free environment. The proposed test rig is highly relevant for the oil production industry and has been designed at the Austrian Competence Center for Tribology (AC²T). The benefit of this equipment is that it allows the setting of the CO₂ atmosphere at a certain partial pressure while simultaneously varying the pH-value, Cl^? ion concentration, and temperature of the electrolyte solution. Pure corrosion phenomena are investigated within a designed coupon box where conditions of steam, electrolyte injection, static, and dynamic flow are controlled. In addition to the corrosive environment, a tribological reciprocating sliding contact is implemented between tubing segments and coupling samples. Within this study, a commercially available low-alloyed C-steel was selected as base material for the tubing, which was tribologically stressed under reciprocating sliding contact against spray metal coated couplings. The results show a high influence of the steel microstructure on the performance of low-alloyed C-steel tubings under sliding-corrosion. Additionally, the dominant damage mechanisms that are observed in real field applications could be successfully reproduced by experimental simulation using this newly designed close-to-reality test rig.     

Pseudorandom signal sampler for relaxed design of multistandard radio receiver

This paper proposes a novel software defined radio (SDR) receiver design using non-uniform sampling (NUS) technique implemented by original design of a pseudorandom signal sampler (PSS) circuit for controlling data conversion to relax multistandard receiver circuit constraints. The proposed and designed NUS-based SDR receiver allows spectral alias suppression at integer multiples of sampling frequency offering the advantages of relaxing anti-aliasing filter (AAF), reducing the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) dynamic power consumption and the automatic gain control (AGC) range as well. The PSS circuit, generating pseudorandom clock signal, with enough time-quantization accuracy, was designed. The PSS is implemented in 65-nm digital CMOS technology and occupies 470 (μm)². It features up to 200 MHz “mean clock” for 3.2 GHz main clock while drawing 242 μA for 1.2 V supply. Mixed experimental/simulation tests, of designed NUS-based SDR receiver, revealed a confirmation of alias-free performances and the achievement of a 72 dB (12-bit ADC) dynamic range after signal reconstruction.     

Cultivar and growing area effects on minor compounds of olive oil from autochthonous and European introduced cultivars in Tunisia

BACKGROUND: Antioxidant profile and volatile compounds were characterized in three virgin olive oils from European countries introduced and cultivated under the same orchard conditions in comparison to some autochthonous cultivars planted in different areas of Tunisia. RESULTS: Significant differences were observed between the oils. α‐Tocopherol content is more important in autochthonous Tunisian cultivars (cvs), higher (400 mg kg^?1) than in European cvs. Total phenols showed that Chétoui cv. (grown in Zaghouan) had the highest level (446 mg kg^?1), followed by Koroneiki (403 mg kg^?1) and Chétoui cvs (grown in Béja) (398 mg kg^?1). Koroneiki oils had the highest content of (3,4‐dihydroxyphenyl)ethanol and (p‐hydroxyphenyl)ethanol (20.5 and 43.5 mg kg^?1, respectively), whereas (3,4‐dihydroxyphenyl)ethanol was not detected in Arbequina, Arbosana or Chemlali cvs (grown in Sahel). Chétoui cv. presented the highest content of dialdehydic form of decarboxymethyl elenolic acid linked to (3,4‐dihydroxyphenyl)ethanol (171 mg kg^?1), whereas Chemlali (Sahel) cv. had the lowest content (29.6 mg kg^?1). The volatile compounds showed an increase in C6 compounds and decrease in pentene isomers in olive oils from varieties cultivated in other growing areas. CONCLUSION: Virgin olive oils studied demonstrate that the differences in phenols, tocopherol levels and volatile profiles may be explained by genetic factors and geographic areas, particularly altitude. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry