Friendship: An old concept with a new meaning?

Today many young people form and maintain what they consider friendships through the net. Internet friendship appears to some as modifying the meaning of real friendship and replacing it with something more trivial. In this paper we explore the complexity of online friendship. We start by seeking to gain an understanding of why and how friendship relates to wellbeing. We then look at how friendships are formed, focusing on the concepts of propinquity and homophily and how they play out within the context of online friendships. We delineate the major dimensions of friendship that have emerged in theory and research and then comment on how these features of friendship may be affected by the advent of widespread electronic communication. The differences between offline and online companionship, social support, tangible support and protection, exclusiveness, conflict resolution and relationship stability are also considered. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges of conducting research on the behaviour of children and young people on the Internet and the difficulties in defining the term “friendship.”     

Metric semantics from partial order semantics

In dealing with denotational semantics of programming languages partial orders resp. metric spaces have been used with great benefit in order to provide a meaning to recursive and repetitive constructs. This paper presents two methods to define a metric on a subset of a complete partial order such that is a complete metric spaces and the metric semantics on coincides with the partial order semantics on when the same semantic operators are used. The first method is to add a ‘length’ on a complete partial order which means a function of increasing power. The second is based on the ideas of [11] and uses pseudo rank orderings, i.e. monotone sequences of monotone functions . We show that SFP domains can be characterized as special kinds of rank orderded cpo's. We also discuss the connection between the Lawson topology and the topology induced by the metric. Received 11 July 1995 / 1 August 1996     

Functional properties of soybean and lupin protein concentrates produced by ultrafiltration-diafiltration

Ultrafiltration followed by diafiltration (UF-DF) was evaluated for the production of protein products from partially defatted soybean meal or undefatted lupin (Lupinus albus L.2043N) meal. This study determined the effects of UF-DF on functional properties of the extracted proteins and compared the results with those of protein prepared by acid-precipitation (AP). UF-DF produced only protein concentrates (73% crude protein, dry basis, db), while AP produced protein isolates (about 90% crude protein, db). Soybean protein produced by UF-DF showed markedly higher values for solubilities up to pH 7.0, surface hydrophobicity index, emulsion activity index, and foaming capacity than did the AP soybean protein. UF-DF soy protein was also the most heat-stable among all protein samples tested. With lupin proteins, only the surface hydrophobicity and emulsion activity indices were significantly improved by using UF-DF. UF-DF generally had no adverse effects on, and in most cases even improved, the functional properties of soy protein concentrate produced by this method. UF-DF did not produce a comparable improvement in functional properties of lupin proteins as it did for soybean protein.     

The effect of boron incorporation on the structure and properties of glassy carbon

Boron was introduced into glassy carbon by chemical modification and by irradiating the precursor polymer with boron ions. Using chemical modification, a polymer with uniform distribution of boron in the bulk was obtained, whereas irradiation with B³⁺ produced a polymer with boron located in a narrow region under the surface. Following modification with boron, the samples were carbonized at 1273 K and examined using X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, temperature programmed desorption (TPD) and by hardness measurements. Structural analysis results suggest that boron is mostly substitutionally bonded in the glassy carbon structure regardless of the method used to introduce boron into the polymer precursor. Formation of crosslinks between glassy carbon ribbons during carbonization as a consequence of the recombination of ion beam induced changes in the polymer structure and a high concentration of boron in the subsurface layer is proposed to account for an increase of glassy carbon hardness. An increase in the total amount of surface oxygen groups was observed in the TPD spectra of both boron-modified samples due to an increase in the number of active sites. Results show that the nature of these sites is influenced by the initial distribution of boron in the polymer precursor.     

Efficacy of a commercial produce wash on bacterial contamination of lettuce in a food service setting

Many microorganisms (including a number of important foodborne pathogens) can be present on raw fruits and vegetables. Since these products are frequently eaten raw, any pathogens present represent a potential risk to the consumer. The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy of a commercial produce wash with that of water for reducing the total bacterial population on lettuce when used by food service employees in university dining halls. Because this study was carried out in actual food service facilities during their daily operation, we used indigenous produce microflora instead of actual pathogens. Over the course of the study, more than 40 heads of lettuce were divided into thirds, and each section was analyzed for total plate count either before washing, after washing in water, or after washing in Victory produce wash. When initial contamination levels were > or = 100 CFU/g (n = 36 samples), reductions obtained with Victory produce wash (1.8 log CFU/g) were significantly larger (P = 0.0006) than those obtained with water (0.8 log CFU/g). Our results indicate that Victory produce wash is effective in reducing indigenous flora on lettuce during food service preparation. Our results also show that care must be taken in the analysis of microbial reduction data: only a slight reduction in total plate count (ca. 0.1 log CFU/g) and no significant difference in reductions (P = 0.84) were observed when all samples (irrespective of initial contamination level) were compared.     

A LC/MS method for the determination of cyanobacteria toxins in water

The cyanobacteria toxins anatoxin-a, microcystin-LR, microcystin-RR, microcystin-YR, and nodularin were separated in less than 30 min on several 1 mm x 15 cm reversed-phase liquid chromatography (LC) columns, and their electrospray mass spectra were measured using injections of 50 ng or less with a benchtop time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometer. New data from this work include the following: (a) the impact of acetic acid concentrations in the methanol-water mobile phase on measured ion abundances; (b) the performance of the electrospray-TOF mass spectrometer as an LC detector; (c) the accuracy and precision of exact m/z measurements after LC separation with a routinely used mass spectrometer resolving power of 5000; and (d) recoveries of the five toxins from reagent water, river waters, and sewage treatment plant effluent samples extracted with C-18 silica particles enmeshed in thin Teflon membrane filter disks. This technique has the potential of providing a relatively simple and reasonable-cost sample preparation and LC/MS method that provides the sensitivity, selectivity, reliability, and information content needed for source and drinking water occurrence and human exposure studies.