Light-induced changes in bottled white wine and underlying photochemical mechanisms

Bottled white wine may be exposed to UV-visible light for considerable periods of time before it is consumed. Light exposure may induce an off-flavor known as “sunlight” flavor, bleach the color of the wine, and/or increase browning and deplete sulfur dioxide. The changes that occur in bottled white wine exposed to light depend on the wine composition, the irradiation conditions, and the light exposure time. The light-induced changes in the aroma, volatile composition, color, and concentrations of oxygen and sulfur dioxide in bottled white wine are reviewed. In addition, the photochemical reactions thought to have a role in these changes are described. These include the riboflavin-sensitized oxidation of methionine, resulting in the formation of methanethiol and dimethyl disulfide, and the photodegradation of iron(III) tartrate, which gives rise to glyoxylic acid, an aldehyde known to react with flavan-3-ols to form yellow xanthylium cation pigments.     

Static and dynamic mechanical properties of boron carbide processed by spark plasma sintering

Spark plasma sintering (SPS) has become a popular technique for the densification of covalent ceramics. The present investigation is focused on the static mechanical properties and dynamic compressive behavior of SPS consolidated boron carbide powder without any sintering additives. Fully dense boron carbide bodies were obtained by a short high temperature SPS treatment. The mechanical properties of the SPS-processed material, namely hardness (32 GPa), Young modulus (470 GPa), fracture toughness K_C (3.9–4.9 MPa m^0.5), flexural strength (430 MPa) and Hugoniot elastic limit (17–19 GPa) are close or even better than those of hot-pressed boron carbide.     

Membrane Signaling Induced by High Doses of Ionizing Radiation in the Endothelial Compartment. Relevance in Radiation Toxicity

Tumor areas can now be very precisely delimited thanks to technical progress in imaging and ballistics. This has also led to the development of novel radiotherapy protocols, delivering higher doses of ionizing radiation directly to cancer cells. Despite this, radiation toxicity in healthy tissue remains a major issue, particularly with dose-escalation in these new protocols. Acute and late tissue damage following irradiation have both been linked to the endothelium irrigating normal tissues. The molecular mechanisms involved in the endothelial response to high doses of radiation are associated with signaling from the plasma membrane, mainly via the acid sphingomyelinase/ceramide pathway. This review describes this signaling pathway and discusses the relevance of targeting endothelial signaling to protect healthy tissues from the deleterious effects of high doses of radiation.     

Supporting browsing-specific information needs: Introducing the Citation-Sensitive In-Browser Summariser

Practitioners and researchers need to stay up-to-date with the latest advances in their fields, but the continual growth in the amount of literature available makes this task increasingly difficult. In this article, we describe the Citation-Sensitive In-Browser Summariser (CSIBS), a new research tool to help manage the literature browsing task. The design of CSIBS was based on a user requirements analysis which identified the information needs that biomedical researchers commonly encounter when browsing through academic literature. CSIBS supports researchers in their browsing tasks by presenting both a generic and a tailored preview about a citation at the point at which they encounter it. This information is aimed at helping the reader determine whether or not to invest the time in exploring the cited article further, thus alleviating information overload. Feedback from biomedical researchers indicates that CSIBS facilitates this relevance judgement task, and that the interface and previews are informative and easy to use.     

Performance tradeoffs among low‐complexity detection algorithms for MIMO‐LTE receivers

The upcoming Third‐Generation Partnership Project—Long‐Term Evolution (3GPP‐LTE) cellular standard will employ spatial multiplexing to significantly increase the data rates. Detection of the spatially multiplexed signals is an essential issue in the design of an LTE receiver. In this paper, we evaluate the performance–complexity tradeoffs for a set of low‐complexity multiple input multiple output (MIMO) detection algorithms in a realistic LTE downlink system. Specifically, antenna correlation and channel estimation errors have been considered for a practical MIMO‐LTE receiver. An LTE downlink model has been implemented in order to evaluate three types of detectors: linear, unsorted successive interference cancellation (SIC), and ordered SIC. Our simulation results show that the unsorted SIC detectors present a very poor performance–complexity tradeoff. Besides, linear detectors are shown to be the best candidates as the performance improvement for the ordered SIC detectors is not significant in a realistic scenario. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Surface Reconstruction Method Using Global Graph Cut Optimization

Surface reconstruction from multiple calibrated images has been mainly approached using local methods, either as a continuous optimization problem driven by level sets, or by discrete volumetric methods such as space carving. We propose a direct surface reconstruction approach which starts from a continuous geometric functional that is minimized up to a discretization by a global graph-cut algorithm operating on a 3D embedded graph. The method is related to the stereo disparity computation based on graph-cut formulation, but fundamentally different in two aspects. First, existing stereo disparity methods are only interested in obtaining layers of constant disparity, while we focus on high resolution surface geometry. Second, most of the existing graph-cut algorithms only reach approximate solutions, while we guarantee a global minimum. The whole procedure is consistently incorporated into a voxel representation that handles both occlusions and discontinuities. We demonstrate our algorithm on real sequences, yielding remarkably detailed surface geometry up to 1/10th of a pixel. Author has worked on this project during his Ph. D. at ARTIS     

On the analysis of cooperation and antagonism in networks of communicating processes

We propose a new method for the analysis of cooperative and antagonistic properties of communicating finite state processes (FSPs). This algebraic technique is based on a composition operator and on the notion of possibility equivalence among FSPs. We demonstrate its utility by showing that potential blocking, termination, and lockout can be decided in polynomial time for loosely connected networks of tree FSPs. Potential blocking and termination are examples of cooperative properties, while lockout is an antagonistic one. For loosely connected networks of (the more general) acyclic FSPs, the cooperative properties become NP-complete and the antagonistic ones PSPACE-complete. For tightly coupled networks of tree FSPs, we also have NP-completeness for the cooperative properties. For the harder case of FSPs with cycles, we provide a natural extension of the method.     

Long-term follow-up of strictureplasty in Crohn's disease

Strictureplasty is an alternative to extensive and/or multiple small bowel resections in the surgical treatment of Crohn's disease. We here report a series of 22 patients (12 M-10 F-mean age years 28). All patients had non perforative form of Crohn's disease lasting for a mean of 8 years. Nine out of 22 had previous intestinal resections. A total of 201 stenosis was identified during per-operative examination (mean per patient: 9). Only tight stenoses (diameter < 2 cm) were treated while others were left untouched. Eighty-three stenoses were treated by short strictureplasty and 24 by long strictureplasty using steel thread. One or several resections were simultaneous performed in 15 patients. Mortality was nil. A post operative abscess without loosened suture was drained. The mean follow-up in the 22 patients was 36 months (range: 12 to 96). Relief of obstructive symptoms was achieved in all patients. Symptomatic recurrence occurred in 9 patients (40%) and 5 (22%) needed reoperation. In one case haemorrhagic ulceration developed within a long strictureplasty and in 4 others stenosis developed in plasty areas but also in previous healthy areas. Thus stricture-plasty is intended not to replace resection but rather to serve as a useful adjunct to the existing surgical options in the treatment of Crohn's disease, especially when short bowel syndrome is a consideration.