Protein stabilisation of Chardonnay wine using trisacryl and bentonite: a comparative study

The stabilisation of a Chilean Chardonnay wine by SP-Trisacryl-M and bentonite was investigated, evaluating protein, polyphenol and polysaccharide adsorption, turbidity and wine quality. The wine could be stabilised by adding at least 0.3 kg m⁻³ of bentonite or 12 kg m⁻³ of trisacryl, removing 95% and 76% of the wine proteins, respectively. The protein adsorption data for bentonite and trisacryl were fitted using the Freundlich isotherm. The wine protein adsorption isotherm on trisacryl was unfavourable. Protein removal from Chardonnay by trisacryl in a packed column at continuous operation was about 50% during the first 70 bed volumes (BV) of treated wine and decreased progressively until the end of the treatment (100 BV). The adsorbents showed a higher selectivity for proteins than for polyphenols and polysaccharides. A sensorial panel could not detect statistically significant differences between the bentonite and trisacryl treatments of wine at P  ≤ 0.05.     

A division of the thermomechanical exergy into two components with very different economic values

The aim of this work is to provide a tool for approximation to the actual energy market value. As exergy represents the quality of energy, in the normal procedure for thermoeconomic optimizing of a given thermal system, the exergy of each stream is used as the basic quantity. The usual method evaluates the cost rates appearing in the cost rate balance in terms of the associated rates of exergy transfer and the corresponding unit costs. In this work, the thermomechanical exergy of each stream is divided into two components with very different qualities and hence with different unit costs. The higher quality component can be assigned the same unit cost as work whereas the lower quality component will usually be assigned a lower unit cost. Therefore, the cost rates of a system's input or output streams will be closer to actual economic values, especially in processes with major pressure variations. An example related to combined cycles is included.     

Evolutionary Fuzzy Rule Induction Process for Subgroup Discovery: A Case Study in Marketing

This paper presents a genetic fuzzy system for the data mining task of subgroup discovery, the subgroup discovery iterative genetic algorithm (SDIGA), which obtains fuzzy rules for subgroup discovery in disjunctive normal form. This kind of fuzzy rule allows us to represent knowledge about patterns of interest in an explanatory and understandable form that can be used by the expert. Experimental evaluation of the algorithm and a comparison with other subgroup discovery algorithms show the validity of the proposal. SDIGA is applied to a market problem studied in the University of Mondragon, Spain, in which it is necessary to extract automatically relevant and interesting information that helps to improve fair planning policies. The application of SDIGA to this problem allows us to obtain novel and valuable knowledge for experts.     

Oxidative rancidity in avocado purée as affected by α-tocopherol, sorbic acid and storage atmosphere

Avocado is nutritionally rich in many health-related components and a valuable energy source due to their high quality fat content. The aim of this work was to evaluate the lipid oxidation of refrigerated avocado purée as affected by the addition of α-tocopherol and/or sorbic acid with antioxidant and antimicrobial purposes, respectively. Hence, the formation of hydroperoxides and secondary oxidation products was studied throughout storage under different modified atmosphere packaging conditions. Addition of α-tocopherol clearly reduced rancidity of the lipid fraction. When the antioxidant was added, hydroperoxide formation was inhibited for a period of at least 12 weeks with little effect of the presence of sorbic acid and O₂ availability. On the contrary, absence of α-tocopherol in the product formulation preceded the production of secondary oxidative metabolites and a rapid saturation of the fatty acid chains. Sorbic acid was found to have a moderate prooxidant effect (p < 0.05). This detrimental influence on the lipid phase of avocado should be weighted up against the antimicrobial effect in order to evaluate its capability of extending the shelf life of avocado products.     

Executing medical guidelines on the web: Towards next generation healthcare

There is still a lack of full integration between current Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and medical guidelines that encapsulate evidence-based medicine. Thus, general practitioners (GPs) and specialised physicians still have to read document-based medical guidelines and decide among various options for managing common non-life-threatening conditions where the selection of the most appropriate therapeutic option for each individual patient can be a difficult task. This paper presents a simulation framework and computational test-bed, called V.A.F. Framework, for supporting simulations of clinical situations that boosted the integration between Health Level Seven (HL7) and Semantic Web technologies (OWL, SWRL, and OWL-S) to achieve content layer interoperability between online clinical cases and medical guidelines, and therefore, it proves that higher integration between EHRs and evidence-based medicine can be accomplished which could lead to a next generation of healthcare systems that provide more support to physicians and increase patients’ safety.     

Molecular dynamics simulation of fast dislocations in copper

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to describe the acceleration and motion of dissociated dislocations in copper to extreme velocities. Stationary dislocations are accelerated either by shear stress or by shear strain rates. Results indicate that dislocations can be accelerated into transonic and supersonic velocities. Stable dislocation motion is found in three distinguished regimes: (i) in a plateau of velocities close to 1.6 km s^?1 in the subsonic regime; (ii) in a narrow range of velocities around 2.6 km s^?1 in the first transonic regime; and (iii) in the second transonic regime with increasing velocities. For large velocities in the second transonic regime and in the supersonic regime, the shear stress is exceeded and dislocation motion is unstable as the crystal loses its mechanical stability. The stacking fault fluctuates around 35 Å in the subsonic regime, but subsequently declines with velocity to less than half the initial value in the second transonic regime. Both the decreasing stacking fault width and the plateau of velocities in the first transonic regime, indicating the existence of a radiation-free state, are in agreement with theoretical predictions.     

Analysis of average burst-assembly delay and applications in proportional service differentiation

In Optical Burst-Switched (OBS) networks, the limitation of optical buffering devices make it impractical to deploy conventional delay-based differentiation algorithms such as Active Queue Management, Weighted Fair Queuing, etc. Furthermore, only the delay that appears due to the burst-assembly process constitutes a variable quantity (all the other sources of delay are mostly fixed), it is then reasonable to make use of the burst-assembly algorithm to provide class-based delay differentiation. The aim of the following study is twofold: first it defines an average assembly delay metric, which represents the assembly delay experienced by a random arrival at the burst assembler of an edge OBS node; and second, this metric is used to define and configure a two-class burst-assembly policy, which gives preference to high-priority traffic over low-priority packet arrivals. The results show that, (1) tuning the parameters of the two-class assembly algorithm, the two classes of traffic exhibit different burst-assembly delay; and, (2) such parameters can be adjusted to provide a given differentiation ratio in the light of the proportional QoS differentiation approach proposed in the literature. A detailed analysis of the two-class assembly algorithm is given, along with an exhaustive set of experiments and numerical examples that validate the equations derived.     

Toward knowledge-rich data mining

This position paper proposes knowledge-rich data mining as a focus of research, and describes initial steps in pursuing it.     

Theory of Raman Scattering by Phonons in Germanium Nanostructures

Within the linear response theory, a local bond-polarization model based on the displacement–displacement Green’s function and the Born potential including central and non-central interatomic forces is used to investigate the Raman response and the phonon band structure of Ge nanostructures. In particular, a supercell model is employed, in which along the [001] direction empty-column pores and nanowires are constructed preserving the crystalline Ge atomic structure. An advantage of this model is the interconnection between Ge nanocrystals in porous Ge and then, all the phonon states are delocalized. The results of both porous Ge and nanowires show a shift of the highest-energy Raman peak toward lower frequencies with respect to the Raman response of bulk crystalline Ge. This fact could be related to the confinement of phonons and is in good agreement with the experimental data. Finally, a detailed discussion of the dynamical matrix is given in the appendix section.