MedISys: An early-warning system for the detection of (re-)emerging food- and feed-borne hazards

We evaluated the Medical Information System (MedISys) as an early-warning system for the detection of food- and feed-borne hazards. Nine hazards were selected in the period from January 2007 to March 2009 from the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) and traced back on MedISys and ProMED-mail. In addition, from January to March 2009, food- and feed-borne (re-)emerging hazards were monitored on MedISys and traced back on ProMED-mail and RASFF. MedISys has demonstrated to be an effective early-warning system for food- and feed-borne hazards. However, further customization is required to improve its sensitivity, in particular by increasing the number of multi-lingual categories related to food and feed items. MedISys tended to detect food- and feed-borne hazards earlier and more frequently than ProMED-mail, but the information from both systems was often complementary.     

Defeasible inheritance with doubt index and its axiomatic characterization

This article introduces and uses a representation of defeasible inheritance networks where links in the network are viewed as propositions, and where defeasible links are tagged with a quantitative indication of the proportion of exceptions, called the doubt index. This doubt index is used for restricting the length of the chains of inference.The representation also introduces the use of defeater literals that disable the chaining of subsumption links. The use of defeater literals replaces the use of negative defeasible inheritance links, expressing “most A are not B”. The new representation improves the expressivity significantly.Inference in inheritance networks is defined by a combination of axioms that constrain the contents of network extensions, a heuristic restriction that also has that effect, and a nonmonotonic operation of minimizing the set of defeater literals while retaining consistency.We introduce an underlying semantics that defines the meaning of literals in a network, and prove that the axioms are sound with respect to this semantics. We also discuss the conditions for obtaining completeness.Traditional concepts, assumptions and issues in research on nonmonotonic or defeasible inheritance are reviewed in the perspective of this approach.     

The ability of limited exposure sampling to detect effects of interventions that reduce the occurrence of pronounced trunk inclination

Ergonomics interventions often focus on reducing exposure in those parts of the job having the highest exposure levels, while leaving other parts unattended. A successful intervention will thus change the form of the job exposure distribution. This disqualifies standard methods for assessing the ability of various exposure measurement strategies to correctly detect an intervention's effect on the overall job exposure of an individual worker, in particular for the safety or ergonomics practitioner who with limited resources can only collect a few measurements. This study used a non-parametric simulation procedure to evaluate the relationship between the number of measurements collected during a self-paced manufacturing job undergoing ergonomics interventions of varying effectiveness, and the probability of correctly determining whether and to which extent the interventions reduced the overall occurrence of pronounced trunk inclination, defined as an inclination of at least 20°. Sixteen video-recordings taken at random times on multiple days for each of three workers were used to estimate the time distribution of each worker's exposure to pronounced trunk inclination. Nine hypothetical ergonomics intervention scenarios were simulated, in which the occurrence of pronounced trunk inclination in the upper 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 of the job exposure distribution was reduced by 10%, 30% and 50%. Ten exposure measurement strategies were explored, collecting from one to ten pre- and post-intervention exposure samples from an individual worker. For each worker, intervention scenario and sampling strategy, data were bootstrapped from the measured (pre-intervention) and simulated (post-intervention) exposure distributions to generate empirical distributions of the estimated intervention effect. Results showed that for the one to three intervention scenarios that had the greatest effect on the overall occurrence of trunk inclination in the job, one to four pre- and post-intervention measurements, depending on worker, were sufficient to reach an 80% probability of detecting that the intervention did, indeed, have an effect. However, even for the intervention scenario that had the greatest effect on job exposure, seven or more samples were needed for two of the three workers to obtain a probability larger than 50% of estimating the magnitude of the intervention effect to within ±50% of its true size. For almost all interventions affecting 1/8 or 1/4 of the job, limited exposure sampling led to low probabilities of detecting any intervention effect, let alone its correct size.     

Different ways of moving ahead after analysis: Changes in experiential dimensions.

Within research on psychoanalysis, the common model of analytic change conceptualizes it as structural reorganization and development of self-analytic function. The present article takes as its point of departure analytic patients who, in follow-up interviews, do not present their experience of change according to this common model. Instead of categorizing analysands as being either successful or unsuccessful cases, the article aims to develop concepts of change that pertain to the experiential domain. Themes in the self experience of three former patients are explored. The data is gathered through follow-up interviews. The interviews were conducted with an analytic approach, which provides data on transference themes. Data from the interviews is not intended to provide empirical support for outcomes, but provides material from which concepts of change can be explored and discussed. The three cases illustrate three distinct psychic dimensions: safety, meaningfulness and sameness. All the cases have in common that they show, as described by Modell (1990), a containing transference in the follow-up interviews. Based on the postulated dimensions of self-experience, and with the view that containing transference is a common theme, it is further argued that, despite showing object-dependency, these informants have undergone an experiential change that is of existential significance. This is a kind of change that, it may be argued, is beyond a structural one; one that may be conceptualized as a precondition for the kind of change assumed by the main analytic model. To develop a self-analytic function, the patient may first need to develop a containing one. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning with few examples for binary and multiclass classification using regularization of randomized trees

The human visual system is often able to learn to recognize difficult object categories from only a single view, whereas automatic object recognition with few training examples is still a challenging task. This is mainly due to the human ability to transfer knowledge from related classes. Therefore, an extension to Randomized Decision Trees is introduced for learning with very few examples by exploiting interclass relationships. The approach consists of a maximum a posteriori estimation of classifier parameters using a prior distribution learned from similar object categories. Experiments on binary and multiclass classification tasks show significant performance gains     

Aflatoxin contamination of consumer milk caused by contaminated rice by‐products in compound cattle feed

BACKGROUND: Elevated levels of aflatoxin M1 were observed in routine checks of consumer milk in southern Sweden in early 2006. A trace‐back study revealed contaminated milk from several farms, and a total of 68 farms were banned from delivering milk to dairies for shorter or longer periods. The maximum level of aflatoxin M1 in a single sample from an individual farm was 257 ng kg^?1 fresh milk. RESULTS: Aflatoxin analyses of commercial compound feed revealed that the contamination originated from the ingredient rice feed meal, a by‐product from the preparation of Basmati rice for human consumption. Up to 56 µg kg^?1 of aflatoxin B1 was found in rice feed meal at one feed mill. CONCLUSION: The present example shows that an aflatoxin‐contaminated minor feed ingredient included at less than 10% (w/w) of compound cattle feed can significantly contaminate the milk produced. This emphasises the need for effective monitoring of the feed chain of food‐producing animals in order to prevent food contamination. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry     

Characterization of the pore labyrinth geometry of sea sponges imaged by micro-CT

The internal pore labyrinths of sea sponges were characterized via the analysis of 3D micro-CT images. Methods were developed to isolate and segment the pores and to extract the pore ‘skeleton’, which facilitated the measurement of local pore dimensions and connectivity. These methods were also used to characterize the bulk pore properties such as porosity and structural surface-to-volume ratios, as well as individual pathway analysis in terms of lengths, diameters, and tortuosity. Also, the role that ciliated cells (lining the pores) might play in the transport of fluids throughout the pore labyrinth was explored. It was deduced that cilia may play a larger role in the transport of fluids through smaller diameter pathways and the highly interconnected pathways of the sponge results in a robust network that can maintain nutrient delivery/waste removal in the case of obstruction of some of the pore pathways. Finally, it is discussed how the information gained from this study might be applied to design synthetic porous tissue scaffolds.     

Changes in Molecular Characteristics of Cereal Carbohydrates after Processing and Digestion

Different extraction, purification and digestion methods were used to investigate the molecular properties of carbohydrates in arabinoxylan and β-glucan concentrates, dietary fiber (DF) rich breads and ileum content of bread fed pigs. The breads studied were: a low DF wheat bread (WF), whole meal rye bread (GR), rye bread with kernels (RK), wheat bread supplemented with wheat arabinoxylan concentrate (AX) and wheat bread supplemented with oat β-glucan concentrate (BG). The weight average molecular weight (M_w) of extractable carbohydrates in β-glucan concentrate decreased eight-fold after inclusion in the BG bread when exposed to in vitro digestion, while the M_w of purified extractable carbohydrates in AX bread was reduced two-fold, and remained almost unaffected until reaching the terminal ileum of pigs. Similarly, the M_w of purified extractable carbohydrates in GR and RK bread was not significantly changed in the ileum. The AX bread resulted in the highest concentration of dissolved arabinoxylan in the ileum among all the breads that caused a substantial increased in ileal AX viscosity. Nevertheless, for none of the breads, the M_w of extractable carbohydrates was related neither to the bread extract nor ileal viscosity.     

Intermittency-friendly and high-efficiency cogeneration: Operational optimisation of cogeneration with compression heat pump,flue gas heat recovery,and intermediate cold storage

This paper develops, implements, and applies a mathematical model for economic unit dispatch for a novel cogeneration concept (CHP-HP-FG-CS (CHP with compression heat pump and cold storage using flue gas heat)) that increases the plant’s operational flexibility. The CHP-HP-FG-CS concept is a high-efficiency and widely applicable option in distributed cogeneration better supporting the co-existence between cogenerators and intermittent renewables in the energy system.The concept involves integrating an efficient high-temperature compression heat pump that uses only waste heat recovered from flue gases as low-temperature heat source, and an intermediate cold thermal storage allowing for non-concurrent operation of the cogeneration unit and the heat pump unit.The model is applied for a paradigmatic case study that shows how the integration of a heat pump affects the operational strategy of a cogeneration plant. It is found that CHP-HP-FG-CS offers significant reductions in fuel consumption (?8.9%) and operational production costs (?11.4%). The plant’s fuel-to-energy efficiency increases from 88.9 to 95.5%, which is state-of-the-art.The plant’s intermittency-friendliness coefficient Rc improves only marginally due to the constrained nature of the low-temperature heat source and the associated small capacity of the heat pump unit. Significant improvements in Rc are found when increasing the heat pump capacity assuming the availability of an unconstrained heat source.     

Interaction between carbon dioxide and ionic liquids: Novel electrolyte candidates for safer Li-ion batteries

Ionic liquids (ILs) are typically molten salts at temperatures lower than 100 °C. Because of their thermal and electrochemical properties, they are good candidates to replace the state-of-the-art electrolytes used in today's Li-ion batteries. These commercial batteries often suffer from hazards caused by possible misuse. Elevated voltages and high temperatures usually lead to electrolyte degradation due to parasitic reactions with the electrodes leading to gas (mainly CO₂) evolution and may then eventually catch fire. Also, ILs are able to dissolve various gas molecules, making it possible to prevent a built-up of an overpressure inside the battery in case of undesired gas evolution. In this work, CO₂ storage in two different ionic liquids, i.e. PYR₁₄TFSI and [BMIm][BF4] is studied with regard to their respective Li-salt. Mixtures of ILs plus different concentrations of CO₂ were made. Phase diagrams of the pressure vs. temperature of the systems “liquid + vapour” to liquid transitions are drawn. Data points from 1.5 bar to 70 bar are collected with a Cailletet apparatus. Both of the ILs show good CO₂ dissolution ability; an increase of the temperature leads to an increase of the pressure needed to dissolve similar amounts of CO₂. The presence of a Li-salt hampers gas storage, particularly for PYR₁₄TFSI. A model based on the Langmuir adsorption theory is used to describe the solubility of the CO₂ in [BMIm][BF4]. The PYR₁₄TFSI IL does not obey the Langmuir-like solubility behaviour. Hence, the solubility then is described by the formation of discrete bonds between the CO₂ and the solvent, similarly to the concept of adspecies and surface sites.