Effect of previous chilled storage on rancidity development in frozen horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus)

Rancidity development during frozen storage (?20 °C) of an underutilised medium‐fat‐content fish species, horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus), was studied. Special attention was given to the effect of previous chilled storage (0, 1, 3 and 5 days) on the quality of the frozen fish. For this, chemical (free fatty acid and conjugated diene contents; peroxide value, PV; thiobarbituric acid index, TBA‐i; fluorescent compound formation) and sensory (rancid odour and taste) analyses were carried out. Hydrolytic rancidity showed an increase with frozen storage time; however, no effect of previous chilling time was observed on the frozen product. Oxidative rancidity measured by chemical (PV, TBA‐i and fluorescence) and sensory (odour and taste) indices increased with frozen storage time and also with previous chilling time. Satisfactory quality was maintained up to 7 months of frozen storage of horse mackerel provided that a short chilling time (not longer than 3 days) was employed. © 2002 Society of Chemical Industry     

GeoPGD: methodology for the design and development of geolocated pervasive games

Universal Access in the Information Society - The field of design and development of games that integrate virtual aspects in a real environment has grown in recent years. An example of such games...     

Continuous biohydrogen production by a degenerated strain of Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824

Degenerated strains of Clostridium acetobutylicum lack the ability to produce solvents and to sporulate, allowing the continuous production of hydrogen and organic acids. A degenerated strain of Clostridium acetobutylicum was obtained through successive batch cultures. Its kinetic characterization showed a similar specific growth rate than the wild type (0.25 h^?1), a higher butyric acid production of 6.8 g·L^?1 and no solvents production. A steady state was reached in a continuous culture at a dilution rate of 0.1 h^?1, with a constant hydrogen production of 507 mL·h^?1, corresponding to a volumetric rate of 6.10 L·L^?1 d^?1, and a yield of 2.39 mol of H₂ per mole of glucose which represents 60% of the theoretical maximum yield. These results suggest that the degeneration is an interesting alternative for hydrogen production with this strain, obtaining a high hydrogen production in a continuous culture with cells in a permanent acidogenic state.     

Engineering Secretory Amyloids for Remote and Highly Selective Destruction of Metastatic Foci

Functional amyloids produced in bacteria as nanoscale inclusion bodies are intriguing but poorly explored protein materials with wide therapeutic potential. Since they release functional polypeptides under physiological conditions, these materials can be potentially tailored as mimetic of secretory granules for slow systemic delivery of smart protein drugs. To explore this possibility, bacterial inclusion bodies formed by a self-assembled, tumor-targeted Pseudomonas exotoxin (PE24) are administered subcutaneously in mouse models of human metastatic colorectal cancer, for sustained secretion of tumor-targeted therapeutic nanoparticles. These proteins are functionalized with a peptidic ligand of CXCR4, a chemokine receptor overexpressed in metastatic cancer stem cells that confers high selective cytotoxicity in vitro and in vivo. In the mouse models of human colorectal cancer, time-deferred anticancer activity is detected after the subcutaneous deposition of 500 µg of PE24-based amyloids, which promotes a dramatic arrest of tumor growth in the absence of side toxicity. In addition, long-term prevention of lymphatic, hematogenous, and peritoneal metastases is achieved. These results reveal the biomedical potential and versatility of bacterial inclusion bodies as novel tunable secretory materials usable in delivery, and they also instruct how therapeutic proteins, even with high functional and structural complexity, can be packaged in this convenient format.     

Structural Diversity of PDZ–Lipid Interactions

PDZ domains are globular protein modules that are over‐and‐above appreciated for their interaction with short peptide motifs found in the cytosolic tail of membrane receptors, channels, and adhesion molecules. These domains predominate in scaffold molecules that control the assembly and the location of large signaling complexes. Studies have now emerged showing that PDZ domains can also interact with membrane lipids, and in particular with phosphoinositides. Phosphoinositides control various aspects of cell signaling, vesicular trafficking, and cytoskeleton remodeling. When investigated, lipid binding appears to be extremely relevant for PDZ protein functionality. Studies point to more than one mechanism for PDZ domains to associate with lipids. Few studies have been focused on the structural basis of PDZ–phosphoinositide interactions, and the biological consequences of such interactions. Using the current knowledge on syntenin‐1, syntenin‐2, PTP‐Bas, PAR‐3 and PICK1, we recapitulate our understanding of the structural and biochemical aspects of PDZ–lipid interactions and the consequences for peptide interactions.     

Covalent surface functionalization of carbon nanostructures via [2 + 1] cycloaddition microwave-assisted reactions

Journal of Materials Science - The use of [2?+?1] cycloaddition microwave-assisted reaction as an effective and versatile method for the surface covalent functionalization of...     

Dynamic resource management considering the real behavior ofaggregate traffic

This paper explains why the theory of effective bandwidth is in general not applicable to characterize realistic traffic sources. Moreover, we show that a static allocation of network resources (bandwidth and/or buffer space) based on large deviation theory can be highly inefficient when the real statistical behavior of traffic is taken into account. As an alternative, we propose a dynamic resource management scheme based on prediction techniques. As a specific example, we apply this scheme to a Differentiated Service (DiffServ) Internet environment, in which the goal, besides policing the incoming traffic, is to optimize the use of network resources, thus minimizing the probability of occurrence of violations of contract guarantees. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated via simulations and our results show the superior performance of the new algorithm in terms of buffer overflows, output link utilization, and jitter, as compared to currently used policing and shaping mechanisms     

A model-extraction approach to verifying concurrent C programs with CADP

The development of reliable software for industrial critical systems benefits from the use of formal models and verification tools for detecting and correcting errors as early as possible. Ideally, with a complete model-based methodology, the formal models should be the starting point to obtain the final reliable code and the verification step should be done over the high-level models. However, this is not the case for many projects, especially when integrating existing code. In this paper, we describe an approach to verify concurrent C code by automatically extracting a high-level formal model that is suitable for analysis with existing tools. The basic components of our approach are: (1) a method to construct a labeled transition system from the source code, that takes flow control and interaction among processes into account; (2) a modeling scheme of the behavior that is external to the program, namely the functionality provided by the operating system; (3) the use of demand-driven static analyses to make a further abstraction of the program, thus saving time and memory during its verification. The whole proposal has been implemented as an extension of the CADP toolbox, which already provides a variety of analysis modules for several input languages using labeled transition systems as the core model. The approach taken fits well within the existing architecture of CADP which does not need to be altered to enable C program verification. We illustrate the use of the extended CADP toolbox by considering examples of the VLTS benchmark suite and C implementations of various concurrent programs.