Analysis of carbonyl compounds in sea buckthorn for the evaluation of triglyceride oxidation,by enzymatic hydrolysis and derivatisation methodology

Carbonyl compounds formed in sea buckthorn berry (Hippophae rhamnoides) and oil samples as a result of lipid oxidation were determined by enzymatic hydrolysis followed by derivatisation with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine and analysed by LC–UV and electrospray ionisation (ESI) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Several classes of carbonyl compounds such as saturated, unsaturated, linear and branched aldehydes and ketones, aromatic aldehyde, dicarbonyls and carboxy aldehydes were identified based on fragmentation pattern, molecular weight and retention time. The lower carbonyls such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acetone were found to be predominant in the berry samples and acetaldehyde was found to be the most abundant carbonyl. In the sea buckthorn pulp oil sample, longer aldehydes and carboxy aldehydes dominated, thus clearly demonstrating the benefit of the enzymatic step when analysing oxidation products originating from triglycerides.     

Scalable Architecture for SoC Video Encoders

Evolving video coding standards demand functional flexibility for implementations, not only at design time but also after fabrication. This paper presents a System-on-Chip design approach with a feasible combination of performance, scalability, programmability, area efficiency, and design time effort for a video encoder. The encoder is based on a homogeneous master-slave processor architecture. Each slave encodes a part of the frame in the Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) data parallel model. Both shared and distributed memory architectures are presented. Design effort is reduced by identical program codes, automated assembly of software and hardware modules independent of the number and type of processors, as well as our flexible on-chip communication network called Heterogeneous IP Block Interconnection (HIBI). A case study implementation with two to ten simple ARM7 processors, 32-bit HIBI bus and non-optimized processor-independent software gives the performance from 6 to 53 fps for QCIF. The whole encoder area ranges from 173 to 770 kgates excluding the memories. The relation scales reasonably well to systems with more powerful processors and optimized code. The optimization of the communication network shows that with more than six slaves even a serial HIBI connection with 100 MHz speed is feasible. HIBI and the parallelization approach allow exploration and optimization of the communication both at the application and architecture layers. Tero Kangas, MSc ’01, Tampere University of Technology (TUT). Since 1999 he has been working as a research scientist in the Institute of Digital and Computer Systems (DCS) at TUT. Currently he is working towards his PhD degree and his main research topics are system architectures and SoC design methodologies in multimedia applications. Kimmo Kuusilinna, PhD ’01, TUT. His main research interests include system-level design and verification, interconnection networks, and parallel memories. Currently he is working as a senior research engineer at the Nokia Research Center. Timo D. H?m?l?inen, MSc ’93, PhD ’97, TUT. He acted as a senior research scientist and project manager at TUT in 1997-2001. He was nominated to full professor at TUT/Institute of Digital and Computer Systems in 2001. He heads the DACI research group that focuses on three main lines: wireless local area networking and wireless sensor networks, high-performance DSP/HW based video encoding, and interconnection networks with design flow tools for heterogeneous SoC platforms.     

Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke at work, at home, and during leisure time: a cross-sectional population sample

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is among the most common environmental health risks, with a striking and immediate biological response and increased disease risk. Exposure studies have looked mostly at worksite or home exposures, whereas total exposure levels at the population level are rarely reported. This study examined ETS exposure at work, at home, and during leisure time in a cross-sectional population sample of working-age adults. Our aim was to monitor changes in ETS exposure from 1992 to 2002. More detailed information on duration of exposure, distribution of exposure sites, and patterns of exposure was obtained in 2002. Data were based on Finland's national population chronic disease risk-factor surveys (conducted every 5 years). Total sample size varied from 8,000 to 13,500. The survey includes a self-administered questionnaire about ETS exposure at different sites. The proportion of nonsmoking persons exposed to ETS declined throughout the study period among both men and women. In 2002, 5.9% of male and 3.6% of female nonsmokers were exposed to ETS 1 hour or more per day, whereas 5.8% of men and 1.7% women were exposed less than 1 hour daily. Worksite exposure was more common among younger age groups of both sexes, but nonsmoking women in older age groups received more exposure at home than at worksites. Policy developments on ETS should aim to protect the whole population from ETS in all environments given that health risks from ETS often persist at home and in leisure environments. Total exposure levels should be studied to assess the health impacts of ETS.     

Simultaneous determination of four coccidiostats in eggs and broiler meat: validation of an LC-MS/MS method.

A published confirmatory method for the quantitative determination of four ionophoric coccidiostats (lasalocid, monensin, salinomycin and narasin) in eggs and broiler meat has been further developed. It is proposed for replacement of liquid chromatography methods previously used in analysis of ionophoric coccidiostats. The samples were extracted with acetonitrile and purified on a silica solid phase extraction column. Purified samples were analysed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and the method, was validated according to the Commission Decision 2002/657/EC. The validation parameters selectivity, linearity, specificity, precision, recovery, decision limit (CCalpha) and detection capability (CCbeta) were determined. The recoveries of coccidiostats analysed ranged from 64-99% in eggs and 62-100% in broiler meat. CCalpha varied from 0.8-1.4 microg/kg in eggs and from 1.5-2.5 microg/kg in broiler meat. CCbeta varied from 0.9 microg/kg to 2.0 microg/kg in eggs and from 1.7-3.2 microg/kg in broiler meat.     

Analyzing competitive and collaborative differences among mobile ecosystems using abstracted strategy networks

During the last 5 years, we have witnessed extraordinary development in the mobile market. Apple’s launch of the iOS platform and associated App Store marketplace turned the market around, and Apple became the leading company in the business. This development caused existing players, such as Nokia, to renew their business and attracted new players, such as Google and Microsoft, to enter the market and introduce their own mobile platforms. To understand this development, we suggest that a generic abstracted model of the ecosystem around mobile platforms should be developed describing how the actors, including users, individual app developers, companies, and digital services, are connected and interact. In this work, we propose that competition and collaboration in this kind of abstracted ecosystem can be modeled and analyzed using network analysis. In our research, we derived weighted competition and collaboration networks for each mobile platform from an expert survey, and by calculating companies’ degree centrality in their networks at different times we were able to illustrate how companies’ strategies to build and maintain an ecosystem differ and develop over time. We believe that this kind of analysis is useful both for companies that build ecosystems and also for companies that plan to do business in them. The former can use it to compare their strategy with existing competitors and also evaluate emerging new ecosystems and the latter to compare and choose between possible ecosystems with which to do business.     

A hybrid session key exchange algorithm for highly-sensitive IP-based institutional communications

Microsystem Technologies - Session key exchange has become an addressed topic in the field of communications security, particularly for the IP-based call session that travels through the public...     

Low-level typographical spellchecking: A proposal

This article focuses on typographical spellchecking. Typographical spellchecking verifies the use of characters such as ? ! - ; : \sp $ @ and other special purpose characters in respect to spaces or null elements. The author claims that this kind of spellchecking has not been developed to any substantial degree, although it could be of considerable practical use as writer's aid. The article discusses the basic challenges of typographical spellchecking and shows that some of the difficulties are greater than might be expected at first sight. Rules for describing the behavior of typographical characters are proposed.His research interests include computational linguistics and electronic publishing.     

Self-reinforcement and hydrolytic degradation of amorphous lactic acid based poly(ester-amide), and of its composite with sol-gel derived fibers

The self-reinforcing and hydrolytic degradation of an amorphous poly(ester-amide) (PEA) based on lactic acid have been studied and compared with those of poly-L-lactide (PLLA). The studied PEA-rods were self-reinforced (SR) by solid-state die drawing resulting double shear strength. The hydrolytic degradation of PEA was studied during exposure to phosphate buffered saline at pH 7.4 and at 37 °C for 18 weeks. The degradation and mechanical properties of PEA were also followed in a self-reinforced composite structure consisting of PEA and sol-gel derived SiO₂-fibers (SGF, 8 wt %). The hydrolytic degradation of the SR-PEA-rods with and without SG-fibers was significantly faster than that of SR-PLLA-rods. The weight average molecular weight (M _w) of PEA decreased by 90% from the initial M _w during the first 6 weeks in hydrolysis, when the M _w of the PLLA decreased by 10%.     

Fine-tuning Cascade-Correlation trained feedforward network with backpropagation

To avoid oversized feedforward networks we propose that after Cascade-Correlation learning the network is fine-tuned with backpropagation algorithm. Our experiments show that if one uses merely Cascade-Correlation learning the network may require a large number of hidden units to reach the desired error level. However, if the network is in addition fine-tuned with backpropagation method then the desired error level can be reached with much smaller number of hidden units. It is also shown that the combined Cascade-Correlation backpropagation training is a faster scheme compared to mere backpropagation training.