Effects of natural antioxidants on the lipid profile of electron beam‐irradiated beef burgers

The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of rosemary and oregano extracts in avoiding oxidative changes in beef burgers, and to evaluate the fatty acid profile of these products after electron beam exposition. Extracts, individually or in combination, were added to beef burgers and compared to synthetic antioxidants commonly used in food (butylated hydroxytoluene, butylated hydroxyanisole). The ground beef were submitted to electron beam irradiation at doses of 0, 3.5 and 7 kGy, and stored for 90 days. At regular time intervals, lipid oxidation and fatty acid composition were evaluated through measurement of thiobarbituric acid‐reactive substances (TBARS) and gas chromatography, respectively. The results indicate that, although the irradiation process triggers an increase in the lipid oxidation ratio expressed by TBARS values, great changes in the fatty acid profiles were not observed; instead, they continued to present characteristics very similar to that of non‐irradiated beef. Thus, as irradiation doses of up to 7 kGy for frozen meat can make foods safe from foodborne pathogens, natural antioxidants derived from spices are able to reduce and avoid lipid changes that may cause a deterioration of the sensory quality of these foods, and these natural extracts offer a good choice for replacing synthetic additives.     

Recurrent-neural-network-based implementation of a programmablecascaded low-pass filter used in stator flux synthesis ofvector-controlled induction motor drive

The concept of programmable cascaded low-pass filter for stator flux vector synthesis by ideal integration of stator voltages at any frequency was introduced by Bose and Patel. A new form of implementation of this filter is proposed that uses a combination of recurrent neural network trained by Kalman filter and a polynomial neural network. The proposed structure is simple, permits faster implementation by digital signal processor, and gives improved performance     

Rate control strategy for embedded wavelet video coders

An investigation into the use of rate-control strategies for embedded wavelet video encoders is presented. It is shown that the best model for the rate×distortion (R-D) curve of these encoders is piecewise linear. Also, an effective iterative procedure is proposed for dealing with the problem of frame dependency, which yields improved rate×distortion results     

Mast cell activation is not required for induction of airway hyperresponsiveness by ozone in mice

Exposure to ambient ozone (O3) is associated with increased exacerbations of asthma. We sought to determine whether mast cell degranulation is induced by in vivo exposure to O3 in mice and whether mast cells play an essential role in the development of pulmonary pathophysiological alterations induced by O3. For this we exposed mast cell-deficient WBB6F1-kitW/kitW-v (kitW/kitW-v) mice and the congenic normal WBB6F1 (+/+) mice to air or to 1 or 3 parts/million O3 for 4 h and studied them at different intervals from 4 to 72 h later. We found evidence of O3-induced cutaneous, as well as bronchial, mast cell degranulation. Polymorphonuclear cell influx into the pulmonary parenchyma was observed after exposure to 1 part/milllion O3 only in mice that possessed mast cells. Airway hyperresponsiveness to intravenous methacholine measured in vivo under pentobarbital anesthesia was observed in both kitW/kitW-v and +/+ mice after exposure to O3. Thus, although mast cells are activated in vivo by O3 and participate in O3-induced polymorphonuclear cell infiltration into the pulmonary parenchyma, they do not participate detectably in the development of O3-induced airway hyperresponsiveness in mice.     

Patch testing with budesonide in serial dilutions: the significance of dose, occlusion time and reading time

Dipeptide transporters in small intestine have a very wide substrate specificity, so that the transporter sometimes serves as a carrier for peptide-like compounds. We have synthesized dipeptide analogues conjugated at an epsilon-amino group of Lys in Val-Lys or Lys-Sar with fluorescent compounds such as fluorescein isothiocyanate and coumarin-3-carboxylic acid. Uptakes of these peptide analogues were examined by measuring intracellular accumulations into monolayers of the human intestinal epithelial cell line Caco-2 expressing the dipeptide transporter PEPT1. Kinetic analysis and effects of addition either of uncoupler (protonophore) or by Gly-Sar, one of the good substrates of PEPT1, revealed that fluorescent dipeptides were taken up by passive diffusion. In contrast, these analogues remarkably inhibited the Gly-Sar uptake by Caco-2 cells. Among the fluorescent analogues synthesized in this paper, Val-Lys(Flu) was the most potent competitive inhibitor against the Gly-Sar uptake with an inhibition constant of 5 microM. This value is the smallest among those ever reported: Val-Lys(Flu) has the highest affinity for PEPT1 among chemicals ever reported. The importance of the hydrophobic part of the substrate was pointed out.     

MMORPGS and cognitive performance: A study with 1280 Brazilian high school students

The present paper attempts to empirically study the cognitive impacts of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) in uncontrolled contexts in light of the Cognitive Mediation Networks Theory, a new model of human intelligence that aims to explain cognition as the result of brain activity combined with the information-processing done by external structures such as tools, social groups and culture. A sample of 1280 students Brazilian high school students answered a form inquiring about socio-demographic information plus the use of computer games, and also was submitted to a short knowledge exam and a mini psychometric test. The findings indicated that, due to their underlying structure and sociocultural nature, MMORPGs are associated to a greater level of insertion into the Digital Age, higher levels of logical-numerical performance, and better scholastic ability. Finally, suggestions are made for future studies on the subject.     

3D Face Recognition Using Simulated Annealing and the Surface Interpenetration Measure

This paper presents a novel automatic framework to perform 3D face recognition. The proposed method uses a Simulated Annealing-based approach (SA) for range image registration with the Surface Interpenetration Measure (SIM), as similarity measure, in order to match two face images. The authentication score is obtained by combining the SIM values corresponding to the matching of four different face regions: circular and elliptical areas around the nose, forehead, and the entire face region. Then, a modified SA approach is proposed taking advantage of invariant face regions to better handle facial expressions. Comprehensive experiments were performed on the FRGC v2 database, the largest available database of 3D face images composed of 4,007 images with different facial expressions. The experiments simulated both verification and identification systems and the results compared to those reported by state-of-the-art works. By using all of the images in the database, a verification rate of 96.5 percent was achieved at a False Acceptance Rate (FAR) of 0.1 percent. In the identification scenario, a rank-one accuracy of 98.4 percent was achieved. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest rank-one score ever achieved for the FRGC v2 database when compared to results published in the literature.