Application of infrared reflectance spectroscopy to the analysis of milk and dairy products

A method for the rapid, simultaneous determination of protein, fat, carbohydrate, non-protein nitrogen and total solids in milk and liquid dairy products by infrared reflectance spectroscopy is presented. The method is calibrated against known standards obtained by conventional, time-consuming wet chemical methods but, once calibrated, can be operated routinely by non-skilled personnel. The method is sensitive and accurate down to 0·5% w/v and can be applied to most liquid samples without any need for prior preparation.     

No Science without Semantics

Computer science often faces the criticism that it isn't actual science. Doing science means using the scientific method, which includes reporting results so that others can repeat and verify them. The problem with the computer science community is the lack of shared terms with precise semantics. When a researcher reports phenomenal results that can't be replicated, the author might be viewed as a brilliant alchemist, but such works undermine claims of being "science."     

Analysis of a homologous series of non-reducing oligosaccharides from Arnica montana L. Roots

The oligosaccharide component compositions of a series of non-reducing oligosaccharides extracted from the roots of Arnica montana L. has been determined by gel permeation chromatography (g.p.c.). The range of oligosaccharides present was found to extend beyond the octasaccharide previously reported. with 16% to 19% of the oligosaccharides having a degree of polymerisation of between 11 and 19 and almost 3% having a degree of polymerisation greater than 20. The chromatographic behaviour of this series of oligosaccharides is compared with that observed for series of D-gluco-oligosaccharides.     

Automatic and Efficient Human Pose Estimation for Sign Language Videos

We present a fully automatic arm and hand tracker that detects joint positions over continuous sign language video sequences of more than an hour in length. To achieve this, we make contributions in four areas: (i) we show that the overlaid signer can be separated from the background TV broadcast using co-segmentation over all frames with a layered model; (ii) we show that joint positions (shoulders, elbows, wrists) can be predicted per-frame using a random forest regressor given only this segmentation and a colour model; (iii) we show that the random forest can be trained from an existing semi-automatic, but computationally expensive, tracker; and, (iv) introduce an evaluator to assess whether the predicted joint positions are correct for each frame. The method is applied to 20 signing footage videos with changing background, challenging imaging conditions, and for different signers. Our framework outperforms the state-of-the-art long term tracker by Buehler et al. (International Journal of Computer Vision 95:180–197, 2011), does not require the manual annotation of that work, and, after automatic initialisation, performs tracking in real-time. We also achieve superior joint localisation results to those obtained using the pose estimation method of Yang and Ramanan  (Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, 2011).     

CLATHRATE HYDRATE FORMATION ENHANCES NEAR-CRITICAL AND SUPERCRITICAL SOLVENT EXTRACTION EQUILIBRIA

Pre-concentration of dilute aqueous solutions by hydrate formation can improve the effective distribution coefficient and selectivity of solvent extraction. Many solvents can serve simultaneously to promote solution concentration by hydrate formation and also to extract non-polar solutes from the resulting concentrated solution. This concept is illustrated for systems with supercritical ethylene and with near-critical liquid carbon dioxide, and its application to conventional solvents is discussed.     

Substrate-mediated interactions and intermolecular forces between molecules adsorbed on surfaces

Adsorbate interactions and reactions on metal surfaces have been investigated using scanning tunneling microscopy. The manners in which adsorbates perturb the surface electronic structure in their vicinity are discussed. The effects these perturbations have on other molecules are shown to be important in overlayer growth. Interactions of molecules with surface steps are addressed, and each molecule's electron affinity is shown to dictate its adsorption sites at step edges. Standing waves emanating from steps are demonstrated to effect transient molecular adsorption up to 40 A away from the step edge. Halobenzene derivatives are used to demonstrate how the surface is important in aligning reactive intermediates.     

Functionally substituted tetramethylcyclopentadienes: Synthesis of 1-(p-hydroxyphenyl)-2,3,4,5-tetramethylcyclopentadiene and its use in the synthesis of an organometallic polymer

Reaction of 2,3,4,5-tetramethylcyclopent-2-enone (1) withp-LiC₆H₄OC-Me₂OMe, followed by treatment with aqueous acid afforded 1-(p-hydroxyphenyl)-2,3,4,5-tetramethylcyclopentadiene (2). This new ligand was then used in the synthesis of the functionally substituted organomolybdenum reagent (⁵-C₅Me₄-p-C₆H₅OH)Mo(CO)₂(NO) (3). Treatment of a preformed 1/1 styrene/maleic anhydride copolymer ( ) with 5 mol% 3 led to chemical incorporation of the organometallic species into the polymer. The final product contained 3 mol% of the organometallic moiety.     

The mechanism of CO oxidation over Cu(110): Effect of CO gas energy

The effect of the temperature of gas phase CO upon the kinetics of the oxygen titration reaction: CO_g +O_a CO_2,g, has been studied. It is found that the reaction's rate is independant of CO gas temperature between 300 and 623 K. The activation energy (6.5 kcal/mole), dependence upon CO pressure (first-order), and independence upon oxygen coverage for 0.1 _o 0.4 are all independant of the CO gas phase temperature. This result rules out any Eley-Rideal type mechanism whereby CO reacts directly from the gas phase with an oxygen adatom without first being accommodated to the surface temperature in an absorbed state. The result is instead interpretable in terms of a Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism.Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Fellowship.