Prevalence and risk factors for Bacillus cereus in raw milk in Inner Mongolia,Northern China

The prevalence of Bacillus cereus in raw milk from dairy herds in Inner Mongolia and associated risk factors were determined. In total, 160 raw milk samples collected from 2014 to 2015 and examined by culture methods to isolate B. cereus. Fifty‐five samples (34.38%) were positive. The prevalence of B. cereus in raw milk was significantly (P < 0.01) lower in winter (15%) than in summer (50%). The highest prevalence of B. cereus in raw milk was seen in samples collected from small‐ to medium‐sized dairy herds in summer. The results of this study indicated that B. cereus could be a common pathogen in Inner Mongolia because of its high prevalence. It is essential for dairy farmers and producers to strengthen hygienic practices in summer to control B. cereus contamination in raw milk. These results will be useful in establishing proper management procedures to reduce the prevalence of B. cereus in raw milk.     

Impact of ultrafiltration/diafiltration sequence on the production of soy protein isolate by membrane technologies

In previous studies, the advantages of combining electrodialysis using a bipolar-cationic membranes configuration to acidify a soy protein extract to pH 6 with ultrafiltration/diafiltration (UF/DF) using a 100 kDa membrane to produce a soy protein isolate with low phytic acid content and improved solubility between pH 2 and 4 was demonstrated, when compared to the production of soy protein isolates by isoelectric precipitation and by UF/DF of a soy protein extract at pH 9. However, limited work was done to establish the impact of the UF/DF sequence for the purification of the pH 6 extract. Therefore, the purpose of this work was to study the impact of four different UF/DF sequences with a total permeate volume of 1.5–1.6 times the initial volume, on membrane fouling and permeate flux, as well as on the isolate protein, ash and phytic acid contents and solubility profile. Of the investigated UF/DF sequences, the VCR 5, VD 4 sequence was shown to be the one with the most severe fouling and consequently the most severe permeate flux decline. At the same time, it was also the VCR 5, VD 4 sequence which was the most efficient in terms of ash and phytic acid removal, followed by the VCR 5, re-VCR5 sequence, the VCR 2, VD 2 sequence and the VCR 2, (re-VCR 2)X 2 sequence, respectively. It was also observed that isolate with low phytic acid content resulted in narrower protein solubility profiles around the isoelectric point and higher protein solubility for the pH range of 2 to 4.Industrial relevancePlant proteins have made up a higher proportion of the human diet in recent years. Soybeans are the most important source of plant protein ingredients accounting for some 68% of global plant protein consumption in the world. Soy protein isolate is traditionally prepared by isoelectric precipitation process. This process has high productivity, however, it results in products with poor functional properties due to protein denaturation and to the presence of phytic acid (1–3% w/w) which alters the solubility of the isolates especially for the pH below the proteins' isoelectric point. In this work, we combined electrodialysis using a bipolar-cationic membranes configuration to acidify a soy protein extract to pH 6 with ultrafiltration/diafiltration (UF/DF) using a 100 kDa membrane to produce soy protein isolates with low phytic acid content. The impact of four different UF/DF sequences on membrane fouling, permeate flux, isolate composition and solubility profile was studied. Of the investigated UF/DF sequences, the VCR 5, VD 4 sequence was shown to be the one with the most severe fouling but at the same time the most efficient in terms of ash and phytic acid removal. It was also observed that the isolate produced by the VCR 5, VD 4 sequence shows narrower protein solubility profiles around the isoelectric point and higher protein solubility for the pH range of 2 to 4 than isolates produced by alternative UF/DF sequences. This isolate could be considered as a valuable ingredient for the formulation of fruit juice beverages or power juices, considering that the pH of these liquid food products is around 3.5.     

Mechanical Characteristics of Superplastic Deformation of AZ31Magnesium Alloy

As the lightest constructional metal on earth, magnesium (and its alloys) offers a great potential for weight reduction in the transportation industry. Many automotive components have been already produced from different magnesium alloys, but they are mainly cast components. Production of magnesium outer body components is still hindered by the material’s inferior ductility at room temperature. Magnesium alloys are usually warm-formed to overcome this problem; however, it was observed that some magnesium alloys exhibits superior ductility and superplastic behavior at higher temperatures. More comprehensive investigation of magnesium’s high temperature behavior is needed for broader utilization of the metal and its alloys. In this work, the high temperature deformation aspects of the AZ31B-H24 commercial magnesium alloy are investigated through a set of uniaxial tensile tests that cover forming temperatures ranging between 23 and 500 °C, and constant true strain rates between 2 × 10⁻⁵ and 2.5 × 10⁻² s⁻¹. The study targets mainly the superplastic behavior of the alloy, by characterizing flow stress, elongation-to-fracture, and strain rate sensitivity under various conditions. In addition, the initial anisotropy is also investigated at different forming temperatures. The results of these and other mechanical and microstructural tests will be used to develop a microstructure-based constitutive model that can capture the superplastic behavior of the material. This article was presented at the AeroMat Conference, International Symposium on Superplasticity and Superplastic Forming (SPF) held in Seattle, WA, June 6–9, 2005.     

On the High Temperature Testing of Superplastic Materials

The simplest test in characterizing the behavior of superplastic materials is the uniaxial tensile test. Since superplasticity is achieved at relatively high temperatures, heat involvement adds so many unpredictable problems to the simplest testing technique. In spite of the vast number of research activities directed towards studying the various aspects of superplastic deformation, there is a lack of a standardized testing procedure that can tackle the various issues associated with high temperature testing. In this work, we attempt to shed some light on the controversial issues associated with high temperature superplastic testing. The effects of various testing procedures and parameters on the accuracy of the results are investigated. We address the issues related to gripping and test sample geometry, heat and temperature effects, and comment on the available testing and analysis procedures. We hope that this study highlights the urgent need to develop a standardized testing approach that takes into account all the important issues affecting high temperature testing. This article was presented at the AeroMat Conference, International Symposium on Superplasticity and Superplastic Forming (SPF) held in Seattle, WA, June 6–9, 2005.     

Factors responsible for rapid dissipation of acidic herbicides in the coastal lagoons of the Camargue (Rhône River Delta, France)

This study was aimed at investigating which processes cause acidic herbicides (e.g., bentazone, MCPA and dichlorprop) to rapidly disappear in the lagoons of the Rhône delta, which are peculiar brackish and shallow aquatic environments. The use of the model MASAS (Modeling of Anthropogenic Substances in Aquatic Systems) revealed that sorption, sedimentation, volatilization, flushing and abiotic hydrolysis had a minor role in the attenuation of the investigated herbicides. Laboratory scale biodegradation and photodegradation studies were conducted to better assess the significance of these two processes in the natural attenuation of herbicides in brackish (lagoons) waters with respect to fresh waters (canals draining paddy fields). Herbicide biodegradation rates were significantly lower in lagoon water than in canal water. Consequently, photodegradation was the main dissipation route of all investigated herbicides. The contribution of indirect photolysis was relevant for MCPA and dichlorprop while direct photolysis dominated for bentazone removal. There is a need to further investigate the identity of phototransformation products of herbicides in lagoons.     

Image processing applications performance study on Cell BE and Blue Gene/L

Two image processing applications, edge detection and image resizing, are studied in this paper on two HPC platforms namely the Cell BE and the Blue Gene/L machines. In this paper we focus on the performance scalability of the studied applications. Our results show that the scale of the problem to be solved highly affects the fitness of the platform. If the data set size is to fit into the Cell core, the fast on‐chip inter‐core communication of a multi‐core system pays back for its high technology design. On the other hand, the overhead of the distant communication in the massively parallel Blue Gene/L machine will only show its benefits for huge data set size that otherwise mandates multiple round‐trip data communications between the local memory of a core and main memory. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new methodology for the design of low energy buildings

The Kyoto protocol binded the developed countries to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions at least by 5% by 2008-2012 in order to tackle global warming and climate change. Some of the measures of the governments to achieve this goal are to promote new buildings construction and to retrofit existing buildings while satisfying low energy criteria. This means improving energy efficiency of buildings and energy systems, developing sustainable building concepts and promoting renewable energy sources.The design of a low energy building requires parametric studies via simulation tools in order to optimize the design of the building envelope and HVAC systems. These studies are often complex and time consuming due to a large number of parameters to consider. Hence, this paper aims to set up a methodology that simplifies parametrical studies during the design process of a low energy building. The methodology is based on the Design of Experiments (DOE) method which is a statistical method widely used in industry to perform parametric studies that reduces the required number of experiments.     

Efficient object detection and tracking in video sequences

One of the most important problems in computer vision is the computation of the two-dimensional projective transformation (homography) that maps features of planar objects in different images and videos. This computation is required by many applications such as image mosaicking, image registration, and augmented reality. The real-time performance imposes constraints on the methods used. In this paper, we address the real-time detection and tracking of planar objects in a video sequence where the object of interest is given by a reference image template. Most existing approaches for homography estimation are based on two steps: feature extraction (first step) followed by a combinatorial optimization method (second step) to match features between the reference template and the scene frame. This paper has two main contributions. First, we detect both planar and nonplanar objects via efficient object feature classification in the input images, which is applied prior to performing the matching step. Second, for the tracking part (planar objects), we propose a fast method for the computation of the homography that is based on the transferred object features and their associated local raw brightness. The advantage of the proposed schemes is a fast matching as well as fast and robust object registration that is given by either a homography or three-dimensional pose.     

A comparison of the quantitative methods for the analysis of the platinum-containing anticancer drug [cis-[amminedichloro(2-methylpyridine)]platinum(II)] (ZD0473) by HPLC coupled to either a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer or an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer

The use of high performance liquid chromatography coupled with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICPMS) as means for the quantitative determination of ZD0473, a platinum anticancer drug, and its related biologically active "aqua" compounds in biofluid samples is described. The performance of the resulting HPLC-ICPMS method was compared with that of a conventional HPLC-triple quadrupole mass spectrometer-based (HPLC-MS/MS) system for properties such as limit of detection, linearity, and reproducibility using spiked samples. The methods were then applied to the determination of plasma ultrafitrate concentrations of ZD0473 in dog plasma samples obtained following intravenous and oral administration at 0.5 and 6 mg/kg, respectively. These experiments showed that both methods were capable of providing accurate and precise results but that the HPLC-ICPMS method had advantages of extended linear range and superior sensitivity, providing a limit of quantification of 0.1 ng/mL for ZD0473, as compared to 5 ng/mL using the current HPLC-MS/MS method. In addition, by using a single combined HPLC-ICPMS/MS/MS system, it was possible to determine the relative MS/MS response of the aqua compounds for the first time.