Mímir: An open-source semantic search framework for interactive information seeking and discovery

Semantic search is gradually establishing itself as the next generation search paradigm, which meets better a wider range of information needs, as compared to traditional full-text search. At the same time, however, expanding search towards document structure and external, formal knowledge sources (e.g. LOD resources) remains challenging, especially with respect to efficiency, usability, and scalability.This paper introduces Mímir—an open-source framework for integrated semantic search over text, document structure, linguistic annotations, and formal semantic knowledge. Mímir supports complex structural queries, as well as basic keyword search.Exploratory search and sense-making are supported through information visualisation interfaces, such as co-occurrence matrices and term clouds. There is also an interactive retrieval interface, where users can save, refine, and analyse the results of a semantic search over time. The more well-studied precision-oriented information seeking searches are also well supported.The generic and extensible nature of the Mímir platform is demonstrated through three different, real-world applications, one of which required indexing and search over tens of millions of documents and fifty to hundred times as many semantic annotations. Scaling up to over 150 million documents was also accomplished, via index federation and cloud-based deployment.     

Performance improvement of conventional and inverted polymer solar cells with hydrophobic fluoropolymer as nonvolatile processing additive

The morphology of the photoactive layer critically affects the performance of the bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells (PSCs). To control the morphology, we introduced a hydrophobic fluoropolymer polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as nonvolatile additive into the P3HT:PCBM active layer. The effect of PVDF on the surface and the bulk morphology were investigated by atomic force microscope and transmission electron microscopy, respectively. Through the repulsive interactions between the hydrophilic PCBM and the hydrophobic PVDF, much more uniform phase separation with good P3HT crystallinity is formed within the active layer, resulting enhanced light harvesting and improved photovoltaic performance in conventional devices. The PCE of the conventional device can improve from 2.40% to 3.07% with PVDF additive. The PVDF distribution within the active layer was investigated by secondary ion mass spectroscopy, confirming a bottom distribution of PVDF. Therefore, inverted device structure was designed, and the PCE can improve from 2.81% to 3.45% with PVDF additive. Our findings suggest that PVDF is a promising nonvolatile processing additive for high performance polymer solar cells.     

Sanitary legislation governing Food Services in Brazil

The Technical Regulation of Good Practices for Brazilian Food Services (Regulamento Técnico de Boas Práticas para Serviços de Alimentação do Brasil) can be complemented by sanitary surveillance agencies at the state, district and municipal levels by tailoring it to location-specific requirements. The purpose of the present study was to survey sanitary legislation governing Brazilian Food Services. During the period from November 2011 to November 2012, a survey was conducted with the sanitary surveillance agencies from the various states, capitals and the Federal District. A previously prepared and tested tool was used for data collection, comprising 10 questions. Only 10 (19.2%) of the sanitary codes had been established prior to RDC Resolution n° 216/2004 and were not complementary. Of the legislation cited as complementary, only the states of Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo and the capital of the state of São Paulo truly presented additional and location-specific aspects. No legislation that was specific to hospital kitchens was found. The majority of participating coordination, including the Evaluation List for Good Practices in Food Services, was also verified; however, it had not been published. In conclusion, a gap in sanitary surveillance services exists, which was caused by the lack of location-specific food service regulations.     

A design of experiments investigation into dry separation using a Knelson Concentrator

Enhanced gravity, or centrifugal, separators have revolutionised gold processing over the past decades, significantly increasing the recovery of fine (−100 μm) free gold. One of the main drawbacks of centrifugal gravity concentrators is the large volume of water required (even if it is all recycled). With water becoming an ever increasingly important “commodity”, reducing this is of importance both from an environmental and a monetary point of view. This work investigated operating a laboratory scale Knelson Concentrator with a dry feed and using air as the fluidising medium. The feed used was a synthetic mixture of tungsten and quartz, used to mimic a gold ore. The response surface method and central composite design techniques were used to design the experiments and to model the results, with the experimental variables being the bowl speed (G-Level), air fluidising pressure and the feed rate. The models corresponded well to the experimental results, indicating that for this experimental setup, the optimal conditions were a bowl G-Level of 40 G, a feed rate of 220 g/min and an air fluidising pressure of 8 psi.     

A high performance crashworthiness simulation system based on GPU

Crashworthiness simulation system is one of the key computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools for the automobile industry and implies two potential conflicting requirements: accuracy and efficiency. A parallel crashworthiness simulation system based on graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture and the explicit finite element (FE) method is developed in this work. Implementation details with compute unified device architecture (CUDA) are considered. The entire parallel simulation system involves a parallel hierarchy-territory contact-searching algorithm (HITA) and a parallel penalty contact force calculation algorithm. Three basic GPU-based parallel strategies are suggested to meet the natural parallelism of the explicit FE algorithm. Two free GPU-based numerical calculation libraries, cuBLAS and Thrust, are introduced to decrease the difficulty of programming. Furthermore, a mixed array and a thread map to element strategy are proposed to improve the performance of the test pairs searching. The outer loop of the nested loop through the mixed array is unrolled to realize parallel searching. An efficient storage strategy based on data sorting is presented to realize data transfer between different hierarchies with coalesced access during the contact pairs searching. A thread map to element pattern is implemented to calculate the penetrations and the penetration forces; a double float atomic operation is used to scatter contact forces. The simulation results of the three different models based on the Intel Core i7-930 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 demonstrate the precision and efficiency of this developed parallel crashworthiness simulation system.     

Development and monitoring of an integrated bioprocess for production of a potential malaria vaccine with Pichia pastoris

An engineered variant of the yeast Pichia pastoris was used to produce the potential malaria vaccine D1M1. This paper describes the implementation of an expanded bed adsorption chromatography step into a sequential cultivation process of the yeast in order to link protein expression, cell release, and product capture of the secreted protein in a fully automated plant. The process is operated with a semi-continuous strategy for an integrated production. Process improvements have been achieved using design of experiments. Resulting purities of product achieved up to 87% with recoveries of 51% in a single downstream operation. Furthermore, a multivariate analysis of historical batch data was used to develop a golden batch model for process monitoring.     

Review of pulsed thermal NDT: Physical principles,theory and data processing

This paper summarizes the basics of pulsed thermal nondestructive testing (TNDT) including theoretical solutions, data processing algorithms and practical implementation. Typical defects are discussed along with 1D analytical and multi-dimensional numerical solutions. Special emphasis is focused on defect characterization by the use of inverse solutions. A list of TNDT terms is provided. Applications of active TNDT, mainly in the aerospace industry, are discussed briefly, and some trends in the further development of this technique are described.     

Starch: a potential substrate for biohydrogen production

Hydrogen is a clean energy carrier with great potential to be an alternative fuel. Anaerobic hydrogen fermentation seems to be more favorable, since hydrogen is yielded at high rates and various organic waste and wastewater enriched with carbohydrates as substrate result in low cost for hydrogen production. Abundant biomass from various industries could be a source for biohydrogen production where combination of waste treatment and energy production would be an advantage. Carbohydrate‐rich nitrogen‐deficient solid wastes such as starch residues can be used for hydrogen production by using suitable bioprocess technologies. Alternatively, converting biomass into gaseous fuels, such as biohydrogen, is possibly the most efficient way to use these agroindustrial residues. This review summarizes the potential of starch agroindustrial residues as a substrate for biohydrogen production. Types of potential starch agroindustrial residues, recent developments and bio‐processing conditions for biohydrogen production will be discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prevalence,enumeration, and characterization of Salmonella isolated from aquatic food products from retail markets in China

This study aimed to estimate the extent and level of Salmonella contamination of aquatic food products in China, and to determine serotype, virulotype, and the antimicrobial resistance profiles of recovered Salmonella isolates. Out of 554 samples collected from July 2011 to May 2014, 86 (15.5%) tested positive for Salmonella. The highest contamination rate occurred in oysters (23.1%, 6/26), followed by freshwater fish (18.6%, 43/231), shrimp (13.0%, 13/100), and saltwater fish (12.2%, 24/197). The contamination levels generally corresponded to a most probable number (MPN)/g of 0.3–10, although one sample exceeded 110 MPN/g. Among the 103 isolates, S. Typhimurium, S. Wandsworth, S. Thompson, and S. Derby were the most prevalent serovars. Sixty-eight isolates (66.0%) were resistant to at least one antimicrobial, and 35 (34.0%) were resistant to more than three. High rates of resistance were observed for tetracycline (35.9%), ampicillin (28.2%), nalidixic acid (26.2%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (25.2%), chloramphenicol (20.4%) and streptomycin (18.4%). Of note, S. Thompson isolates exhibited resistance to multiple extended-spectrum cephalosporins, ciprofloxacin, and other antimicrobials. PCR analysis of 15 virulence genes showed that ssaQ, mgtC, siiD, sopB, and bcfC were present in all 103 isolates, whereas the remaining loci were variably distributed. S. Typhimurium, S. Enteritidis, and S. Weltevreden isolates exhibited a wider range of pathogenicity determinants compared with the other strains. Our study provides a comprehensive surveillance on prevalence of Salmonella in aquatic food products from China and indicates its potential risk to public health. These data are valuable for epidemiological studies, risk management, and public health strategies.     

Food recognition using neural network classifier and multiple hypotheses image segmentation

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes the multiple-hypotheses image segmentation and feed-forward neural network classifier for food recognition to improve the performance. Initially, the food or meal image is given as input. Then, the segmentation is applied to identify the regions, where a particular food item is located using salient region detection, multi-scale segmentation, and fast rejection. Then, the features of every food item are extracted by the global feature and local feature extraction. After the features are obtained, the classification is performed for each segmented region using a feed-forward neural network model. Finally, the calorie value is computed with the aid of (i) food volume and (ii) calorie and nutrition measure based on mass value. The experimental results and performance evaluation are validated. The outcome of the proposed method attains 0.947 for Macro Average Accuracy (MAA) and 0.959 for Standard Accuracy (SA), which provides better classification performance.