The impact of roasting on the ochratoxin A content of coffee

Roasting coffee led to a drop in the ochratoxin A (OTA) concentration, as measured by the reference method, especially for dark type roasts. The way the beverage was prepared also affected the OTA content, which could paradoxically be higher than that of the initial roasted coffee. Assays on the thermal stability of pure OTA showed that it ought to be found in larger quantities in roasted coffee. This suggested that OTA was masked by reactions with the substrate during roasting. The absence of OTA in green coffee is therefore the best guarantee of safety.     

Infrequent association: massive inguinoscrotal bladder hernia, multiple scrotal lithiasis, and bilateral obstructive uropathy]

BACKGROUND AND AIMS OF THE STUDY: Surgical treatment of functional tricuspid regurgitation associated with advanced valvular disease remains controversial, mainly due to the difficulty in choosing between valve replacement or reconstructive surgery. Failure to correct tricuspid regurgitation during valvular surgery carries a poor prognosis, as reoperation may represent a significant risk to the patient. Thus correct tricuspid valve surgery is vital to achieve improved early and long-term clinical results. METHODS: A total of 142 patients underwent concomitant tricuspid annuloplasty with mitral valve replacement and their clinical outcome was assessed. RESULTS: Overall hospital mortality rate was 11.3%. Seven patients died during follow up. The overall actuarial survival rate for 10 years was 74.1 +/- 14.2%. Postoperatively, 75.8% of the patients had no residual tricuspid insufficiency, while 24.2% had first- or second-degree tricuspid insufficiency and were treated medically. All patients were in NHYA functional class I or II postoperatively. CONCLUSION: Clinically, it is important to assess the severity of functional tricuspid insufficiency before and/or during the operation. Bicuspidalization annuloplasty for functional tricuspid insufficiency has provided good results, with a low incidence of reoperation and significant clinical improvement. The technique could be used in most patients with functional tricuspid regurgitation.     

The operational semantics of user-defined relationships in object oriented database systems

In semantic data models, abstract relationship (e.g. generalization, aggregation, etc.) semantics are defined, specifying how insertion, deletion and modification operations made at a higher level of abstraction can affect the objects abstracted over and vice versa. These semantics, also known as structural constraints, are expressed through so-called update rules. This perspective has been somewhat lost in most object-oriented systems, where user-defined relationships are supported as simple pointers and their semantics are embedded, distributed and replicated within the operations accessing these pointers. This paper inherits and extends the treatment of relationships found in semantic data models to behavioural object-oriented models by presenting an approach to uniformly capture the update rules for user-defined relationships. The stress is not on supporting relationships as first-class objects, but on describing their update rules (or operational semantics) through a set of constructors namely, reaction, anticipation, delegation and exception. The approach has been borne out by an implementation in an active object-oriented database system.     

Mathematical modelling of the alcoholic fermentation of glucose by Zymomonas mobilis mobilis

The kinetics of alcoholic fermentation of a strain of Zymomonas mobilis, isolated from sugarcane juice, has been studied with the objective of determining the constansts of a non-structured mathematical model that represents the fermentation process. Assays in batch and in continuous culture have been carried out with different initial concentrations of glucose. The final concentrations of glucose, ethanol and biomass were determined. The following kinetic parameters were obtained: μ_max, 0·5 h^?1; K_s, 4·64 g dm^?3; P_max, 106 g dm^?3; Y_x/s, 0·0265 g g^?1; m, 1·4 g g^?1 h^?1; α, 17·38 g g^?1; β, 0·69 g g^?1 h^?1.     

Thermal evaluation of the use of porous ceramic plates on ventilated façades—part II: Thermal behavior

The effects of porous ceramic plates on the thermal behavior of ventilated façades were evaluated, and the results are presented herein. Thermal behavior in a ventilated façade of specimens containing 40 wt% of lime mud and a firing temperature of 1100°C was evaluated and compared with a commercial porcelain ceramic tile, which was the reference material. An experimental apparatus was designed to evaluate the thermal performance of the studied ventilated façades. The results revealed that the ventilated façade composed of the studied porous ceramic tiles produced a greater reduction in temperature between the external environmental and the interior of a box representing a building (ΔT5) of 65.7°C, compared with the façade composed of the commercial porcelain ceramic tiles (ΔT5 = 56.0°C) and even the traditional façade (ΔT5 = 49.1°C). Thus, porous ceramic tiles based on byproducts are promising candidates for ventilated façade systems.     

A General Approach to Midpoint Theory and Aggregation of Quasimetrics

Many fields in applied sciences, like Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, use aggregation methods to provide new generalized metrics from a collection of old ones. Thus, the problem of merging by means of a function a collection of generalized metrics into a single one has been recently studied in depth. Moreover, the mipoint sets for a generalized metric involving fuzzy sets have shown a great potential in medical diagnosis and decision making since it models the concept of “compromise” or “middle way” between two positions. Joining these facts, the aim of this paper is to provide a general framework for the study of midpoint sets for quasimetrics via aggregation theory. In particular, we determine the properties that an aggregation function must satisfy to characterize the midpoint set for a quasimetric generated by means of the fusion of a collection of quasimetrics in terms of the midpoint sets for each of the quasimetrics that are merged. In fact, this study generalizes the results for metrics in this context that are retrieved as a particular case of the exposed theory. Finally, some particular results for generalized metrics defined for fuzzy sets are proved.