Increasing the photocatalytic and fungicide activities of Ag3PO4 microcrystals under visible-light irradiation

The present study reports for the first time the performance of silver phosphate (Ag₃PO₄) microcrystals as photocatalyst (degradation of Rodamine B-RhB) and antifungal agent (against Candida albicans–C. albicans) under visible-light irradiation (455 nm). Ag₃PO₄ microcrystals were synthesized by a simple co-precipitation (CP) method at room temperature. The structural and electronic properties of the as-synthetized Ag₃PO₄ have been investigated before and after 4 cycles of RhB degradation under visible light using X-ray diffraction (XRD), micro-Raman spectroscopy, UV–Vis spectrophotometer and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) images. The antifungal activity was analyzed in planktonic cells and 48h-biofilm of C. albicans by colony forming units (CFU) counting, confocal laser and FE-SE microscopies. Statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS software. Morphological and structural modifications of Ag₃PO₄ were observed upon recycling. After 4 recycles, the material maintained its photodegradation property; an eightfold increase in the efficiency of Ag₃PO₄ was observed in planktonic cells and a two fold increase in biofilm when irradiated under visible light. Thus, higher antifungal effectiveness against C. albicans was obtained when associated with visible-light irradiation.     

Development of low-alcohol isotonic beer by interrupted fermentation

Alcohol-free beer with isotonic properties is getting more popular and its production can be carried out by different production strategies; however, interrupted fermentation is still a challenge. Therefore, the objective of this study was to develop a low-alcohol isotonic beer (<0.5% v/v) by interrupted fermentation. Moreover, the major objective is to compare the developed product to commercial beverages (sports drinks, ‘Pilsen' regular beer, alcohol-free beers and low-alcohol isotonic beer). The beverages were evaluated based on pH, alcohol content (% v/v), total titratable acidity (mEq L⁻¹), osmolality (mOsmol kg⁻¹), bitterness International Bitterness Units, colour European Brewery Convention, total phenolic compounds (mg L⁻¹ gallic acid), reducing and total sugars (%) and Na and K contents (mg L⁻¹). The developed low-alcohol isotonic beer presented characteristics similar to sports drinks, with the advantage of being richer in phenolic compounds and suitable osmolality. Despite salts were added in its formulation, the grades attributed to all beers employed in the sensory evaluation, as well as the purchase intention did not present significant differences.     

Screening of supports for the immobilization of pectinmethylesterase from acerola (Malpighia glabra L)

A partially purified extract of pectinmethylesterase (PME) from acerola fruit was immobilized on various supports: glass, celite, chrysotile, agarose, concanavalin A Sepharose 4B, egg shell, polyacrylamide and gelatin. In addition, reticulation with glutaraldehyde was assessed, as well as the use of gelatin in the presence of celite, glass and silica. The highest immobilization yields were obtained when the pectinmethylesterase was immobilized in concanavalin A Sepharose 4B (81.7%) and in gelatin‐water (78.0%). Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry     

Equivalence between Ampere and Grassmann's forces

We calculate the force on part of a single closed circuit due to the remaining circuit in four different geometries according to the forces of Ampere and Grassmann. All analytical calculations are performed using surface or volume current elements in order to avoid the divergences which appear with linear current elements of zero diameter. We conclude that when we consider the action of a closed circuit as a whole and utilize only circuits with closed lines of current, there will be an equivalence between the expressions of Grassmann and Ampere. This means that both of them are compatible with the experimental findings related to Ampere's bridge, contrary to the opinion of some authors     

A Genre-Aware Approach to Focused Crawling

Focused crawlers have as their main goal to crawl Web pages that are relevant to a specific topic or user interest, playing an important role for a great variety of applications. In general, they work by trying to find and crawl all kinds of pages deemed as related to an implicitly declared topic. However, users are often not simply interested in any document about a topic, but instead they may want only documents of a given type or genre on that topic to be retrieved. In this article, we describe an approach to focused crawling that exploits not only content-related information but also genre information present in Web pages to guide the crawling process. This approach has been designed to address situations in which the specific topic of interest can be expressed by specifying two sets of terms, the first describing genre aspects of the desired pages and the second related to the subject or content of these pages, thus requiring no training or any kind of preprocessing. The effectiveness, efficiency and scalability of the proposed approach are demonstrated by a set of experiments involving the crawling of pages related to syllabi of computer science courses, job offers in the computer science field and sale offers of computer equipments. These experiments show that focused crawlers constructed according to our genre-aware approach achieve levels of F1 superior to 88%, requiring the analysis of no more than 65% of the visited pages in order to find 90% of the relevant pages. In addition, we experimentally analyze the impact of term selection on our approach and evaluate a proposed strategy for semi-automatic generation of such terms. This analysis shows that a small set of terms selected by an expert or a set of terms specified by a typical user familiar with the topic is usually enough to produce good results and that such a semi-automatic strategy is very effective in supporting the task of selecting the sets of terms required to guide a crawling process.     

Motivations for the IT Professional Turnaway Intention: A Delphi Approach

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we use the Delphi method to identify the main motivations that have led IT professionals to intend to move to another area. We found that the pursuit of career growth and the quest for acquiring new experiences and abilities have a marked impact on the IT professional turnaway intention. Moreover, female IT professionals and IT professionals oriented by the career advancement paradigm have a higher propensity to abandon the IT area.     

Microbiological,immunological, and histological changes in the gut of Salmonella Enteritidis-challenged rats fed goat cheese containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus EM1107

Cheeses are able to serve as suitable matrices for supplying probiotics to consumers, enabling appropriate conditions for bacteria to survive gastric transit and reach the gut, where they are assumed to promote beneficial processes. The present study aimed to evaluate the microbiological, immunological, and histological changes in the gut of Salmonella Enteritidis-challenged rats fed goat cheese supplemented with the probiotic strain Lactobacillus rhamnosus EM1107. Thirty male albino Wistar rats were randomly distributed into 5 experimental groups with 6 animals each: negative (NC) and positive (PtC) control groups, control goat cheese (CCh), goat cheese added with L. rhamnosus EM1107 (LrCh), and L. rhamnosus EM1107 only (EM1107). All animals, except NC group were challenged with Salmonella Enteritidis (10⁹ cfu in 1 mL of saline through oral gavage). Microbial composition was assessed with high-throughput 16S rRNA sequencing by means of Illumina MiSeq (Illumina, San Diego, CA). Nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) from the animal cecum tissue was determined by real-time PCR and interleukins (TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-10, and IFN-γ) by means of ELISA. Myeloperoxidase and malondialdehyde levels were determined biochemically. The administration of the L. rhamnosus EM1107 probiotic strain, either as a pure culture or added to a cheese matrix, was able to reduce Salmonella colonization in the intestinal lumen and lessen tissue damage compared with rats from PtC group. In addition, the use of cheese for the probiotic strain delivery (LrCh) was associated with a marked shift in the gut microbiota composition toward the increase of beneficial organisms such as Blautia and Lactobacillus and a reduction in NF-κB expression. These findings support our hypothesis that cheeses might be explored as functional matrices for the efficacious delivery of probiotic strains to consumers.     

Improved fallow: growth and nitrogen accumulation of five native tree species in Brazil

Nitrogen (N) is the most important yield-limiting factor in agricultural systems, however, N application can lead to emissions and environmental problems such as global warming (N₂O) and groundwater contamination (NO₃ ^?). This study analyses the N balance, nitrogen-use efficiency, and N loss potential of conventional farming systems (arable farming, improved arable farming, and agroforestry) and organic farming systems (mixed farming, arable farming, and agroforestry) based on long-term field experiments in southern Germany. The effects of the conversion of farm structure and N management are identified. The conventional farming systems in this study were high N-input and high N-output systems. The conventional arable farming system had the lowest nitrogen-use efficiency and the highest N surplus. An optimised N management and the use of high-yielding crop varieties improved its nitrogen-use efficiency. The establishment of conventional agroforestry resulted in the reduction of N input, N output and N surplus, while maintaining high yields. The organic mixed farming system is characterised by a relatively high N input and N output, the accumulation of soil organic nitrogen, the highest nitrogen-use efficiency, and the lowest N surplus of all analysed systems. These good results can be attributed to the intensive farm N cycle between soil–plant–animal. The shift from organic mixed farming to organic arable farming system extensified the N cycle, reduced N input, crop yield and N output. The change from organic arable farming to organic agroforestry reduced the N input, increased the biomass yield, and remained the N surplus within an optimal range.