Simultaneous daytime measurements of the atmospheric coherence diameter r(0) with three different methods

The most common parameter used in characterizing atmospheric turbulence (seeing) is the atmospheric coherence diameter, or r(0). r(0) can be measured in many ways. Three such techniques that are useful when one is making daytime seeing measurements by observing the Sun are described. Results from an experiment in which r(0) was measured with all three methods are presented.     

Intelligent product search with soft-boundary preference relaxation

This paper proposes a novel method for preference relaxation in online product search, which enables consumers to make quality choices without suffering from the commonly experienced information overload. In online shopping scenarios that involve multi-attribute choice tasks, it can be difficult for consumers to process the vast amounts of information available and to make satisfactory buying decisions. In such situations consumers are likely to eliminate potentially good choices early on, using hard-constraint filtering tools. Our approach uses edge sets to identify the alternatives on the soft boundary and the principle of alternative domination to suppress the alternatives on this boundary that are irrelevant. We demonstrate how our approach outperforms existing methods for product search in a set of simulations using two sets of 2650 car advertisements and 1813 digital cameras gathered from a popular online store.     

Motion gradient vector flow: an external force for tracking rolling leukocytes with shape and size constrained active contours

Recording rolling leukocyte velocities from intravital microscopic video imagery is a critical task in inflammation research and drug validation. Since manual tracking is excessively time consuming, an automated method is desired. This paper illustrates an active contour based automated tracking method, where we propose a novel external force to guide the active contour that takes the hemodynamic flow direction into account. The construction of the proposed force field, referred to as motion gradient vector flow (MGVF), is accomplished by minimizing an energy functional involving the motion direction, and the image gradient magnitude. The tracking experiments demonstrate that MGVF can be used to track both slow- and fast-rolling leukocytes, thus extending the capture range of previously designed cell tracking techniques.     

Finding optimal hardware/software partitions

Most previous approaches to hardware/software partitioning considered heuristic solutions. In contrast, this paper presents an exact algorithm for the problem based on branch-and-bound. Several techniques are investigated to speed up the algorithm, including bounds based on linear programming, a custom inference engine to make the most out of the inferred information, advanced necessary conditions for partial solutions, and different heuristics to obtain high-quality initial solutions. It is demonstrated with empirical measurements that the resulting algorithm can solve highly complex partitioning problems in reasonable time. Moreover, it is about ten times faster than a previous exact algorithm based on integer linear programming. The presented methods can also be useful in other related optimization problems.     

Detection of geophysical features in InSAR point cloud data sets using spatiotemporal models

In this article, we introduce an approach for detecting evolving geophysical features within interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR)-derived point cloud data sets. This approach is based on the availability of models describing both spatial and temporal behaviours of the geophysical features of interest. The model parameters are used to generate a multidimensional space that is then scanned with a user-defined resolution. For each point in the parameter space, a spatiotemporal template is reconstructed from the original model. This template is then used to scan the point cloud data set for regions matching the spatiotemporal behaviour.

We also introduce a proportional measure where the residual for each point in the data set is compared to both the data and the template to provide a scale invariant measure of the behavioural matching. The matching is evaluated for every point in the parameter over a region of influence determined by the parameters. The resulting multidimensional space is then collapsed onto geographical coordinates to produce an overlay map identifying regions whose spatiotemporal behaviour matches the feature of interest.

We tailored our approach to the detection of subsidence behaviour, indicative of the development of sinkholes, modelled as Gaussian with amplitude linearly increasing with time. We verified the validity of our model using both synthetic and actual InSAR data sets. The latter was obtained by processing imagery of a region near Wink, Texas, containing ground truth sinkhole data.

We applied this framework to a 40 km × 40 km area of interest located in western Virginia and performed ground validation on a subset of the identified regions. The results show good agreement between the locations detected by our algorithm and the evidence of subsidence observed during the ground validation campaign.     

Type of bacterial starter culture,aging and fermentation effects on some characteristics of inoculated beef sausages

Beef sausage mixes were inoculated with either Pediococcus acidilactici with Staphylococcus xylosus or P. acidilactici with S. carnosus, subdivided and then held for 0, 24, 48 or 72 h at 8–10 °C prior to fermentation. After aging (pre-fermentation holding), the mixes were fermented for 16 h ending at 41 °C. Moisture, protein and fat contents of all sausage mixes did not differ due to holding effects over all starter cultures. The pH of mixes followed the same pattern for all mixes, declining (p < 0.05) from approximately 5.8 to pH 5.2–5.3 at 72 h aging and to 4.4–4.5 after fermentation. Total acidity of the mixes followed an inverse pattern to pH, increasing (p < 0.05) after fermentation although there was no effect due to type of starter culture. Aging had no effect on nonprotein nitrogen (NPN) content as ΔNPN among all cultures. After fermentation, however, sausages held 72 h and inoculated with S. carnosus had higher NPN contents compared to P. acidilactici alone (p < 0.05) and with S. xylosus (p < 0.10). The same effects of starter cultures on changes in total amino acid concentration were observed. Concentrations of individual amino acids showed increases depending on pre-fermentation aging period (0 h versus 72 h) followed by fermentation.     

Role of soil health in maintaining environmental sustainability of surface coal mining

Mountaintop coal mining (MCM) in the Southern Appalachian forest region greatly impacts both soil and aquatic ecosystems. Policy and practice currently in place emphasize water quality and soil stability but do not consider upland soil health. Here we report soil organic carbon (SOC) measurements and other soil quality indicators for reclaimed soils in the Southern Appalachian forest region to quantify the health of the soil ecosystem. The SOC sequestration rate of the MCM soils was 1.3 MgC ha(-1) yr(-1) and stocks ranged from 1.3 ± 0.9 to 20.9 ± 5.9 Mg ha(-1) and contained only 11% of the SOC of surrounding forest soils. Comparable reclaimed mining soils reported in the literature that are supportive of soil ecosystem health had SOC stocks 2.5-5 times greater than the MCM soils and sequestration rates were also 1.6-3 times greater. The high compaction associated with reclamation in this region greatly reduces both the vegetative rooting depth and infiltration of the soil and increases surface runoff, thus bypassing the ability of soil to naturally filter groundwater. In the context of environmental sustainability of MCM, it is proposed that the entire watershed ecosystem be assessed and that a revision of current policy be conducted to reflect the health of both water and soil.     

Antibacterial effects of natural tenderizing enzymes on different strains of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Listeria monocytogenes on beef

This study determined the efficacy of actinidin and papain on reducing Listeria monocytogenes and three mixed strains of Escherichia coli O157:H7 populations on beef. The average reduction of E. coli O157:H7 was greater than that of L. monocytogenes and higher concentrations of either protease yielded greater reduction in bacterial populations. For instance, actinidin at 700 mg/ml significantly (p ≤ 0.05) reduced the population of L. monocytogenes by 1.49 log cfu/ml meat rinse after 3 h at 25 & 35 °C, and by 1.45 log cfu/ml rinse after 24 h at 5 °C, while the same actinidin concentration significantly reduced the populations of three mixed strains of E. coli O157:H7 by 1.81 log cfu/ml rinse after 3 h at 25 & 35 °C, and 1.94 log cfu/ml rinse after 24 h at 5 °C. These findings suggest that, in addition to improving the sensory attributes of beef, proteolytic enzymes can enhance meat safety when stored at suitable temperatures.     

Effects of different hybrids, strains and age of laying hens on the cholesterol content of the table egg

The intrinsic fluorescence of homogeneous castor oil seed cytosolic fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase (FBPasec) was used as an indicator of conformational changes due to ligand binding. Binding of the substrate and the inhibitor fructose-2,6-bisphosphate (F-2,6-P2) was quantitatively compared to their respective kinetic effects on enzymatic activity. There are two distinct types of substrate interaction with FBPasec, corresponding to catalytic and inhibitory binding, respectively. Inhibitory substrate binding shares several characteristics with F-2,6-P2 binding which indicates that both ligands bind at the same site. However, F-2,6-P2 does not prevent fluorescence transitions attributed to catalytic substrate binding. The marked synergistic inhibition of FBPasec by AMP and F-2,6-P2 appears to arise via AMP's promotion of F-2,6-P2 binding. Based on the X-ray crystal structure of porcine kidney FBPase our modelling studies suggest the existence of a distinct F-1,6-P2/F-2,6-P2 inhibitory binding site which partially overlaps with the enzyme's catalytic site. We propose that a pronounced allosteric transition mediated by AMP binding increases access of F-1,6-P2 and F-2,6-P2 to this common inhibitory binding site.     

Cystic duct syndrome and minimally invasive surgery

Cholecystectomy is an established successful operation which provides total relief of presurgical symptoms in up to 85% of patients. About 5% of patients after cholecystectomy experience severe episodes of upper abdominal pain, similar to those that they had prior to cholecystectomy. These so called postcholecystectomy syndromes may be due to biliary strictures, retained biliary calculi, cystic duct stump syndrome, stenosis or dyskinesis of the sphincter of Oddi. Postcholecystectomy symptoms caused by cystic stump and gallbladder remnant had been described early in this century and several papers have been published on the topic. During recent years laparoscopic cholecystectomy became popular but we have not found in the literature the mention of either that it could cause cystic duct stump syndrome or it could be used for its treatment. During the last seven years in 8 patients we found gallbladder remnants or cystic duct stumps causing their symptoms. Among the 8 patients 3 had laparoscopic and 5 classic cholecystectomies. After incomplete cholecystectomy we usually find that the cystic duct stump and the Calot triangle embedded in inflamed scar tissue. For this reason the surgical risk is to high with laparoscopic surgery to reoperate for these pathological changes. In all 8 cases the pathological cystic duct stumps and gallbladder remnants were removed using 3-4 cm single microlaparotomy incisions. The postoperative stay of these patients were uneventful and they were discharged home 2-3 days after surgery.