The high cost and potential toxicity of biodegradable polymers like poly(lactic‐co‐glycolic)acid (PLGA) has increased the interest in natural and modified biopolymers as bioactive carriers. This study characterized the physical stability (water sorption and state transition behavior) of selected starch and proteins: octenyl succinate–modified depolymerized waxy corn starch (DWxCn), waxy rice starch (DWxRc), phytoglycogen, whey protein concentrate (80%, WPC), whey protein isolate (WPI), and α‐lactalbumin (α‐L) to determine their potential as carriers of bioactive compounds under different environmental conditions. After enzyme modification and particle size characterization, glass transition temperature and moisture isotherms were used to characterize the systems. DWxCn and DWxRc had increased water sorption compared to native starch. The level of octenyl succinate anhydrate (OSA) modification (3% and 7%) did not reduce the water sorption of the DWxCn and phytoglycogen samples. The Guggenheim–Andersen–de Boer model indicated that native waxy corn had significantly (P < 0.05) higher water monolayer capacity followed by 3%‐OSA‐modified DWxCn, WPI, 3%‐OSA‐modified DWxRc, α‐L, and native phytoglycogen. WPC had significantly lower water monolayer capacity. All Tg values matched with the solid‐like appearance of the biopolymers. Native polysaccharides and whey proteins had higher glass transition temperature (Tg) values. On the other hand, depolymerized waxy starches at 7%‐OSA modification had a “melted” appearance when exposed to environments with high relative humidity (above 70%) after 10 days at 23 °C. The use of depolymerized and OSA‐modified polysaccharides blended with proteins created more stable blends of biopolymers. Hence, this biopolymer would be suitable for materials exposed to high humidity environments in food applications. 相似文献
BACKGROUND: Laparoscopic Nissen fundoplication is an effective procedure for the treatment of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD), but the underlying motility mechanisms that explain the success of this operation remain unclear. METHODS: Twenty patients with a history of GORD underwent stationary oesophageal manometry and prolonged ambulatory pH monitoring, both before and 3 months after fundoplication. RESULTS: Eighteen patients were completely cured of reflux symptoms and stopped all antireflux medication after operation. After fundoplication there was a significant increase (P < 0.01) in median resting lower oesophageal sphincter (LOS) pressure and length. Median residual LOS pressure during swallow-induced LOS relaxation also increased significantly after operation (P < 0.01). The number of reflux episodes decreased from a median of 48 to 3 after fundoplication (P < 0.01). The time at pH less than 4 decreased from 5.7 to 0 per cent in the supine position (P < 0.01), and from 9.8 to 0.2 per cent while upright (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Early subjective results at 3 months following laparoscopic antireflux surgery show improved symptoms. One of the mechanisms underlying the antireflux action of fundoplication is an increase in median residual LOS pressure at the gastro-oesophageal junction. This may be a purely mechanical effect of the fundic wrap extrinsic to the LOS. 相似文献
As research on virtual worlds gains increasing attention in educational, commercial, and military domains, a consideration of how player populations are ‘reassembled’ through social scientific data is a timely matter for communication scholars. This paper describes a large‐scale study of virtual worlds in which participants were recruited at public gaming events, as opposed to through online means, and explores the dynamic relationships between players and contexts of play that this approach makes visible. Challenging conventional approaches to quantitatively driven virtual worlds research, which categorizes players based on their involvement in an online game at a particular point in time, this account demonstrates how players' networked gaming activities are contingent on who they are playing with, where, and when. 相似文献
Drought diagnosis and forecasting are fundamental issues regarding hydrological management in Spain, where recurrent water scarcity periods are normal. Land-surface models (LSMs) could provide relevant information for water managers on how drought conditions evolve. Here, we explore the usefulness of LSMs driven by atmospheric analyses with different resolutions and accuracies in simulating drought and its propagation to precipitation, soil moisture and streamflow through the system. We perform simulations for the 1980-2014 period with SASER (5 km resolution) and LEAFHYDRO (2.5 km resolution), which are forced by the Spanish SAFRAN dataset (at 5km and 30km resolutions), and the global eartH2Observe datasets at 0.25 degrees (including the MSWEP precipitation dataset). We produce standardized indices for precipitation (SPI), soil moisture (SSMI) and streamflow (SSI). The results show that the model structure uncertainty remains an important issue in current generation large-scale hydrological simulations based on LSMs. This is true for both the SSMI and SSI. The differences between the simulated SSMI and SSI are large, and the propagation scales for drought regarding both soil moisture and streamflow are overly dependent on the model structure. Forcing datasets have an impact on the uncertainty of the results but, in general, this impact is not as large as the uncertainty due to model formulation. Concerning the global products, the precipitation product that includes satellite observations (MSWEP) represents a large improvement compared with the product that does not.
This study investigated the microbial community developed in a UASB reactor for hydrogen production and correlated it to reactor performance. The reactor was inoculated with kitchen waste compost and fed with raw cheese whey at two organic loading rates, 20 gCOD/Ld and 30 gCOD/Ld. Hydrogen production was very variable, using an OLR of 30 gCOD/Ld averaged 1.0 LH(2)/Ld with no methane produced under these conditions. The hydrogen yield was also very variable and far from the theoretical. This low yield could be explained by selection of a mixed fermentative population with presence of hydrogen producing organisms (Clostridium, Ruminococcus and Enterobacter) and other non-hydrogen producing fermenters (Lactobacillus, Dialister and Prevotella). The molecular analysis of the raw cheese whey used for feeding revealed the presence of three predominant organisms that are affiliated with the genera Buttiauxella (a low-yield hydrogen producer) and Streptococcus (a lactic acid-producing fermenter). Although these organisms did not persist in the reactor, the continuous addition of these fermenters could decrease the reactor's hydrogen yield. 相似文献
Interactive visualization of volume models in standard mobile devices is a challenging present problem with increasing interest from new application fields like telemedicine. The complexity of present volume models in medical applications is continuously increasing, therefore increasing the gap between the available models and the rendering capabilities in low-end mobile clients. New and efficient rendering algorithms and interaction paradigms are required for these small platforms. In this paper, we propose a transfer function-aware compression and interaction scheme, for client-server architectures with visualization on standard mobile devices. The scheme is block-based, supporting adaptive ray-casting in the client. Our two-level ray-casting allows focusing on small details on targeted regions while keeping bounded memory requirements in the GPU of the client. Our approach includes a transfer function-aware compression scheme based on a local wavelet transformation, together with a bricking scheme that supports interactive inspection and levels of detail in the mobile device client. We also use a quantization technique that takes into account a perceptive metrics of the visual error. Our results show that we can have full interaction with high compression rates and with transmitted model sizes that can be of the order of a single photographic image. 相似文献
We present the design of a predictive load shedding scheme for a network monitoring platform that supports multiple and competing traffic queries. The proposed scheme can anticipate overload situations and minimize their impact on the accuracy of the traffic queries. The main novelty of our approach is that it considers queries as black boxes, with arbitrary (and highly variable) input traffic and processing cost. Our system only requires a high-level specification of the accuracy requirements of each query to guide the load shedding procedure and assures a fair allocation of computing resources to queries in a non-cooperative environment. We present an implementation of our load shedding scheme in an existing network monitoring system and evaluate it with a diverse set of traffic queries. Our results show that, with the load shedding mechanism in place, the monitoring system can preserve the accuracy of the queries within predefined error bounds even during extreme overload conditions. 相似文献