Consumer perception of extruded snacks containing brown rice and dried mushroom

Effects of mushroom type, seasoning and health benefit information (HBI) on consumers’ saltiness expectation, sensory liking, elicited emotions and purchase intent (PI) of extruded snacks were investigated. Five snacks were evaluated: straw mushroom (Volvariella volvacea) extrudates without (SME) or with seasoning (SMES), phoenix mushroom (Pleurotus pulmonarius) extrudates without (PME) or with seasoning (PMES), and the control without mushroom and seasoning. Hedonic scores and positive emotions were generally higher for seasoned mushroom-containing snacks (SMES and PMES) with 65% and 75.83% of consumers reporting willingness to purchase, respectively, after receiving HBI. Bored, interested and satisfied were identified as significant emotional predictors for PI odds. Flavour, saltiness, overall liking, bored, good and interested were critical attributes, differentiating snacks. This study demonstrated that sensory liking and PI of extruded brown rice-based snacks containing mushroom could be improved through savoury seasoning addition, which also allowed saltiness expectations to be met.     

Controlled Secure Direct Communication Protocol via the Three-Qubit Partially Entangled Set of States

In this paper, we first re-examine the previous protocol of controlled quantum secure direct communication of Zhang et al.’s scheme, which was found insecure under two kinds of attacks, fake entangled particles attack and disentanglement attack. Then, by changing the party of the preparation of cluster states and using unitary operations, we present an improved protocol which can avoid these two kinds of attacks. Moreover, the protocol is proposed using the three-qubit partially entangled set of states. It is more efficient by only using three particles rather than four or even more to transmit one bit secret information. Given our using state is much easier to prepare for multiqubit states and our protocol needs less measurement resource, it makes this protocol more convenient from an applied point of view.     

The pharmacokinetics and protein-binding of fusidic acid in patients with severe renal failure requiring either haemodialysis or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis

Antibiotic treatment options for Burkholderia cepacia infection are limited because of high intrinsic resistance. The problem is complicated by development of cross-resistance between antibiotics of different classes. We isolated antibiotic-resistant mutants by stepwise exposure to chloramphenicol (Chlor) and to trimethoprim/sulphamethoxazole (T/S) for four B. cepacia strains: ATCC13945, Per (clinical isolate), Cas and D4 (environmental isolates). Chlor(r) mutants did not produce chloramphenicol acetyl-transferase. Cross-resistance, defined as greater than four-fold increase in MIC by microtitre dilution method, was consistently seen in both types of mutants. For chloramphenicol-resistant (Chlor[r]) and trimethoprim/sulphamethoxazole-resistant (Tr/Sr) mutants of B. cepacia ATCC13945 and Cas, no MIC change was seen for piperacillin, ceftazidime, rifampicin, gentamicin, tobramycin, polymyxin B or azithromycin. B. cepacia-Per and -D4 mutants showed cross-resistance to ceftazidime and to piperacillin. Comparison of outer membrane protein (OMP) profiles of B. cepacia and their mutants by SDS-PAGE revealed Tr/Sr) mutants to be deficient in a major OMP (molecular weight 39-47 kDa). Tr/Sr mutants also expressed additional OMPs not found in wild type strains at 75-77 kDa for B. cepacia-ATCC13945 and -Cas, and 20-21 kDa in B. cepacia-D4 and -Per. No OMP changes occurred in Chlor(r) mutants. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) profiles of each type of mutant showed new high and low molecular weight LPS bands. Cross-resistance seems to be mediated by alterations in porin and LPS for Tr/Sr mutants, but only by LPS in Chlor(r) mutants.     

Context-specific adaptation of vertical vergence to correlates of eye position

Vertical phoria (vertical vergence in the absence of binocular feedback) can be trained to vary with non-visual cues such as vertical conjugate eye position, horizontal conjugate eye position and horizontal vergence. These prior studies demonstrated a low-level association or coupling between vertical vergence and several oculomotor cues. As a test of the potential independence of multiple eye-position cues for vertical vergence, context-specific adaptation experiments were conducted in three orthogonal adapting planes (midsagittal, frontoparallel, and transverse). Four vertical disparities in each of these planes were associated with various combinations of two specific components of eye position. Vertical disparities in the plane were associated with horizontal vergence and vertical conjugate eye position; vertical disparities in the frontoparallel plane were associated with horizontal and vertical conjugate eye position; and vertical disparities in the transverse plane were associated with horizontal vergence and horizontal conjugate eye position. The results demonstrate that vertical vergence can be adapted to respond to specific combinations of two different sources of eye-position information. The results are modeled with an association matrix whose inputs are two classes of eye position and whose weighted output is vertical vergence.     

Continuous phase quadrature phase shift keyed signaling techniquewith coding

A continuous phase quadrature phase shift keyed (CPQPSK) modulation technique is presented. This method utilizes a conventional QPSK modulator and a phase trajectory converter to approximate M=4, h=1/4 continuous phase signal and allows low cost, low complexity, and high rate (>1 Gbit/s) CPM modem implementation for bandwidth efficient transmission through nonlinear satellite channels. Using a communications analysis computer program it has been found that CPQPSK has 99 percent out-of-band power of 0.8R (MSK has 99 percent out-of-band power of 1.2 R where R is defined as bit rate), continuous phase trajectories, and nearly constant envelope amplitude. Simulation of realistic hardware designs indicate that the CPQPSK will require an Eb/No of 14 dB to achieve a bit error rate (BER) of 10^-6. Forward error correcting techniques using block codes with an overhead of 10 percent indicate that the Eb/No requirements can be reduced to 11.2 dB for 10^-6 BER