Influence of pencil lead hardness on voltammetric response of graphite reinforcement carbon electrodes

This work studied the voltammetric response of graphite reinforcement electrodes made of different pencil lead hardness. The studies showed that harder graphite leads, regardless of their manufacturer, are more appropriate as electrode material for voltammetric purposes due to their higher peak currents, increasing sensitivity and reproducibility, with ΔEp closer to the theoretical value for a reversible system.     

Construction of baselines for VoIP traffic management on open MANs

In the last century, owing to the constant evolution of technologies telecommunication networks have become increasingly robust, being able to support multiple services. These services are part of the heterogeneous network traffic that can be carried through the Internet. Many of these services, including VoIP, are latency sensitive. In other words, this means that their quality depends directly on the network quality of service. Since users tend to become more sensitive with the instability and unavailability of the network, it is important to improve traffic management. A particular type of data that could be used to improve VoIP traffic management is the Internet Protocol Detail Record (IPDR). IPDRs are tickets created by all VoIP call attempts which contain a group of information related to the call history. Because of its full range of information, IPDRs can be used to create VoIP traffic baselines. This paper presents the development of baselines based on IPDRs to support VoIP traffic management in open‐access Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decision support systems in water resources in the demarcated region of Douro – case study in Pinhão river basin,Portugal

This paper puts forward the importance of decision support systems (DSS) for the planning and management of water resources. A case study of the Pinhão river basin, in Portugal, is presented. Given the importance of vineyards in the Douro region, it is important to determine if water availability will be enough to meet present and future water demands. In order to answer this question, DSS tools were used to assess different scenarios. The MIKE BASIN software was used in the hydrographical basin of Pinhão river, assisted by a geographic information system, GIS, which allowed the modelling of the basin, both temporally and spatially, facilitating the visualisation and interpretation of results. According to the attained results, it was verified that, at present, the hydrographical basin meets the considered water needs. The DSS proved to be an important tool to assist the decision‐making process in the studied river basin.     

Critical Success Factors for New Product Development in Biotechnology Companies

The development of new products has become increasingly critical for the competitiveness of companies, due to increased diversity and variety of products, the reduction of product life cycles, and, primarily, globalization of markets. Thus, the identification and prioritization of critical success factors for developing new products is important, particularly for the high degree of risk and uncertainty involved. The main objective of this article is the identification and prioritization of critical success factors in new product development projects in biotechnology companies in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The research method used was a survey questionnaire, which was sent to a sample of 31 biotechnology companies in Minas Gerais state. The principal findings of this research are that interpersonal skills/relationships of the project leader and technical skills are the most critical factors for successful new product development in this industry. The implications for the biotechnology industry in general, as well as for those responsible for managing new product development, are discussed.     

Influence of pH cycling and mechanical loading on the resin-dentin microtensile bond strength

The durability of adhesive interfaces is still a problem in adhesive restorations in dentistry. Laboratorial ageing methods have been proposed to predict the performance of materials, but they still require standardization. The objective of this study was to evaluate the resin-dentin microtensile bond strength of composite restorations subjected to pH cycling and different levels of mechanical loading. Resin blocks were built over a flat superficial dentin of bovine incisors (n = 40), using a three-step adhesive system. Half of the specimens were submitted to 10 cycles of pH cycling, followed by mechanical loading (0, 500,000; 1,000,000; 2,000,000 cycles – 98 N, 4 Hz). The other half was directly subjected to mechanical loading. After ageing, all groups were subjected to a microtensile bond test. Data were analyzed using two-way ANOVA and Tukey’s test (α = 0.05). The frequency of the early de-bonding was compared using the Chi-square test (α = 0.05). The statistical analysis revealed that the cross-product interaction ‘pH cycling’ vs. ‘number of mechanical loading cycles’ (p = 0.72) as well as the main factor ‘pH cycling’ (p = 0.49) was not statistically significant, and they were not able to reduce the resin–dentin bond strength values. Regarding the number of mechanical loading cycles, the groups subjected to 2,000,000 cycles showed lower bond strength values than the others (p = 0.003). The frequency of debonded specimens increased with mechanical loading. Therefore, it can be concluded that in this restorative model, at least 2,000,000 mechanical cycles are need to decrease the microtensile strength and simulate the ageing of the interface.     

Development of an in-house method for the incorporation of model migrants in polyethylene films and determination of diffusion constants in food

Two methods were tested and compared for the additivation of low density polyethylene (LDPE). The aim was to obtain highly contaminated plastic films to enable the study of migration (diffusion and partition phenomena). One of the methods involved immersion of low density polyethylene (LDPE) films in a concentrated solution of the selected substances. The other method involved achieving close contact of plastic films with a polyethylene wax contaminated with the selected compounds. The PE-wax method provided better results as regards the final concentration and homogeneity of the contaminants in the plastic films (deviations between replicates for each plastic film was lower than 10% for both migrants tested). This method was therefore considered suitable for preparing a homogeneous additive release system. Finally, to test the applicability of the method, concentration profiles were studied in chocolate spread placed in contact with the contaminated films, and diffusion coefficients were estimated in this foodstuff. Estimated diffusion coefficients were 4.6 × 10⁻⁰⁷ cm²/s for DPBD and 3.2 × 10⁻⁰⁷ cm²/s for triclosan in the same conditions.     

Intercontinental spread of a multidrug-resistant methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus clone

Two hundred ten methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates recovered between 1990 and 1997 from three Portuguese hospitals located in Lisbon and Oporto were analyzed by molecular fingerprinting techniques. The hybridization of ClaI restriction digests with the mecA- and Tn554-specific DNA probes combined with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis documented the abrupt appearance and extensive intrahospital spread of the Brazilian epidemic MRSA clone in the 1995 samples of each one of the three hospitals analyzed-suggesting the intercontinental transfer of this strain from Brazil to Portugal. The appearance of this clone may challenge the dominance of another highly epidemic imported clone-the Iberian MRSA, currently the most widely spread MRSA clone in Portuguese hospitals.     

A NONLINEAR POPULATION BALANCE APPROACH TO WET BALL MILL SCALE-UP DESIGN

Recent research has shown that population balance models hold considerable promise as a basis for accurate ball mill scale-up from laboratory batch grinding tests. Researchers at the University of Utah have developed and tested a scale-up approach based on linear population balance models which when used with an “experimental linearization” procedure (referred to as a similar fineness testing) produces accurate predictions of mill dimensions and product size distributions for commerical mills.

Since wet ball mill grinding kinetics are often highly nonlinear and the similar fineness procedure required to apply the linear model can be somewhat tedious experimentally, the development of a scale-up approach based on a nonlinear model which is experimentally simpler to use is desirable. In the current paper an approach involving an empirical nonlinear kinetic model and a distributed volume model for material transport is evolved. The approach Is tested by predicting mill performance for a variety of materials (limestone, quartz, iron ore concentrate) in pilot and commercial scale mills (up to 14ft. in diameter) based on data obtained in a 10 inch diameter batch ball mill.     

Potential of migration of active compounds from protein‐based films with essential oils to a food and a food simulant

Migration tests at different temperatures and storage periods were performed to evaluate the release of active compounds from active whey protein films (WPFs) to a food and food simulants. Whey protein film incorporated with different levels of an optimized essential oils (EOs) blend (1%, 2%, 2.7%, and 5%, w/w) were prepared by casting. This blend contained EOs from rosemary and 2 species of cinnamon. Salami was packaged with WPF and stored during 180 days at 5°C. Temperature influenced significantly the migration of compounds (P<.1). It was observed that eucalyptol was the compound that presented the highest potential of migration into 95% ethanol (v/v). After contact of film with salami, it was observed that, in general, more than 50% of active compounds released from WPF to salami. It was observed that higher amounts of active compounds were released to salami than to fatty food simulant. Results suggested that the release of compounds depends on their affinity with the food/food simulant, temperature, their concentration in packaging, and composition of food. Active packaging may ensure the quality of food due the migration of compounds from EO with antimicrobial and antioxidant activity incorporated in the film to the foodstuff.     

Method for selecting representative videos for change detection datasets

In evaluating the change detection algorithms, the algorithm evaluated must show a superior performance than the state-of-the-art algorithms. The evaluation process steps comprise executing a new algorithm to segment a set of videos from a dataset and compare the results regarding a ground truth. In this paper, we propose using additional information in evaluating change detection algorithms: the level of difficulty in classifying a pixel. First, for each video frame used in the evaluation, we created a difficulty map structure, which stores values representing the level of difficulty required by an algorithm to classify each pixel of that frame. Second, we developed a metric to estimate each dataset video’s difficulty based on our difficulty maps. Third, we applied the metric to selecting the more representative videos from the dataset based on their difficulty level. Finally, to demonstrate the method’s contribution, we evaluated it using all videos from the CDNet 2014 dataset. The results showed that a subset of videos selected by our method has the same potential as the original CDNet 2014 dataset. Hence, a new change detection algorithm can be evaluated more quickly using our subset of videos selected.