Microbiological and biochemical profile of cv. Conservolea naturally black olives during controlled fermentation with selected strains of lactic acid bacteria

The effect of controlled fermentation processes on the microbial association and biochemical profile of cv. Conservolea naturally black olives processed by the traditional anaerobic method was studied. The different treatments included (a) inoculation with a commercial starter culture of Lactobacillus pentosus, (b) inoculation with a strain of Lactobacillus plantarum isolated from a fermented cassava product and (c) uninoculated spontaneous process. Microbial growth, pH, titratable acidity, organic acids and volatile compounds were monitored throughout the fermentation. The initial microbiota consisted of Gram-negative bacteria, lactic acid bacteria and yeasts. Inhibition of Gram-negative bacteria was evident in all processes. Both starter cultures were effective in establishing an accelerated fermentation process and reduced the survival period of Gram-negative bacteria by 5 days compared with the spontaneous process, minimizing thus the likelihood of spoilage. Higher acidification of the brines was observed in inoculated processes without any significant difference between the two selected starter cultures (113.5 and 117.6mM for L. plantarum and L. pentosus, respectively). L. pentosus was also determined as the major species present during the whole process of spontaneous olive fermentation. It is characteristic that lactic acid fermentation was also initiated rapidly in the spontaneous process, as the conditions of fermentation, mainly the low salt level (6%, w/v) favored the dominance of lactic acid bacteria over yeasts. Lactic, acetic and propionic were the organic acids detected by HPLC in considerable amounts, whereas citric and malic acids were also present at low levels and degraded completely during the processes. Ethanol, methanol, acetaldehyde, ethyl acetate were the major volatile compounds identified by GC. Their concentrations varied among the different treatments, reflecting varying degrees of microbial activity in the brines. The results obtained from this study could help the Greek table olive industry to improve the existing processing schemes in order to increase product consistency and quality expanding the international market for naturally black olives.     

Induced lactic acid fermentation of untreated green olives of the Conservolea cultivar by Lactobacillus pentosus

Inoculation of untreated green olives of the Conservolea cultivar (Olea europea media rotunda) with a commercial strain of Lactobacillus pentosus with/without glucose supplement was studied. Despite an initial loss in viability of 0.5 log cycles on average, due to lack of adaptation of the starter to the saline environment of the brine, cultures grew well and initiated an accelerated fermentation process. Inoculation reduced the survival period of Enterobacteriaceae, and consequently potential spoilage, and caused a quicker acidification of brines and decrease in pH compared with control uninoculated processes. The diffusion of phenolic compounds was slow, hindered by the epidermis of the fruits, and had no effect on the growth of the starter. HPLC analysis revealed that lactic and acetic acids were among the end‐products during the fermentation of green olives. Citric, tartaric and malic acids were also detected but at much lower concentrations. Results obtained from this work can be applied directly to industry for the effective use of starter cultures on natural fermentation processes of green olives without prior lye treatment. © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

Effect of calcium chloride on mechanical properties and microbiological characteristics of cv. Conservolea naturally black olives fermented at different sodium chloride levels

The effect of calcium chloride (CaCl₂)(5 gL^?1) and sodium chloride (NaCl) concentration (40, 60 and 8 gL^?1) on the microbiological and mechanical properties of naturally black olives of cv. Conservolea in brines was studied. In 40 and 60 g L^?1 brines the growth of lactic acid bacteria was favoured over that of yeasts, resulting in rather complete lactic acid fermentation as indicated by high free acidity (9.8–11.5 g lactic acid L^?1) and low pH (3.7–3.8). At 80 g L^?1 brine, yeasts were the dominant members of the microflora, rendering a product with lower acidity (8 g lactic acid L^?1) and higher pH (4.3–4.5). In the presence of CaCl₂ there was a consistent increase in the depth of the peripheral region in which cell wall breakage occurred. When cells separated, perforated walls were observed at sites associated with plasmodesmata. The flesh was strongest and stiffest when CaCl₂ was added to olives treated with 40 g L^?1 brine, consistent with cell wall breakage being the predominant mode of failure. The only observed effect on the mechanical properties of the skin was a stiffening at 60 g L^?1 brine on addition of CaCl₂. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry     

Biomarkers in AL Amyloidosis

Systemic AL amyloidosis is a rare complex hematological disorder caused by clonal plasma cells which produce amyloidogenic immunoglobulins. Outcome and prognosis is the combinatory result of the extent and pattern of organ involvement secondary to amyloid fibril deposition and the biology and burden of the underlying plasma cell clone. Prognosis, as assessed by overall survival, and early outcomes is determined by degree of cardiac dysfunction and current staging systems are based on biomarkers that reflect the degree of cardiac damage. The risk of progression to end-stage renal disease requiring dialysis is assessed by renal staging systems. Longer-term survival and response to treatment is affected by markers of the underlying plasma cell clone; the genetic background of the clonal disease as evaluated by interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization in particular has predictive value and may guide treatment selection. Free light chain assessment forms the basis of hematological response criteria and minimal residual disease as assessed by sensitive methods is gradually being incorporated into clinical practice. However, sensitive biomarkers that could aid in the early diagnosis and that could reflect all aspects of organ damage and disease biology are needed and efforts to identify them are continuous.     

Control and Data Channel Resource Allocation in OFDMA Heterogeneous Networks

This paper investigates the downlink resource allocation problem in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) consisting of macro cells and small cells sharing the same frequency band. Dense deployment of small cells overlaid by a macro layer is considered to be one of the most promising solutions for providing hotspot coverage in future 5G networks. The focus is to devise an optimised policy for small cells’ access to the shared spectrum, in terms of their transmissions, in order to keep small cell served users sum data rate at high levels while ensuring that certain level of quality of service (QoS) for the macro cell users in the vicinity of small cells is provided. Both data and control channel constraints are considered, to ensure that not only the macro cell users’ data rate demands are met, but also a certain level of Bit Error Rate (BER) is ensured for the control channel information. Control channel reliability is especially important as it holds key information to successfully decode the data channel. The problem is addressed by our proposed linear binary integer programming heuristic algorithm which maximises the small cells utility while ensuring the macro users imposed constraints. To further reduce the computational complexity, we propose a progressive interference aware low complexity heuristic solution. Discussion is also presented for the implementation possibility of our proposed algorithms in a practical network. The performance of both the proposed algorithms is compared with the conventional Reuse-1 scheme under different fading conditions and small cell loads. Results show a negligible drop in small cell performance for our proposed schemes, as a trade-off for ensuring all macro users data rate demands, while Reuse-1 scheme can even lead up to 40 % outage when control region of the small cells in heavily loaded.     

Time-optimal control of a self-propelled particle in a spatiotemporal flow field

We address a minimum-time problem that constitutes an extension of the classical Zermelo navigation problem in higher dimensions. In particular, we address the problem of steering a self-propelled particle to a prescribed terminal position with free terminal velocity in the presence of a spatiotemporal flow field. Furthermore, we assume that the norm of the rate of change of the particle's velocity relative to the flow is upper bounded by an explicit upper bound. To address the problem, we first employ Pontryagin's minimum principle to parameterise the set of candidate time-optimal control laws in terms of a parameter vector that belongs to a compact set. Subsequently, we develop a simple numerical algorithm for the computation of the minimum time-to-come function that is tailored to the particular parametrisation of the set of the candidate time-optimal control laws of our problem. The proposed approach bypasses the task of converting the optimal control problem to a parameter optimisation problem, which can be computationally intense, especially when one is interested in characterising the optimal synthesis of the minimum-time problem. Numerical simulations that illustrate the theoretical developments are presented.     

Crisis-driven changes in construction patterns: evidence from building permits in a Mediterranean city

Abstract

This study aimed to describe the construction sector’s response to the 2007–2008 recession based on the spatial analysis of 10 building activity indicators over a 25-year period (1990–2014) in Athens, Greece. Expansion and recession cycles influenced the average values of four indicators (density of new buildings, average floors per new building, density of enlarged buildings and building permits per inhabitant) without altering their spatial pattern. By contrast, the spatial distribution of six indicators (proportion of small-sized dwellings, average surface area of new buildings, average number of floors in enlarged buildings, average surface area of enlarged buildings, volume ratio of enlarged buildings compared to new buildings and ratio of new building surface area to the absolute population increase) became more heterogeneous during the study period. Local-scale indicators derived from building-permits data provide insights into building cycles, shedding light on the short-term effects of the recent crisis on the construction sector.     

Large-sample inference in the general AR(1) model

The situation where the available data arise from a general AR(1) model is discussed, and two new avenues for constructing confidence intervals for the unknown autoregressive root are proposed, one based on a Central Limit Theorem, and the other based on the block-bootstrap. The two new methodologies rely on clever preprocessing of the original series, and are subsequently free of the difficulties present in previous methods that were due to data nonstationarity and/or discontinuity in the limit distribution in the case of a unit root. Some finite-sample simulations are also presented supporting the applicability of the proposed methods, and the problem of bootstrap block size choice is discussed. Research partly supported by NSF Grant DMS-97-03964.     

The Zermelo–Voronoi diagram: A dynamic partition problem

We consider a Voronoi-like partition problem in the plane for a given finite set of generators. Each element in this partition is uniquely associated with a particular generator in the following sense: an agent that resides within a set of the partition at a given time will arrive at the generator associated with this set faster than any other agent that resides anywhere outside this set at the same instant of time. The agent’s motion is affected by the presence of a temporally varying drift, which is induced by local winds/currents. As a result, the minimum time to a destination is not equivalent to the minimum distance traveled. This simple fact has important ramifications over the partitioning problem. It is shown that this problem can be interpreted as a Dynamic Voronoi Diagram problem, where the generators are not fixed, but rather they are moving targets to be reached in minimum time. The problem is solved by first reducing it to a standard Voronoi Diagram by means of a time-varying coordinate transformation. We then extend the approach to solve the dual problem where the generators are the initial locations of a given set of agents distributed over the plane, such that each element in the partition consists of the terminal positions that can be reached by the corresponding agent faster than any other agent.