Microbial communities and malt quality of durum wheat used in brewing

Durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) has potential as an adjunct in brewing given its agronomic, chemical and technological properties. The aim of this work were to identify the cultivable microflora and evaluate the technological quality of the durum wheat variety ‘Senatore Cappelli’ grown and used by a craft brewery in Sardinia, Italy. The isolated bacterial strains were mainly rhizospheric (Kocuria rizophila, Microbacterium aerolatum and Bacillus pumilus) and associated with the microbiota of wheat (Staphylococcus spp.). None have been reported previously as spoilage species in brewing. The dominant yeast genera were Cryptococcus spp. and Rhodotorula spp., followed by Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The dominant filamentous fungus genera were Alternaria and Rhizopus. Low levels of mycotoxigenic Fusarium spp., Aspergillus spp. and Penicillium spp. were isolated. However, the levels of deoxynivalenol, T2‐HT2, fumonisin, aflatoxin and ochratoxin detected in the malt and grain were below the thresholds defined by European law. Malt obtained from raw grain showed interesting technological properties, but required specific malting parameters different from those of common wheat and barley. These data suggest that the use of locally grown durum wheat in brewing can increase sustainability and reduce costs, while reinforcing the link with the terroir and promoting reduced mycotoxin levels. © 2019 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling     

Coded transmissions for space links affected by solar scintillation: Baseband analysis

A thorough analysis of the behavior of error‐correcting codes over space links affected by solar scintillation is presented. The relevant channel parameters are fixed through the development of a model based on real missions' data. Both telecommand and telemetry links are considered in fast and slow fading conditions. Besides classical coherent modulation schemes, the possibility to use noncoherent modulation schemes is considered, to eliminate the problem of phase tracking. For the case of channels with very slow fading, the use of external interleavers or erasure coding is proposed to cope with error bursts.     

Highly efficient preparation of free all-trans-astaxanthin from Haematococcus pluvialis extract by a rapid biocatalytic method based on crude extracellular enzyme extract

A highly efficient, rapid, green and safe procedure for the preparation of free all-trans-astaxanthin from Haematococcus pluvialis algal extract, by a crude extracellular enzyme extract, was reported. The free all-trans-astaxanthin obtained by the biocatalysed method had fewer side products compared to the saponification procedure. Through single-factor experiments and a Box–Behnken design, it was possible to find the optimal biocatalytic conditions for the hydrolysis of 2 mg of H. pluvialis oil with 14.7 mg (protein content) of lyophilised crude extracellular enzyme extract obtained from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The reaction was carried out in 30 min at pH 9.16 and 36 °C, in 5.5 mL total reaction volume, under nitrogen atmosphere and dark conditions. The hydrolysis ratio of the astaxanthin esters was 98.72%, and the production of free all-trans-astaxanthin was 82.83 μg per mg of H. pluvialis oil. The method herein reported was simpler than other enzymatic methods previously described and allowed saving of time and costs.     

Detection of glyphosate and its metabolites in food of animal origin based on ion-chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (IC-HRMS)

Glyphosate and glufosinate are broad spectrum herbicides, widely used in agriculture and in inhabited or industrialised areas, and aminomethylphosphonic acid is a degradation product of glyphosate. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer reported that glyphosate is a probable carcinogenic. In 2017, however, a scientific opinion of the European Chemicals Agency concluded that glyphosate is not proven to be carcinogenic, mutagenic or to have negative effects on reproduction. Nevertheless, aminomethylphosphonic acid was not considered. Due to their chemical-physical characteristics, these molecules present difficulties that have not yet allowed routine monitoring to be carried out. For these reasons, we developed and validated a simple and versatile liquid extraction, before IC-HRMS analysis, of three different complex matrices: honey, bass fish and bovine muscle. Among the satisfactory validation parameters, the LOQs in the range of 4.30–9.26 ng g^?1 demonstrated high method sensitivity, compared to the few works present in literature. Finally, the method was applied to real commercial samples, which showed no traces of the selected pesticides.     

Subspace Clustering for Situation Assessment in Aquatic Drones: A Sensitivity Analysis for State-Model Improvement

Abstract

In this paper, we propose the use of subspace clustering to detect the states of dynamical systems from sequences of observations. In particular, we generate sparse and interpretable models that relate the states of aquatic drones involved in autonomous water monitoring to the properties (e.g., statistical distribution) of data collected by drone sensors. The subspace clustering algorithm used is called SubCMedians. A quantitative experimental analysis is performed to investigate the connections between i) learning parameters and performance, ii) noise in the data and performance. The clustering obtained with this analysis outperforms those generated by previous approaches.     

Designer portfolio archetypes in design-intensive industries

ABSTRACT

The paper analyzes the designer portfolio configurations employed by firms, in design-intensive industries, to implement different product design strategies. Using the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis methodology, the paper explores how decorative lamps manufacturers, that first adopted the new LED technology, assembled their designer portfolios. The study shows that, in the early phases of LED lamps, four different designer portfolio archetypes were adopted by firms, two of them related to a product language divergence strategy and two to a product language convergence strategy: international design-star archetype, crowd design-innovator archetype, local ambassador archetype, international bridge archetype. These four archetypes are discussed, contributing to a better understanding of the relationship between product design strategies and designers’ management in design-intensive industries.     

Energy-aware lazy scheduling algorithm for energy-harvesting sensor nodes

The main problem in dealing with energy-harvesting (EH) sensor nodes is represented by the scarcity and non-stationarity of powering, due to the nature of the renewable energy sources. In this work, the authors address the problem of task scheduling in processors located in sensor nodes powered by EH sources. Some interesting solutions have appeared in the literature in the recent past, as the lazy scheduling algorithm (LSA), which represents a performing mix of scheduling effectiveness and ease of implementation. With the aim of achieving a more efficient and conservative management of energy resources, a new improved LSA solution is here proposed. Indeed, the automatic ability of foreseeing at run-time the task energy starving (i.e. the impossibility of finalizing a task due to the lack of power) is integrated within the original LSA approach. Moreover, some modifications have been applied in order to reduce the LSA computational complexity and thus maximizing the amount of energy available for task execution. The resulting technique, namely energy-aware LSA, has then been tested in comparison with the original one, and a relevant performance improvement has been registered both in terms of number of executable tasks and in terms of required computational burden.     

An LMI approach for H ∞ analysis and control of discrete-time piecewise affine systems

In this paper we investigate some analysis and control problems for discrete-time hybrid systems in the piece-wise affine form. By using arguments from the dissipativity theory for non-linear systems, we show that H X analysis and synthesis problems can be formulated and solved via linear matrix inequalities by taking into account the switching structure of the considered system. In this paper we address the generalized problem of controlling hybrid systems whose switching structure does not depend only on the state but also on the control input.     

On the detection of card-sharing traffic through wavelet analysis and Support Vector Machines

In the last years, the interest in methods and techniques for circumventing the security of the available digital video broadcasting systems is continuously increasing. Digital TV providers are struggling to restrict access to their video contents only to authorized users, by deploying more and more sophisticated conditional access systems. At the state-of-the-art, the most significant menace is the card-sharing activity which exploits a known weakness allowing an authorized subscriber to provide access to digital contents to a potentially large group of unauthorized ones connected over a communication network. This is usually realized by using ad hoc customized devices. Detecting the presence of these illegal systems on a network, by recognizing their related traffic is an issue of primary importance. Unfortunately, to avoid the identification of such traffic, payload obfuscation strategies based on encryption are often used, hindering packet inspection techniques.This paper presents a strategy for the detection of card-sharing traffic, empowered by machine-learning-driven traffic classification techniques and based on the natural capability of wavelet analysis to decompose a traffic time series into several component series associated with particular time and frequency scales and hence allowing its observation at different frequency component levels and with different resolutions. These ideas have been used for the proof-of-concept implementation of an SVM-based binary classification scheme that relies only on time regularities of the traffic and not on the packet contents and hence is immune to payload obfuscation techniques.