A new design of flocculation tank: the Turbomix applied to weighted flocculation.

As far as flocculation is concerned, the agglomeration of suspended particles into flocs is highly linked to the hydraulic behaviour of the agitation. The Turbomix is a special design of mixing tank; its design was developed to better control the flow during the flocculation stage. It enables a significant decrease in footprint of the process. The combination of the Turbomix and ballasted flocculation has been studied during pilot trials in terms of treatment efficiency. Its controlled hydraulic behaviour explains the efficiency of the process as proved by CFD investigation.     

VH gene family utilization of anti-acetylcholine receptor antibodies in experimental autoimmune myasthenia gravis

The immunoglobulin heavy chain (VH) gene family usage in experimental autoimmune myasthenia gravis (EAMG) model was investigated by RNA slot blot hybridization using VH gene family specific probes. Anti-acetylcholine receptor (AChR) monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) isolated from susceptible C57BL/6 and resistant BALB/c mice were found to be encoded by VH genes from at least six different families. The Vgam3.8 family was overrepresented in alpha-bungarotoxin blocking mAbs. Expression of cross-reactive idiotypes by anti-AChR mAbs was irrespective of the VH gene family usage. Strain dependent differences in susceptibility for EAMG were not reflected in an aberrant VH gene family usage of anti-AChR mAbs.     

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.     

Shelf life of powdered Campomanesia adamantium pulp in controlled environments

The objective of this study was to evaluate the shelf life of powdered guavira pulp obtained by a foam mat drying process. The dehydrated guavira pulp was packed into low density polyethylene (LDPE) bags and stored under two controlled conditions: environmental (25 °C, RH 75%) and accelerated (35 °C, RH 90%) for 90 days. The shelf life was accompanied by carrying out the following analyses every 10 days: moisture content, water activity, vitamin C content, pH and titratable acidity. Vitamin C was the quality attribute used to determine the shelf life of the product, by determining its degradation kinetics as a function of storage time. The linear regression data showed that the vitamin C degradation reaction fitted the zero and first order kinetic models. The shelf life of the powdered guavira pulp under environmental conditions was approximately 49 days, and under accelerated conditions (35 °C) 45 days. The Q10 was equal to 1.09, predicting a shelf life similar to that found under environmental conditions. The moisture content for these conditions was 10.0% e 5.4% for 35 °C and 25 °C, respectively. The above demonstrate the efficiency of the accelerated test in predicting the shelf life of the product.     

Piecewise linear skeletonization using principal curves

Proposes an algorithm to find piecewise linear skeletons of handwritten characters by using principal curves. The development of the method was inspired by the apparent similarity between the definition of principal curves (smooth curves which pass through the "middle" of a cloud of points) and medial axes (smooth curves that run equidistantly from the contours of a character image). The central fitting-and-smoothing step of the algorithm is an extension of the polygonal line algorithm, which approximates principal curves of data sets by piecewise linear curves. The polygonal line algorithm is extended to find principal graphs and complemented with two steps specific to the task of skeletonization: an initialization method to capture the approximate topology of the character, and a collection of restructuring operations to improve the structural quality of the skeleton produced by the initialization method. An advantage of our approach over existing methods is that we optimize the skeleton graph by minimizing an intuitive and explicit objective function that captures the two competing criteria of smoothing the skeleton and fitting it closely to the pixels of the character image. We tested the algorithm on isolated handwritten digits and images of continuous handwriting. The results indicated that the proposed algorithm can find a smooth medial axis in the great majority of a wide variety of character templates and that it substantially improves the pixel-wise skeleton obtained by traditional thinning methods     

Study on reuse of metal oxide-promoted sulphated zirconia in acylation reactions

A series of sulphated zirconia samples (SZ) promoted with Al₂O₃, Ga₂O₃, and Fe₂O₃ were synthesized by co-precipitation at constant pH and aged under reflux conditions. Structural, surface and catalytic properties of the samples were investigated using N₂ adsorption/desorption, thermal analysis, in-situ FTIR spectroscopy, TPR–MS and EGA–MS measurements. The catalytic performance of promoted SZ in anisole acylation has been investigated. Promotion by either Fe₂O₃ or Ga₂O₃ was found to increase the catalytic activity (yield) after recycle of catalysts with respect un-promoted sample, whereas promotion by Al₂O₃ was observed to increase the conversion but not the yield. It is worth noting that all systems present high selectivity to the p-metoxyacetophenone product.     

Monogenic Autoinflammatory Diseases: State of the Art and Future Perspectives

Systemic autoinflammatory diseases are a heterogeneous family of disorders characterized by a dysregulation of the innate immune system, in which sterile inflammation primarily develops through antigen-independent hyperactivation of immune pathways. In most cases, they have a strong genetic background, with mutations in single genes involved in inflammation. Therefore, they can derive from different pathogenic mechanisms at any level, such as dysregulated inflammasome-mediated production of cytokines, intracellular stress, defective regulatory pathways, altered protein folding, enhanced NF-kappaB signalling, ubiquitination disorders, interferon pathway upregulation and complement activation. Since the discover of pathogenic mutations of the pyrin-encoding gene MEFV in Familial Mediterranean Fever, more than 50 monogenic autoinflammatory diseases have been discovered thanks to the advances in genetic sequencing: the advent of new genetic analysis techniques and the discovery of genes involved in autoinflammatory diseases have allowed a better understanding of the underlying innate immunologic pathways and pathogenetic mechanisms, thus opening new perspectives in targeted therapies. Moreover, this field of research has become of great interest, since more than a hundred clinical trials for autoinflammatory diseases are currently active or recently concluded, allowing us to hope for considerable acquisitions for the next few years. General paediatricians need to be aware of the importance of this group of diseases and they should consider autoinflammatory diseases in patients with clinical hallmarks, in order to guide further examinations and refer the patient to a specialist rheumatologist. Here we resume the pathogenesis, clinical aspects and diagnosis of the most important autoinflammatory diseases in children.     

Learning and design of principal curves

Principal curves have been defined as “self-consistent” smooth curves which pass through the “middle” of a d-dimensional probability distribution or data cloud. They give a summary of the data and also serve as an efficient feature extraction tool. We take a new approach by defining principal curves as continuous curves of a given length which minimize the expected squared distance between the curve and points of the space randomly chosen according to a given distribution. The new definition makes it possible to theoretically analyze principal curve learning from training data and it also leads to a new practical construction. Our theoretical learning scheme chooses a curve from a class of polygonal lines with k segments and with a given total length to minimize the average squared distance over n training points drawn independently. Convergence properties of this learning scheme are analyzed and a practical version of this theoretical algorithm is implemented. In each iteration of the algorithm, a new vertex is added to the polygonal line and the positions of the vertices are updated so that they minimize a penalized squared distance criterion. Simulation results demonstrate that the new algorithm compares favorably with previous methods, both in terms of performance and computational complexity, and is more robust to varying data models     

Sounding Out Pharmaceutical Processes

High-resolution ultrasonic spectroscopy is a novel technique with enormous potential for analysis of a wide range of samples and processes. This technique is based on precision measurements of velocity and attenuation of acoustical waves at high frequencies propagating through materials. It allows fast at/on line measurements analysis of formulation consistency (composition, structure) of raw materials, ingredients and intermediates, process impurity analysis, particle sizing, batch to batch variation, stability assessment etc in pharmaceutical industry. The technology can be used for static fingerprint measurements or for dynamic analysis of systems. Optical transparency is not required as ultrasonic waves propagate through opaque samples. The analysis is fast and non-destructive. High-resolution ultrasonic spectrometers were developed, patented and brought to the market by Ultrasonic Scientific Ltd. and recognised with various international awards. These instruments require small sample volumes, down to 0.03 ml, and give excellent resolution. They can be used for the analysis of composition, aggregation, particle sizing, gelation, micellisation, crystallisation, sedimentation, enzymatic activity, conformational transitions in polymers, biopolymer-ligand binding and antigen-antibody interactions, etc. This article describes main features of High-Resolution Ultrasonic Spectroscopy and area of applications of new high-resolution HR-US series of ultrasonic spectrometers. Several applications are illustrated including the monitoring of denaturation and aggregation of proteins in antibody solution, the measurements of the particle size in emulsions, precipitation in synthetic blood substitutes and crystallisation