Validation of a Method for Analysis of Aroma Compounds in Red Wine using Liquid–Liquid Extraction and GC–MS

An analytical method for determination of volatile composition of wines using sample preparation by liquid–liquid extraction and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry for separation and detection has been developed and validated. Extraction of volatile compounds was performed in dichloromethane, and 1-octanol was added as an internal standard. Kékfrankos red wine produced in Villány wine region in Hungary was used as a model wine for testing and validation of the method. The developed method allowed satisfactory determination of 33 volatile compounds in the wines. Compounds analyzed include alcohols, esters, lactones, fatty acids, furans, and nitrogen compounds. The calibration curves of the four reference compounds used (2-phenyl ethanol, ethyl nonanoate, butyrolactone, and tyrosol) were linear in all cases with correlation coefficients (R ²) ranging from 0.9951 to 0.9992. The accuracy of the method was checked with a standard addition method (recovery 92.2–103 %), showing good repeatability and reproducibility (RSD?<?10 %).     

Metals in organic and conventional wheat flours determined by an optimised and validated ICP‐MS method

This study was undertaken (i) to optimise and validate a suitable method for multi‐element determination in cereal products and (ii) to evaluate multi‐element content differences in commercially available conventional vs. organic wheat flours. Presented ICP‐MS method is simple and accurate for the determination of eighteen elements in cereal food. Obtained results show differences in metal content between conventional and organic wheat flours and confirm that both types of production are well within the toxicological safety limits regarding the metal contents. The significant differences among conventional vs. organic wheat flours were obtained for As, Cd, Cr, Fe, Mg, Mo, Ni and V. Toxic metals (Al, As, Cd and Pb) input was higher in conventional compared with organic wheat flours. However, further and long‐term research is needed to clearly underline the effects of organic agricultural practice on the quality of food products.     

Layout design of manufacturable quantum-dot cellular automata

Quantum-dot cellular automaton (QCA) is an emergent technology that is not hindered by quantum effects that limit the scaling of CMOS technology, but instead employs them to perform computation. However, this brings its own impediments, such as the influence of the thermodynamic effects. Beside that, QCA has to be coupled with CMOS circuitry of different size features to enable clocking. We discussed all these facts and devised a floorplan which would facilitate manufacturability. Based on it we developed the process of QCA layout design and defined the design rules that must be considered in order to ensure correct operation. These instructions enable the automatization of designing a QCA circuit layout.     

Capillary electrophoretic profiling of tryptic digests of water soluble proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis-transgenic and non-transgenic maize species

Capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) has been applied to separation and characterisation of enzymatic (tryptic) hydrolysates of water-soluble proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)-transgenic (Aristis-Bt) and two native non-transgenic (Aristis and Coventry) maize varieties. Water-soluble proteins were extracted from the flour of these maize species and digested by bovine pancreatic trypsin immobilised on agarose gel in 100 mM ammonium hydrocarbonate buffer, pH 7.9. The yielded tryptic digests of proteins were analysed by CZE in four acidic background electrolytes (BGEs) (100 mM H₃PO₄, 50 mM Tris, pH 2.25; 500 mM acetic acid, pH 2.54; 200 mM formic acid, 200 mM acetic acid, pH 2.05; and 200 mM iminodiacetic acid, pH 2.26) using a lab-made CZE apparatus equipped with bare fused silica capillary and UV-absorption detector operating at 206 nm. Among the tested BGEs, the best resolution of the tryptic peptides of extracted proteins of the above three maize species was obtained in isoelectric BGE, 200 mM iminodiacetic acid, pH 2.26. Selected resolved tryptic peptides of proteins were characterised by effective electrophoretic mobilities and corrected (migration times normalised) peak areas. Some significant relative qualitative and quantitative differences in CZE-UV profiling of tryptic protein digests were found, which can be potentially used to differentiate transgenic Aristis Bt and non-transgenic Aristis varieties or two native non-transgenic varieties, Aristis and Coventry.     

Fuzzy gain-scheduling control of a gas-liquid separation plant implemented on a PLC

In the paper an approach to the non-linear control of a gas-liquid separation plant is presented. To solve the problem the fuzzy gain-scheduling method was used and implemented on a programmable logic controller (PLC). Velocity-based linearization approach was used for control system design and implementation for the first time in process control application. Emphasis was placed on the appropriate adaptation of the method and some important implementation issues. The algorithm was carefully designed and tested by using ordinary simulation, hardware-in-the-loop simulation, and experiments on the real plant. The results show that the proposed approach substantially improves the closed-loop performance of the plant.     

Effect of ternary solute interaction on interfacial segregation and grain boundary embrittlement

Effect of ternary solute interaction on interfacial segregation and grain boundary embrittlement in an M–I–J system is modeled on the basis of combined Guttmann and Rice–Wang approaches. It is clearly shown that repulsive I–J interaction strengthens interfacial segregation of the impurity I, suppresses segregation of the solute J, and substantially enhances intergranular embrittlement. Attractive interaction exhibits an opposite effect. Generally, the effect of the ternary interaction is weaker than that of the binary one. Although there are only rare experimental data in this respect, their comparison to model calculations shows a very good agreement.     

TLM modeling of a probe‐coupled cylindrical cavity based on compact wire model in the cylindrical mesh

This article describes an implementation of a compact wire model into the three‐dimensional transmission‐line matrix (TLM) cylindrical mesh for the purpose of an efficient analysis of probe‐coupled cylindrical microwave cavity devices. Because of a cylindrical grid structure and empirical nature of the compact model, this implementation has to take into account a change of wire model parameters with a variable cross section of the TLM nodes through which a wire conductor passes. The model accuracy has been experimentally verified and compared with the corresponding results reached by the TLM method based on a rectangular grid in order to consider its advantages. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2012.     

A Linear Optimal Transportation Framework for Quantifying and Visualizing Variations in Sets of Images

Transportation-based metrics for comparing images have long been applied to analyze images, especially where one can interpret the pixel intensities (or derived quantities) as a distribution of ‘mass’ that can be transported without strict geometric constraints. Here we describe a new transportation-based framework for analyzing sets of images. More specifically, we describe a new transportation-related distance between pairs of images, which we denote as linear optimal transportation (LOT). The LOT can be used directly on pixel intensities, and is based on a linearized version of the Kantorovich-Wasserstein metric (an optimal transportation distance, as is the earth mover’s distance). The new framework is especially well suited for computing all pairwise distances for a large database of images efficiently, and thus it can be used for pattern recognition in sets of images. In addition, the new LOT framework also allows for an isometric linear embedding, greatly facilitating the ability to visualize discriminant information in different classes of images. We demonstrate the application of the framework to several tasks such as discriminating nuclear chromatin patterns in cancer cells, decoding differences in facial expressions, galaxy morphologies, as well as sub cellular protein distributions.