Screening of supports for the immobilization of pectinmethylesterase from acerola (Malpighia glabra L)

A partially purified extract of pectinmethylesterase (PME) from acerola fruit was immobilized on various supports: glass, celite, chrysotile, agarose, concanavalin A Sepharose 4B, egg shell, polyacrylamide and gelatin. In addition, reticulation with glutaraldehyde was assessed, as well as the use of gelatin in the presence of celite, glass and silica. The highest immobilization yields were obtained when the pectinmethylesterase was immobilized in concanavalin A Sepharose 4B (81.7%) and in gelatin‐water (78.0%). Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry     

Equivalence between Ampere and Grassmann's forces

We calculate the force on part of a single closed circuit due to the remaining circuit in four different geometries according to the forces of Ampere and Grassmann. All analytical calculations are performed using surface or volume current elements in order to avoid the divergences which appear with linear current elements of zero diameter. We conclude that when we consider the action of a closed circuit as a whole and utilize only circuits with closed lines of current, there will be an equivalence between the expressions of Grassmann and Ampere. This means that both of them are compatible with the experimental findings related to Ampere's bridge, contrary to the opinion of some authors     

A Genre-Aware Approach to Focused Crawling

Focused crawlers have as their main goal to crawl Web pages that are relevant to a specific topic or user interest, playing an important role for a great variety of applications. In general, they work by trying to find and crawl all kinds of pages deemed as related to an implicitly declared topic. However, users are often not simply interested in any document about a topic, but instead they may want only documents of a given type or genre on that topic to be retrieved. In this article, we describe an approach to focused crawling that exploits not only content-related information but also genre information present in Web pages to guide the crawling process. This approach has been designed to address situations in which the specific topic of interest can be expressed by specifying two sets of terms, the first describing genre aspects of the desired pages and the second related to the subject or content of these pages, thus requiring no training or any kind of preprocessing. The effectiveness, efficiency and scalability of the proposed approach are demonstrated by a set of experiments involving the crawling of pages related to syllabi of computer science courses, job offers in the computer science field and sale offers of computer equipments. These experiments show that focused crawlers constructed according to our genre-aware approach achieve levels of F1 superior to 88%, requiring the analysis of no more than 65% of the visited pages in order to find 90% of the relevant pages. In addition, we experimentally analyze the impact of term selection on our approach and evaluate a proposed strategy for semi-automatic generation of such terms. This analysis shows that a small set of terms selected by an expert or a set of terms specified by a typical user familiar with the topic is usually enough to produce good results and that such a semi-automatic strategy is very effective in supporting the task of selecting the sets of terms required to guide a crawling process.     

Motivations for the IT Professional Turnaway Intention: A Delphi Approach

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we use the Delphi method to identify the main motivations that have led IT professionals to intend to move to another area. We found that the pursuit of career growth and the quest for acquiring new experiences and abilities have a marked impact on the IT professional turnaway intention. Moreover, female IT professionals and IT professionals oriented by the career advancement paradigm have a higher propensity to abandon the IT area.     

Improved fallow: growth and nitrogen accumulation of five native tree species in Brazil

Nitrogen (N) is the most important yield-limiting factor in agricultural systems, however, N application can lead to emissions and environmental problems such as global warming (N₂O) and groundwater contamination (NO₃ ^?). This study analyses the N balance, nitrogen-use efficiency, and N loss potential of conventional farming systems (arable farming, improved arable farming, and agroforestry) and organic farming systems (mixed farming, arable farming, and agroforestry) based on long-term field experiments in southern Germany. The effects of the conversion of farm structure and N management are identified. The conventional farming systems in this study were high N-input and high N-output systems. The conventional arable farming system had the lowest nitrogen-use efficiency and the highest N surplus. An optimised N management and the use of high-yielding crop varieties improved its nitrogen-use efficiency. The establishment of conventional agroforestry resulted in the reduction of N input, N output and N surplus, while maintaining high yields. The organic mixed farming system is characterised by a relatively high N input and N output, the accumulation of soil organic nitrogen, the highest nitrogen-use efficiency, and the lowest N surplus of all analysed systems. These good results can be attributed to the intensive farm N cycle between soil–plant–animal. The shift from organic mixed farming to organic arable farming system extensified the N cycle, reduced N input, crop yield and N output. The change from organic arable farming to organic agroforestry reduced the N input, increased the biomass yield, and remained the N surplus within an optimal range.     

Polymer electrolytes based on a ternary miscible blend of poly(ethylene oxide), poly(bisphenol A-co-epichlorohydrin) and poly(vinyl ethyl ether)

Ternary blends of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO), poly(bisphenol A-co-epichlorohydrin) (PBE) and poly(vinyl ethyl ether) (PVEE) were obtained as films and characterized by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and vibrational spectroscopy (FTIR). From the DSC results, phase diagrams for the ternary blends were determined, where the variation of the viscoelastic phase extent as a function of the polymers composition was determined. The DSC results also indicated miscibility of the system, exhibiting only one glass transition temperature (T_g) and decrease in the crystallinity of the system, as well as decrease in the crystallinity of PEO present in the blends. Vibrational spectroscopy (FTIR) provided information on the intermolecular interactions between the pairs PBE/PEO and PBE/PVEE, via hydrogen bond interaction. From the FTIR analyses, molecular model systems of equilibrium among the interacting structures were proposed as a molecular basis for the miscibility of the system.Polymer electrolytes based on the ternary blend containing 60/25/15 (PEO/PBE/PVEE) mass percent and lithium perchlorate (LiClO₄) were obtained and characterized by DSC, FTIR, optical microscopy and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Solid electrolytes containing up to 10 wt% LiClO₄ exhibited a single-phase behavior, evidenced by the DSC results. For these electrolytes, FTIR spectra indicated the formation of polymer-ion complexes, in which the cation (Li⁺) acts favoring the polymer-polymer miscibility. Electrolytes containing LiClO₄ higher than 10 wt% exhibit a multiple phase behavior, in which a PEO-rich, salt-containing phase is present in equilibrium with PBE or PVEE-rich phases. Maximum ionic conductivity at room temperature, for the electrolyte containing 20 wt% LiClO₄, reached 4.23 × 10⁻³ Ω⁻¹ cm⁻¹, while all samples exhibited conductivity of approximately 10⁻¹ Ω⁻¹ cm⁻¹ at 80 °C.     

Stress and strain distribution in demineralized enamel: A micro‐CT based finite element study

Physiological oral mechanical forces may play a role on the progression of enamel carious lesions to cavitation. Thus, the aim of this study was to describe, by 3D finite element analysis, stress, and strain patterns in sound and carious enamel after a simulated occlusal load. Micro‐CT based models were created and meshed with tetrahedral elements (based on an extracted third molar), namely: a sound (ST) and a carious tooth (CT). For the CT, enamel material properties were assigned according to the micro‐CT gray values. Below the threshold corresponding to the enamel lesion (2.5 g/cm³) lower and isotropic elastic modulus was assigned (E = 18 GPa against E₁ = 80 GPa, E₂ = E₃ = 20 GPa for sound enamel). Both models were imported into a FE solver where boundary conditions were assigned and a pressure load (500 MPa) was applied at the occlusal surface. A linear static analysis was performed, considering anisotropy in sound enamel. ST showed a more efficient transfer of maximum principal stress from enamel to the dentin layer, while for the CT, enamel layer was subjected to higher and concentrated loads. Maximum principal strain distributions were seen at the carious enamel surface, especially at the central fossa, correlating to the enamel cavity seen at the original micro‐CT model. It is possible to conclude that demineralized enamel compromises appropriate stress transfer from enamel to dentin, contributing to the odds of fracture and cavitation. Enamel fracture over a dentin lesion may happen as one of the normal pathways to caries progression and may act as a confounding factor during clinical diagnostic decisions. Microsc. Res. Tech. 78:865–872, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Development of low-alcohol isotonic beer by interrupted fermentation

Alcohol-free beer with isotonic properties is getting more popular and its production can be carried out by different production strategies; however, interrupted fermentation is still a challenge. Therefore, the objective of this study was to develop a low-alcohol isotonic beer (<0.5% v/v) by interrupted fermentation. Moreover, the major objective is to compare the developed product to commercial beverages (sports drinks, ‘Pilsen' regular beer, alcohol-free beers and low-alcohol isotonic beer). The beverages were evaluated based on pH, alcohol content (% v/v), total titratable acidity (mEq L⁻¹), osmolality (mOsmol kg⁻¹), bitterness International Bitterness Units, colour European Brewery Convention, total phenolic compounds (mg L⁻¹ gallic acid), reducing and total sugars (%) and Na and K contents (mg L⁻¹). The developed low-alcohol isotonic beer presented characteristics similar to sports drinks, with the advantage of being richer in phenolic compounds and suitable osmolality. Despite salts were added in its formulation, the grades attributed to all beers employed in the sensory evaluation, as well as the purchase intention did not present significant differences.