Grape production and Wine Processing. Control of Quality and Safety in Organic Production Chains

This leaflet provides a practical overview for producers and others involved in grape production and wine processing, of what can be done at these steps to improve the quality and safety of organically produced wine, in addition to certification and general food safety requirements. Other leaflets cover production of other commodities and separate leaflets aim at consumers and retailers

Emerging technologies for physical weed control in row crops in Euro

Review of European physical and cultural weed control methods including new directions in research and technolog

An ultra fast optical header replacement technology and its application for broadband optical packet switch.

An optical header replacement technology based on Self Electro-optic Effect Devices (SEEDs) is presented. By using the measurement result of a 75 μm long SEED device, we simulate an 8 Gbps throughput is achievable. Based on the switching characteristics of SEEDs, we proposed several methods to improve the SEEDs switching speed. An ultra fast switching speed at 50 Gbps is achievable by integrating external components and applying a pair of preset pulses. Due to the convenience of operation in both the optical domain and the electrical domain, it is very suitable for optical header processing; therefore it is an ideal candidate solution for optical fast packet switch

On the security of digital signature schemes based on error-correcting codes

We discuss the security of digital signature schemes based on error-correcting codes. Several attacks to the Xinmei scheme are surveyed, and some reasons given to explain why the Xinmei scheme failed, such as the linearity of the signature and the redundancy of public keys. Another weakness is found in the Alabbadi-Wicker scheme, which results in a universal forgery attack against it. This attack shows that the Alabbadi-Wicker scheme fails to implement the necessary property of a digital signature scheme: it is infeasible to find a false signature algorithm D from the public verification algorithm E such that E(D*(m)) = m for all messages m. Further analysis shows that this new weakness also applies to the Xinmei scheme

The impact of space flight on survival and interaction of Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34 with basalt, a volcanic moon analog rock

Microbe-mineral interactions have become of interest for space exploration as microorganisms could be used to biomine from extra-terrestrial material and extract elements useful as micronutrients in life support systems. This research aimed to identify the impact of space flight on the long-term survival of Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34 in mineral water and the interaction with basalt, a lunar-type rock in preparation for the ESA spaceflight experiment, BIOROCK. Therefore, C. metallidurans CH34 cells were suspended in mineral water supplemented with or without crushed basalt and send for 3 months on board the Russian FOTON-M4 capsule. Long-term storage had a significant impact on cell physiology and energy status (by flow cytometry analysis, plate count and intracellular ATP measurements) as 60% of cells stored on ground lost their cell membrane potential, only 17% were still active, average ATP levels per cell were significantly lower and cultivability dropped to 1%. The cells stored in the presence of basalt and exposed to space flight conditions during storage however showed less dramatic changes in physiology, with only 16% of the cells lost their cell membrane potential and 24% were still active, leading to a higher cultivability (50%) and indicating a general positive effect of basalt and space flight on survival. Microbe-mineral interactions and biofilm formation was altered by spaceflight as less biofilm was formed on the basalt during flight conditions. Leaching from basalt also changed (measured with ICP-OES), showing that cells release more copper from basalt and the presence of cells also impacted iron and magnesium concentration irrespective of the presence of basalt. The flight conditions thus could counteract some of the detrimental effects observed after the 3 month storage conditions

An application of decision trees method for fault diagnosis of induction motors

Decision tree is one of the most effective and widely used methods for building classification model. Researchers from various disciplines such as statistics, machine learning, pattern recognition, and data mining have considered the decision tree method as an effective solution to their field problems. In this paper, an application of decision tree method to classify the faults of induction motors is proposed. The original data from experiment is dealt with feature calculation to get the useful information as attributes. These data are then assigned the classes which are based on our experience before becoming data inputs for decision tree. The total 9 classes are defined. An implementation of decision tree written in Matlab is used for these data

Tactical fixed job scheduling with spread-time constraints

We address the tactical fixed job scheduling problem with spread-time constraints. In such a problem, there are a fixed number of classes of machines and a fixed number of groups of jobs. Jobs of the same group can only be processed by machines of a given set of classes. All jobs have their fixed start and end times. Each machine is associated with a cost according to its machine class. Machines have spread-time constraints, with which each machine is only available for L consecutive time units from the start time of the earliest job assigned to it. The objective is to minimize the total cost of the machines used to process all the jobs. For this strongly NP-hard problem, we develop a branch-and-price algorithm, which solves instances with up to 300 jobs, as compared with CPLEX, which cannot solve instances of 100 jobs. We further investigate the influence of machine flexibility by computational experiments. Our results show that limited machine flexibility is sufficient in most situations

Authenticity and Fraud Information to Consumers regarding Control of Quality and Safety in Organic Production Chains

This leaflet provides a practical overview for consumers of what is done to secure the authenticity and integrity of 7 types of organically produced foods, where improvements are possible and what the consumers can do to support efforts that meet their demands. Other leaflets for consumers cover taste, freshness and nutrients or safety and contamination, and separate leaflets aim at retailers or at production of specific commodities

Authenticity and Fraud Information to Retailers regarding Control of Quality and Safety in Organic Production Chains

This leaflet provides a practical overview for retailers of what is done to secure the authenticity and integrity of organically produced foods, where improvements are possible and what the retailers can do to support efforts that meet their customers’ demands. Other leaflets for retailers cover taste, freshness and nutrients or safety and contamination, and separate leaflets aim at consumers or at production of specific commodities