The algebraic molecular model in 12^{12}C and its application to the α\alpha+12^{12}C scattering: from densities and transition densities to optical potentials and nuclear formfactors

The algebraic molecular model is used in $^{12}$C to construct densities and transition densities connecting low-lying states of the rotovibrational spectrum, first and foremost those belonging to the rotational bands based on the ground and the Hoyle states. These densities are then used as basic ingredients to calculate, besides electromagnetic transition probabilities, nuclear potentials and formfactors to describe elastic and inelastic $\alpha$+$^{12}$C scattering processes. The calculated densities and transition densities are also compared with those obtained by directly solving the problem of three interacting alpha's within a three-body approach where continuum effects, relevant in particular for the Hoyle state, are properly taken into account.Comment: Contribution to "Symmetries and Order: Algebraic Methods in Many Body Systems", in honor of F. Iachell

Ocean modelling for aquaculture and fisheries in Irish waters

The Marine Institute, Ireland, runs a suite of operational regional and coastal ocean models. Recent developments include several tailored products that focus on the key needs of the Irish aquaculture sector. In this article, an overview of the products and services derived from the models are presented. The authors give an overview of a shellfish model developed in-house and that was designed to predict the growth, the physiological interactions with the ecosystem, and the level of coliform contamination of the blue mussel. As such, this model is applicable in studies on the carrying capacity of embayments, assessment of the impacts of pollution on aquaculture grounds, and the determination of shellfish water classes. Further services include the assimilation of the model-predicted shelf water movement into a new harmful algal bloom alert system used to inform end users of potential toxic shellfish events and high biomass blooms that include fish-killing species. Models are also used to identify potential sites for offshore aquaculture, to inform studies of potential cross-contamination in farms from the dispersal of planktonic sea lice larvae and other pathogens that can infect finfish, and to provide modelled products that underpin the assessment and advisory services on the sustainable exploitation of the resources of marine fisheries. This paper demonstrates that ocean models can provide an invaluable contribution to the sustainable blue growth of aquaculture and fisheries

Strategic planning of the integrated urban wastewater system using adaptation pathways (article)

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordThe dataset associated with this article is located in ORE at: https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.2443Emerging threats such as climate change and urbanisation pose an unprecedented challenge to integrated management of urban wastewater systems, which are expected to function in a reliable, resilient and sustainable manner regardless of future conditions. Traditional long term planning is rather limited in developing no-regret strategies that avoid maladaptive lock-ins in the near term and allow for flexibility in the long term. In this study, a novel adaptation pathways approach for urban wastewater management is developed in order to explore the compliance and adaptability potential of intervention strategies in a long term operational period, accounting for different future scenarios and multiple performance objectives in terms of reliability, resilience and sustainability. This multi-criteria multi-scenario approach implements a regret-based method to assess the relative performance of two types of adaptation strategies: (I) standalone strategies (i.e. green or grey strategies only); and (II) hybrid strategies (i.e. combined green and grey strategies). A number of adaptation thresholds (i.e. the points at which the current strategy can no longer meet defined objectives) are defined to identify compliant domains (i.e. periods of time in a future scenario when the performance of a strategy can meet the targets). The results obtained from a case study illustrate the trade-off between adapting to short term pressures and addressing long term challenges. Green strategies show the highest performance in simultaneously meeting near and long term needs, while grey strategies are found less adaptable to changing circumstances. In contrast, hybrid strategies are effective in delivering both short term compliance and long term adaptability. It is also shown that the proposed adaption pathways method can contribute to the identification of adaptation strategies that are developed as future conditions unfold, allowing for more flexibility and avoiding long term commitment to strategies that may cause maladaptation. This provides insights into the near term and long term planning of ensuring the reliability, resilience and sustainability of integrated urban drainage systems.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Application of an electronic tongue as a single-run tool for olive oils physicochemical and sensory simultaneous assessment

Olive oil is highly appreciated due to its nutritional and organoleptic characteristics. However, a huge compositional variation is observed between olive oils, requiring the use of diverse analytical techniques for its classification including titration, spectrophotometry and chromatography, as well as sensory analysis. Chemical analysis is usually time-consuming, expensive and require skilled technicians, while the sensorial ones are dependent upon individual subjective evaluations, even if performed by trained panellists. This work evaluated and demonstrated the feasibility of using a potentiometric electronic tongue, comprising non-specific lipid polymeric and cross-sensitive sensor membranes, coupled with chemometric tools based on different sub-sets of sensors (from 11 to 14 sensors), to predict key quality parameters of olive oils based on single-run assays. The multivariate linear models established for 23 centenarian olive trees from different cultivars allowed predicting peroxide value, oxidative stability, total phenols and tocopherols contents, CIELAB scale parameters (L*, a* and b* values), as well as 11 gustatory-retronasal positive attributes (green, sweet, bitter, pungent, tomato and tomato leaves, apple, banana, cabbage, fresh herbs and dry fruits) with satisfactory accuracy (0.90±0.07 R2 0.98±0.02 for the repeated K-fold-CV procedure, which ensured that 25% of the data was used for internal-validation purposes). The electronic tongue device had an accuracy statistically similar to that achieved with standard analytical techniques, pointing out the versatility of the device for the fast and simultaneous chemical and sensory analysis of olive oil.Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006984 – Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM, Project UID/BIO/04469/2013 – CEB, Project UID/QUI/50006/2013 - REQUIMTE-LAQV and strategic project PEst-OE/AGR/UI0690/2014 – CIMO all funded by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through COMPETE2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) – and by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia I.P.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Monitoring physicochemical and sensory attributes during debittering of stoned green olives

Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM -UID/EQU/50020/2019 -funded by national funds through FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) and by Project UID/BIO/04469/2013–CEB, and strategic project PEst- OE/AGR/UI0690/2014–CIMO all funded by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through COMPETE2020 –Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) –and by national funds through FCT–Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. Ítala M.G. Marx acknowledges Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through FCT PhD reference: (SFRH/BD/137283/2018)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Olive oil total phenolic contents and sensory sensations trends during oven and microwave heating processes and their discrimination using an electronic tongue

Olive oil has unique organoleptic attributes and its consumption is associated with nutritional and health benefits, which are mainly related to its rich composition in phenolic and volatile compounds. The use of olive oil in heat-induced cooking leads to deep reduction of phenolic and volatile concentrations and to changes of the sensory profiles. This work confirmed that oven and microwave heating significantly reduced total phenolic contents (value < 0.0001, one-way ANOVA), more pronounced in the latter, together with a significant reduction of the intensity of fruity, sweet, bitter, pungent, and green attributes (value < 0.0001, Kruskal-Wallis test), particularly for fruity and green sensations. Besides, bitter, fruity, green, and pungent intensities showed a linear dependency with the total phenolic contents (-Pearson 0.9694). Finally, the potentiometric electronic tongue together with linear discriminant analysis-simulated annealing algorithm allowed satisfactory discrimination (sensitivities of %, for repeated -fold cross-validation) of olive oils subjected to intense microwave heating (510min, 160205°C) from those processed under usual cooking conditions (oven heating during 1560min or microwave heating during 1.53min, 72165°C). This could be due to the different responses of the electronic tongue towards olive oils with diverse phenolic and sensory profiles.This work was financially supported by Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM, Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006984;CQ-VR, Project UID/QUI/00616/2013; CEB, Project UID/BIO/04469/2013; REQUIMTE-LAQV, Project UID/QUI/50006/2013; and CIMO, Strategic Project PEst-OE/AGR/UI0690/2014, all funded by Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) through COMPETE2020-Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) and by national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal. Nuno Rodrigues acknowledges FCT, POPH-QREN, and FSE for the Ph.D. Grant (SFRH/ BD/104038/2014).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Effect of malaxation temperature on the physicochemical and sensory quality of cv. Cobrançosa olive oil and its evaluation using an electronic tongue

Olive oil is consumed worldwide due to its appreciated sensory attributes and health benefits, which are related with its fatty acid profile and richness in phenolic compounds that support a health claim concerning olive oil protective effects on blood lipids. However, to ensure that oils possess a rich phenolic content, the extraction conditions can be optimised. Therefore, the effects of malaxation temperature (22, 28 and 34 ºC) on the physicochemical and sensory characteristics of cv. Cobrançosa olive oils were evaluated. The oils extracted at 22 ºC had an overall better physicochemical quality (higher total phenols content, greater oxidative stability, lower free acidity and oxidation markers) and more intense positive sensory sensations (higher bitterness and pungency). Additionally, this study showed that a potentiometric electronic tongue could be used to discriminate oils taking into account the effect of malaxation temperature on the overall physicochemical and sensory scores (all samples correctly classified for leave-one-out cross-validation) with a predictive classification similar to that achieved by trained panellists. This finding strengthens the hypothesis that this device could be used as a complementary/alternative taste tool for assessing the impact of the extraction conditions on the oils physicochemical and sensory characteristics.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support by national funds FCT/MCTES to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020), to CEB (UIDB/04469/2020), to REQUIMTE-LAQV (UIDB/50006/2020) units and to BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte 2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. ´Itala M.G. Marx also acknowledges the PhD research grant (SFRH/BD/137283/2018) provided by FCT. Nuno Rodrigues thanks to National funding by FCT- Foundation for Science and Technology, P.I., through the institutional scientific employment program-contract.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Volatile-olfactory profiles of cv. Arbequina olive oils extracted without/with olive leaves addition and their discrimination using an electronic nose

Oils from cv. Arbequina were industrially extracted together with olive leaves of cv. Arbequina or Santulhana (1%, w/w), and their olfactory and volatile profiles were compared to those extracted without leaves addition (control). The leaves incorporation resulted in green fruity oils with fresh herbs and cabbage olfactory notes, while control oils showed a ripe fruity sensation with banana, apple, and dry hay grass notes. In all oils, total volatile contents varied from 57.5 to 65.5mg/kg (internal standard equivalents), being aldehydes followed by esters, hydrocarbons, and alcohols the most abundant classes. No differences in the number of volatiles were observed. The incorporation of cv. Arbequina or Santulhana leaves significantly reduced the total content of alcohols and esters (minus 3756% and 1013%, respectively). Contrary, cv. Arbequina leaves did not influence the total content of aldehydes or hydrocarbons, while cv. Santulhana leaves promoted a significant increase (plus 49 and 10%, respectively). Thus, a leaf-cultivar dependency was observed, tentatively attributed to enzymatic differences related to the lipoxygenase pathway. Olfactory or volatile profiles allowed the successful unsupervised differentiation of the three types of studied cv. Arbequina oils. Finally, a lab-made electronic nose was applied to allow the nondestructive discrimination of cv. Arbequina oils extracted with or without the incorporation of olive leaves (100% and 99±5% of correct classifications for leave-one-out and repeated K-fold cross-validation variants), being a practical tool for ensuring the label correctness if future commercialization is envisaged. Moreover, this finding also strengthened that olive oils extracted with or without olive leaves incorporation possessed quite different olfactory patterns, which also depended on the cultivar of the olive leaves.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support by national funds FCT/MCTES to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020), CEB (UIDB/04469/2020), REQUIMTE-LAQV (UIDB/ 50006/2020) units, and the Associate Laboratories for Green Chemistry-LAQV (UIDB/50006/2020) and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2020), as well as to BioTecNorte operation (NORTE01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020—Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. ´Itala M.G. Marx also acknowledges the PhD research grant (SFRH/BD/137283/2018) provided by FCT. Nuno Rodrigues likes to thank national funding by FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, P.I., through the institutional scientific employment program contract.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio