Effect of type of suckling and polyunsaturated fatty acid use on lamb production. 2. Chemical and fatty acid composition of raw and cooked meat

This study was carried out in order to examine the chemical and fatty acid composition of raw and cooked meat obtained fromlambs raised under mothers or reared by artificial suckling with acidified milk replacers with or without polyunsaturated fattyacid (PUFA) supplementation. Meat samples were taken from twenty Gentile di Puglia male lambs subjected to the followingfeeding treatments: the control group received only maternal milk (MM, n.=6) while two groups were reared by artificial sucklingwith an acidified milk replacer (MR, n.=7) or with an acidified milk replacer supplemented with 10 ml/l of a PUFA enrichedoil (MR+PUFA, n.=7). Lambs were slaughtered at 45 days of age. After 24 hours of refrigeration at 4 °C, the lumbar regionwas dissected from each right half-carcass and split into pieces, one of which was used raw while the other was cooked in aventilated electric oven at 180 °C until an internal temperature of 75 °C was reached. Chemical and fatty acid analysis wereperformed on raw and cooked meat, while only raw meat was assessed for cholesterol. Cooking losses were also evaluated.Meat obtained from MR+PUFA fed lambs contained more fat (P<0.01) and less protein (P<0.05) than MM lambs. Nursingunder mothers increased the total amount of saturated fatty acids (SFA), compared with both the MR group (P<0.05) and tothe MR+PUFA one (P<0.01). In MM meat samples, fewer PUFAs (P<0.01) and omega-6 fatty acids (P<0.01) were found incomparison with both MR diets. The highest PUFA/SFA ratio of meat was recorded for the MR+PUFA group (0.27), with statisticaldifferences respect to the MR group (0.21; P<0.05) and to the MM one (0.14; P<0.01). Lambs raised with maternalmilk produced meat containing more cholesterol than the MR+PUFA group (85.89 vs 76.26 mg/100 g; P<0.05). The atherogenicityindex of meat was higher following natural rearing in comparison with the MR+PUFA treatment (1.34 vs 1.05;P<0.05), while the PCL/PCE ratio was significantly higher in MR+PUFA samples than in both MM and MR ones (0.93 vs 0.77and 0.76, respectively; P<0.05). Cooking cancelled the differences between treatments with regard to the all the dieteticparameters evaluated. In conclusion, artificial suckling with acidified milk replacers improves some meat quality features.Supplementation of milk replacers with PUFAs, although in a limited way, may improve the dietetic properties of lamb meat

Implementing dynamic changes in automation support using ocular-based metrics of mental workload: a laboratory study.

Adaptive Automation has been often invoked as a remedy to indiscriminate introduction of automation support. However, this form of automation is difficult to implement without a sensitive and reliable index of the Operator Functional State. In a series of studies we have showed the usefulness of the distribution of eye fixations as an index of mental workload to be used as a trigger of automation. Particularly, the distribution pattern was found to be sensitive to taskload variations and types, thus making it very appealing for designing adaptive systems. This approach seems to be valid and reliable, but a necessary step in this research program would be testing the effectiveness of automation driven by fixation distribution and its capability in reducing the workload. The present study is a first attempt to carry out such validation

Regenerative Approaches in Wound Healing: New Alternatives for Older Tools

Critical wounds are well known to develop in elderly people and in other conditions where inflammation, vascular, and nervous disease lead to chronical inefficiency in running up healing processes. Recent researches have been focusing on microenvironment, and specific technologies have contributed to design and produce new materials (the era of biomaterials and devices in wound healing)

Numerical Investigation of High Enthalpy Flows

Abstract This work deals with fluid dynamic simulations of high enthalpy flows. Thermochemical non-equilibrium, typical of such flows, was modelled by using the well known multi-temperature model developed by Park. The non-equilibrium model was implemented in a 2D finite volume solver of the Euler equations and was assessed by comparing the results with available experimental measurements. Several test cases concerning 2D and axisymmetric expansion nozzles were performed by varying gas composition and stagnation temperature

Shear viscosity and chemical equilibration of the QGP

We have investigated, in the frame work of the transport approach, different aspects of the QGP created in Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. The shear viscosity $\eta$ has been calculated by using the Green-Kubo relation at the cascade level. We have compared the numerical results for $\eta$ obtained from the Green-Kubo correlator with the analytical formula in both the Relaxation Time Approximation (RTA) and the Chapman-Enskog approximation (CE). From this comparison we show that in the range of temperature explored in a Heavy Ion collision the RTA underestimates the viscosity by about a factor of 2, while a good agreement is found between the CE approximation and Gree-Kubo relation already at first order of approximation. The agreement with the CE approximation supplies an analytical formula that allows to develop kinetic transport theory at fixed shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, $\eta/s$. We show some results for the build up of anisotropic flows $v_{2}$ in a transport approach at fixed shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, $\eta/s$. We study the impact of a T-dependent $\eta/s(T)$ on the generation of the elliptic flows at both RHIC and LHC. We show that the transport approach provides, in a unified way, a tool able to naturally describe the $v_{2}(p_{T})$ in a wide range of $p_{T}$, including also the description of the rise and fall and saturation of the $v_{2}(p_{T})$ observed at LHC. Finally, we have studied the evolution of the quark-gluon composition employing a Boltzmann-Vlasov transport approach that include: the mean fields dynamics, associated to the quasi-particle model, and the elastic and inelastic collisions for massive quarks and gluons. Following the chemical evolution from an initial gluon dominated plasma we predict a quark dominance close to $T_{C}$ paving the way to an hadronization via quark coalescence.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, Invited Talk given by S. Plumari at the 11th International Conference on Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (NN2012), San Antonio, Texas, USA, May 27-June 1, 2012. To appear in the NN2012 Proceedings in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS

"Chemical" composition of the Quark Gluon Plasma

In this article we discuss the issue of the quark to gluon ratio in the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). Our model to describe the QGP evolution is based on transport theory including the mean field dynamics described by a quasi-particle model.The last is able to take into account for the lattice QCD thermodynamics and implies a "chemical" equilibrium ratio between quarks and gluons strongly increasing as T approaches to the temperature of the phase transition Tc. We present first the tests performed in a fixed box to check that our code is able to reproduce the equilibrium ratio and then the results obtained for the simulations of ultra-Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions (uRHIC's) at RHIC and LHC energies. We observe a rapid evolution from a gluon dominated initial state to a quark dominated plasma and we see that near Tc almost 80% of the particles composing the plasma are quarks. This has potentially a strong impact on several quantitative aspects of QGP probes and furnishes a justification to the coalescence hadronization model

ANALISI GEOSPAZIALI PER LA VALUTAZIONE DELLA BIOMASSA ALL’INTERNO DI UN AREA PROTETTA NEL CONTEST DELL’AREA METROPOLITANA DI ROMA

La Città Metropolitana di Roma Capitale (Italia) rappresenta una vasta area, i cui scopi non sono solo istituzionali, ma riguardano anche funzioni specifiche, come la promozione e il coordinamento dello sviluppo economico e sociale. Le aree naturali dei parchi inclusi nell’area metropolitana sono in grado di fornire servizi ecosistemici e risorse come prodotti agricoli e forestali. Lo sfruttamento razionale delle risorse di biomassa prodotte nell’area metropolitana può essere un’opportunità per sostituire i combustibili fossili, rendere la città più rispettosa del clima e, al tempo stesso, rilanciare la gestione sostenibile delle foreste che sono spesso abbandonate e a rischio di processi di degrado. L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è quello di indagare e aggiornare l’attuale distribuzione dei principali tipi forestali del Parco Naturale Regionale di Bracciano-Martignano, attraverso tecniche GIS e Remote Sensing, al fine di valutare il potenziale di biomassa presente nelle aree forestali. I risultati hanno confermato l’importanza dei dati satellitari Sentinel-2 per le applicazioni riguardo la vegetazione, consentendo di mappare specie e superfici e di effettuare altri studi su scala regionale con un’elevata precisione generale. L’analisi della distribuzione dei tipi forestali, eseguita all’interno del parco, ha mostrato che sono disponibili circa 20.000 t di biomassa legnosa all’anno, a indicare che la gestione razionale delle foreste può essere strategica per affrontare sia il degrado forestale che l’approvvigionamento energetico della città