Benchmarking International Food Safety Performance in the Fresh Produce Sector

The objective of this paper is to assess food systems performance in Mediterranean countries to deliver safe food (fresh produce), and to demonstrate the capacity to the satisfaction of private customers and public regulators. To that end, an international benchmarking exercise was developed to assess the quality performance gap in food standards across countries and food systems. The study was carried out in three Mediterranean countries: Spain, Morocco and Turkey and involved an audit of the citrus and tomatoes supply chains, and a comparison with existing "best practice" in infrastructure and management practices at both firm and industry level. The aim was to identify the gaps between fresh produce exporters and a best practice company. To that end, the Spanish fresh produce supply chain was used as the benchmark since in many areas it is more advanced than elsewhere.benchmarking, performance, quality and safety, fresh produce, Mediterranean countries, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Nutritional status in Turkish cystic fibrosis patients

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Cd110,116(α,α)Cd110,116 elastic scattering and systematic investigation of elastic α scattering cross sections along the Z=48 isotopic and N=62 isotonic chains

The elastic scattering cross sections for the reactions Cd110,116(α,α)Cd110,116 at energies above and below the Coulomb barrier are presented to provide a sensitive test for the α-nucleus optical potential parameter sets. Additional constraints for the optical potential are taken from the analysis of elastic scattering excitation functions at backward angles which are available in literature. Moreover, the variation of the elastic α scattering cross sections along the Z=48 isotopic and N=62 isotonic chain is investigated by the study of the ratios of the Cd106,110,116(α,α)Cd106,110,116 scattering cross sections at E cm15.6and18.8 MeV and the ratio of the Cd110(α,α)Cd110 and Sn112(α,α)Sn112 reaction cross sections at Ecm18.8 MeV, respectively. These ratios are sensitive probes for the α-nucleus optical potential parametrizations. The potentials under study are a basic prerequisite for the prediction of α-induced reaction cross sections (e.g., for the calculation of stellar reaction rates in the astrophysical p or γ process). © 2011 American Physical Society.This work was supported by the EUROGENESIS research program, by the Hungarian Office of the National Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), Grants No. NN83261 and No. K068801, by the European Research Council, Grant No. 203175, and by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (NSF Grant No. PHY0822648). G.G.K. and D.G. acknowledge the support of the Spanish Interministerial Commission of Science and Technology, under Project No. FPA2005-02379, and the Ministry of Education and Science (MEC) Consolider, Project No. CSD2007-00042. G.G. acknowledges support from the Bolyai grant. D.G. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science Juan de la Cierva grant. This work was also supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), Grants No. 108T508 (TBAG1001) and No. 109T585 (under the EUROGENESIS research program). Fruitful discussions with M. Avrigeanu are gratefully acknowledged.Peer Reviewe

Measurements of double-helicity asymmetries in inclusive J/ψJ/\psi production in longitudinally polarized p+pp+p collisions at s=510\sqrt{s}=510 GeV

We report the double helicity asymmetry, $A_{LL}^{J/\psi}$, in inclusive $J/\psi$ production at forward rapidity as a function of transverse momentum $p_T$ and rapidity $|y|$. The data analyzed were taken during $\sqrt{s}=510$ GeV longitudinally polarized $p$$+$$p$ collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in the 2013 run using the PHENIX detector. At this collision energy, $J/\psi$ particles are predominantly produced through gluon-gluon scatterings, thus $A_{LL}^{J/\psi}$ is sensitive to the gluon polarization inside the proton. We measured $A_{LL}^{J/\psi}$ by detecting the decay daughter muon pairs $\mu^+ \mu^-$ within the PHENIX muon spectrometers in the rapidity range $1.2<|y|<2.2$. In this kinematic range, we measured the $A_{LL}^{J/\psi}$ to be $0.012 \pm 0.010$~(stat)~$\pm$~$0.003$(syst). The $A_{LL}^{J/\psi}$ can be expressed to be proportional to the product of the gluon polarization distributions at two distinct ranges of Bjorken $x$: one at moderate range $x \approx 0.05$ where recent RHIC data of jet and $\pi^0$ double helicity spin asymmetries have shown evidence for significant gluon polarization, and the other one covering the poorly known small-$x$ region $x \approx 2\times 10^{-3}$. Thus our new results could be used to further constrain the gluon polarization for $x< 0.05$.Comment: 335 authors, 10 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, 2013 data. Version accepted for publication by Phys. Rev. D. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm