A

Abstract:  In the dairy activity, the production of cheese and ricotta discards approximately 55% of the milk used, wasting 6 million L / Day of whey. Currently, they are used as raw material for new products such as dairy-based drinks, grated cheeses and spreads. These advances led to the need to regulate the packaged food´s labeling, incorporating to the ch. V of the Argentine Food Code (CAA) (year 2005), to protect and guide the consumer. The products "dairy drinks" and "fermented dairy drinks" were incorporated in the ch. VIII of the CAA (year 2018). The aim of this research was to determine the compliance rate of the CAA regulations for the labeling of dairy substitutes (SL) commercialized at hypermarkets in Córdoba City in 2020; and evaluate the influence of dairy food labeling on consumers purchasing choices. A descriptive, observational and cross-sectional study was carried out on 39 SL labels, compared through a check-list, and by 176 structured surveys. Differences in compliance and influence were evaluated by inferential statistics using the proportions homogeneity test, with a significance level of 0.05. To analyze compliance and non-compliance according to the type of product, the chi-square test was used, for the same level of significance. It was obtained that 85% of the SL showed some non-compliance, mainly in the exhibition and distribution of the mandatory information (33%) and in the optional labeling (8%), prevailing in the drinkable SL. No significant influences of the label were found in the respondents´ purchase choice (only in 7% was it determined by reading and information on it), it was estimated, by a 95% confidence interval, that the proportion of the sample group who were influenced in its choice, and it is among [0.03; 0.11]. The label is the main mean of communication between the consumer and the manufacturer, and therefore the regulation´s compliance is highly relevant since it provides all the information that the consumer needs to make a decision on their purchase.Resumen:  En la actividad láctea, la elaboración de queso y ricota desecha aproximadamente 55% de la leche utilizada, desaprovechando 6 millones de L/Día de suero. Actualmente, se utilizan como materia prima de nuevos productos como bebidas con base láctea, quesos rallados y untables. Estos avances llevaron a la necesidad de regular la rotulación de alimentos envasados, incorporando el cap. V al Código Alimentario Argentino (CAA) (año 2005), para proteger y orientar al consumidor. Se incorporaron los productos “bebidas lácteas” y “bebidas lácteas fermentadas” en el cap. VIII del CAA (año 2018). Esta investigación tuvo como objetivo determinar el grado de cumplimiento de las disposiciones del CAA para el rotulado de sucedáneos lácteos (SL) comercializados en hipermercados de la ciudad de Córdoba en el año 2020; y evaluar la influencia del rotulado de los alimentos lácteos en la elección de compra por parte de los consumidores. Se realizó un estudio descriptivo, observacional y transversal, sobre 39 rótulos de SL, comparados a través de un check-list, y por 176 encuestas estructuradas. Las diferencias en cumplimiento y la influencia se evaluaron mediante estadística inferencial utilizando prueba de homogeneidad de proporciones, con un nivel de significancia de 0.05. Para analizar el cumplimiento e incumplimiento según tipo de producto, se utilizó el test chi cuadrado, para el mismo nivel de significación. Se obtuvo que el 85% de los SL presentan algún incumplimiento principalmente en la presentación y distribución de la información obligatoria (33%) y en el rotulado facultativo (8%), prevaleciendo en los SL bebibles. No se encontró influencias significativas del rótulo en la elección de compra de los encuestados (solo en el 7% estuvo determinada por la lectura e información del mismo), se estimó por intervalo de confianza del 95% la proporción poblacional de los encuestados que se ven influenciados, siendo el mismo [0,03; 0,11]. El rótulo es el principal medio de comunicación entre el consumidor y el elaborador, y por ello el cumplimiento de las disposiciones para el mismo cobra gran relevancia ya que en él se brinda toda la información que el consumidor necesita para tomar una decisión en su compra.

Bat lung epithelial cells show greater host species-specific innate resistance than MDCK cells to human and avian influenza viruses

Background With the recent discovery of novel H17N10 and H18N11 influenza viral RNA in bats and report on high frequency of avian H9 seroconversion in a species of free ranging bats, an important issue to address is the extent bats are susceptible to conventional avian and human influenza A viruses. Method To this end, three bat species (Eidolon helvum, Carollia perspicillata and Tadarida brasiliensis) of lung epithelial cells were separately infected with two avian and two human influenza viruses to determine their relative host innate immune resistance to infection. Results All three species of bat cells were more resistant than positive control Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells to all four influenza viruses. TB1-Lu cells lacked sialic acid α2,6-Gal receptors and were most resistant among the three bat species. Interestingly, avian viruses were relatively more replication permissive in all three bat species of cells than with the use of human viruses which suggest that bats could potentially play a role in the ecology of avian influenza viruses. Chemical inhibition of the JAK-STAT pathway in bat cells had no effect on virus production suggesting that type I interferon signalling is not a major factor in resisting influenza virus infection. Conclusion Although all three species of bat cells are relatively more resistant to influenza virus infection than control MDCK cells, they are more permissive to avian than human viruses which suggest that bats could have a contributory role in the ecology of avian influenza viruses

Product factorability of integral bilinear operators on Banach function spaces

[EN] This paper deals with bilinear operators acting in pairs of Banach function spaces that factor through the pointwise product. We find similar situations in different contexts of the functional analysis, including abstract vector lattices¿orthosymmetric maps, C¿-algebras¿zero product preserving operators, and classical and harmonic analysis¿integral bilinear operators. Bringing together the ideas of these areas, we show new factorization theorems and characterizations by means of norm inequalities. The objective of the paper is to apply these tools to provide new descriptions of some classes of bilinear integral operators, and to obtain integral representations for abstract classes of bilinear maps satisfying certain domination properties.The first author was supported by TUBITAK-The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, Grant No. 2211/E. The second author was supported by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Spain) and FEDER, Grant MTM2016-77054-C2-1-P.Erdogan, E.; Sánchez Pérez, EA.; Gok, O. (2019). Product factorability of integral bilinear operators on Banach function spaces. Positivity. 23(3):671-696. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11117-018-0632-zS671696233Abramovich, Y.A., Kitover, A.K.: Inverses of Disjointness Preserving Operators. American Mathematical Society, Providence (2000)Abramovich, Y.A., Wickstead, A.W.: When each continuous operator is regular II. Indag. Math. (N.S.) 8(3), 281–294 (1997)Alaminos, J., Brešar, M., Extremera, J., Villena, A.R.: Maps preserving zero products. Studia Math. 193(2), 131–159 (2009)Alaminos, J., Brešar, M., Extremera, J., Villena, A.R.: On bilinear maps determined by rank one idempotents. Linear Algebra Appl. 432, 738–743 (2010)Alaminos, J., Extremera, J., Villena, A.R.: Orthogonality preserving linear maps on group algebras. Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. 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Multiple Sclerosis Risk Variant HLA-DRB1*1501 Associates with High Expression of DRB1 Gene in Different Human Populations

The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) DRB1*1501 has been consistently associated with multiple sclerosis (MS) in nearly all populations tested. This points to a specific antigen presentation as the pathogenic mechanism though this does not fully explain the disease association. The identification of expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) for genes in the HLA locus poses the question of the role of gene expression in MS susceptibility. We analyzed the eQTLs in the HLA region with respect to MS-associated HLA-variants obtained from genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We found that the Tag of DRB1*1501, rs3135388 A allele, correlated with high expression of DRB1, DRB5 and DQB1 genes in a Caucasian population. In quantitative terms, the MS-risk AA genotype carriers of rs3135388 were associated with 15.7-, 5.2- and 8.3-fold higher expression of DQB1, DRB5 and DRB1, respectively, than the non-risk GG carriers. The haplotype analysis of expression-associated variants in a Spanish MS cohort revealed that high expression of DRB1 and DQB1 alone did not contribute to the disease. However, in Caucasian, Asian and African American populations, the DRB1*1501 allele was always highly expressed. In other immune related diseases such as type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, asthma and IgA deficiency, the best GWAS-associated HLA SNPs were also eQTLs for different HLA Class II genes. Our data suggest that the DR/DQ expression levels, together with specific structural properties of alleles, seem to be the causal effect in MS and in other immunopathologies rather than specific antigen presentation alone

An assessment of functioning and non-functioning distractors in multiple-choice questions: a descriptive analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Four- or five-option multiple choice questions (MCQs) are the standard in health-science disciplines, both on certification-level examinations and on in-house developed tests. Previous research has shown, however, that few MCQs have three or four functioning distractors. The purpose of this study was to investigate non-functioning distractors in teacher-developed tests in one nursing program in an English-language university in Hong Kong.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using item-analysis data, we assessed the proportion of non-functioning distractors on a sample of seven test papers administered to undergraduate nursing students. A total of 514 items were reviewed, including 2056 options (1542 distractors and 514 correct responses). Non-functioning options were defined as ones that were chosen by fewer than 5% of examinees and those with a positive option discrimination statistic.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The proportion of items containing 0, 1, 2, and 3 functioning distractors was 12.3%, 34.8%, 39.1%, and 13.8% respectively. Overall, items contained an average of 1.54 (SD = 0.88) functioning distractors. Only 52.2% (n = 805) of all distractors were functioning effectively and 10.2% (n = 158) had a choice frequency of 0. Items with more functioning distractors were more difficult and more discriminating.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The low frequency of items with three functioning distractors in the four-option items in this study suggests that teachers have difficulty developing plausible distractors for most MCQs. Test items should consist of as many options as is feasible given the item content and the number of plausible distractors; in most cases this would be three. Item analysis results can be used to identify and remove non-functioning distractors from MCQs that have been used in previous tests.</p

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Search for direct pair production of the top squark in all-hadronic final states in proton-proton collisions at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for direct pair production of the scalar partner to the top quark using an integrated luminosity of 20.1fb−1 of proton–proton collision data at √s = 8 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC are reported. The top squark is assumed to decay via t˜→tχ˜01 or t˜→ bχ˜±1 →bW(∗)χ˜01 , where χ˜01 (χ˜±1 ) denotes the lightest neutralino (chargino) in supersymmetric models. The search targets a fully-hadronic final state in events with four or more jets and large missing transverse momentum. No significant excess over the Standard Model background prediction is observed, and exclusion limits are reported in terms of the top squark and neutralino masses and as a function of the branching fraction of t˜ → tχ˜01 . For a branching fraction of 100%, top squark masses in the range 270–645 GeV are excluded for χ˜01 masses below 30 GeV. For a branching fraction of 50% to either t˜ → tχ˜01 or t˜ → bχ˜±1 , and assuming the χ˜±1 mass to be twice the χ˜01 mass, top squark masses in the range 250–550 GeV are excluded for χ˜01 masses below 60 GeV

Compressed representation of a partially defined integer function over multiple arguments

In OLAP (OnLine Analitical Processing) data are analysed in an n-dimensional cube. The cube may be represented as a partially defined function over n arguments. Considering that often the function is not defined everywhere, we ask: is there a known way of representing the function or the points in which it is defined, in a more compact manner than the trivial one