Evaluation of peroxyacetic acid as a potential pre-grinding treatment for control of enteric pathogens on fresh beef trim

Peroxyacetic acid was evaluated in four separate trials for ability to reduce populations of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella serotype Typhimurium (ATCC 13311) on fresh beef trim. Trial 1 examined the effectiveness of peroxyacetic acid on individual pieces of fresh beef trim. Trial 2 was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of peroxyacetic acid at low levels of contamination on batches of trim. Trial 3 studied the washing effect of the dip due to water. Lastly, Trial 4 compared the effectiveness of peroxyacetic acid to lactic acid. At various inoculation levels, peroxyacetic acid reduced populations of rifampicin-resistant E. coli O157:H7 and S. Typhimurium by approximately 1.0 log CFU/cm2. Much of the reductions recorded in Trials 1 and 2 may have been due to the washing effect of the dip. Trial 3 showed that approximately half of the reduction was due to the water dip. In addition, as shown in Trial 1, increases in concentrations (> 200 ppm) did not significantly increase log reductions of rifampicin-resistant E. coli O157:H7 and S. Typhimurium. Following a water dip in Trial 4, peroxyacetic acid caused a reduction of 0.7 log CFU/cm2 in E. coli O157:H7 and 1.0 log CFU/cm2 in S. Typhimurium, whereas lactic acid caused reduction of 1.3 log CFU/cm2 in E. coli O157:H7 and 2.1 log CFU/cm2 in S. Typhimurium following the water dip. Peroxyacetic acid was not more effective than 2% L-lactic acid in reducing pathogens on fresh beef trim

Semantic tuples for evaluation of image sentence generation

Trabajo presentado al Workshop on Vision and Language (VL’15), celebrado en Lisboa (Portugal) el 18 de semptiebre de 2015.The automatic generation of image captions has received considerable attention. The problem of evaluating caption generation systems, though, has not been that much explored. We propose a novel evaluation approach based on comparing the underlying visual semantics of the candidate and ground-truth captions. With this goal in mind we have defined a semantic representation for visually descriptive language and have augmented a subset of the Flickr-8K dataset with semantic annotations. Our evaluation metric (BAST) can be used not only to compare systems but also to do error analysis and get a better understanding of the type of mistakes a system does. To compute BAST we need to predict the semantic representation for the automatically generated captions. We use the Flickr-ST dataset to train classifiers that predict STs so that evaluation can be fully automated.This work was partly funded by the Spanish MINECO project RobInstruct TIN2014-58178-R and by the ERA-net CHISTERA project VISEN PCIN-2013-047.Peer Reviewe

Limits on Relief through Constrained Exchange on Random Graphs

Agents are represented by nodes on a random graph (e.g., small world or truncated power law). Each agent is endowed with a zero-mean random value that may be either positive or negative. All agents attempt to find relief, i.e., to reduce the magnitude of that initial value, to zero if possible, through exchanges. The exchange occurs only between agents that are linked, a constraint that turns out to dominate the results. The exchange process continues until a Pareto equilibrium is achieved. Only 40%-90% of the agents achieved relief on small world graphs with mean degree between 2 and 40. Even fewer agents achieved relief on scale-free like graphs with a truncated power law degree distribution. The rate at which relief grew with increasing degree was slow, only at most logarithmic for all of the graphs considered; viewed in reverse, relief is resilient to the removal of links.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 22 references Changes include name change for Lory A. Ellebracht (formerly Cooperstock, e-mail address stays the same), elimination of contractions and additional references. We also note that our results are less surprising in view of other work now cite

Deep breathing couples CSF and venous flow dynamics

Venous system pathologies have increasingly been linked to clinically relevant disorders of CSF circulation whereas the exact coupling mechanisms still remain unknown. In this work, flow dynamics of both systems were studied using real-time phase-contrast flow MRI in 16 healthy subjects during normal and forced breathing. Flow evaluations in the aqueduct, at cervical level C3 and lumbar level L3 for both the CSF and venous fluid systems reveal temporal modulations by forced respiration. During normal breathing cardiac-related flow modulations prevailed, while forced breathing shifted the dominant frequency of both CSF and venous flow spectra towards the respiratory component and prompted a correlation between CSF and venous flow in the large vessels. The average of flow magnitude of CSF was increased during forced breathing at all spinal and intracranial positions. Venous flow in the large vessels of the upper body decreased and in the lower body increased during forced breathing. Deep respiration couples interdependent venous and brain fluid flow—most likely mediated by intrathoracic and intraabdominal pressure changes. Further insights into the driving forces of CSF and venous circulation and their correlation will facilitate our understanding how the venous system links to intracranial pressure regulation and of related forms of hydrocephalus

Semantic tuples for evaluation of image sentence generation

The automatic generation of image captions has received considerable attention. The problem of evaluating caption generation systems, though, has not been that much explored. We propose a novel evaluation approach based on comparing the underlying visual semantics of the candidate and ground-truth captions. With this goal in mind we have defined a semantic representation for visually descriptive language and have augmented a subset of the Flickr-8K dataset with semantic annotations. Our evaluation metric (BAST) can be used not only to compare systems but also to do error analysis and get a better understanding of the type of mistakes a system does. To compute BAST we need to predict the semantic representation for the automatically generated captions. We use the Flickr-ST dataset to train classifiers that predict STs so that evaluation can be fully automated.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Sicherung von Dämmen, Deichen und Stauanlagen : Handbuch für Theorie und Praxis ; Vol. V - 2015

Die Universität Siegen beschäftigt sich seit über 15 Jahren wissenschaftlich und im Bereich der anwendungsorientierten Forschung mit diesem Thema und hat dazu mittlerweile fünf Symposien durchgeführt. Mit der Veröffentlichung soll die langjährige Tradition als etablierte wissenschaftliche Plattform mit einem Wissensaustausch auf europäischer Ebene fortgesetzt werden. Die Bearbeitung dieser Thematik erfolgt auf der Basis der bewährten Kooperation zwischen Geotechnik und Wasserbau an der Universität Siegen. Aktuelle Ereignisse, wie z.B. die aus England oder Australien im Februar des Jahres 2014, machen uns aber auch deutlich, dass ein absoluter Schutz gegen Extremereignisse nicht möglich ist. Sie zeigen aber auch, dass dort wo technischer Hochwasserschutz konsequent umgesetzt wurde Schäden vermieden werden konnten. Wir sind nach den Ereignissen in den vergangenen Jahren aufgefordert wissenschaftlich noch leistungsfähigere und duktilere Systeme zu entwickeln. Weiter ist die Wissenschaft in der Pflicht, die Zivile Sicherheit im Hochwasser-schutz permanent zu bewerten, zu bearbeiten und ganzheitliche-interdisziplinäre und länderübergreifende Lösungen für die Zivilgesellschaft einzufordern

Remarks on the vocabulary of the ancient orations in the Missale Romanum

Contains fulltext : mmubn000001_046076263.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)Promotor : C. MohrmannXXIII, 218 p