The magnesium sulfate-water system at pressures to 4 kilobars

Hydrated magnesium sulfate constitutes up to 1/6 of the mass of carbonaceous chondrites, and probably is important in many icy asteroids and satellites. It occurs naturally in meteorites mostly as epsomite. MgSO4, considered anhydrously, comprises nearly 3/4 of the highly soluble fraction of C1 chondrites. Thus, MgSO4 is probably an important solute in cryovolcanic brines erupted on certain icy objects in the outer solar system. While the physiochemical properties of the water-magnesium sulfate system are well known at low pressures, planetological applications of these data are hindered by a dearth of useful published data at elevated pressures. Accordingly, solid-liquid phase equilibria was recently explored in this chemical system at pressures extending to about 4 kilobars. The water magnesium sulfate system in the region of the eutectic exhibits qualitatively constant behavior between pressures of 1 atm and 2 kbar. The eutectic melting curve closely follows that for water ice, with a freezing point depression of about 4 K at 1 atm decreasing to around 3.3 K at 2 kbars. The eutectic shifts from 17 pct. MgSO4 at 1 atm to about 15.3 pct at 2 kbars. Above 2 kbars, the eutectic melting curve again tends to follow ice

Changes in the soluble nitrogen fraction of milk throughout PDO Grana Padano cheese-making

The behaviour of soluble nitrogen compounds during Grana Padano cheese-making was studied at eight dairies. Raw milk, skimmed milk, sweet whey and the derived natural whey culture, collected from 24 processes, were analysed for soluble whey proteins (\u3b1-lactalbumin and \u3b2-lactoglobulin), proteose-peptones (PP), small peptides (SP), caseinomacropeptides (CMPs), and free amino acids (FAAs). The PP fraction increased during milk natural creaming, then part of it was selectively retained in the curd and the rest degraded in the first few hours of whey fermentation, together with \u3b1-lactalbumin, CMPs and part of SP. Features outlined for the whey culture were confirmed on 30 samples collected at six different dairies. A time course study of the whey fermentation showed that degradation of \u3b1-lactalbumin began when the pH dropped below 4, whereas \u3b2-lactoglobulin content did not change. Uptake of specific FAAs was shown to support the initial growth of lactic acid bacteria in whey

Microfiltration and ultra-high-pressure homogenization for extending the shelf-storage stability of UHT milk

Fat separation, gelation or sedimentation of UHT milk during shelf-storage represent instability phenomena causing the product rejection by consumers. Stability of UHT milk is of increasing concern because access to emerging markets currently implies for this product to be stable during shipping and prolonged storage, up to 12 months. The role of microfiltration prior to UHT process in avoiding or retarding the gelation or sediment formation was studied by comparing microfiltered UHT milk to conventional UHT milk. A second trial was set up to study the effects of double ultra-high pressure homogenization in delaying the cream rising and UHT milk homogenized once at lower pressure was taken as control. All milk samples were produced at industrial plant level. Milk packages were stored at 22 \ub0C, opened monthly for visually inspecting the presence of cream layer, gel or sediment and then analysed. Microfiltration markedly delayed the formation of both gel particles and sediment, with respect to the control, and slowed down the proteolysis in terms of accumulation of peptides although no correlation was observed between the two phenomena. The double homogenization, also evaluated at ultra-structural level, narrowed the fat globule distribution and the second one (400 MPa), performed downstream to the sterilization step, disrupted the fat-protein aggregates produced in the first one (250 MPa). The adopted conditions avoided the appearance of the cream layer in the UHT milk up to 18 months. This study contributes important knowledge for developing strategies to delay instability phenomena in UHT milk destined to extremely long shelf storage

Impact of Extending Hard-Cheese Ripening : A Multiparameter Characterization of Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese Ripened up to 50 Months

Extending ripening of hard cheeses well beyond the traditional ripening period is becoming increasingly popular, although little is known about the actual evolution of their characteristics. The present work aimed at investigating selected traits of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese ripened for 12, 18, 24, 30, 40 and 50 months. Two cheeses per each ripening period were sampled. Although moisture constantly decreased and was close to 25% in 50-month cheeses, with a parallel increase in cheese hardness, several biochemical changes occurred involving the activity of both native and microbial enzymes. Capillary electrophoresis demonstrated degradation of \u3b1s1- and \u3b2-casein, indicating residual activity of both chymosin and plasmin. Similarly, continuous release of free amino acids supported the activity of peptidases deriving from lysed bacterial cells. Volatile flavor compounds, such as short-chain fatty acids and some derived ketones, alcohols and esters, evaluated by gas chromatography with solid-phase micro-extraction, accumulated as well. Cheese microstructure was characterized by free fat trapped in irregularly shaped areas within a protein network, with native fat globules being no longer visible. This study showed for the first time that numerous biochemical and structural variations still occur in a hard cheese at up to 50 months of aging, proving that the ripening extension deserves to be highlighted to the consumer and may justify a premium price

Phase equilibria of the magnesium sulfate-water system to 4 kbars

Magnesium sulfate is the most abundant salt in carbonaceous chondrites, and it may be important in the low-temperature igneous evolution and aqueous differentiation of icy satellites and large chondritic asteroids. Accordingly, we are investigating high-pressure phase equilibria in MgSO4-H2O solutions under pressures up to four kbars. An initial report was presented two years ago. This abstract summarizes our results to date including studies of solutions containing 15.3 percent, 17 percent, and 22 percent MgSO4. Briefly, these results demonstrate that increasing pressure causes the eutectic and peritectic compositions to shift to much lower concentrations of magnesium sulfate, and the existence of a new low-density phase of magnesium sulfate hydrate

Ontology population from web product information

With the vast amount of information available on the Web, there is an increasing need to structure Web data in order to make it accessible to both users and machines. E-commerce is one of the areas in which growing data congestion on the Web has serious consequences. This paper proposes a frame- work that is capable of populating a product ontology us- ing tabular product information from Web shops. By for- malizing product information in this way, better product comparison or recommendation applications could be built. Our approach employs both lexical and syntactic matching for mapping properties and instantiating values. The per- formed evaluation shows that instantiating consumer elec- Tronics from Best Buy and Newegg.com results in an F1 score of approximately 77%

Modelling the circular polarisation of Earth-like exoplanets: constraints on detecting homochirality

Stars and planetary system

Ion-Exchange Chromatographic Method for the Determination of the Free Amino Acid Composition of Cheese and Other Dairy Products : an Inter-Laboratory Validation Study

Although free amino acids (FAAs) represent a significant component of ripened cheeses and can provide useful information for their characterization, no inter-laboratory validated analytical method exists which allows a reliable comparison of data obtained by different laboratories and the adoption of quality control schemes based on FAA pattern. The objective of the present work was to test the effectiveness of an analytical protocol for the determination of the FAA composition of cheese and to verify the adequateness of this type of analysis for quality control procedures of Grana Padano PDO cheese as well as for research purposes. After an initial test to compare performances of ion-exchange chromatography (IEC) and HPLC techniques, an inter-laboratory collaborative study (seven laboratories, four samples) was organized to validate an IEC method with post-column ninhydrin derivatization and using l-norleucine as an internal standard. Determined amounts of individual FAA ranged from 8 to over 1380 mg/100 g cheese, with relative standard deviation of repeatability (RSDr) ranging from 0.5 to 4.6%, and relative standard deviation of reproducibility (RSDR) ranging from 1.3 to 9.9% for FAA concentrations over 100 mg/100 g. For lower concentrations, RSDr and RSDR were about thrice as high. On the basis of the results of this investigation, at present, the validated method is adopted as the official method for the determination of FAA patterns in the quality control of Grana Padano PDO cheese

Semantics-based information extraction for detecting economic events

As today's financial markets are sensitive to breaking news on economic events, accurate and timely automatic identification of events in news items is crucial. Unstructured news items originating from many heterogeneous sources have to be mined in order to extract knowledge useful for guiding decision making processes. Hence, we propose the Semantics-Based Pipeline for Economic Event Detection (SPEED), focusing on extracting financial events from news articles and annotating these with meta-data at a speed that enables real-time use. In our implementation, we use some components of an existing framework as well as new components, e.g., a high-performance Ontology Gazetteer, a Word Group Look-Up component, a Word Sense Disambiguator, and components for detecting economic events. Through their interaction with a domain-specific ontology, our novel, semantically enabled components constitute a feedback loop which fosters future reuse of acquired knowledge in the event detection process

Macromolecular Traits in the African Rice Oryza glaberrima and in Glaberrima/Sativa Crosses, and Their Relevance to Processing

Molecular properties of proteins and starch were investigated in 2 accessions of Oryza glaberrima and Oryza sativa, and in one NERICA cross between the 2 species, to assess traits that could be relevant to transformation into specific foods. Protein nature and organization in O. glaberrima were different from those in O. sativa and in NERICA. Despite the similar cysteine content in all samples, thiol accessibility in O. glaberrima proteins was higher than in NERICA or in O. sativa. Inter-protein disulphide bonds were important for the formation of protein aggregates in O. glaberrima, whereas non-covalent protein-protein interactions were relevant in NERICA and O. sativa. DSC and NMR studies indicated only minor differences in the structure of starch in these species, as also made evident by their microstructural features. Nevertheless, starch gelatinization in O. glaberrima was very different from what was observed in O. sativa and NERICA. The content of soluble species in gelatinized starch from the various species in the presence/absence of treatments with specific enzymes indicated that release of small starch breakdown products was lowest in O. glaberrima, in particular from the amylopectin component. These findings may explain the low glycemic index of O. glaberrima, and provide a rationale for extending the use of O. glaberrima in the production of specific rice-based products, thus improving the economic value and the market appeal of African crops