High‐Speed Deterministic‐Latency Serial IO

In digital systems, serial IO at speeds in the range from 1 to 20 Gbps is realized by means of dedicated transceivers, named serializer-deserializers (SerDeses). In general, due to their internal architecture, the data transfer delay, or the latency, may vary after a reset of the device. On the other hand, some applications, such as high-speed transfer protocols for analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, trigger and data acquisition systems, clock distribution, synchronization and control of radio equipment need this delay to be constant at each reset. In this chapter, we focus on a serial IO architecture based on configurable transceivers embedded in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). We will show how it is possible to achieve deterministic-latency operation in a line-code-independent way. As a case study, we will consider a synchronous 2.5-Gbps serial link based on an 8b10b line code

Mycotoxins: An Under-evaluated Risk for Human Health

Mycotoxins are secondary toxic metabolites produced mainly by fungi belonging to the Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium, Alternaria, and Claviceps genera. These moulds can colonize agricultural crops and produce mycotoxins during pre- and post-harvest practices, processing, and storage. Animals fed with feed contaminated with mycotoxins may be a natural and unwanted bioenhancer way to transfer mycotoxins, eventually metabolized, to animal-derived food addressed to humans. The natural occurrence of mycotoxins, also a low concentration, in food may cause adverse health effects in humans, rarely showing acute symptoms but the chronic exposure causes problems ranging from gastrointestinal and kidney disorders to immune deficiency and to develop some types of cancers. Human exposure to mycotoxins can happen by eating directly contaminated foods or through contaminated animal products. This alternative entry of mycotoxin into the human food chain is a signal of animals fed with contaminated feed. The exposure danger to mycotoxins can be monitored by following the biotransformation product occurrence in tissues and biological fluids, and these data are needed to evaluate their potential risk for humans, in particular for weak subpopulations like babies, children, old, or pressed by food security troubles. In this regard, the main aim of this volume is to evaluate the occurrence of mycotoxins and other contaminants in food, nutraceuticals, and biological fluids in order to ensure human safety. To guarantee effective consumer safety, reliable methods have been validated for the analysis of contaminants in various matrices. In addition, the risk associated with the assumption of contaminated food was assessed. Risk characterization is an indispensable aspect to safeguard public health, which helps to identify risks threatening consumers

Strong magnetic fields in nonlocal chiral quark models

We study the behavior of strongly interacting matter under a uniform intense external magnetic field in the context of nonlocal extensions of the Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. A detailed description of the formalism is presented, considering the cases of zero and finite temperature. In particular, we analyze the effect of the magnetic field on the chiral restoration and deconfinement transitions, which are found to occur at approximately the same critical temperatures. Our results show that these models offer a natural framework to account for the phenomenon of inverse magnetic catalysis found in lattice QCD calculations.Fil: Gomez Dumm, Daniel Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Izzo Villafañe, María Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Noguera, S.. Universidad de Valencia; EspañaFil: Pagura, Valeria Paula. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Valencia; EspañaFil: Scoccola, Norberto Nerio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; Argentina. Universidad Favaloro; Argentin

Emulating the GLink Chip-Set with FPGA Serial Transceivers in the ATLAS Level-1 Muon Trigger

Many High Energy Physics experiments based their serial links on the Agilent HDMP-1032/34A serializer/deserializer chip-set (or GLink). This success was mainly due to the fact that this pair of chips was able to transfer data at \sim 1 Gb/s with a deterministic latency, fixed after each power up or reset of the link. Despite this unique timing feature, Agilent discontinued the production and no compatible commercial off-the-shelf chip-sets are available. The ATLAS Level-1 Muon trigger includes some serial links based on GLink in order to transfer data from the detector to the counting room. The transmission side of the links will not be upgraded, however a replacement for the receivers in the counting room in case of failures is needed. In this paper, we present a solution to replace GLink transmitters and receivers. Our design is based on the gigabit serial IO (GTP) embedded in a Xilinx Virtex 5 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). We present the architecture and we discuss parameters of the implementation such as latency and resource occupation. We compare the GLink chip-set and the GTP-based emulator in terms of latency, eye diagram and power dissipation

The Nutraceutical Properties of “Pizza Marinara TSG” a Traditional Food Rich in Bioaccessible Antioxidants

Italian gastronomy experiences have ever-enhancing fame around the world. It is due to the linkage between taste and salubriousness commonly related to Mediterranean foods. The market proposes many types of pizza to suit all palates. In this work, the antioxidant potential of the "pizza “marinara” included in the register of traditional specialties guaranteed (TSG) was determined. ABTS method evaluated the antioxidant activity of the pizza homogenized. In vitro digestion models estimated the intestinal and gastric bioaccessibility of the main antioxidant compounds (lycopene and phenolics). To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide the content, antioxidant potential, and bioaccessibility of the antioxidants (polyphenols and lycopene) contained in the traditional pizza “marinara TSG”. Our results showed that the "pizza marinara TSG" had polyphenols concentration, lycopene level, antioxidant activity, and bioaccessibility of phenolic compounds and lycopene better than other similar pizzas. They confirmed the nutritional importance of traditional preparations and established the functional potential of "pizza marinara TSG" as a food rich in bio-accessible antioxidants

The nutraceutical properties of "pizza marinara TSG" a traditional food rich in bioaccessible antioxidants

Italian gastronomy experiences have ever-enhancing fame around the world. It is due to the linkage between taste and salubriousness commonly related to Mediterranean foods. The market proposes many types of pizza to suit all palates. In this work, the antioxidant potential of the "pizza “marinara” included in the register of traditional specialties guaranteed (TSG) was determined. ABTS method evaluated the antioxidant activity of the pizza homogenized. In vitro digestion models estimated the intestinal and gastric bioaccessibility of the main antioxidant compounds (lycopene and phenolics). To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide the content, antioxidant potential, and bioaccessibility of the antioxidants (polyphenols and lycopene) contained in the traditional pizza “marinara TSG”. Our results showed that the "pizza marinara TSG" had polyphenols concentration, lycopene level, antioxidant activity, and bioaccessibility of phenolic compounds and lycopene better than other similar pizzas. They confirmed the nutritional importance of traditional preparations and established the functional potential of "pizza marinara TSG" as a food rich in bio-accessible antioxidants

Whey fermented by using Lactobacillus plantarum strains: A promising approach to increase the shelf life of pita bread

Nowadays, there is an increasing concern regarding the shelf life of food products, leading producers to research natural antimicrobial agents to use in food preparation. In this study, we evaluated the antifungal activity of Lactobacillus plantarum fermented whey and then added the whey during preparation of pita bread to study shelf-life improvement. The fermented whey showed a satisfactory inhibitory (antifungal) effect against Penicillium expansum and Penicillium brevicompactum strains: the minimum inhibitory and minimum fungicidal concentrations ranged from 3.9 to 39.0 g/L and from 62.5 to 250 g/L, respectively. Addition of fermented whey increased the shelf life of the pita bread. After inoculation of the bread surface with Penicillium, an increase in shelf life until d 8 was achieved compared with the positive control, whereas under natural contamination conditions, an extension of shelf life until d 19 was observed. In terms of antimicrobial activity, the greatest reduction (100%) in fungal growth was achieved when all of the water in the dough was replaced with fermented whey. An untrained sensory panel could not identify differences between bread produced with fermented whey and control pita breads. These results suggest the possibility of using fermented whey in food preservation

Properties of magnetized neutral pions at zero and finite temperature in nonlocal chiral quark models

The behavior of π0 meson properties in the presence of a uniform external magnetic field is studied in the context of a nonlocal extension of the Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. The analysis includes the π0 mass, the effective π0-quark coupling and the pion-to-vacuum hadronic form factors, both at zero and finite temperature. Numerical results are compared with previous calculations carried out within the local NJL model, when available. The validity of chiral relations and the features of deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration transitions are discussed.Fil: Gomez Dumm, Daniel Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Izzo Villafañe, María Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; ArgentinaFil: Scoccola, Norberto Nerio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; Argentin

Urinary levels of enniatin B and its phase I metabolites: First human pilot biomonitoring study

Enniatins (Enns) are mycotoxins produced by Fusarium spp. and are widely distributed contaminants of cereals and derivate products. Among the different identified enniatins, Enn B is the most relevant analogue in cereals in Europe. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate for the first time the occurrence of Enn B and Enn B phase I metabolites in 300 human urine samples throughout an ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography high resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS) methodology. Three different sample preparation procedures were evaluated and salting-out liquid-liquid extraction showed satisfactory validation results. Enn B was quantified in 83.7% of samples ranging from 0.006 to 0.391 ng/mL (average content: 0.016 ng/mL). In line with the in vitro observations with human liver microsomes, in the here analyzed samples the Enn B monooxygenated, N-demethylated and dioxygenated metabolites were tentatively found in 87.7%, 96.3% and 6.7% of samples. The data of this pilot biomonitoring survey indicate a frequent intake of enniatins in Italy, supporting further toxicological studies to provide better basis for understanding their potential effects in humans