Food fraud: policy and food chain

Food supply chain fraud can arise in terms of the integrity of the food item, the processes used to produce that food item and/or the people employed and the data that accompanies the food item. Emergent food fraud themes include characterization of food fraud, drivers of supply chain fraud, traceability systems and mechanisms for deterrence. Options for action at global, supply chain and organizational levels are the ongoing development of data centralization systems especially ensuring that distinct databases can be coordinated to add value through collective data analysis, and secondly ensuring there are appropriate deterrence mechanisms in place so that food fraud mitigation moves from a stance of fraud detection to one of fraud prevention

Development of MY FRAM matrix to assess food safety risks in horticultural crops

A farm food safety risk assessment matrix (MY FRAM) was developed for horticultural farms. The tool enables farmers to carry out self risk assessments on the potential of food safety risks on the farm from site selection to post-harvest handling. MY FRAM was developed on Microsoft ASP. NET C# 4.5 with logical functions and utilised a semi-quantitative risk assessment approach (risk ranking of 1 – 9) for farmers. MY FRAM is an illustrative risk ranking tool to allow farmers to quickly identify potential food safety risks and risk summary and corrective actions are suggested to farms on how to reduce the risks. The tool can also be utilised as a training tool for farm workers to understand the importance of food safety at the farm level

Contrasting Effects of Varicose Vein Surgery on Endothelial-dependent and -independent Cutaneous Vasodilation in the Perimalleolar Region

AbstractObjectivesTo evaluate the effects of varicose vein surgery on cutaneous microvascular perfusion and vasodilator responses to acetylcholine (Ach) and sodium nitroprusside (SNP) in the gaiter area of patients with great saphenous vein insufficiency.MethodsTwenty-nine patients with isolated great saphenous vein incompetence attended three study mornings (before surgery, and 6–8 weeks and 6 months after sapheno-femoral ligation+partial stripping) during which cutaneous microvascular responses were measured in the supine and standing positions using laser Doppler fluximetry (LDF) combined with incremental-dose iontophoretic administration of endothelial-dependent (Ach) and -independent (SNP) vasodilators.ResultsVaricose vein surgery had no significant effect on baseline cutaneous perfusion or the microvascular response to Ach: e.g. peak vasodilator responses to the 1000μC stimulus were mean 58 SEM 7, 64 SEM 6 and 65 SEM 7PU on the pre-operative, 6–8 weeks and 6 months assessments. In contrast, the corresponding responses to SNP were significantly increased following surgery: e.g. at 2000μC, mean 63 SEM 9, 142 SEM 4 and 157 SEM 9PU (p<0.0001) in the upright position.ConclusionsSapheno-femoral ligation and partial stripping in patients with great saphenous vein insufficiency improves endothelial-independent cutaneous vasodilator function at the gaiter area, which may at least partly explain the benefits of surgery in reducing the risk of venous ulceration

A systematic review of adult attachment and social anxiety

Background Attachment has been implicated in the development of social anxiety. Our aim was to synthesise the extant literature exploring the role of adult attachment in these disorders. Method Search terms relating to social anxiety and attachment were entered into MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Web of Science. Risk of bias of included studies was assessed using and adapted version of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality assessment tool. Eligible studies employed validated social anxiety and attachment assessments in adult clinical and analogue samples. The review included cross sectional, interventional and longitudinal research. Results Of the 30 identified studies, 28 showed a positive association between attachment insecurity and social anxiety. This association was particularly strong when considering attachment anxiety. Cognitive variables and evolutionary behaviours were identified as potential mediators, concordant with psychological theory. Limitations Due to a lack of longitudinal research, the direction of effect between attachment and social anxiety variables could not be inferred. There was substantial heterogeneity in the way that attachment was conceptualised and assessed across studies. Conclusions The literature indicates that attachment style is associated with social anxiety. Clinicians may wish to consider attachment theory when working clinically with this population. In the future, it may be useful to target the processes that mediate the relationship between attachment and social anxiety

Conformations of closed DNA

We examine the conformations of a model for a short segment of closed DNA. The molecule is represented as a cylindrically symmetric elastic rod with a constraint corresponding to a specification of the linking number. We obtain analytic expressions leading to the spatial configuration of a family of solutions representing distortions that interpolate between the circular form of DNA and a figure-eight form that represents the onset of interwinding. We are also able to generate knotted loops. We suggest ways to use our approach to produce other configurations relevant to studies of DNA structure. The stability of the distorted configurations is assessed, along with the effects of fluctuations on the free energy of the various configurations.Comment: 39 pages in REVTEX with 14 eps figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. E. This manuscript updates, expands and revises, to a considerable extent, a previously posted manuscript, entitled "Conformations of Circular DNA," which appeared as cond-mat/970104

A speech interface for air traffic control terminals

Several issues concerning the current use of speech interfaces are discussed and the design and development of a speech interface that enables air traffic controllers to command and control their terminals by voice is presented. A special emphasis is made in the comparison between laboratory experiments and field experiments in which a set of ergonomics-related effects are detected that cannot be observed in the controlled laboratory experiments. The paper presents both objective and subjective performance obtained in field evaluation of the system with student controllers at an air traffic control (ATC) training facility. The system exhibits high word recognition test rates (0.4% error in Spanish and 1.5% in English) and low command error (6% error in Spanish and 10.6% error in English in the field tests). Subjective impression has also been positive, encouraging future development and integration phases in the Spanish ATC terminals designed by Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea (AENA)

Information-Geometric Indicators of Chaos in Gaussian Models on Statistical Manifolds of Negative Ricci Curvature

A new information-geometric approach to chaotic dynamics on curved statistical manifolds based on Entropic Dynamics (ED) is proposed. It is shown that the hyperbolicity of a non-maximally symmetric 6N-dimensional statistical manifold M_{s} underlying an ED Gaussian model describing an arbitrary system of 3N degrees of freedom leads to linear information-geometric entropy growth and to exponential divergence of the Jacobi vector field intensity, quantum and classical features of chaos respectively.Comment: 8 pages, final version accepted for publicatio

Nucleation of Al3Zr and Al3Sc in aluminum alloys: from kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to classical theory

Zr and Sc precipitate in aluminum alloys to form the compounds Al3Zr and Al3Sc which for low supersaturations of the solid solution have the L12 structure. The aim of the present study is to model at an atomic scale this kinetics of precipitation and to build a mesoscopic model based on classical nucleation theory so as to extend the field of supersaturations and annealing times that can be simulated. We use some ab-initio calculations and experimental data to fit an Ising model describing thermodynamics of the Al-Zr and Al-Sc systems. Kinetic behavior is described by means of an atom-vacancy exchange mechanism. This allows us to simulate with a kinetic Monte Carlo algorithm kinetics of precipitation of Al3Zr and Al3Sc. These kinetics are then used to test the classical nucleation theory. In this purpose, we deduce from our atomic model an isotropic interface free energy which is consistent with the one deduced from experimental kinetics and a nucleation free energy. We test di erent mean-field approximations (Bragg-Williams approximation as well as Cluster Variation Method) for these parameters. The classical nucleation theory is coherent with the kinetic Monte Carlo simulations only when CVM is used: it manages to reproduce the cluster size distribution in the metastable solid solution and its evolution as well as the steady-state nucleation rate. We also find that the capillary approximation used in the classical nucleation theory works surprisingly well when compared to a direct calculation of the free energy of formation for small L12 clusters.Comment: submitted to Physical Review B (2004

High-precision B(E2) measurements of semi-magic Ni 58,60,62,64 by Coulomb excitation

High-precision reduced electric-quadrupole transition probabilities B(E2;01+→21+) have been measured from single-step Coulomb excitation of semi-magic Ni58,60,62,64 (Z=28) beams at 1.8 MeV per nucleon on a natural carbon target. The energy loss of the

On the dynamic adaptation of language models based on dialogue information

We present an approach to adapt dynamically the language models (LMs) used by a speech recognizer that is part of a spoken dialogue system. We have developed a grammar generation strategy that automatically adapts the LMs using the semantic information that the user provides (represented as dialogue concepts), together with the information regarding the intentions of the speaker (inferred by the dialogue manager, and represented as dialogue goals). We carry out the adaptation as a linear interpolation between a background LM, and one or more of the LMs associated to the dialogue elements (concepts or goals) addressed by the user. The interpolation weights between those models are automatically estimated on each dialogue turn, using measures such as the posterior probabilities of concepts and goals, estimated as part of the inference procedure to determine the actions to be carried out. We propose two approaches to handle the LMs related to concepts and goals. Whereas in the first one we estimate a LM for each one of them, in the second one we apply several clustering strategies to group together those elements that share some common properties, and estimate a LM for each cluster. Our evaluation shows how the system can estimate a dynamic model adapted to each dialogue turn, which helps to improve the performance of the speech recognition (up to a 14.82% of relative improvement), which leads to an improvement in both the language understanding and the dialogue management tasks