Influences of Labeling Policy and Media Coverage On the Demand for Butter and Margarine

food labeling, regulation, media coverage, trans fat, consumer demand, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Self-Perception of Weight and Health and Dietary Quality

perception, dietary quality, obesity, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Development of a Competitive Chain Reaction Assay For Quantitative Analysis of White Spot Syndrome Virus Gene Transcription and Viral Replication in Shrimps

Despites much research on infectivity and diagnostics of white spot syndrome virus (WSSV), little is known about the viral replication kinetics and quantitative gene expressions. Therefore, a time course quantitative study was carried out using competitive polymerase chain reaction (cPCR) to measure viral growth in grow-out Penaeus monodon experimentally infected via feeding of WSSV infected tissue. The current tissue tropism studies demonstrated that gills have higher viral load followed by integument and abdominal muscle. Gills and integument were infected as early as 14 hour post infection (hr p.i.) compared to 24 hr pi. for abdominal muscle. Gills are therefore recommended for extraction of DNA in routine PCR screening of WSSV. A classification of infection level was proposed to categorise infection into light (0 to 24 hr p.i.), moderate (24 to 48 hr p.i.) and moribund (48 to 120 hr pi.) stage according to viral loads detected in gills, which were 0 to 1 x lo3, 1 x lo3 to 1 x 10' and 1 x 10' to 1 x lo9 copies per mg tissue respectively for the three infection stages. As the viral load was low at light infection, but increased exponentially at moderate infection and maintained at high level at moribund infection, such pattern of growth in viral loads is comparable to the eclipse, logarithmic and plateau phase of viral growth curve. White spots and reddish discoloration on the exoskeleton were apparent in moderate and moribund infection stage, but terminal clinical signs such as abnormal swimming behaviour and heavy mortality could only be observed in the later. Previous studies on WSSV early genes expression were often qualitative rather than quantitative. By using competitive reverse transcriptase PCR (cRT-PCR), early gene ribonucleotide reductase large subunit (RR1) and thymidine kinasethymidylate kinase (TK-TMK) mRNA expressions were non detectable at light infection stage (12 hr p.i.), but abundant at moderate (24 hr p.i.) and moribund (60 hr p.i. and above) infection stages. Geomeans of RR1 expression in whole heart samples were 9.69 x lo4 and 2.36 x 10' copies at moderate and moribund infection stage respectively. Thus, both genes are probably vital in establishing WSSV infection, and their expressions are useful as marker in anti-viral studies of WSSV.Shrimp immunity was emphasised under the European Commission's Shrimp Immunity and Disease Control (SI & DC) project. At present, prophenoloxidase (proPo) activating system and penaeidins, the predominant antimicrobial peptides, are well studied in bacterial and fungal infection, but not in viral infection. The mRNA expression of prop0 was detected low and infrequent throughout infection with two-step PCR in heart and lymphoid organ. Penaeidin expression was however abundant with geomean of 4.35 x lo4 copies in light infection (12 hr p.i.) but downregulated to 8.94 x lo3 copies at moderate infection (24 hr p.i.) and non-detectable at moribund stage in whole heart samples. The lack of penaeidin and prop0 mRNA upregulation suggests that they have little if any importance in the response to viral infection

Algorithms on determining the correlation laws between ultrasonic images and quality of spot welds.

Conventional quality control devices for spot welding cannot perform on-line inspection and provide feedback to the welding control system. In this way, the traditional quality control systems are similar to statistical welding parameters monitoring systems. It is imperative to combine the idea of on-line quality inspection with closed-loop feedback control in a robust control system. However, there is no single acoustic method to date capable of manipulating real-time control and on-line quality inspection, concurrently, since specific procedures (e.g. scanning time and adjustment time) need to be adopted by traditional acoustic microscopes to retrieve proper information, and these procedures tend to disable the real-time and on-line capability of acoustic microscopy. With recent hardware improvements, the novel portable acoustic device is able to reduce the scanning time to real-time fashion without losing any significant data. On the other hand, the adjustment time of the portable acoustic device can be reduced noticeably by employing intelligent control software instead of human operators. This new hardware-software configuration will be an ideal approach to the on-line, real-time nondestructive inspection of spot welds. The primary goal of this research is to develop an intelligent system to accomplish the on-line, real-time nondestructive inspection for spot welds. The following objectives were fulfilled to reach the final goal. (1) Classification of the acoustic images of spot welds. (2) Quantification of acoustic information as parameters. (3) The study of the influence of each parameter on the strength of spot welds. (4) Identification of important and significant parameters. (5) Integration of these parameters into the knowledge base of the software. The system developed can be an on-line advisor that is capable of providing critical information about the quality of spot welds during the process. Furthermore, this system is able to render warning signals to the process control unit to prevent further mistakes.Dept. of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1999 .L33. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-02, Section: B, page: 1132. Advisers: Roman Maev; Michael Wang. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1999

Modelling and experimental study of the spray forming of dissimilar metals

This research describes a systematic study to develop a strong interfacial bond in as-sprayed dissimilar metallic alloys. Non-destructive three-dimensional microstructure and residual stress characterisations via X-ray micro-computed tomography and neutron diffraction, respectively and numerical modelling of the preform shape evolution, transient heat flow and thermal residual stress developed were employed. The study revealed quantitatively the links between the key spray forming parameters, corresponding microstructures formed and the interfacial bonding characteristics in thick as-sprayed dissimilar metallic alloys.The key novelties of this research include:- The development of a preform shape and heat flow model that incorporates: (1) the use of a mesh deformation method with automated re-meshing algorithm to model the growing preforms and address the coupling of droplet mass/enthalpy input at the deposition surface and (2) a substrate induction preheating model.- Validated against experimental measurements, the preform heat flow model was used to establish the correlations between the preform thermal history and microstructures formed. The correlations established based on the tomography and diffraction measurements showed their interrelationship and agreements with one another. The correlations also provided the crucial links to take into account the effects of the microstructure formed on the corresponding material properties and stresses developed in the preform after cooling.- The combined use of thermal residual stress modelling and neutron diffraction in this research presents, for the first time, the nondestructive quantitative assessment of the interfacial bonding in thick as-sprayed dissimilar steels preforms. The effects of different substrate and spray temperatures on the microstructures, residual stress and interfacial bond developed were investigated systematically.- The dynamics of the atomised droplets rapid microstructural change during deposition were revealed when subjected to rapid Joule heating (~500 K s-1) to a range of isothermal temperatures in the vicinity of the precipitate solvus and alloy solidus temperatures with a short (~10 s) high temperature holding time. A finite element model of the transient heat flow in the powder compact was developed to provide more quantitative information of the specimen internal temperature distribution which was otherwise unavailable and the rapid microstructural change in the powders was rationalised in terms of the transient temperature conditions. These results can be useful in reconciling thermal histories and microstructures in the as-sprayed preforms, and may guide the optimisation of the spray forming process if desirable microstructural features are to be preserved into the bulk preform.- The elastic and plastic deformation behaviours of the spray formed steels containing different levels of porosity and the integrity of the bonded interface of the spray formed dissimilar steels were studied in situ via three-point bend tests with neutron diffraction. The study revealed the role of the constituent phases in the as-sprayed high speed steel when subjected to stresses above the elastic limit and the characteristics of the interfacial bond formed in comparison to the non-destructive assessment carried out in this research

International students\u27 travel decision making process

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Abnormal Domestic Information Disseminate on Cross-listed Nikkei 225 Index Futures from Abroad?

This study extends the GARCH with autoregressive conditional jump intensity in Generalized Error Distribution (GARJI-GED) model to identify the fundamental characteristics of Nikkei 225 index and futures. Furthermore, this study applied the Granger causality test to investigate whether an abnormal information lead and lag relationship existed for the Nikkei 225, SIMEX-Nikkei 225 and OSE-Nikkei 225. Empirical results demonstrate that Nikkei 225 index and futures show jump phenomena, implying a jump process is necessary to match statistical features in spot and futures markets. Finally, the empirical results indicated that the abnormal information of the OSE-Nikkei 225 futures contract significantly leads the one of the SIMEX- Nikkei 225 and Nikkei 225 index.