Effects of Brix, processing techniques and storage temperature on the quality of carambola fruit cordial

Two methods of processing carambola fruit cordial were compared using a cold method (CM) and a hot method (HM). Characteristics of the freshly prepared product were compared. Samples were later prepared at 35 °, 45 ° and 55 ° Brix concentrations and stored at 25 °C and 5 °C. The responses measured during storage were changes in pH, titratable acidity, ascorbic acid content, Brix, viscosity, colour, pulp sedimentation and sensory attributes of colour and taste. The pH remained stable during storage but did not show any correlation with titratable acidity, which fluctuated. The ascorbic acid content decreased. Temperature seemed to have an effect on Brix and viscosity values, colour and pulp sedimentation. The 35 ° and 45 ° Brix CM cordials stored at 5 °C were more acceptable in terms of colour and taste. CM did not seem to be a feasible technique for producing cordial from fresh fruit

Costos e impacto económico del síndrome de apnea-hipopnea obstructiva del sueño (SAHOS) para la salud pública

El síndrome de apnea-hipopnea obstructiva del sueño (SAHOS) no tratado se asocia con costos directos e indirectos significativos. Este trastorno también tiene un impacto negativo sobre el desempeño y la seguridad laboral y está implicado en una proporción considerable de accidentes automovilísticos. El diagnóstico oportuno y la terapia óptima han mostrado disminución en la utilización de los sistemas de salud y en los costos, al tiempo que atenúan los riesgos adversos. Del mismo modo, el SAHOS no tratado se asocia con incremento en las tasas de desempleo. Para los profesionales de la salud, tener un paciente con SAHOS involucrado en una colisión automovilística es de crucial importancia debido al daño personal y público, así como la potencial discapacidad física por el accidente. En Latinoamérica se requiere de la medición de los costos directos e indirectos dado el problema de salud pública que tiene asociado el SAHOS y las implicaciones mencionadas.Untreated obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) is associated with significant direct and indirect medical costs. This disorder also has a significant negative impact on work performance and safety, and is implicated in a substantial proportion of motor vehicular crashes. Timely diagnosis and optimal therapy have shown a lower utilization rate related to health care systems and reduced costs, while adverse risks are mitigated at the same time.Prompt diagnosis and optimal therapy have shown to decrease heath care utilizaton and costs, as well as mitigating these adverse risks.Similarly, untreated OSAHS is associated with higher unemployment rates. For health care professionals, having a patient with OSAHS involved in a MVC is of paramount importance for a several reasons, including personal and public damage, as well as the potential physical disability that may be caused by the accident. In Latin America, measuring direct and indirect costs is necessary considering the public health problem associated with OSAHS and the implications mentioned above

Robust Transceiver Design for SWIPT DF MIMO Relay Systems With Time-Switching Protocol

In this article, we investigate a dual-hop simultaneous wireless information and power transfer decode-and-forward multiple-input and multiple-output relay communication system, in which the relay node harvests energy based on the radio frequency (RF) signal transmitted from the source node through the time-switching (TS) protocol to decode and forward the re-encoded information to the destination node. With the consideration of the channel estimation error, the joint optimization of the TS factor and source and relay precoding matrices is proposed with robustness against the channel state information mismatch to maximize the mutual information (MI) between the source and destination nodes. We derive the optimal structure of the source and relay precoding matrices to simplify the transceiver optimization problem under fixed and flexible power constraints. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed algorithms with robustness provide better MI performance compared to the nonrobust algorithm

Individual differences in level of wisdom are associated with brain activation during a moral decision-making task.

IntroductionWisdom is reportedly associated with better health and quality of life. However, our knowledge of the neurobiology of wisdom is still in the early stages of development. We aimed to improve our understanding by correlating a psychometric measure of the trait with patterns of brain activation produced by a cognitive task theorized to be relevant to wisdom: moral decision-making. In particular, we aimed to determine whether individual differences in wisdom interact with moral task complexity in relation to brain activation.MethodsParticipants were 39 community-dwelling men and women aged 27-76 years, who completed moral and nonmoral decision-making tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Brain activation in select regions of interest was correlated with participants' scores on the San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-WISE).ResultsIndividual differences in wisdom were found to interact with brain response to moral versus nonmoral and moral personal versus impersonal dilemmas, particularly in regions in or near the default mode network. Persons with higher scores on the SD-WISE had less contrast between moral and nonmoral dilemmas and greater contrast between moral-personal and moral-impersonal dilemmas than individuals with lower SD-WISE scores.ConclusionsResults confirmed our hypothesis that individual differences in level of wisdom would interact with moral condition in relation to brain activation, and may underscore the relevance of considering one's own and others' actions and experiences in the context of wise thinking. Future studies are needed to replicate these findings and to examine specific neurocircuits

Challenges and opportunities of marine propulsion with alternative fuels

The increasingly stringent shipping emissions regulations and global decarbonisation movement have prompted the adoption of alternative fuels in the shipping industry. This review presents the performance results and evaluation of alternative fuel engines under low-medium speed operation that has not been considered by existing reviews. This operating regime is typically used in marine propulsion. Relevant articles published by reputable journals were retrieved from scholarly databases and analysed. The evaluated alternative fuels were waste plastic oil (WPO), tyre pyrolysis oil (TPO), biodiesel, ammonia, vegetable oil (VO), and waste lubricant oil (WLO). Neat WPO and TPO demonstrated poorer emissions performances than diesel; alternatively, retarding the fuel injection timing of the WPO engine and blending the TPO with biodiesel had elevated engine performances substantially. As compared to VO degum and blending VO with diesel, VO preheating was a more promising approach to augment engine performance. Ammonia is an attractive candidate owing to its carbon-free chemical composition, but novel technologies are needed to address its terribly high NOx emission. Diesel-like fuel (DLF) derived from WLO produced notably better engine performance than fossil diesel. This review provides insight into liquid alternative fuels performances for low-medium speed engine operation, whose combustion physics is considerably different from high-speed operation. Such understandings are vital to address the current issues regarding marine engine systems, promoting the development of combustion technologies and alternative fuels uptake in marine propulsion

TonEBP suppresses IL-10-mediated immunomodulation

TonEBP is a key transcriptional activator of M1 phenotype in macrophage, and its high expression is associated with many inflammatory diseases. During the progression of the inflammatory responses, the M1 to M2 phenotypic switch enables the dual role of macrophages in controlling the initiation and resolution of inflammation. Here we report that in human and mouse M1 macrophages TonEBP suppresses IL-10 expression and M2 phenotype. TonEBP knockdown promoted the transcription of the IL-10 gene by enhancing chromatin accessibility and Sp1 recruitment to its promoter. The enhanced expression of M2 genes by TonEBP knockdown was abrogated by antagonism of IL-10 by either neutralizing antibodies or siRNA-mediated silencing. In addition, pharmacological suppression of TonEBP leads to similar upregulation of IL-10 and M2 genes. Thus, TonEBP suppresses M2 phenotype via downregulation of the IL-10 in M1 macrophagesope

Report of the third Asian Prostate Cancer study meeting.

The Asian Prostate Cancer (A-CaP) study is an Asia-wide initiative that was launched in December 2015 in Tokyo, Japan, with the objective of surveying information about patients who have received a histopathological diagnosis of prostate cancer (PCa) and are undergoing treatment and clarifying distribution of staging, the actual status of treatment choices, and treatment outcomes. The study aims to clarify the clinical situation for PCa in Asia and use the outcomes for the purposes of international comparison. Following the first meeting in Tokyo in December 2015, the second A-CaP meeting was held in Seoul, Korea, in September 2016. This, the third A-CaP meeting, was held on October 14, 2017, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with the participation of members and collaborators from 12 countries and regions. In the meeting, participating countries and regions presented the current status of data collection, and the A-CaP office presented a preliminary analysis of the registered cases received from each country and region. Participants discussed ongoing challenges relating to data input and collection, institutional, and legislative issues that may present barriers to data sharing, and the outlook for further patient registrations through to the end of the registration period in December 2018. In addition to A-CaP-specific discussions, a series of special lectures were also delivered on the situation for health insurance in the United States, the correlation between insurance coverage and PCa outcomes, and the outlook for robotic surgery in the Asia-Pacific region. Members also confirmed the principles of authorship in collaborative studies, with a view to publishing original articles based on A-CaP data in the future

Transient carnitine transport defect with cholestatic jaundice: report of one case in a premature baby

Carnitine (β-hydroxy-γ-trimethylaminobutyric acid) is involved in the transport of long-chain fatty acids into the mitochondrial matrix and the removal of potentially toxic acylcarnitine esters. Transient carnitine transport defect is a rare condition in newborns reported in 1/90,000 live births. In this paper, we describe a case of transient carnitine transport defect found in a premature baby who had prolonged cholestatic jaundice and poor weight gain, and who responded dramatically to oral carnitine supplementation

Integrated Circuit Packaging Recognition with Tilt Auto Adjustment using Deep Learning Approach

A deep-learning-based approach for recognizing integrated circuit (IC) packaging type is presented in this paper. The objective of this work is to design a deep-learning method that can recognize multiple types of packaging per detection, performing counting operations, and calculating the centre location of an IC with its tilting angle. The transfer learning from model You-Only-Look-Once (YOLO) v5 was chosen because it has been trained with the coco dataset and has a more reliable feature extraction system than the other models. In order to extract data from images, OpenCV was used, which allows the deep learning model to perform more efficient analysis of the input data. Apart from that, the principal component analysis (PCA) was used to estimate the angle of the IC in order to determine the rotation of each IC for the purpose of tilting adjustment. The developed model has an average confidence score of 85% and is capable of operating in a variety of conditions, as demonstrated by ANOVA analysis