Interaction between sodium chloride and texture in semi-hard Danish cheese as affected by brining time, dl -starter culture, chymosin type and cheese ripening

Reduced NaCl in semi-hard cheeses greatly affects textural and sensory properties. The interaction between cheese NaCl concentration and texture was affected by brining time (0–28 h), dl-starter cultures (C1, C2, and C3), chymosin type (bovine or camel), and ripening time (1–12 weeks). Cheese NaCl levels ranged from <0.15 to 1.90% (w/w). NaCl distribution changed during ripening; migration from cheese edge to core led to a more homogeneous NaCl distribution after 12 weeks. As ripening time increased, cheese firmness decreased. Cheeses with reduced NaCl were less firm and more compressible. Cheeses produced with C2 were significantly firmer than those produced with C1; cheeses produced with C3 had higher firmness and compressibility. In NaCl reduced cheese, use of camel chymosin as coagulant resulted in significantly higher firmness than that given using bovine chymosin. Overall, cheese NaCl content is reducible without significant textural impact using well-defined starter cultures and camel chymosin

Does computer use pose a hazard for future long-term sickness absence?

The aim of the study was to investigate if weekly duration of computer use predicted sickness absence for more than two weeks at a later time

Neurofilament Light in Cerebrospinal Fluid is Associated With Disease Staging in European Lyme Neuroborreliosis

BACKGROUND: Drivers of differences in disease presentation and symptom duration in Lyme neuroborreliosis (LNB) are currently unknown. OBJECTIVES: We hypothesized that neurofilament light (NfL) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) would predict disease location and sequelae in a historic LNB cohort. DESIGN: Using a cross-sectional design and archived CSF samples from 185 patients diagnosed with LNB, we evaluated the content of NfL in the total cohort and in a subgroup of 84 patients with available clinical and paraclinical information. METHODS: Individuals were categorized according to disease location: a. Central nervous system (CNS) with stroke (N=3), b. CNS without stroke (N=11), c. Peripheral nervous system (PNS) with cranial nerve palsy (CNP) (N=40) d. PNS without CNP (N=30). Patients with hospital follow-up more than 6 months after completed antibiotic therapy were categorized as having LNB associated sequelae (N=15). RESULTS: At diagnosis concentration of NfL exceeded the upper reference level in 60% (105/185), especially among individuals above 30 years. Age-adjusted NfL was not found to be associated with symptom duration. Age-adjusted NfL was significantly higher among individuals with CNS involvement. Category a. (stroke) had significantly higher NfL concentrations in CSF compared to all other categories, category b. (CNS involvement without stroke) had significantly higher values compared to the categories of PNS involvement. We found no significant difference between the categories with PNS involvement (with or without CNP). Significantly higher NfL was found among patients with follow-up in hospital setting. CONCLUSION: Comparison of NfL concentrations between the 4 groups of LNB disease manifestations based on clinical information revealed a hierarchy of neuron damage according to disease location and suggested evolving mechanisms with accelerated injury especially when disease is complicated by stroke. Higher values of NfL among patients with need of follow-up in hospital setting suggest NfL could be useful to identify rehabilitative needs

Playing with fear: a field study in recreational horror

Haunted attractions are illustrative examples of recreational fear in which people voluntarily seek out frightening experiences in pursuit of enjoyment. We present findings from a field study at a haunted-house attraction where visitors between the ages of 12 and 57 years (N = 110) were equipped with heart rate monitors, video-recorded at peak scare points during the attraction, and asked to report on their experience. Our results show that enjoyment has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with fear across repeated self-reported measures. Moreover, results from physiological data demonstrate that the experience of being frightened is a linear function of large-scale heart rate fluctuations, whereas there is an inverted-U-shaped relationship between participant enjoyment and small-scale heart rate fluctuations. These results suggest that enjoyment is related to forms of arousal dynamics that are “just right.” These findings shed light on how fear and enjoyment can coexist in recreational horror

Quantum optical coherence can survive photon losses: a continuous-variable quantum erasure correcting code

A fundamental requirement for enabling fault-tolerant quantum information processing is an efficient quantum error-correcting code (QECC) that robustly protects the involved fragile quantum states from their environment. Just as classical error-correcting codes are indispensible in today's information technologies, it is believed that QECC will play a similarly crucial role in tomorrow's quantum information systems. Here, we report on the first experimental demonstration of a quantum erasure-correcting code that overcomes the devastating effect of photon losses. Whereas {\it errors} translate, in an information theoretic language, the noise affecting a transmission line, {\it erasures} correspond to the in-line probabilistic loss of photons. Our quantum code protects a four-mode entangled mesoscopic state of light against erasures, and its associated encoding and decoding operations only require linear optics and Gaussian resources. Since in-line attenuation is generally the strongest limitation to quantum communication, much more than noise, such an erasure-correcting code provides a new tool for establishing quantum optical coherence over longer distances. We investigate two approaches for circumventing in-line losses using this code, and demonstrate that both approaches exhibit transmission fidelities beyond what is possible by classical means.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure