Desarrollo de chips de manzana anna (Malus domestica) mediante preconcentración osmótica y horneado industrial

The main objective of this thesis was the development of an Anna apple snack, which resembles a chip (crispy flake), by osmotic dehydration and industrial baking, avoiding the use of deep frying. For the development of the apple chips, a completely randomized design with factorial arrangement 32 was done (two factors, three levels within each factor, and 3 replications). The response variables analyzed were: moisture content, total sugars and acidity. The interpretation of the results was performed using the analysis ANOVA and the Tukey test. This was supplemented by a table of decision-making and it was found that the best treatment was osmotically dehydrated at 50 ° C within syrup (25% sucrose, 25% glucose and 50% water) and baked at 115 ° C for 15 minutes. The treatment was tested sensorially to estimate the liking and the crunchiness level measured as fracturability. In addition, the shelf life of the product was estimated by the kinetic degradation model. Likewise, the total antioxidant capacity of the product was measured by FRAP assay (Ferric reducing antioxidant power). The chemical profile and the nutritional content of the apple chips were determinated. In addition, three tentative programs for industrial assessment were proposed, namely quality control, HACCP and industrial processing plans. Finally, a market study was conducted using surveys, in which 99% of respondents would be willing to buy the product that tentatively would have the trade name “MANZANNA Chips”. The potential consumers of our product would be people between 18 and 65 years, living in Quito. However, we support that the market study embrace other cities and consumers.El objetivo de esta tesis fue el desarrollo de un snack de manzana Anna tipo chip (hojuela crocante), mediante deshidratación osmótica y horneado industrial sin incurrir en el uso de fritura. El producto fue desarrollado en base a un diseño experimental completamente al azar con arreglo factorial 32 de dos factores y tres niveles dentro de cada factor, con 3 repeticiones. Las variables de respuesta analizadas fueron: humedad, azúcares totales y acidez y la interpretación de los resultados fue realizada mediante el análisis de varianza ANOVA y la prueba Tukey de separación de medias. Esto fue complementado con una tabla de ponderación para la toma de decisiones. El mejor tratamiento fue el deshidratado osmóticamente a 50°C en un jarabe con 25% sacarosa, 25% glucosa y 50% agua y horneado a 115°C por 15 minutos. Este tratamiento fue evaluado sensorialmente y estimado su nivel de agrado y de crocancia medido como fracturabilidad. Además, se estimó el tiempo de vida útil en base al modelo de degradación cinética. La capacidad antioxidante total fue analizada a través del ensayo FRAP (poder antioxidante para reducir Fe3+). Simultáneamente al desarrollo del producto se determinó el perfil químico y el contenido nutricional de los chips. Adicionalmente se elaboraron los programas tentativos de control de calidad y el plan HACCP, así como el necesario para la elaboración industrial del producto. Finalmente, se elaboró un estudio de mercado mediante encuestas, donde se encontró que el 99% de los encuestados estaría dispuesto a comprar el producto que tentativamente tendría el nombre comercial de MANZANNA Chips. Inicialmente el producto tendría como potenciales consumidores a personas entre 18 y 65 años de la ciudad de Quito. Sin embargo se alienta que este estudio sea extendido a otras ciudades y grupos de edad

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy

We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI. Supplemental material in the ancillary file

A search for ultra-high-energy photons at the Pierre Auger Observatory exploiting air-shower universality

The Pierre Auger Observatory is the most sensitive detector to primary photons with energies above ∼0.2 EeV. It measures extensive air showers using a hybrid technique that combines a fluorescence detector (FD) with a ground array of particle detectors (SD). The signatures of a photon-induced air shower are a larger atmospheric depth at the shower maximum (X$_{max}$) and a steeper lateral distribution function, along with a lower number of muons with respect to the bulk of hadron-induced background. Using observables measured by the FD and SD, three photon searches in different energy bands are performed. In particular, between threshold energies of 1-10 EeV, a new analysis technique has been developed by combining the FD-based measurement of X$_{max}$ with the SD signal through a parameter related to its muon content, derived from the universality of the air showers. This technique has led to a better photon/hadron separation and, consequently, to a higher search sensitivity, resulting in a tighter upper limit than before. The outcome of this new analysis is presented here, along with previous results in the energy ranges below 1 EeV and above 10 EeV. From the data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory in about 15 years of operation, the most stringent constraints on the fraction of photons in the cosmic flux are set over almost three decades in energy

Study on multi-ELVES in the Pierre Auger Observatory

Since 2013, the four sites of the Fluorescence Detector (FD) of the Pierre Auger Observatory record ELVES with a dedicated trigger. These UV light emissions are correlated to distant lightning strikes. The length of recorded traces has been increased from 100 μs (2013), to 300 μs (2014-16), to 900 μs (2017-present), to progressively extend the observation of the light emission towards the vertical of the causative lightning and beyond. A large fraction of the observed events shows double ELVES within the time window, and, in some cases, even more complex structures are observed. The nature of the multi-ELVES is not completely understood but may be related to the different types of lightning in which they are originated. For example, it is known that Narrow Bipolar Events can produce double ELVES, and Energetic In-cloud Pulses, occurring between the main negative and upper positive charge layer of clouds, can induce double and even quadruple ELVES in the ionosphere. This report shows the seasonal and daily dependence of the time gap, amplitude ratio, and correlation between the pulse widths of the peaks in a sample of 1000+ multi-ELVES events recorded during the period 2014-20. The events have been compared with data from other satellite and ground-based sensing devices to study the correlation of their properties with lightning observables such as altitude and polarity

Extraction of the Muon Signals Recorded with the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory Using Recurrent Neural Networks

We present a method based on the use of Recurrent Neural Networks to extract the muon component from the time traces registered with water-Cherenkov detector (WCD) stations of the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The design of the WCDs does not allow to separate the contribution of muons to the time traces obtained from the WCDs from those of photons, electrons and positrons for all events. Separating the muon and electromagnetic components is crucial for the determination of the nature of the primary cosmic rays and properties of the hadronic interactions at ultra-high energies. We trained a neural network to extract the muon and the electromagnetic components from the WCD traces using a large set of simulated air showers, with around 450 000 simulated events. For training and evaluating the performance of the neural network, simulated events with energies between 1018.5, eV and 1020 eV and zenith angles below 60 degrees were used. We also study the performance of this method on experimental data of the Pierre Auger Observatory and show that our predicted muon lateral distributions agree with the parameterizations obtained by the AGASA collaboration