A survey on determination of HACCP knowledge of food handlers in Istanbul food businesses

The HACCP system is a food safety approach, which prevents hazards before they happen. With this survey we aimed to determine the HACCP knowledge of staff working in kitchens of food businesses in Istanbul and correlate the results with some demographic characteristics in order to evaluate HACCP awareness in the foodservice sector in Istanbul. A self-administrable questionnaire was developed in order to evaluate the knowledge of food handlers in all stages of kitchen work. The questionnaire consisted of a first set of 9 demographic questions followed by 12 items related to HACCP system application. According to data obtained from this study, food handlers’ HACCP knowledge increases parallel with age, education level, and time spent in the sector and seniority. In addition, in order to increase the knowledge and awareness of HACCP, training has been found to be important

Correlation of minimum apparent diffusion coefficient with maximum standardized uptake on fluorodeoxyglucose PET-CT in patients with rectal adenocarcinoma

PURPOSE:The aim of this study was to retrospectively assess the correlation between minimum apparent diffusion coefficient (ADCmin) values obtained from diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and maximum standardized uptake values (SUVmax) obtained from positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) in rectal cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty-one patients with pathologically confirmed rectal adenocarcinoma were included in this study. For preoperative staging, PET-CT and pelvic MRI with diffusion-weighted imaging were performed within one week (mean time interval, 3±1 day). For ADC measurements, the region of interest (ROI) was manually drawn along the border of each hyperintense tumor on b=1000 s/mm2 images. After repeating this procedure on each consecutive tumor-containing slice to cover the entire tumoral area, ROIs were copied to ADC maps. ADCmin was determined as the lowest ADC value among all ROIs in each tumor. For SUVmax measurements, whole-body images were assessed visually on transaxial, sagittal, and coronal images. ROIs were determined from the lesions observed on each slice, and SUVmax values were calculated automatically. The mean values of ADCmin and SUVmax were compared using Spearman’s test. RESULTS:The mean ADCmin was 0.62±0.19×10-3 mm2/s (range, 0.368–1.227×10-3 mm2/s), the mean SUVmax was 20.07±9.3 (range, 4.3–49.5). A significant negative correlation was found between ADCmin and SUVmax (r=-0.347; P = 0.026). CONCLUSION:There was a significant negative correlation between the ADCmin and SUVmax values in rectal adenocarcinomas

MultiLexNorm: A Shared Task on Multilingual Lexical Normalization

Lexical normalization is the task of transforming an utterance into its standardized form. This task is beneficial for downstream analysis, as it provides a way to harmonize (often spontaneous) linguistic variation. Such variation is typical for social media on which information is shared in a multitude of ways, including diverse languages and code-switching. Since the seminal work of Han and Baldwin (2011) a decade ago, lexical normalization has attracted attention in English and multiple other languages. However, there exists a lack of a common benchmark for comparison of systems across languages with a homogeneous data and evaluation setup. The MULTILEXNORM shared task sets out to fill this gap. We provide the largest publicly available multilingual lexical normalization benchmark including 12 language variants. We propose a homogenized evaluation setup with both intrinsic and extrinsic evaluation. As extrinsic evaluation, we use dependency parsing and part-of-speech tagging with adapted evaluation metrics (a-LAS, a-UAS, and a-POS) to account for alignment discrepancies. The shared task hosted at W-NUT 2021 attracted 9 participants and 18 submissions. The results show that neural normalization systems outperform the previous state-of-the-art system by a large margin. Downstream parsing and part-of-speech tagging performance is positively affected but to varying degrees, with improvements of up to 1.72 a-LAS, 0.85 a-UAS, and 1.54 a-POS for the winning system

First-principles study of structural, elastic, lattice dynamical and thermodynamical properties of GdX (X = Bi, Sb)

WOS: 000277675400001The results are presented of first-principles calculations of the structural, elastic and lattice dynamical properties of GdX (X = Bi, Sb). In particular, the lattice parameters, bulk modulus, phonon dispersion curves, elastic constants and their related quantities, such as Young's modulus, Shear modulus, Zener anisotropy factor, Poisson's ratio, Kleinman parameter, and longitudinal, transverse and average sound velocities, were calculated and compared with available experimental and other theoretical data. The temperature and pressure variations of the volume, bulk modulus, thermal expansion coefficient, heat capacities, Gruneisen parameter and Debye temperatures were predicted in wide pressure (0-50 GPa) and temperature ranges (0-500 K). The plane-wave pseudopotential approach to the density-functional theory within the GGA approximation implemented in VASP (Vienna ab initio simulation package) was used in all computations.Turkish Prime Ministry State Planning Agency [2001K120590]This work was supported by the Turkish Prime Ministry State Planning Agency under Projects No. 2001K120590 and we kindly acknowledge Prof. Dr Suleyman Ozcelik for his financial support

Electronic, elastic and optical properties on the Zn1-xMgxSe mixed alloys

WOS: 000286112900018The structural, elastic, electronic and optical properties of Zn1-xMgxSe ternary mixed crystals are investigated by utilizing the first-principles plane-wave pseudopotential method within the LDA approximations. Some basic physical properties, such as lattice constant, bulk modulus, second-order elastic constants (C-ij), Shear modulus, Young's modulus, Poison's ratio, Lame constants and the electronic band structures, are calculated. We have, also, predicted the optical properties such as dielectric functions, refractive index and energy loss function of these ternary mixed crystals. Our results agree well with the available data in the literature.Gazi University [05/2008-42]This work is supported by Gazi University Research-Project Unit under Project No: 05/2008-42

The electronic and optical properties of Zn1-xCaxSe mixed alloys

WOS: 000279899900035We have investigated the structural, electronic, and optical properties of Zn1-xCaxSe ternary alloys using first principles calculations within the plane-wave pseudopotential method. Some basic physical properties, such as lattice constant, bulk modulus, electronic band structures, and optical properties (dielectric functions, refractive index, and energy loss function) were calculated. In addition, the effects of composition x on bulk modulus, band gap, refractive index and dielectric function were calculated. Our results agree well with the available data in the literature. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Turkish Prime Ministry State Planning Agency [2001K120590]This work was supported by the Turkish Prime Ministry State Planning Agency under Projects No. 2001K120590