A Personalized Facet-Weight Based Ranking Method for Service Component Retrieval

With the recent advanced computing, networking technologies and embedded systems, the computing paradigm has switched from mainframe and desktop computing to ubiquitous computing, one of whose visions is to provide intelligent, personalized and comprehensive services to users. As a new paradigm, Active Services is proposed to generate such services by retrieving, adapting, and composing of existing service components to satisfy user requirements. As the popularity of this paradigm and hence the number of service components increases, how to efficiently retrieve components to maximally meet user requirements has become a fundamental and significant problem. However, traditional facet-based retrieval methods only simply list out all the results without any kind of ranking and do not lay any emphasis on the differences of importance on each facet value in user requirements, which makes it hard for user to quickly select suitable components from the resulting list. To solve the problems, this paper proposes a novel personalized facet-weight based ranking method for service component retrieval, which assigns a weight for each facet to distinguish the importance of the facets, and constructs a personalized model to automatically calculate facet-weights for users according to their histo -rical retrieval records of the facet values and the weight setting. We optimize the parameters of the personalized model, evaluate the performance of the proposed retrieval method, and compare with the traditional facet-based matching methods. The experimental results show promising results in terms of retrieval accuracy and execution time

Effects of Different Heat Treatment Temperatures on Eating Quality of Sweet-Scented Osmanthus Flowers

The chemical components of edible sweet-scented osmanthus flowers (Osmanthus fragrans (Thunb.) Lour.) vary at different heat treatment temperatures, so it is extremely necessary to explore the effect of different heating temperatures on the eating quality of sweet-scented osmanthus. In this work, changes in the bioactive ingredients, antioxidant property, color and flavor substances of unheated (control) and heated (at 80, 100 or 120 °C for 20 min) flowers of Osmanthus fragrans ‘Boyejingui’, ‘Echengdangui’ and ‘Wanyingui’ were determined. The results showed that with an increase in heating temperature, the content of bioactive ingredients decreased significantly (P < 0.05), and the loss rates of flavonoids, polyphenols and anthocyanins were up to 37.44%, 28.74% and 49.10%, respectively. The antioxidant capacity decreased initially and then increased, and the radical scavenging capacity of the sample heated at 120 ℃ increased by 6.52% compared with that of the sample heated at 100 ℃. The color difference significantly increased (P < 0.05), the bitterness increased, and the astringency decreased first and then increased. Compared with the control group, furans, nitrogen-containing heterocycles and phenols were exclusively found in the sample heated at 120 ℃ at a level of 6.21%. The number of species of characteristic aroma components progressively decreased but a caramel-like aroma was formed. Therefore, medium and low temperature processing is suitable for the production of sweet-scented osmanthus products with health benefits, and high-temperature processing is suitable for the production of sweet-scented osmanthus-based snacks. ‘Boyejingui’ is suitable for low temperature processing, ‘Echengdangui’ is suitable for high temperature processing, and the quality of ‘Wanyingui’ is poor after heat treatment. Processing temperature and varieties should be reasonably selected according to practical demands. This study can provide a theoretical basis for the development of thermally processed products of sweet-scented osmanthus

Glycyrrhizin Attenuates Salmonella Typhimurium-Induced Tissue Injury, Inflammatory Response, and Intestinal Dysbiosis in C57BL/6 Mice

Salmonellae are one of the most important foodborne pathogens, which threaten the health of humans and animals severely. Glycyrrhizin (GL) has been proven to exhibit anti-inflammatory and tissue-protective properties. Here, we investigated the effects of GL on tissue injury, inflammatory response, and intestinal dysbiosis in Salmonella Typhimurium-infected mice. Results showed that GL or gentamicin (GM) significantly (P &lt; 0.05) alleviated ST-induced splenomegaly indicated by the decreased spleen index, injury of liver and jejunum indicated by the decreased hepatocytic apoptosis, and the increased jejunal villous height. GL significantly (P &lt; 0.05) increased secretion of inflammatory cytokines (IFN-γ, IL-12p70, IL-6, and IL-10) in spleen and IL-12p40 mRNA expression in liver. Meanwhile, GL or GM pre-infection treatments significantly (P &lt; 0.05) decreased ST-induced pro-inflammatory cytokine (IFN-γ, TNF-α, and IL-6) expression in both spleen and liver and increased (P &lt; 0.05) anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 secretion in spleen. Furthermore, GL or GM pre-infection treatment also regulates the diversities and compositions of intestinal microbiota and decreased the negative connection among the intestinal microbes in ST-infected mice. The above findings indicate that GL alleviates ST-induced splenomegaly, hepatocytic apoptosis, injury of jejunum and liver, inflammatory response of liver and spleen, and intestinal dysbacteriosis in mice