MORPHOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS ON SELECTED CHERRY PLANTS, A PRIMARY EFFECT PRODUCT OF GAMMA RADIATION (Cz137)

A study has been conducted on the rootstock cross area, trunk cross area and total growth with 195 selected plants, a primary effect product from Bigareau Burlat, Pobeda Krimska and Kozerska cherry varieties, during the first MV1 generation after the gamma radiation with Cz137. Graft branches were exposed to dosages of 25Gy, 35Gy and 45Gy at the Institute of Radiobiology and Radiopreservation in Sofia. The graft was taken during dormant buds onto a Prunus mahaleb rootstock. The average values of all study parameters with the selected plants are 10 to 50% smaller in comparison with the controls (plants not treated with radiation). The highest reduction of total plant growth is noticed at Kozerska variety. The average value is 40% smaller in contrast to the control. The average values for this characteristic provide statistical significant differences for all radiation dosages with the selected plants in contrast to the control. The highest difference was noticed with the dosage of 25 Gy, where the total growth is 50% smaller than the control. A very high positive correlation is determent between the rootstock and trunk cross area, as well as between the rootstock and trunk cross area and with the total growth in all of the tested varieties. Negative correlation between the radiation dosage and the total growth is detected for Pobeda Krimska and Kozerska. This kind of correlation is not present in Bigareau Burlat

CHEMICAL CONTENT OF FRUITS OF SOME PERSPECTIVE STRAWBERRY VARIETIES CULTIVATED ON OPEN FIELD

This research contains results concerning the chemical composition of 15 introduced varieties of strawberries in Macedonia: Idea, Camarosa, Belrubi, Evita, Honeoye, Tethis, Chandler, Onda, Miranda, Paros, Elsanta, Eris, Madalene, Favette and Marmolada and two controll varieties: Pocahontas and Sengasengana. The analysis has been conducted on the following substances: soluble dry matter, sugars (total and reductive), acids, pulp’s pH, sugar/acid ratio, vitamin C, anthocyanins and mineral matters. The percentage of soluble dry matter is between 8.5% with the Eris variety and 11% with Idea. Idea has the highest concentration of sugars with 8.80% of total and 6.16% of reductive sugars. Eris has the lowest concentration of 6.80% total and 4.76% reductive sugars. Lowest amount of acids is 0.79% (Onda and Madalene) and highest is 0.94% (Evita). The range of pH value goes from 3.5 (Tethis) to 4.2 (Chandler and Pocahontas). The Marmolada variety has the highest sugar/acid ratio with 10.4 and Evita has the lowest of 8.1. The concentration of vitamin C goes between the range of 72.49mg% (Pocahontas) and 113.73mg% (Camarosa). The anthocyanins concentration with the Favette is to be the lowest with 37.06mg/kg, whereas the Elsanta reaches the highest content with 48.88mg/kg. The content of mineral matter within the fruit is between 0.52% (Chandler and Onda) and 0.94% (Tethis)

Data Aggregation and Packet Bundling of Uplink Small Packets for Monitoring Applications in LTE

In cellular massive Machine-Type Communications (MTC), a device can transmit directly to the base station (BS) or through an aggregator (intermediate node). While direct device-BS communication has recently been in the focus of 5G/3GPP research and standardization efforts, the use of aggregators remains a less explored topic. In this paper we analyze the deployment scenarios in which aggregators can perform cellular access on behalf of multiple MTC devices. We study the effect of packet bundling at the aggregator, which alleviates overhead and resource waste when sending small packets. The aggregators give rise to a tradeoff between access congestion and resource starvation and we show that packet bundling can minimize resource starvation, especially for smaller numbers of aggregators. Under the limitations of the considered model, we investigate the optimal settings of the network parameters, in terms of number of aggregators and packet-bundle size. Our results show that, in general, data aggregation can benefit the uplink massive MTC in LTE, by reducing the signalling overhead.Comment: to appear in IEEE Networ

Energy-Efficient 3D Deployment of Aerial Access Points in a UAV Communication System

In this letter, we propose an energy-efficient 3-dimensional placement of multiple aerial access points (AAPs), in the desired area, acting as flying base stations for uplink communication from a set of ground user equipment (UE). The globally optimal energy-efficient vertical position of AAPs is derived analytically by considering the inter-cell interference and AAP energy consumption. The horizontal position of AAPs which maximize the packing density of the AAP coverage area are determined using a novel regular polygon-based AAP placement algorithm. We also determine the maximum number of non-interfering AAPs that can be placed in the desired area. The effect of the AAP energy consumption on the optimal placement and the analytic findings are verified via numerical simulations.Comment: This version of the work has been accepted for publication in the IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS. 6 pages; 5 figure

What Can Wireless Cellular Technologies Do about the Upcoming Smart Metering Traffic?

The introduction of smart electricity meters with cellular radio interface puts an additional load on the wireless cellular networks. Currently, these meters are designed for low duty cycle billing and occasional system check, which generates a low-rate sporadic traffic. As the number of distributed energy resources increases, the household power will become more variable and thus unpredictable from the viewpoint of the Distribution System Operator (DSO). It is therefore expected, in the near future, to have an increased number of Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS) devices with Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU)-like capabilities in the distribution grid, thus allowing the utilities to monitor the low voltage grid quality while providing information required for tighter grid control. From a communication standpoint, the traffic profile will change drastically towards higher data volumes and higher rates per device. In this paper, we characterize the current traffic generated by smart electricity meters and supplement it with the potential traffic requirements brought by introducing enhanced Smart Meters, i.e., meters with PMU-like capabilities. Our study shows how GSM/GPRS and LTE cellular system performance behaves with the current and next generation smart meters traffic, where it is clearly seen that the PMU data will seriously challenge these wireless systems. We conclude by highlighting the possible solutions for upgrading the cellular standards, in order to cope with the upcoming smart metering traffic.Comment: Submitted; change: corrected location of eSM box in Fig. 1; May 22, 2015: Major revision after review; v4: revised, accepted for publicatio

Impact of Harvest Time on the Main Agronomic and Fruit Quality Traits of Three Apricot Cultivars

Fruit quality and sensorial traits of three apricot cultivars as affected by harvest time were evaluated. High variability and significant differences were found among cultivars in all studied traits, except flowering date, yield efficiency, stone weight, titratable acidity, and sucrose. Additionally, all evaluated traits significantly depended on the harvest time. Year-by-year variation also was observed. Mid-late season 'Hungarian Best' and late ripening 'Kecskemét Rosè' cultivars had better fruit quality and sensorial traits than the early ripening cultivar 'Senetate', and can be recommended for fresh consumption, storage, and processing. On a principal component analysis, mid- and late-harvest time was shown to be positively associated with a good yield, sweetness, flavor, juiciness, and aroma, and negatively associated with sourness of the apricot. © 2012 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Reliability-Latency-Rate Tradeoff in Low-Latency Communications with Finite-Blocklength Coding

Low-latency communication plays an increasingly important role in delay-sensitive applications by ensuring the real-time exchange of information. However, due to the constraints on the maximum instantaneous power, bounded latency is hard to be guaranteed. In this paper, we investigate the reliability-latency-rate tradeoff in low-latency communications with finite-blocklength coding (FBC). More specifically, we are interested in the fundamental tradeoff between error probability, delay-violation probability (DVP), and service rate. Based on the effective capacity (EC) and normal approximation, we present several gain-conservation inequalities to bound the reliability-latency-rate tradeoffs. In particular, we investigate the low-latency transmissions over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, over a Rayleigh fading channel, with frequency or spatial diversity, and over a Nakagami-$m$ fading channel. To analytically evaluate the quality-of-service-constrained low-latency communications with FBC, an EC-approximation method is further conceived to derive the closed-form expression of quality-of-service-constrained throughput. For delay-sensitive transmissions in which the latency threshold is greater than the channel coherence time, we find an asymptotic form of the tradeoff between the error probability and DVP over the AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels. Our results may provide some insights into the efficient scheduling of low-latency wireless communications in which statistical latency and reliability metrics are adopted.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans. Inf. Theor

Goal-Oriented Scheduling in Sensor Networks With Application Timing Awareness

— Taking inspiration from linguistics, the communications theoretical community has recently shown a significant recent interest in pragmatic, or goal-oriented, communication. In this paper, we tackle the problem of pragmatic communication with multiple clients with different, and potentially conflicting, objectives. We capture the goal-oriented aspect through the metric of Value of Information (VoI), which considers the estimation of the remote process as well as the timing constraints. However, the most common definition of VoI is simply the Mean Square Error (MSE) of the whole system state, regardless of the relevance for a specific client. Our work aims to overcome this limitation by including different summary statistics, i.e., value functions of the state, for separate clients, and a diversified query process on the client side, expressed through the fact that different applications may request different functions of the process state at different times. A query-aware Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) solution based on statically defined VoI can outperform naive approaches by 15-20%

DIFFERENT APPROACHES IN THE IDENTIFICATION OF MEAT ORIGIN BASED ON PROTEIN PROFILING AND SIMPLE PCR

The meat origin, as a fundamental factor for the quality and the usability of its products, can be determined using DNA or protein analysis. In this study, different techniques are applied to determine the origin of different raw meat samples. The DNA analysis of meat is based on the Polymerase Chain Reaction whereas the techniques involving protein analysis are carried out using electrophoresis. Using the SDS-PAGE technique optimized by changing the running conditions, the amount of materials and the gel concentration, it is possible to differentiate different types of meat. We determine the differences in protein profile of poultry meat compared to the other samples in which are identified two specific fractions between 116 and 200 kD in the zone of myosin heavy chains and one bellow 45 kD in the zone of actin. In the beef samples there is a specific fraction in the zone of tropomyosin, while in pork and beef samples appeared a fraction in the zone of myosin light chain. This technique is suitable and can be only used for internal control in production and processing environments because of its low sensitivity. In practice, there are commercialized kits for the identification of meat and meat products based on DNA analysis. All those kits are dealing with specific primers for different type of meat (beef, pork, poultry, goat, horse, etc). In this case we used the primers for ryanodine receptor gene 1 (RYR1) which protein is involved in calcium pathways of the skeletal muscle cells. We amplify DNA isolated from beef, pork and poultry and DNA analysis based on partial amplification of the RYR1 gene showed the difference between mammalian and poultry meat because there is no amplification on the DNA sample isolated from chicken meat

DIFFERENT APPROACHES IN ANALYZING CHYMOSIN PURITY

Chymosin is a specific proteolytic enzyme found in rennet, and is the key enzyme in cheese production classified in the aspartic endopeptidases (EC 3.4.23.4). The aim of this study was to determine the purity of different commercially available chymosins and its equivalents using electrophoretic and chromatographic techniques. Chymosins produced by the company Chr. Hansen, CHY-MAX 200 and CHY-MAX Plus, CHY-MAX PowderExtra NB, as well as Maxiren 1800 Granulate from the company DSM, Sirnik from SZR – Travnik, Kraljevo and Planika from Mikroprocessing, Bileca were used as materials for this study. The purity level of the commercially available enzymes was analyzed using electrophoretic (sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis or SDS-PAGE) and chromatographic (Rapid Resolution Liquid Chromatography or RRLC) techniques. Results showed no presence of undeclared protein fractions due to inappropriate purification process in the samples except for CHY-MAX М 200 which had two protein fractions, most likely as a result of a polymorphism. All the CHY-MAX and Maxiren samples have chymosin as the active component (36 kDa), except for Planika and Sirnik which have a natural protease from R. miehei. Chromatographic analysis showed that beside the active component (chymosin), the preservative sodium benzoate was present in varying concentrations in all but CHY-MAX PowderExtra NB