Capacidade de sobrevivência e termorresistência de listeria monocytogenes em salsichas formuladas, com e sem a adição de lactato de potássio, embaladas a vácuo, e armazenadas a -18°C, 4°C e 10°C

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência dos Alimentos.O presente trabalho teve por objetivo: i) realizar um estudo comparativo entre três métodos de recuperação de Listeria monocytogenes em salsichas embaladas a vácuo; ii) verificar a sobrevivência de L. monocytogenes em salsichas embaladas a vácuo, preparadas com ou sem adição de lactato de potássio durante estocagem a temperaturas de refrigeração e abusiva; iii) determinar a sobrevivência de L. monocytogenes em salsichas durante estocagem a temperaturas de refrigeração, empregando eletroforese em gel em campo pulsado (PFGE); e iv) verificar os efeitos da temperatura e tempo de reaquecimento na sobrevivência de L. monocytogenes em salsichas preparadas com ou sem adição de lactato de potássio, durante estocagem em temperaturas de refrigeração e congelamento. Os resultados obtidos indicaram que: i) o método de enxágüe do produto na embalagem do USDA/ARS foi mais sensível, bem como rápido e fácil, do que o método aprovado de enriquecimento de amostra do USDA/FSIS ou que o método de enxágüe de amostra do USDA/ARS em determinar a presença ou ausência de L. monocytogenes; ii) a adição de lactato de potássio como um ingrediente na produção de salsichas pode aumentar consideravelmente a segurança microbiológica de produtos cárneos prontos para consumo inibindo ou retardando a multiplicação de L. monocytogenes durante estocagem em temperatura de refrigeração ou abusiva; iii) cepa isolada de uma planta de processamento multiplicou melhor em salsichas embaladas a vácuo do que cepas isoladas de salsichas, salame e em clínica; e iv) a formulação do produto e temperatura/tempo de estocagem, ou combinações destas, não influenciaram significativamente a sobrevivência e/ou termorresistência de L. monocytogenes em salsichas nas temperaturas de reaquecimento testadas

Seismic vulnerability maps of Timisoara historical center based on fragility curves

The seismic vulnerability assessment on a territorial scale requires the application of simplified procedures. Data collection is usually carried out by adopting external inspections; for this reason the knowledge gained for the considered buildings is usually not complete and lack of information has to be managed. The definition of a methodology which takes into account these aspects is one of the aims of this paper. Another goal is the extension of the obtained results to buildings not directly surveyed on site, whose characteristics are similar to those of the analyzed buildings. The case study of Timisoara (Romania) is presented. A rapid survey of the historical center is performed and recurring typologies are identified. Analyses of the most significant local mechanisms of collapse are implemented, taking into account possible parameters variation. Fragility curves for each typology are then obtained allowing the definition of vulnerability maps for the whole historical center

The application of a Bayesian approach to assess the seismic vulnerability of historical centers

The seismic vulnerability of historical centers at a territorial scale cannot be assessed performing detailed analysis which are usually adopted at the single building scale. In fact, a traditional complete survey would be extremely time-consuming and not sustainable for this purpose. The approach described in this paper is based on the idea that it is possible to infer quantities which cannot be directly detected from buildings outside inspection starting from parameters that can be measured. In order to achieve this purpose, a Bayesian approach is applied, updating initial hypotheses when new data become available. In this context, the procedure herein proposed aims at applying a probabilistic approach instead of a deterministic one to define facades inter-storey height starting from buildings height knowledge. In order to validate the method, for out of plane local mechanisms of collapse (walls overturning), horizontal loads multiplier \uf0610 values are calculated and compared to results obtained by using data collected on-site

Potential biogas production from agricultural by-products in Sicily. A case study of citrus pulp and olive pomace

Renewable energy sources represent a suitable alternative to conventional fossil fuels, due to the possible advantages in terms of environmental impact reduction. Anaerobic digestion of biomasses could be considered an environmental friendly way to treat and revalorise large amounts of by-products from farming industries because it ensures both pollution control and energy recovery. Therefore, the objective of this study was to define a methodology for evaluating the potential biogas production available from citrus pulp and olive pomace, which are suitable agricultural by-products for biogas production. In the first phase of the study, the spatial distribution of both olive and citrus-producing areas was analysed in Sicily, a geographical area of the Mediterranean basin highly representative of these types of cultivation. Then, a GIS-based model, which had been previously defined and utilised to evaluate the amount of citrus pulp and olive pomace production, was applied to this case study. Based on the results obtained for the different provinces of Sicily, the province of Catania was chosen as the study area of this work since it showed the highest production of both citrus pulp and olive pomace. Therefore, a further analysis regarded the quantification of olive pomace and citrus pulp at municipal level. The results of this analysis showed that the total amount of available citrus pulp and olive pomace corresponded theoretically to about 11,102,469 Nm3/year biogas. Finally, the methodology adopted in this study made it possible to identify suitable areas for the development of new biogas plants by considering both the spatial distribution of the olive and citrus growing areas and the locations of the existing processing industries

Responsabilidad del estado por fallas en el servicio notarial.

This article is about of State responsibility, generated by failures of the notary service; taking as starting point, its definition from the organic and functional criterion, administrative law. Subsequently the legal framework of this activity is developed, in order to establish the necessary concepts when determining the elements that constitute it. Teleology of this investigative article, consists of determine and analyzing theconfiguration of the State´s non contractual liability, for failure in the notarial service, studying some situations in which state responsibility, has been declared to the demands that have been brought by citizens who have been affected their interests for this, taking as a starting point the doctrine and jurisprudence develops in this respect. Finally, the various judgments handed down by the Council of State are analyzed in order to build a line of case law, a task that is basic and instructive for lawyers and citizens interested in gaining knowledge of and deepening the subject.Este artículo aborda la responsabilidad extracontractual del Estado por fallas en el servicio notarial, tomando como punto de partida su definición doctrinal, desde el criterio orgánico y funcional del Derecho Administrativo. Posteriormente se desarrolla el marco legal de esta actividad, a fin de establecer los conceptos necesarios que sirven de base para determinar los elementos que la constituyen. La teleología de este articulo investigativo, tiende a analizar y determinar la configuración de la mencionada anteriormente, estudiando algunas situaciones en las que se ha declarado la responsabilidad estatal, ante las demandas que han interpuesto ciudadanos que han visto afectados sus intereses por ello, tomando como punto de partida la doctrina y jurisprudencia desarrolla al respecto. Finalmente se analizan sentencias relevantes en la materia proferidas por el Consejo de Estado, a fin de construir una línea jurisprudencial, labor que resulta básica e instructiva para abogados y ciudadanos interesados en obtener conocimiento del tema y profundizar los mismos

Development of an information system for the traceability of citrus-plant nursery chain related to the Italian National Service for Voluntary Certification

Abstract: At present, the production of certified plants in Italy, which is obtained by using propagating materials verified in terms of varietal trueness-to-type and phytosanitary condition, is guaranteed by the National Service for Voluntary Certification.  The monitoring of productions and activities that are carried out in the centres established by the National Service for Voluntary Certification is crucial for the identification of both possible sources of disease risk and the destination of the propagating materials.  In previous studies a methodology was proposed and applied to carry out the requirements analysis and specification for the development of an integrated computer-based information system for certified citrus-plant traceability.  This study proposes a methodology for the implementation of the information system suitable to execute the previously designed functionalities.  The use of PostgreSQL, a free and open-source object-relational database management system, allowed the implementation of the entity-relation scheme that included the information related to the managed propagating materials and the process activities defined by the certification program.  System functionalities were implemented in applications developed on the basis of the client-server paradigm.  The proposed methodology was applied to the case study of the Italian citrus-plant nursery chain.  Specific information derived from plants and centres of the National Service for Voluntary Certification were included in the database along with the geolocation of both certified citrus plants produced in the nurseries and planted in the field and citrus mother plants.  Geographic data acquired by using a GPS system were combined with other information concerning plant health condition and treatments with the aim to find out possible relations between the citrus-plant health status and the territory.  The system implemented in this study allows the definition and utilisation of ‘track and trace’ procedures of propagation materials and plants that are in the certified Italian citrus-plant nursery chain, as well as the evaluation and prevention of the diffusion of the Citrus Tristeza Virus which causes one of the most damaging diseases in citrus orchards.   Keywords: citrus, certification, traceability, nursery chain, GIS, information system, plant disease

Responsabilidad del estado por fallas en el servicio notarial.

This article is about of State responsibility, generated by failures of the notary service; taking as starting point, its definition from the organic and functional criterion, administrative law. Subsequently the legal framework of this activity is developed, in order to establish the necessary concepts when determining the elements that constitute it. Teleology of this investigative article, consists of determine and analyzing theconfiguration of the State´s non contractual liability, for failure in the notarial service, studying some situations in which state responsibility, has been declared to the demands that have been brought by citizens who have been affected their interests for this, taking as a starting point the doctrine and jurisprudence develops in this respect. Finally, the various judgments handed down by the Council of State are analyzed in order to build a line of case law, a task that is basic and instructive for lawyers and citizens interested in gaining knowledge of and deepening the subject.Este artículo aborda la responsabilidad extracontractual del Estado por fallas en el servicio notarial, tomando como punto de partida su definición doctrinal, desde el criterio orgánico y funcional del Derecho Administrativo. Posteriormente se desarrolla el marco legal de esta actividad, a fin de establecer los conceptos necesarios que sirven de base para determinar los elementos que la constituyen. La teleología de este articulo investigativo, tiende a analizar y determinar la configuración de la mencionada anteriormente, estudiando algunas situaciones en las que se ha declarado la responsabilidad estatal, ante las demandas que han interpuesto ciudadanos que han visto afectados sus intereses por ello, tomando como punto de partida la doctrina y jurisprudencia desarrolla al respecto. Finalmente se analizan sentencias relevantes en la materia proferidas por el Consejo de Estado, a fin de construir una línea jurisprudencial, labor que resulta básica e instructiva para abogados y ciudadanos interesados en obtener conocimiento del tema y profundizar los mismos

An automatic system for the detection of dairy cows lying behaviour in free-stall barns

In this paper, a method for the automatic detection of dairy cow lying behaviour in free-stall barns is proposed. A computer visionbased system (CVBS) composed of a video-recording system and a cow lying behaviour detector based on the Viola Jones algorithm was developed. The CVBS performance was tested in a head-to-head free stall barn. Two classifiers were implemented in the software component of the CVBS to obtain the cow lying behaviour detector. The CVBS was validated by comparing its detection results with those generated from visual recognition. This comparison allowed the following accuracy indices to be calculated: the branching factor (BF), the miss factor (MF), the sensitivity, and the quality percentage (QP). The MF value of approximately 0.09 showed that the CVBS missed one cow every 11 well detected cows. Conversely, the BF value of approximately 0.08 indicated that one false positive was detected every 13 well detected cows. The high value of approximately 0.92 obtained for the sensitivity index and that obtained for QP of about 0.85 revealed the ability of the proposed system to detect cows lying in the stalls

IMPROVING PER-PIXEL CLASSIFICATION OF CROP-SHELTER COVERAGE BY TEXTURE ANALYSES OF HIGH-RESOLUTION SATELLITE PANCHROMATIC IMAGES

Actual research challenges in automated recognition of crop shelters regard, among other issues, the accuracy of classification, contour detection and typology identification. In this field the use of high-resolution multispectral images has been found to improve the feature recognition in comparison to RGB images or low resolution multispectral ones. As for classification methodologies, per-pixel and object-oriented ones offer different tools to cope with image recognition and feature extraction. In this study, to improve the classification of cropshelter coverage, the per-pixel method was applied to high-resolution multispectral images, coupled with a texture analysis of high-resolution panchromatic images. In detail, the results of the classification accuracy assessment achieved by the use of native high-resolution panchromatic images and RGB-band images resampled accordingly, were compared with those found in a previous study in which panchromatic images degraded to the RGB-band image resolution were used. The results show that the proposed methodology is suitable to improve crop-shelter classification quality and contour detection of parcels

LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF ARUNDO DONAX BIOMASS PRODUCTION IN A MEDITERRANEAN EXPERIMENTAL FIELD USING TREATED WASTEWATER

In this study the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Arundo donax production process for energy purpose is proposed. The cultivation of this type of herbaceous biomass, irrigated with urban wastewater, was carried out in an experimental field, sited in eastern Sicily (Italy). The analysis by LCA makes it possible, among other things, to evaluate the potential environmental impacts related to each phase of the process. In this study a sensitivity analysis of the LCA results were carried out by varying the process stages. Furthermore the incidence of each process stage on the damage categories by varying the cultivation- cycle length was evaluated. The stages constituting the Arundo donax production process, considered in this assessment, regard seedling production, agronomic practices, irrigation, and transport to boiler. The functional unit used in the analyses was 1 ton of biomass and crop productivity values were derived from literature. The analyses allowed to identify the most significant stages of the Arundo donax production process related to the experimental field. In detail, this study highlights that seedling production and irrigation stages contributed most of all to the overall environmental burden, whereas agronomic practices stage showed a minor influence on the process