A Risk-Based Approach to Evaluate the Impact of Interventions at Reducing the Risk of Foodborne Illness Associated with Wheat-Based Products

Pathogens are emerging on previously unrecognized food vehicles, such as wheat flour, which is a widely consumed commodity. Despite its low water activity, wheat-based ingredients and products have been implicated in several foodborne outbreaks over the last few years, resulting not only in the recall of food products but also in consumer illnesses. As a raw agricultural commodity, wheat is exposed to naturally occurring microbiological contamination that may compromise the overall safety of flour and other derived products. To address the increased concern regarding the safety of wheat-based foods, the objectives of the present research study were designed to develop and implement intervention strategies (i.e., acidic saline tempering solutions and high-pressure processing) aimed at reducing foodborne contaminants at different points along the mill-to-table continuum. Additionally, the effectiveness of such interventions at reducing public health risks was assessed using a stochastic, risk assessment model. Tempering with acidic saline solutions significantly improved the safety of wheat prior to milling, without substantially affecting the functional properties of straight-grade flour. For instance, the combination of lactic acid (5.0% v/v) and NaCl (~26% w/v) reduced the aerobic mesophilic bacteria and E. coli O157:H7 counts in soft wheat by 3.1 and 1.8 log CFU/g, respectively. A microbiological survey conducted in a commercial milling facility revealed that, as wheat is milled into flour, there is a substantial risk of cross-contamination by microorganisms potentially inhabiting the milling equipment. Appropriate cleaning and sanitization regimens should, therefore, be implemented in the mill to reduce such risk. The application of high-pressure processing (600 MPa, 6 min), as a post-packaging intervention, significantly reduced E. coli counts in cookie dough by as much as 2.0 log CFU/g, without causing significant changes on product quality parameters. The risk assessment modeling revealed that the application of these interventions along the mill-to-table continuum can significantly reduce the public health risks associated with the consumption of cookie dough contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. The findings of this study will lead to better decision-making regarding strategies that could be applied throughout the grain processing chain to safeguard consumers. Advisor: Andréia Bianchin

Audio-Based Productivity Forecasting of Construction Cyclic Activities

Due to its high cost, project managers must be able to monitor the performance of construction heavy equipment promptly. This cannot be achieved through traditional management techniques, which are based on direct observation or on estimations from historical data. Some manufacturers have started to integrate their proprietary technologies, but construction contractors are unlikely to have a fleet of entirely new and single manufacturer equipment for this to represent a solution. Third party automated approaches include the use of active sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes, passive technologies such as computer vision and image processing, and audio signal processing. Hitherto, most studies with these technologies have aimed to activity identification or to identifying active and idle times. Given that most actions performed with construction machinery involve cyclic activities, cycle time estimation is much more relevant. In this study, hardware and software requirements were optimized toward that goal. This approach had three facets: first, signal spectral analysis was performed through the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for comparison; second, audio and active sensor data have been submitted to a machine learning framework for activity classification accuracy comparison; and, third, Bayesian statistical models were used to include historical data for cycle time estimation enhancement. As a result, audio signals have been used along with a Markov-chain-based filter to achieve cycle time estimation with an accuracy of over 81% for up to five days of single-machine operation

A Practical Model to Perform Comprehensive Cybersecurity Audits

These days organizations are continually facing being targets of cyberattacks and cyberthreats; the sophistication and complexity of modern cyberattacks and the modus operandi of cybercriminals including Techniques, Tactics and Procedures (TTP) keep growing at unprecedented rates. Cybercriminals are always adopting new strategies to plan and launch cyberattacks based on existing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exploiting end users by using social engineering techniques. Cybersecurity audits are extremely important to verify that information security controls are in place and to detect weaknesses of inexistent cybersecurity or obsolete controls. This article presents an innovative and comprehensive cybersecurity audit model. The CyberSecurity Audit Model (CSAM) can be implemented to perform internal or external cybersecurity audits. This model can be used to perform single cybersecurity audits or can be part of any corporate audit program to improve cybersecurity controls. Any information security or cybersecurity audit team has either the options to perform a full audit for all cybersecurity domains or by selecting specific domains to audit certain areas that need control verification and hardening. The CSAM has 18 domains; Domain 1 is specific for Nation States and Domains 2-18 can be implemented at any organization. The organization can be any small, medium or large enterprise, the model is also applicable to any Non-Profit Organization (NPO)

Interaction of Cocoa Powder with Intestinal Microbiota

Cocoa is the fully fermented and dried seed of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao L.) which has prebiotic properties, due to their high concentration of polyphenols. Therefore, the ingestion of cocoa could cause changes in the proportions of the intestinal microbiota that can influence the intestinal immune response. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of alkalization process of the cocoa bean in the diversity of the gut microbiota. The samples were “lavado” unprocessed cocoa powder, “natural” unprocessed cocoa powder, “D-11-S” as alkalized cocoa powder, “D-11-B” heavily alkalized cocoa powder, and raw cocoa “shells” and a control of fecal matter. The cocoa powders are rich in polyphenols and anthocyanins that are pH sensitive exhibiting different colors as their structure changes. Analyses of pH and color correlated to microbial diversity can help understanding for which forms of polyphenols and anthocyanins will be more active. To analyze the samples a digestion was conducted by simulating the human digestion system in vitro, with five samples and one control (fecal samples without cocoa). Microbial diversity and composition were analyzed with Illumina HiSeq with methods via bTEFAP® DNA analysis. Segments of the bacterial genome were amplified with the 515F and 806R primers specific for the universal Eubacterial 16S rRNA gene. Final operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were taxonomically classified using BLASTn against a database derived from GreenGenes/RDP/NCBI. Monte Carlo simulation was performed to detect features with significant differences. Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, and Bacteroidetes were the most predominant phyla in samples comprising \u3e96% of all sequences (pBacteriodetes (F:B) by natural cocoa and D-11-B affected the diversity of the gut microbiota promoting a normal stable variety of OTUs. These data suggest that cocoa powder consumption aids in the prevalence of a beneficial microbiota in the human gut

Measurement of sustainability at farm-level : stakeholders perceptions and indicators of the social dimension

While there is a consensus between researchers, decision makers and consumers that an operationalization of the concept of sustainability is necessary, there exist huge disagreements on how to transform the multidimensional concept of sustainability into usable metrics. Due to the multiple actors involved, diverse objectives and complex interactions, the selection of metrics to be monitored is expected to be science-based, but also relevant to the main concerns of the stakeholders. This dissertation address these gaps investigating stakeholders arguments about the suitability of a set of sustainability indicators in an accountancy agricultural information system for policy evaluation. The research is framed in the FP7 EU-Project Farm Level Indicators for New Topics in Policy Evaluation (FLINT). The thesis pursues two objectives: i)to elicit stakeholders perceptions about the adoption of sustainability indicators into an established farm accountancy data system and ii)to contribute to assess the usefulness of collecting indicators of social sustainability at farm-level. The first objective is reached by exploring the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) stakeholders perceptions on feasibility and usefulness of a set of sustainability indicators. Using discussion groups and semi-structured interviews in nine European countries, we collected arguments about the measurement of sustainability at farm level. Participant stakeholders identified that the request of sustainability information of the farm is already taking place under simultaneous, embedded and sometimes overlapping requirements from regulations, markets or research agents. We found that stakeholders have diverging perceptions toward the value of that information, especially for those indicators not expected to be used for farm-level decision making. For the second objective, two empirical studies were conducted using an integrated data set of FADN and FLINT project in a sample of 1100 FADN farms distributed in nine countries. In the first study we explored the linkage between the use of advisory services by farm managers and the economic, environmental and social performance of farms. We identified three clusters of farms that have a different sustainability performance and that relate differently to advisory services. In the three groups of farms, the number of contacts with advisory services is positively correlated with the adoption of innovations, the number of information sources and the adoption of farm risk management measures. We failed to find linear relationship between advisory services and environmental and social sustainability. The second study investigated the influence of farm-level factors in farmers satisfaction with farming and its relationship with the level of satisfaction they have with their overall quality of life. We propose a path model using a Structural Equation Model-Partial Least Squares approach, testing the validity and reliability of a farmers work satisfaction construct and determining on how far the farm variables are related with it. Results suggest that while it is valid and reliable to measure work satisfaction as a construct, the farm level data that is currently available explains farmers satisfaction with their own standard and values only partially. Therefore a metric that measures those values should be further developed and tested. This doctoral dissertation contributes to the identification and prioritization of standardized indicators of farm-level sustainability. Two main learnings can be implied from the findings. The first one is that ontological differences between the agents that are involved in the functioning and evolvement of an information system can be identified (but not solved) applying inter and transdisciplinary research methods. The second one is that standardized indicators of social sustainability are desirable, feasible and useful to be collected and integrated in the same data sets with economic and environmental indicators. That said, due to the complexity of the relationship between sustainability dimensions, the value of standardization of indicators is limited by how are they going to be used.Obwohl zwischen Forschern, Entscheidungsträgern und Verbrauchern Konsens darüber besteht, dass eine Operationalisierung des Nachhaltigkeitskonzepts notwendig ist, gibt es dennoch große Meinungsverschiedenheiten darüber, wie das mehrdimensionale Konzept in brauchbare Metriken umgewandelt werden kann. Aufgrund der Vielzahl der beteiligten Akteure, der unterschiedlichen Ziele und der komplexen Wechselwirkungen wird erwartet, dass die Auswahl der zu überwachenden Metriken wissenschaftlich fundiert, und gleichzeitig entsprechend den wichtigsten Anliegen der Interessengruppen erfolgt. Die vorliegende Dissertation zielt darauf ab, diese Lücken zu schließen, indem sie die Argumente der Interessengruppen über die Eignung einer Reihe von Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren im Kontext der landwirtschaftlichen Buchführung für die Politikbewertung untersucht.Die empirische Forschung ist Teil des FP7 EU-Projekts Farm Level Indicators for New Topics in Policy Evaluation (FLINT) Die Dissertation verfolgt zwei Ziele: (i) die Wahrnehmung unterschiedlicher Interessengruppenvertreter über die Adoption von Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren in ein etabliertes landwirtschaftliches Buchhaltungsdatensystem zu erheben und (ii) den Nutzen der Erhebung von Indikatoren für die soziale Nachhaltigkeit auf betrieblicher Ebene zu bewerten. Das erste Ziel wird durch die Untersuchung der Wahrnehmungen der Interessengruppen des Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) über die Machbarkeit und den Nutzen einer Reihe von Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren erreicht. Mit Hilfe von Diskussionsgruppen und semi-strukturierten Interviews in neun europäischen Ländern haben wir Argumente zur Messung der Nachhaltigkeit auf betrieblicher Ebene gesammelt. Die teilnehmenden Interessengruppenvertreter stellten fest, dass die Anforderung von Nachhaltigkeitsinformationen über den Betrieb bereits unter gleichzeitigen, eingebetteten und sich manchmal überschneidenden Anforderungen von Verordnungen, Märkten oder Forschungsagenten erfolgt. Wir haben festgestellt, dass die Interessengruppen unterschiedliche Auffassungen über den Wert dieser Informationen haben, insbesondere für diejenigen Indikatoren, von denen nicht erwartet wird, dass sie für die Entscheidungsfindung auf Betriebsebene verwendet werden. Für das zweite Ziel wurden zwei empirische Studien mit einem integrierten Datensatz des FLINT Projekts mit einer Stichprobe von 1100 FADN-Betrieben in neun Ländern durchgeführt. In der ersten Studie untersuchten wir den Zusammenhang zwischen der Inanspruchnahme von Beratungsdiensten durch Betriebsleiter und der wirtschaftlichen, ökologischen und sozialen Leistung von Betrieben. Wir haben drei Cluster von Betrieben identifiziert, die eine unterschiedliche Nachhaltigkeitsleistung aufweisen und sich unterschiedlich auf Beratungsleistungen beziehen. In den drei Gruppen ist die Anzahl der Kontakte zu Beratungsdiensten positiv korreliert mit der Einführung von Innovationen, der Anzahl der Informationsquellen und der Einführung von Maßnahmen des betrieblichen Risikomanagements. Es ist uns nicht gelungen, einen linearen Zusammenhang zwischen Beratungsleistungen und ökologischer und sozialer Nachhaltigkeit zu finden. Die zweite Studie untersuchte den Einfluss von Faktoren auf Betriebsebene auf die Zufriedenheit der Landwirte mit der Landwirtschaft, und deren Zusammenhang mit der Zufriedenheit mit ihrer allgemeinen Lebensqualität. Wir schlagen ein Pfadmodell mit einem Structural Equation Model-Partial Least Squares Ansatz vor, das die Validität und Zuverlässigkeit eines Konstrukts der Arbeitszufriedenheit der Landwirte testet und bestimmt, inwieweit die Betriebsvariablen mit ihm in Beziehung stehen. Die Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass das Konstrukt gültig und zuverlässig ist, die Arbeitszufriedenheit zu messen, dass aber die derzeit verfügbaren Daten auf Betriebsebene die Zufriedenheit der Landwirte mit ihrem eigenen Lebensstandard und ihren Werten nur teilweise erklären. Daher sollte eine Metrik, die diese Werte misst, weiterentwickelt und getestet werden. Diese Dissertation trägt zur Identifizierung und Priorisierung von standardisierten Indikatoren für die Nachhaltigkeit auf Betriebsebene bei. Aus den Ergebnissen lassen sich zwei wesentliche Erkenntnisse ableiten: Die erste ist, dass ontologische Unterschiede zwischen den Akteuren, die an der Funktionsweise und Entwicklung eines Informationssystems beteiligt sind, durch die Anwendung inter- und transdisziplinärer Forschungsmethoden identifiziert (aber nicht gelöst) werden können. Die zweite ist, dass standardisierte Indikatoren für die soziale Nachhaltigkeit wünschenswert, machbar und nützlich sind, und daher in denselben Datensätzen mit Wirtschafts- und Umweltindikatoren gesammelt und integriert werden sollten. Allerdings ist der Wert der Standardisierung von Indikatoren aufgrund der Komplexität der Beziehung zwischen Nachhaltigkeitsdimensionen dadurch begrenzt, wie sie verwendet werden

Classification and Interpretation of Selected Soil Data from a Tropical Region of Bolivia

Half of the uncultivated land of the world, or some 80 million hectars (ha), lies in the humid tropics, where the climatic environment offers a high potential for crop production. If only 2 per-cent of this area were put into cultivation with good management practices, enough food could be produced to feed the present population of Latin America (Committee on Tropical Soils, National Academy of Sciences, 1972)

A Practical Model to Perform Comprehensive Cybersecurity Audits

These days organizations are continually facing being targets of cyberattacks and cyberthreats; the sophistication and complexity of modern cyberattacks and the modus operandi of cybercriminals including Techniques, Tactics and Procedures (TTP) keep growing at unprecedented rates. Cybercriminals are always adopting new strategies to plan and launch cyberattacks based on existing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exploiting end users by using social engineering techniques. Cybersecurity audits are extremely important to verify that information security controls are in place and to detect weaknesses of inexistent cybersecurity or obsolete controls. This article presents an innovative and comprehensive cybersecurity audit model. The CyberSecurity Audit Model (CSAM) can be implemented to perform internal or external cybersecurity audits. This model can be used to perform single cybersecurity audits or can be part of any corporate audit program to improve cybersecurity controls. Any information security or cybersecurity audit team has either the options to perform a full audit for all cybersecurity domains or by selecting specific domains to audit certain areas that need control verification and hardening. The CSAM has 18 domains; Domain 1 is specific for Nation States and Domains 2-18 can be implemented at any organization. The organization can be any small, medium or large enterprise, the model is also applicable to any Non-Profit Organization (NPO)

Exploring the confluence of confianza and national identity in Honduran voseo: a sociopragmatic analysis

This dissertation explores the dynamics of language variation and the process of language change from a Speaker-based approach (cp. Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968) through the analysis of a linguistic feature that has received much scholarly attention, namely, Spanish pronominal forms of address (see PRESEEA project), in an understudied variety: Honduran Spanish. Previous studies, as sparse as they are, have proposed that the system of singular forms in this variety comprises a set of three forms for familiar/informal address—vos, tú, and usted—and a sole polite/formal form, usted (Castro, 2000; Hernández Torres, 2013; Melgares, 2014). In order to empirically explore this system and detect any changes in progress within it, a model typical of address research in Spanish was adopted by examining pronoun use between interlocutors in specific types of relationships (e.g. parent-child or between friends). This investigation, however, takes this model further by also analyzing the attitudes Honduran speakers exhibit toward the forms in connection to their Honduran identity, while adopting Billig’s (1995) theory of ‘banal nationalism’—the (re)production of national identity through daily social practices—, and as a corollary, their spontaneous pronoun production, following Terkourafi’s (2001; 2004) frame-based approach. Thereupon, this dissertation goes beyond the typical model of describing the innovative form as more frequent in specific types of interactions (once dominated by another form) by delving into how language variation leads to change as it is taking place in the everyday interactions of speakers, guided by pressures of discourse, societal structure, and identity reproduction, thus, providing a richer picture of the language change process. With the main goal of explaining the prevalence of vos in Honduran Spanish—provided that the general tendency in the language is the expansion of tú (e.g. Fox, 1969; Lastra de Suárez, 1972; Millán, 2011; Penny, 1991) and that tú is prescriptively promulgated as the ‘proper/correct’ form and not vos by the Honduran education system and religion—, this investigation was carefully designed by integrating a methodology typical of address research (cp. PRESEEA) with both quantitative and qualitative techniques informed by various subfields of linguistics, including variationist sociolinguistics, politeness research, and sociocultural linguistics. Accordingly, data were gathered through two main research tasks, a written sociolinguistic questionnaire and group semi-directed interviews, from a sample of native speakers of the urban variety of Honduran Spanish. Collected data from the sociolinguistic questionnaire were analyzed inferentially through a combination of Chi-squared and Fisher’s exact tests, and a logistic regression in R. Attitudinal and naturalistic data were analyzed qualitatively by organizing them into themes (i.e. Thematic Analysis: King & Horrocks, 2010) and by examining spontaneous pronoun use in relation to the extralinguistic features of the interactions (Terkourafi, 2001; 2004). Results from the qualitative analysis of the interview data revealed that vos is widely accepted as the norm and that no social stigma is associated with it, as it is used in everyday interactions under the level of conscious awareness, that is, banally reproducing Honduran national identity. What is unacceptable is the use of tú, which is ascribed to a foreign identity; thus, any use of tú by Honduran speakers is perceived as either spurious or performance of foreignness. Usted is as acceptable as vos is, mainly utilized to express distance, deference, or respect. Furthermore, it was shown that vos can be actively manipulated in interaction to portray non-conservative identity, and likewise, usted can be manipulated to portray conservative identity. These findings were supported by the results of the quantitative analysis, which provide conclusive evidence that certain extralinguistic factors mediate pronoun selection, including, gender match between speaker and addressee (although no independent gender of speaker or of addressee effects were detected), age of speaker and of addressee, and degree of confianza between interlocutors, in addition to other features particular to the interactional context, such as the presence of third parties and the setting. Consequently, the statistically significant preference of vos by younger generations in conjunction with its acceptance as the norm and with its function as a marker of national identity evidence the socially unobstructed change in the pronominal system of Honduran Spanish as vos becomes even more greatly rooted in the Honduran way of life. This change appears to have originated in the family context, specifically in parent-child relationships, where a high degree of confianza (i.e. profound confianza) is shared, but also seems to affect relationships inside and outside of the family domain in which moderate confianza (i.e. superficial confianza) is shared—where it is expressed through reciprocal vos among younger interlocutors but through reciprocal usted among older interlocutors. In sum, these findings demonstrate that vos has prevailed in Honduran Spanish since its first attestations in the region during Colonial times as it has developed into a banal symbol of Honduran national identity

Capacity Market for Distribution System Operator – with Reliability Transactions – Considering Critical Loads and Microgrids

Conventional distribution system (DS) asset planning methods consider energy only from transmission systems (TS) and not from distributed energy resources (DER), leading to expensive plans. Newer transactive energy DS (TEDS) asset planning models, built on capacity market mechanisms, consider energy from both TS and DERs, leading to lower-cost plans and maximizing social welfare. However, in both methods the cost of higher reliability requirements for some users are socialized across all users, leading to lower social welfare. In this paper, a novel transactive energy capacity market (TECM) model is proposed for DS asset planning. It builds on TEDS incremental capacity auction models by provisioning for critical loads to bid and receive superior reliability as a service. The TECM model considers these reliability transactions, in addition, to selling energy transactions from TS and DERs, buying energy transactions from loads, and asset upgrade transactions from the network operator. The TECM model allows for islanded microgrids and network reconfiguration to maximize social welfare. The TECM model is assessed on several case studies, demonstrating that it achieves higher social welfare and a lower plan cost